Free Lemon Truffles - Love Instantly by Cece Monét

necessity and then only via e-mail or on their office communicator instant messaging. Cheng only had regular face time with Angela in staff meetings, in which he deliberately did not sit anywhere near her and if he could, he would even sit where he couldn’t see her. He trusted her operations decisions and did not sit in on any of her meetings either.
    After the first two weeks, he still burned for her, probably now more so than ever before, but he didn’t give in to any of his impulses. He just increased his rigid, grueling calisthenics routine instead. He wondered how many mantras about separating himself from all earthly desires he would need to endure before any of it actually kicked in and started working…
    ~
    About a month had passed since Cheng’s initial arrival at their office and with each passing day, Angela was increasingly having a difficult time staying focused at work. Cheng consumed her almost every thought now, though she had to give herself credit for pretending to be unaffected. He mostly stayed away from her, which made life somewhat easier, though he avoided her so much now that she honestly began wondering if he had changed his mind about her altogether. Maybe the nostalgia factor had worn off for him and he was starting to think she was just a plain, ordinary mom, the way she often felt herself to be these days.
    Today, however, they’d had to make a business deal which required his VP level sign off, so he had to attend the meeting, unlike the rest of her meetings that he usually declined. The two of them sat on one side of the large rectangular conference room table, while a team from their partner company sat across from them. The meeting, which included some last minute negotiations, had lasted two hours. It felt like an eternity of bittersweet torture.
    Angela thought she would pass out her awareness of Cheng was so strong from the moment he’d sat down beside her. Though she was pretty sure she kept her facial expression neutral and she eventually got her breathing steady, she couldn’t control her rapid heart rate and she felt flushed. Hopefully that glow on her face just looked like makeup. She did her best to ignore the way Cheng affected her and went on to keep her cool and do her best work under pressure.
    Cheng gave his feedback too, though it was minimal. From what she’d heard about him and his usual business dealings, she had to wonder if he was behaving uncharacteristically right now. Had he diverted from his usual management style here lately being so hands off with her? Probably. She had to admit that his trust in her ability to handle things was refreshing too; she liked and appreciated it.
    When Angela slid a sideway glance over at him out of her periphery, she could tell from the rigid set of his body that he could feel the pull too. The animal magnetism charged up between the two of them was making it hard for her to concentrate. She silently mused about what would happen if she just jumped on Cheng right now. The two of them could go at it on the floor, the table, up against one of the room’s walls…
    Cheng must have caught the general direction in which her mind was moving because he cleared his throat then, seemingly in warning for her to knock it off. Damn his intuition was always so on point and he was definitely in sync with her. Angela found that Cheng being so in tuned with everything around him was both annoying as well as arousing…
    Angela couldn’t help it. She wasn’t trying to inflame the two of them. Just like the sun rose in the morning and set at night, their attraction for each other simply was and couldn’t be ignored forever. The meeting finally ended and two of the three men from their partner company had left the room already, leaving the last man alone with Angela and Cheng.
    The man pulled Cheng to the side of the conference room and proceeded to tell Cheng in Mandarin that if he were smart, he would go ahead and marry his Director of