Neha called back with Arjun's schedule for the meetings for the day, as Sanam had requested. She was an expert when it came to manipulating Rahul into telling her things, "So his meeting is supposed to end at 8:30 and then he has another one at 8:45."

Sanam glanced at the time. Ten minutes to 8. "Perfect, it shouldn't take me too long to get there."

"Go get him, babe. And remember, you owe me one."

Sanam laughed, "Sure, Neha." She picked up her bag and walked out of the house, "Just like you owe me countless others for lying to your parents when you'd be out on dates with Rahul."

Neha scowled at her through the FaceTime, "Whatever. I'm pregnant. Don't make me yell at you."

"Sure, take care of my niece for me."

"Hey, if could be a nephew too." She complained, for Rahul and Sanam both wanted a girl but Neha kept saying it'd be a boy. Mother's intuition and all. They could have ended the matter by simply asking the doctor the gender of the baby but Neha insisted she wanted it to remain a surprise.

"We'll see. Bye!" Sanam said just as she reached the ground floor and walked to her car. She then fed the address into the navigation as she had never been there before to know the way. ETA was 8:06 am.

More than enough time.

Once she arrived, she parked in the garage and walked out towards the front of the building instead of walking in through the garage entrance. The height of the building was one worth noting. She had gotten too used to the penthouse to realize this was all Arjun and his family.

"Excuse me," Someone said behind her for she was blocking their path by simply tilting her head up towards the very top floor.

"Sorry," She replied back and moved aside. The man dressed in a suit followed by three other walked in while many others kept walking down the pathway to other buildings. Remembering her mission, she walked inside the heavy doors.

It felt like a maze in there. For a few seconds, she felt lost, out of place, and completely overwhelmed at the rush and the amount of people all carrying out some function or the other. And this was only the ground floor. Everything was fast-paced, reminding her of the hospital. But there, she didn't feel like an outsider. Her brain fit in perfectly there. It was her comfort zone. This? This felt like she had suddenly stepped into another dimension and they were all speaking a language quite foreign to her ears.

Locating the reception, she walked over. A lady in her early to mid-twenties greeted her in a monotone, without looking at her, too busy typing away at her keyboard. "Hi, welcome to Mehta Choice Hotels. Do you have an appointment?"

"Uh, no?"

She frowned, having to deal with this all the time and glanced up at her to quickly inform. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but without an appointment..."

Sanam cut her short, "Yeah, I understand. If you can just tell me where Arjun's office is, I'd really appreciate that." She realized she had forgotten to ask that of Neha.

"Like I said, ma'am, I can't let you in if you don't have an appointment. And you definitely don't meet the big bosses without one. I'll be more than happy to schedule one if you'd like though. What's it going to be about?"

I looked at the watch handing behind her on the wall. 8:23. She knew the young female was only doing her job but she had places to be. "Alright, listen. I don't have time for this. Just tell me where his office is. I'm his wife."

She laughed, the politeness leaving her tone and replaced with irritation. "Right, and I'm Miss Universe. Now if you're done wasting my time, you can show yourself out before I call security."

It annoyed Sanam to the core that she had laughed and dismissed her just like that. She knew she didn't dress fancy like the people in his world did, but did it mean she deserved this treatment? No. She was still dressed decent enough in a pair of salmon skinny jeans and a yellow business casual top. It wasn't that she completely stood out from the surroundings.

"You know, first off, stop calling me ma'am. And second, forget it. I'll find my own way there. Third, if I were you, I'd start looking for another job because you're fired."

"Who the hell do you think you are to fire me, you bitch?"

"Oh, that's it." Sanam mumbled, having had enough of her rude behavior, and walked around the desk.

"Hey, you can't come in here." She complained, but Sanam didn't pay attention to it.

She took a sticky pad and wrote her name down from the tag she was wearing. Then, taking out her phone, she showed her one of the pics Arjun had taken on her phone a couple days ago. He had been in the mood to goof around so when she wasn't properly answering to him – courtesy to her taking notes – he'd stolen her books away. It had ended up with him grabbing her by the waist and pulling her to him and tickling her. When she had sobered up from laughing, he had taken a picture of them while she had been leaning against his chest wearing one of her loose shirts as she was moody that day and wanted to wear something loose and comfortable, but to others, it could very well have come off as it was his shirt.

