CHAP

O!

M!!

G!!!!!!!!!!!

She wished she'd known how hot he was! Clearly CEO's weren't all old and smelly. Seriously, there should have been a warning somewhere so she could have prepared herslef before walking into his office.

" Warning; potential employer is so hot you may have a problem talking, thinking, walking, acting like a human, not drooling, not stuttering and not landing up naked on his desk, his floor and potentially against his wall."

"Uh... Hi... helloooo... uh, Doris Granger. Hello. Yup!" She stuttered and extended her hand for him to shake. He didn't take it. Instead, he stared at her strangely.

"Sit!" He gestured to a chair and her wobbly legs somehow took her there. She watched him intently as he confidently strode to his chair and lowered himself into it. He wore a black suit and tie that screamed "I'm so expensive you could never afford me. EVER!"

His eyes were a dazzling sky blue, his jaw was chiseled like a runway model and his sandy blonde hair was perfectly styled. In fact, he looked more well groomed than many of the male actors she'd seen over the years- and that was saying a lot. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs and arms in an arrogant way that made him even more appealing, yet downright terrifying. Suddenly images of a certain Mr. Gray flashed through her head. She wondered if he also had a secret room somewhere...?

She cleared her throat and tried to imagine her neighbor who sported so much back hair that it made him look like he was wearing a fluffy Persian rug on his back when sunbathing in the corridor- as one does in a public corridor. But it wasn't working. Her wig was making her head itchy, and she tried to scratch it carefully. Shit. She wished she wasn't wearing this horrible disguise right now. She hated looking so damn ugly in front of such a hot man. Not that a hot man like this would ever find a girl like her attractive, but still.

"So...?" Man God spoke and his voice was dreamy and bedroom-y and husky as hell and she wanted him to whisper sweet, sexy nothings into her ears.

"So?" She repeated stupidly, her voice cracking slightly.

"I see you worked as an assistant in Uraguay?"

"Paraguay. The 'guays" can get very confusing." She smiled as widely as she could. Smiling like this would hopefully hide the fact she was a blatant liar.

"And how did you land up there?" he asked. "It's a rather unusual place to go and work in."

"Mmmm," her mind raced for an answer. "My uncle." She said the first thing that popped into her head. "He's South American and he..." she tapered off, unable to finish the lie that was about to come out of her mouth. "Uncle."

"Don't they speak Spanish there?" he asked.

"Si! Muchos gracias!" She quickly said the only Spanish words she could remember, and immediately regretted it.

"You speak Spanish?" he asked looking as perplexed as she felt right now.

She nodded. 'Don't say it, Petunia-Poppy Tiger-Lilly, don't say it'..."Fluent in it!" Fuck! Why had she just said that?

"Interesting," he said. "Of course Spanish is of no use here in South Africa. I mean, it would be better if you were fluent in isiZulu."

Please don't lie about being fluent in Zulu... she was mentally begging herself because she seemed to have lost all control of the things that were currently coming out of her mouth. *"'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika'." She said quickly.

He looked at her. Strangely. "Miss. Granger, I'm fully aware of what the first line of our national anthem is."

"Of course you are." Would someone please beam her out of this bloody meeting. She looked down at the hands in her lap, and they fell into a long, protracted silence. He finally broke it.

"This is a job interview, Miss. Granger? You're supposed to be selling yourself to me."

"Sorry?" Petunia asked.

"Why should I hire you?"

"Uh, um... uh?" Her mouth wasn't working properly. And neither was her brain. He was so gorgeous and terrifyingly intimidating all at the same time. It was a deadly combination. She tried to adjust her big glasses that were currently slipping off her nose, but was too late. They dropped to the floor with a loud thud.

"Sorry! I..." she threw herself off her seat and onto the floor, looking around for them. Shit! They had made their way under his desk. She lay down flat and stuck her arm under it, trying to retrieve them. She finally grabbed them, put them back on and shot back up to the chair as quickly as she could. "Sorry about that! Slippery little suckers." She tried to flash him a smile and he pointed at her.

"They're cracked." He said flatly.

