The room fell quiet. Zaria closed her eyes so that she would not be staring at the lightly tanned skin directly in front of her face. She was acutely aware that they were alone, really alone, for the first time since the hotel incident. She snuck a glance at him but closed her eyes again quickly when she saw he was watching her with a distinct furrow between his brows.

"I think it has been long enough, thank you," she told him, letting the ice pack slide from her hand onto the table with a soft thud. As soon as the pressure of the pack on her face was gone, she stood up and tried to appear nonchalant as she walked to the windows. The skin in both areas were numb, and she wrapped her arms around herself to keep from rubbing feeling back into them. She looked out the window for a while, watching as cars drove around on the street far below.

Gu Cheng leaned back in the soft leather seat, a long finger tapping against the melting ice packs. The speed of her retreat irritated him, as though she could not stand to be near him one second longer. Even standing at the window she was facing away, dismissive in her posture. The silence stretched out, and he felt his lips tug up as she began to fidget, wondering if she felt uncomfortable by the quiet. Sure enough, after a few more minutes of nobody speaking, she turned back to the table and took a seat opposite of him. Her lips opened and closed several times, and he waited to see what questions she would ask about him. Most of the young starlets or heiresses that found themselves alone with him would immediately begin feeling out exactly how rich he was or whether he was currently seeing somebody. He crossed his arms across his chest as he waited, his gaze mocking.

Zaria shifted in her chair and picked at the edge of her cast. "So..." She felt like she should fill the silence. It felt strange to be in a room with someone and not be doing something. If she had her phone, she would be playing with it just to keep from having an awkward conversation. "Liu Wan is your secretary? At just the entertainment company or all of your companies?"

"I only have Liu Wan. She works out of the entertainment company."

"She is very nice. And she must be very capable to work at such a large company..." Zaria trailed off, not sure what else she could say. She cleared her throat and tried again. "It must be a tiring job."

"Why would it be tiring?" Gu Cheng asked. The conversation was confusing.

"As your secretary, she is the first line of defense between you and all of your admirers, isn't she? And she has to deal with them even when her boss is not there. She was very professional when I met her," she added, seeing his face darkening, "I liked her a lot. I just thought it must be tiring..."

Zaria looked down at the table, linking her fingers together beneath its surface.

"I am not interested in any of them," He stated in a matter of fact manner. "I can't control if flies buzz around me."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I wasn't saying you were doing it to make her job harder. I was just thinking it must be tiring, swatting all day long." Zaria grew quiet again, looking at her nails under the table. "She is very pretty. She looks like she could be a model herself. Actually, every woman I have seen since I got here is very pretty..."

"I am not interested in any of them," Gu Cheng responded again. "And you are saying all the women are attractive. Have you seen no attractive men?"

"Oh, no, there are many attractive men as well. When I first saw Director Chiu, I thought that he was an actor pretending to be a doctor! Even your assistant is very attractive!"

Inside the elevator, on his way back up from escorting the former employee along with the security guards, Mo Ye felt a chill run down his back.

In the conference room, Gu Cheng sharpened his gaze at the woman who refused to look up to meet his eyes. Hearing other men mentioned was annoying him, although he could not tell why. "Anybody else?"

"CEO Gu," she said, finally looking up. She stumbled over the next words when she encountered his frozen glare. "Ahem, CEO Gu, I'm afraid that I have not met that many people to be able to recommend any to your company. And if you were looking for yourself, then I don't think I would set you up with anyone without knowing more about them than they have an attractive face. Men and women can be beautiful on the outside but bitter and rotten on the inside. You should be more picky."

She thought he wanted her to set him up... Gu Cheng found himself so angry that he felt he could spit blood. "You..." Unable to get out another word, he stood up and stormed out of the conference room.

Outside, Gu Cheng did not stop to cool down. Instead, he strode toward the elevator, entering as soon as the doors opened and nearly knocking over Mo Ye. The latter quietly stood aside as Gu Cheng pressed the button to go up to his office. The elevator quickly rose the twenty stories to the top, and the doors slid open with a pleasant chime. There was no secretary at the desk in front of his office. In fact, there was not another soul on the entire floor. Gu Cheng did not like having too many people around to touch his things, so if he was not in his office in this building, then nobody was allowed to come to the top floor at all.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Mo Ye quietly followed his boss through the small reception area and into his sterile, modern office. The room was all steel and glass, a remnant of the former director of this company. Gu Cheng did not like using the office but saw no point in wasting money to change a desk that he only used a few times a month. He frowned down at the sleek and tall desk chair, choosing to walk past it to stand at the window. He stood there for several minutes with his hands sunk into his pockets, a dark cloud across his features.