"Does this give you an idea of who I am?" Sanam challenged while the girls skin paled, the color draining from her face as she certainly recognized Arjun in his casuals and realized Sanam hadn't been lying about being his wife.

"I'm so..."

Sanam waved her hand, cutting off her apology. "Not interested. What floor is his office on?"

"Forty-six." She answered right away.

"Feel free to start packing up your desk." She made her way to the elevators as she was stopped again.

"Uh, ma'am, he's in a meeting. You'll need a code to get into his office."

"What's the code?"

"Only he knows."

Sanam sighed and got in the elevator. Just freaking great. Neha had mentioned nothing about the code either. Stepping out of the elevator, she redialed her. "You should have told me there is a code to get into his office."

"What code? There's no code." She answered, oblivious herself.

"Some girl at the reception just told me. There are codes to get into their offices."

"Oh, that's just great." She said, irritated herself. "I swear, I didn't know. But hey, it's Arjun. Can't be that hard. Try birthdays?"

Reaching the cabin that had his name on the door, she glanced at the keypad where the code was to be entered before the door could be pushed in.

8:26

She didn't have time to play guess and check. The keypad beeped in failure. "Nope, not his birthday."

"Try Anaya's?"

"Nuh-uh." It didn't work.

"Try yours."

She punched in the four digits of the month and date. Instead of beeping thrice to indicate error, it beeped once and the keypad turned green as the lock opened. She grinned but then it faltered as she realized it wasn't Neha's voice.

Arjun.

Slowly, she turned to face him with a busted look. "Call you back." She whispered in the phone to Neha and ended the call. "Uh, hi?" She greeted him.

He chuckled, pushing the door in. "Hey yourself, what are you doing here?"

"Surprise?" She said, though not happy at all that it didn't go as she would have liked for it to.

"I take it you and Neha didn't count on the codes." He answered, nodding for her to enter.

She grumbled, walking past him as he held the door open. "No, thanks for ruining it." At the mention of codes, it registered in her head. He had her birthday as the passcode. She had to feel touched learning that.

A chuckle escaped him again as he let go of the door and reached to give her a hug. "I loved it still. When did you get the idea?"

"Right when you said please what that adorable puppy-eye look."

He attempted to object. "I wasn't puppy-eyed."

She answered with a laugh, "Yeah, babe. You were."

"Did you just call...?" His question was left incomplete as Rahul walked in with his head glued to his phone and only briefly looking up.

"Arjun, how long does it take to get the Rivera file?" His head turned to Sanam, "Hey Sanam." And then it settled in and he did a double take. "Oh. Hey Sanam."

Suppressing a laugh, Sanam waved. "Hi jeeju."

"Ah. Neha's behavior in the morning is starting to make sense now."

She apologized, embarrassed. "Uh, sorry about that?"

He asked, dismissing her apology, letting her know he didn't really take offense to being used. "Did I interrupt a moment?" He raised his eyes at them, seeing Arjun's arm around her and how close they were standing.

Sanam side-stepped and dropped her bag on the chair. "We were just talking about how the stupid code system ruined my surprise."

"Oh yeah, we got them installed just over the weekend."

"That explains why Neha didn't know about them."

Rahul offered, "Hey, if you want, Arjun, you can sit out the next meeting. I can cover and tell dad you came down with a stomach bug or something."

She put an end to it there itself, "Oh no. Not going to happen. There will be no lying. Besides, I was promised I'd be allowed to study in here – no distractions."

Arjun made a face at his brother and sadly admitted, "I did promise that."

"Your mistake," Rahul laughed at his misery. "Come on then. Dad wants to talk to us before the Rivera meeting."

Arjun nodded, "I'll be there in a sec."

Rahul teased, "Don't be too long. Bye Sanam."

"Bye Jeej." She bid as he walked out the door, closing it behind him. "Now, where this view I was promised?" She asked, turned to Arjun.

He offered his hand and she stood up from the chair. He walked over to the blinds and twisted the rod in the end to open them. "Wow." She expressed. Not only did everything look tiny from up here, but she could see so far off the horizon. Some taller buildings did block the view, but she was more interested in seeing the different roads in the distance merging and diverging like people come and leave from one's life.