"Oh?" Petunia looked down her nose at her glasses, a large crack had appeared in one of the lenses. She shrugged, trying to be as unperturbed about this as she possibly could. This only made him eye her strangely.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what?" She was swimming in a state of nerves now. Nothing was going well.

"Job! Hire you! Why?" he spat the words out in a very Yoda-like fashion.

"Oh. That. Why should you hire me?" She adjusted her glasses again, this time because she needed to give her hands something to do.

"Tick. Tick. Tick, Miss. Granger. I have lots of important things to do, so if you're not going to talk to me, I must insist that this is over." He looked irritated.

"Ok. OKAY." she quickly jumped in. "You should employ me because I am... am..., because..." she paused again. He shouldn't hire her! At all. She had no qualifications, she had no idea what the hell she would do if she worked here, and she was wearing a stupid disguise. She was the last person on earth he should hire.

"You're not doing yourself any favors here, Miss. Granger. Because with every second that passes, I want to hire you less and less." he tapped his foot and it made the desk wobble slightly.

Mmmm.... you know what else would make the desk wobble....

"Stop it stupid!" She reprimanded herself for thinking such filthy thoughts. She was officially perving, and it wasn't very pretty.

"Did you just tell me to stop it?" He uncrossed his legs, leaned over the table and stared at her.

"No!"Petunia's heart thumped against her rib cage. Shit, had she said that out loud?

"Yes you did!" He glared at her, his nostrils flaring and his brow creasing.

"No I didn't!" She tried to sound as confident as possible, but was failing miserably.

A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Damn, he had a sexy mouth. "Yes you did!" he said emphatically, "I said you weren't doing yourself any favors and then you said, and I quote, 'stop it stupid."

She shook her head and bit her bottom lip to stop anything else stupid from flying out of her mouth. Talk about an epic fail! The most catastrophic fail in the history of job interviews.

"So who's stupid?" he asked, leaning even further over the table. One of the buttons on his shirt was open, and the lean caused his shirt to pull apart slightly. Her eyes were drawn to the dark black lines on his chest. A tattoo? This man was hiding a tattoo under his sleek, sophisticated business suit... just when she thought he couldn't get any hotter, he did. What else was he hiding under his suit?

"Miss. Granger, who's stupid?" he asked again. She flicked her eyes up from the gap in his shirt to his eyes and realized that she was in serious trouble here. She was beyond forming a coherent thought- due to the fact she was both terrified of, and turned on, by this man all at the same time. She feared that if she stayed in the room a moment longer, she might make an even bigger idiot of herself.

"I'm so sorry!" She shot up out of her chair and stood up. "I think there's been some kind of terrible misunderstanding here." She backed away from his desk.

"What kind of misunderstanding?" he stood up. He was tall. Tall and big in all the right places. And did she mention intimidating as hell?He towered above her like the steel building itself.

"I think I'm in the wrong place." She looked around the room frantically. "Wrong job interview, even. I think, maybe, I'm supposed to be somewhere else..." She continued to move towards the door.

"Somewhere else, where?" he continued approaching her and she wanted to turn and run.

She shrugged. Why was she saying all this? It wasn't making any sense and she was just digging herself into an even bigger hole.

"Mmmm, now that is a big question, isn't it? Where are any of us meant to be, really?"

He stopped walking for a moment and she could just make out that faint smile once more. "A philosopher as well as an assistant?" he was mocking her now.

"What can I say, I'm a woman of many talents."

"Really?" he was striding forward now, and in a few more steps, he would be way too close for comfort. "What kind of talents?" he asked.

"Uh...uh...Look behind you!!!" Petunia suddenly yelled and pointed to the other end of the room. He swung around, looking startled and she used it as her chance to run. She bolted out the door and straight to the lift.

As she climbed into the lift, she heard him burst out laughing. His laughter was so loud that it echoed down the hall. She hung her head in her hands. She'd never been so embarrassed in her life, and she'd done some pretty embarrassing things before- many of them had been recorded and put on TV too. So she was no stranger to embarrassment- but this one was something special.

*Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika- is our South African national anthem- and also the first line of the song. It means "God bless Africa." And on a side note, an interesting fact, our anthem is sung in five different languages all in one song. It's totally unique in this way.