Mo Ye waited uncertainly in front of the desk, clearing his throat subtly after a moment and updating his boss. "Sir, the woman has been escorted from the building, and the reception desk and guards have all been informed she is not to be allowed to reenter. Do you wish to make an assault report with the police?"

There was no response. Just as he was about to try again, a cold voice came from the still figure. "Assistant Mo, am I an attractive man?"

Of all the things Mo Ye expected to hear, this was not one of them. He racked his brain for an explanation, but other than it being connected to Miss Joshua, he came up blank. "Sir is very attractive."

Gu Cheng turned around to face him, the light from the late afternoon sun through the slightly tinted windows, creating an almost ethereal glow around him. "Am I as attractive as Chiu Leong?"

"I..." Mo Ye took a deep breath and slowly let it out. In his mind, he examined it from every angle but could see no direct way out of the current mine field. "Director Chiu is an attractive man, but I do not believe that Director Chiu is of the same caliber as CEO Gu."

Gu Cheng's dark eyes seemed to pull him apart layer by layer. Mo Ye self consciously straightened his glasses and directed his eyes straight ahead. "So if someone were to mention that Assistant Mo and Director Chiu are attractive but did not mention me, does that mean that they do not find me attractive?"

A feeling of ice sliding down his back made Mo Ye shiver, and he inwardly cursed his way up one side of the room and down the other. "If this person was in front of you at the time, they might have felt bashful, stating it in front of CEO Gu."

"Hmm." Gu Cheng's eyes continued to peel him for another minute before finally looking away. The explanation made sense. Even while actively serving in the army, there was not a shortage of females throwing themselves at him. It was hard to believe that his face was unworthy of mentioning due to being unattractive. His lips twitched at the idea of that woman being bashful, but it was true that she had been unable to meet his eyes for long.

"I do not believe that CEO Gu has to worry about Miss Joseph's returning his affections if he should decide to court her. She is not a manipulative person that I can tell, but she is young and likely not familiar with certain feelings. One would just need to approach slowly."

Gu Cheng felt his lips twitch again before his brows drew down into a point. "Who wants to pursue her? I merely worried that she was blind thinking that man was more attractive than me." He scoffed and tapped his finger on the shiny glass surface of his desk.

Mo Ye sighed in his heart. With one person actively resisting interactions and the other denying his own feelings, theirs would be a difficult path.

A muffled buzz sounded from both of their phones, and they looked at their screens in unison.

"It looks like the phones are ready to be picked up, sir. Should I go down and escort Miss Joshua over to the lab?" He offered tentatively. He was unsure how to approach his boss in his current mind state. The normally decisive man was running from cold to frozen too quickly to adjust to.

Without bothering to answer, Gu Cheng led the way back to the elevator.

Back in the conference room, Zaria was still trying to figure out what she had said to anger the stone faced man this time. It occurred to her that he knew she was new to the city, so why would he be asking if she knew of anyone that could be scouted? As for finding someone to date, she really had been joking about that. It was unlikely that a man as handsome as he was would have any trouble finding companionship. In her 19 years of living, she had not seen a face as finely sculpted or a figure so perfectly arranged. She recalled a magazine article in some famous fashion magazine that had extolled the virtues of a man's forearms and how the simple act of rolling up a button-up shirt to show the forearms could increase a man's sexiness by 200%. Gu Cheng had obviously been who they had in mind when they wrote that article. The problem came whenever he opened his mouth...

Zaria was interrupted from her appraisal of a certain someone's assets by the arrival of said person's assistant, advising her that they were summoned to the lab. She and Mo Ye walked the short distance to the lab, where Gu Cheng was already standing and talking to the cute little technician. He did not look at her when she approached, but she still politely nodded a greeting as she has seen many others do to be respectful before turning toward the young woman who was holding out the new phone.

"I was not able to save much. Most of the data was corrupted, but I did manage to save some pictures. I was wondering if I could keep the old one? It is a useless piece of plastic at this point, but I found some of the circuitry to be interesting."

"Everything else is lost?" Zaria asked, just to be sure.

"If I can't get anything else off of it, then I doubt anyone else can," the young woman said. The spikes of her hair bobbing as she shook her nodded her head.

Zaria agreed to give her the phone. It was useless and just another item to carry around, so it really was not a worry. She wanted to immediately turn on the new phone to check which pictures were saved, but she was conscious of the others looking at her curiously.

"Thank you," she said, looking at each of the three individuals present. "I appreciate what you have all done. If there is something that I can do for any of you, please don't hesitate to ask. If I am able to, then I will do it."

The young woman stated that she was more than paid back with the new puzzle she had been given, carrying the old phone back to her work table and proceeding to ignore the lot of them. Mo Ye waved his hands and denied any part in helping her, while Gu Cheng just gazed at her with those dark eyes and said nothing.