He said standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders. "You really need to see the skyline in the evening." She turned slightly and his hand shifted to her side.

She expressed trying to ignore the fact of where his hands were, "I'm just a little jealous you get to see this view every day."

"You know you are welcome here anytime," He made it known glancing into her chocolate brown eyes.

"Yeah." She whispered. "I hope you weren't too upset earlier."

"Are you kidding? This totally makes up for it." He confessed in a tone as if he were an excited teenager who had just gotten his life-long dream of meeting their favorite celebrity backstage fulfilled.

She smiled, glad she could make some part of his day bearable. He was really too kind on her by being understanding every day of her career that overshadowed her life and their relationship. "Oh, I took the liberty to fire whoever the girl that works at the front desk on the first floor is. I wrote down her name but forgot to take it off the sticky pad, but yeah. In case you need to tell dad and Rahul about it."

He was in sync as he questioned, "Okay, and what did she do?"

"Well, she kept on annoying me by telling me she couldn't tell me where your office was if I didn't have an appointment. Then she laughed when I told her I was your wife. And, when I told her she was fired, she called me a bitch. So yeah, I say she is horrible at her job, which is customer service."

He dramatically gasped, "Haw, how dare she? Consider her fired."

She laughed at his response, "Thanks for not going all possessive and everything like they show rich guys in books."

He teased, "And here I was thinking you didn't have the time to read books other than medical textbooks and journals."

She stuck her tongue out, "I don't, but Neha made sure to rant about the novels she read."

"And she's never mentioned Fifty Shades to you?"

She quickly remembered it was mentioned the night when their friends had come over for an after the fact Diwali dinner. "No, maybe she hasn't read it?"

He laughed, though well aware she had read it. "Maybe."

"Aren't you getting late for your meeting?" She questioned, pulling away from him.

He let out an exaggerated sigh. "Guess I will have to go."

"Don't forget that Rivera file!" She reminded him and he walked back from almost having reached the door. Opening a locked cabinet with a key he took out of his pocket, he flipped through some folders before finding the one he needed. Meanwhile, she walked over to where her bag was.

He stopped at his desk and wrote on the sticky pad. "That's the Wi-Fi password." He handed it to her. "There are some snacks in my desk. Here are the keys." He kept the set he had used to open the locked file cabinet in her palm and pointed to a door towards the right, "That door leads to a small bedroom and the other leads to the washroom. There's a coffee machine in the bedroom and some drinks in the mini fridge in there. Help yourself to anything and if I still forgot something, text me on messenger. I'll have my laptop on so I can answer there."

It would seem like he had said a lot, but Sanam had heard longer instructions being given out in one breath at the hospital from her resident doctors. "In short, make myself comfortable."

The muscles of his shoulders relaxed with a soft smile as he realized he didn't have to worry. "Yeah."

She smiled back, standing up. "I plan on it, Arjun. Now stop worrying about me and go. I'll be fine here."

Convinced by her words, he pecked her cheek. "I'll be back around noon."

"Kays." She answered and with a last glance, he left the door. The door clicked shut on its own. She took in a deep breath, looking around the grand room. 

He has a freaking bedroom attaching to his office? 

She didn't understand why as she had never known him to stay overnight in the time she had been staying with him at the penthouse. She simply didn't know that he hadn't done that recently since now, he did have a reason to come home. Before, he wouldn't much care of staying in this bedroom or the one in the penthouse when he was going to be alone at both places.

She sat in his chair and found it to be very comfortable. Much comfortable than the wooden chair at the coffee table back home. 

I can just slouch and... She shook her head, sitting up properly. No, you have to study. 

Reaching for her bag, she took out her laptop, books, and a stack of blank notebook paper to take notes on.

Let the long day begin.

~

authors note;

They're being a normal couple with these sweet surprises and all *tears of joy* Lemme know what you think about them!

I think we've hit the mid-point of this book... so don't worry. Though their relationship is on track now and it may seem close to ending, I have a few things planned for them ;)

Starting next week, I'll be updating this book on Wednesdays & Saturdays. I have a bank of chapters written so I'm fairly certain I can stick to this schedule even if personal life gets busy! See you on Wednesday!