He couldn’t fault her for her devotion to her friend and her insane lack of self-preservation when defending her. The woman needed someone to save her from herself sometimes. She was a hard act to follow, and he glanced down at the spreadsheet taking in the numbers easily with how she had presented the data. Impressed that someone so volatile could be so precise and good at something as mundane as maths and money. He slid his eyes back up to watch her as someone asked her a question.
“Are the budgets for the Inhale project ready for the marketing department to start readying its launch?”
“Mr. Wang and I still have to finalize some details before I can issue you that funding. It will be with you by the end of the week.” Ling batted off the question without missing a beat, knowing she would have to pull him aside for that soon, given they hadn’t given her a clue what they were putting into that campaign, and caught Tian’s eyes on her.
He had demanded she stay, and now they were alone he was taking his damn time about it. She tried not to show her obvious disdain and inspected her manicured French tips with a sigh.
“Am I holding you up?” Tian asked calmly without raising his head to meet her eye and continued with what he was doing. Seemingly unbothered if he was.
“You owe me a shirt.” He smirked and then sat down to face her across the table and caught her instant glaring gawp. She was incensed that he would come right out at work and say that.
“I’ll pay for the dress.” Tian finally caved, knowing fine well that what he did to it would probably be unrepairable, and it’s not like he couldn’t afford it, however much it cost. In this, he would agree he hadn’t needed to rip it off her. He had been caught up in drunk passion and a misguided sense of needing to get her naked.
“That’s it? Not even going to tell me what you found?” Ling was blatantly glaring at him.
She didn’t know why he got to her so much, but he did, and it always left her feeling like a complete mess anytime she bickered with him this way. Unable to calm down for ages after and was tense and tetchy like she had fought with a family member. He was too good at slaying her with that damn shitty poker face and calm tone he always hit her with.
He made her crazy.
“I’ll have to pull the extra hundred from another source unless Yanhue is going to increase the amount they gave me to work with.” Ling pulled her laptop back out and opened it, mentally skimming all the projects up in the air and who could lose some funding without holding things up. That was hardly a small gap in numbers she had to fill.
“What projects do we have running right now?” Although he knew most of the company’s workings, Tian sometimes needed reminders as a lot was happening. OTS had its fingers in a lot of pies.
Tian sighed and leaned back in his chair, thinking it through while chewing on his lip.
“What’s the issue with the life planner app?” It wasn’t one of Tian’s main projects or focuses as it fell under Kai’s jurisdiction, so he didn’t have a clear view of it. He had been focusing on other things these past weeks.
“They discovered that NLY Tech was working on a similar, almost identical program and decided to add new features to drown out the competition. They had to extend the deadline and needed more staff.” With work between them, Ling found it easier to sit calmly in Tian’s presence. She couldn’t fault him as a boss or his work ethic; when he was in this mode, he wasn’t such an asshole. His manner and ease of command gave her a sense of security that the company was in good hands and her future stable. He never seemed flustered by any issues that arose, and despite her dislike of him, she was glad he would be their permanent CEO when Kai and his minions moved on.
Tian had a good grip on the workings of OTS and didn’t make rash decisions. All the projects she had seen him approve were ones she believed would do well financially. At times she felt like they had the same thought process.
Tian leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and clasped his hands together, his jacket straining slightly over his broad shoulders and distracting Ling. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably as memories of being under those very strong muscles, held pinned to a mattress, flickered through her mind’s eye, and she blushed. Her face heated with an invasive replay of running her hands over their bulk and down his back in the throes of passion. She was wholly uncomfortable that her brain would go there.
Ling was flustered by her train of thought and cleared her throat as she had to drag her mind back to the present, dodging his focus when he lifted his eyes to look her way and immersed herself in her laptop. Avoiding his gaze as she tried to calm her wildly palpating heart and rising blood temperature.
Tian tapped his thumb on the table, watching Ling as she scrolled her screen, deep in thought about where to pull the funds from when everything they had kept running was all projects worth keeping. He was torn.
Ling nodded, typed a quick message to her assistant to get the paperwork ready with the agreed amount, and then gave Tian a long, scrutinizing look.
“You know Inhale is Meilei’s baby, right?” She narrowed her eyes at him