Chapter 280

By the time he reached his office it was almost lunch hour. He walked over to his cube and was surprised to see a gift beautifully wrapped with a red ribbon tied on top onto a beautiful bow on his desk. His messages indicated that there were three of them waiting for him. He took his coat off and hanged it on the hanger outside his cube. He removed his cell phone from his pocket and left it on the next and booted his desktop. He proceeded to check his message and all three were work related and he erased two of them and wrote something on a piece of a paper regarding the other. While waiting for his machine to come up, he noticed that his cell phone was turned off. He remembered turning it off in the morning as she was around and he didn't want any distractions. He had voice messages and about five missed calls. He ran through them and four of them were from his sister and one was from Carissa. The first voice message was from his niece singing "Happy Birthday to you". He looked the calendar and he had completely forgotten what day it was and with Diya staying over, a smile adorned his face and he turned around to open the gift. He opened it up and it had a box of finest Belgium chocolates and a card. He opened it up and it was from Carissa. He was not sure how she got his office address and had it delivered here, but the card was beautiful. It also said that she would like to have dinner with him if he was free. He picked up one of the chocolates and continued to work while savoring its flavor and that was when he realized that it was liquor filled chocolates and decided to keep them aside and not eat them at work.

He walked over to her room after dinner and they spent some time chatting about a lot of things. She noticed that something was on his mind, especially after the phone call he had received. She had noticed the way he had picked up the phone and had been a little surprised after that. She knew something was going on and guessed that it might be a girl and she had clarified that by looking at the missed call on his cell phone when he had stepped out for a minute. As she had suspected it was from Diya and by the way he had been surprised and way he had spoken on the phone after that she guessed that it must have been her fiancée on the other end and not her. He looked a little different after that and seemed distant. He had walked over to her room with her as she stayed in the same hotel and he had helped himself to a couple of rounds confirming that something was definitely on his mind and this time she knew he was a little disturbed. She knew very well that he doesn’t go for more than two glasses of wine at any given time under normal circumstances. Now he was helping himself with a third one from her room and especially after that phone call, she knew something was definitely on his mind. She gently walked over to him and sat next to him and took his hand in hers and suggested that it is not wise to get drunk on his birthday and leaned over to give a peck on his cheek. He grabbed her and kissed her on her lips; she was caught off guard but she absolutely wasn’t going to stop him from kissing her as this was something she had always longed for. He picked her up in his arms and walked over to the bed, with his hands around her waist he continued to kiss her while kicking off his shoes.