Standing Before Love (Myra and Sean)
Chapter 450

Another busy day, and another mountain of documents were waiting for Myra to go through. She went to her desk and started working quickly. Nothing's easy around here. Gotta work hard.

Heather was already immersed in work. She had been going to work early for the past few days. Most of the time, she would be the first to arrive. The office was always eerily quiet this early in the morning, but she had to come no matter what. Blake was assigning a lot of irrelevant work for her, but she couldn't refuse, so she went on with it, though work had been giving her a headache.

It wasn't until she was halfway done when the other employees started coming in, and Blake came the latest of them all. He was the CEO after all, so he could work whenever he wanted. On the other hand, Heather never abused her privileges, nor would she butt heads with Blake. However, Blake kept harassing her, much to her chagrin.

She wouldn't mind working in the company if everything was smooth sailing, but nay. She had to work through all the office politics every day, and that took all the fun out of work. I thought Blake was a good guy, but no. He's evil. Blake wasn't as unscrupulous as he was before he took over the company, but after he became the CEO, he kept tripping up Heather. She thought it was childish of him.

The first thing Blake did when he came was to come to Heather's office. She was too busy to notice him, so she thought it was just another employee. "Talk." Heather didn't even look up. Blake arched an eyebrow at her. "It's me, Heather. Your brother," he said sarcastically. Heather quickly looked up and frowned.

Blake was nothing but trouble for Heather, and he knew Heather disliked him too. But he would trip her up again and again, because he thrived on her misery. "What's the matter, Blake?" Heather forced a smile.

Blake whipped out a stack of files and put them on her desk. "There's a few errors here, Heather," he said solemnly.

Heather thought she had never seen those files before, so she skimmed through them quickly. There wasn't anything wrong in the first few pages, so she kept skimming, then she noticed all the errors were marked in red.

What's this? Elementary homework? The corner of her lips twitched. The documents were about the data on the European side of the business, so it wasn't important. Blake wanted her to finish it in a day out of a sudden, so she had to work overtime to finish it. Small mistakes were inevitable in such a short frame of time, and it wasn't a big deal anyway.

Heather wondered why Blake was blaming her for it as if she made a huge loss for the company. "I see. I'll rectify them right away. They should be done by today." Left with no choice, she took the loss. She didn't pay too much attention to it, so any mistake was her fault.

Blake wouldn't let her off the hook that easily though. He was just waiting for her to trip up. Even though it wasn't a big mistake, he could make a mountain out of a molehill, since he was the boss anyway. Blake cleared his throat and put on an angry look. "I had high hopes for you, Heather. You've never made any mistakes since you were a child. Any imperfection is unforgivable."

What the heck is this *sshole talking about? Heather looked at him in disbelief as he spouted nonsense. "You're giving me too much credit, Blake. Everyone makes mistakes, especially me. I made a lot of unforgivable ones, and that's why everyone hates me," she insulted herself. Since Blake wanted to embarrass her, then she would play along with him.

Heather had a lot of stuff to handle, so she didn't have the time to argue with him over every little matter. Whatever he says.

It was effective enough, since it shut Blake up. He couldn't take it any further when Heather was already insulting herself. It took him a while before he answered, "Don't say that, Heather. Everyone loves you. They won't-" Blake didn't finish his sentence. He noticed that Heather was giving him a blatantly sarcastic smile.

Heather arched her eyebrow. She didn't want to keep the charade up anymore, since she didn't have as much free time as Blake did.

Blake noticed her underlying anger too, and he realized he had annoyed her. I'd probably get diced if I pushed my luck. Whatever. I got what I came here for anyway. And it's not that much of a problem. No point dwelling over it. Blake decided to stop pushing her around, since it wasn't the time to confront her just yet. "Get to it, and don't waste my time," he said seriously. Even though he was a douchebag, Blake could be intense when he wanted to.

Heather nodded. "Sure. My assistant will hand it over once I'm done." She wanted him to leave right away. If he stayed even for a moment longer, Heather thought she might kill him. Once he was gone, she massaged her temples, calming herself down. Crap. Dealing with him is exhausting. Time was a strange thing. It changed Blake for the worse, and he wasn't even good to begin with. She had always disliked him for being an unfaithful playboy, but ever since he took over the company, he started becoming scummier than ever.

She looked outside the door and wondered how long her suffering would go on. There was still her company to work on, so she couldn't waste her time in Langston Group. Not only did she have to wake up early and work overtime, but she also had to look out for Blake in case he tripped her up again. God, this is a pain. She massaged her temples.

She had never felt so frustrated before, but she had no choice. She wondered when the harassment from Blake would stop, but there was nothing she could do aside from pressing on no matter how hard it was. She had tried to stay out of his way, but he insisted on going out of his way to make life hard for her.

There were times when she just wanted to humiliate herself in public just so he would stop tripping her up. She wondered if he would let her off the hook if she did so, but she couldn't do it. That would mean she'd have to damage the company, and that was unacceptable, at least for her. She knew Blake didn't care, but the company was special for her. She worked hard to make the business a success in Europe.

Heather had decided to run a business herself, but that didn't mean she would abandon Langston Group. She wanted to get even more partners for them, since the company's success made her happy too. Langston Group held a special place in her heart. She loved the company more than Blake did. Ironic, considering that Blake controlled the company. It was probably her sentiments at work, but that was how women tended to act.

She read through the documents Blake left her. Before that, she was hard at work with something else, but Blake's childish tendencies forced her to stop. The frustration from the sudden pause filled her with rage and an urge to toss all the files into the shredder, but she held the urge down. There was no time for tantrums, for she had a lot of work to do. Heather rectified all the mistakes she made, and she realized they were genuine mistakes on her part. The little mistakes did affect the presentation.

Heather reflected on the mistakes she made. She hated shirking her responsibilities, and time wasn't an excuse for her to make any errors. She reflected on herself while correcting the mistakes she made. Once she was done, Heather felt much better about herself. Subsequently, she called her assistant, but nobody was in the office. Oh, it's lunchtime already?

Heather put down her work and stood up. Oh god, I'm sore. I need a spa treatment. She skipped out on a lot of meals lately, for she was working harder than a graduate writing her thesis.

She bumped into Matthias right after she came out of the company, much to her surprise. Now this is a huge coincidence. She stared at him.

Matthias was wearing a pair of sunglasses, and he smiled warmly at Heather. It caught her by surprise, melting her heart. "What brings you here?"

He had been waiting for her, but he wouldn't tell her that. Matthias came to her company before lunchtime just so he could "bump into her" right after she came out. He didn't expect her to come out late, though he realized she might be working overtime.

Matthias wanted to go into the company, but he decided against it. The whole point for the wait was to create the feeling of a chance encounter. Heather had been avoiding him lately, and he was out of excuses to ask her out. In the end, he decided to go with a stupid plan-waiting for her.

But the point was that this plan came down to luck. It wasn't the first time Matthias pulled this stunt, but he failed every time. Even so, seeing her was well worth it in the end. Sometimes, he would ask himself, Why am I doing this? But there was no answer for that.

For some reason, he would start missing Heather from time to time. He missed her smile, and he missed the way she talked; he wondered why he felt that way. Perhaps it was a rebound, since he thought the one he liked was Myra. He didn't know why he would start to yearn for Heather out of the blue.