Entwined with love

Chapter-28

Ashton's POV

I reached office earlier than usual because I had a meeting with all the team members to review and finalize the designs. I went straight to the conference room where the entire team was waiting from me. I entered and everybody stood up to greet me. I greeted them back curtly and gestured everyone to sit. Just as I sat, I felt something unusual in the count of team members.

My eyes roamed around and it instantly clicked me who was actually missing. Surely, I wouldn't have noticed this minute detail in the count of team members if it wasn't for Arinya.
Am I seriously turning into a creep? If yes, then I really need to stop.
Well, it's actually peculiar because she is ridiculously punctual when it comes to work or meetings.

"Sir, here are all the design envelopes of every team member." Miss Wilson said breaking my trail of thoughts.

I gestured her to keep all the envelopes in front of me.

"I assume, every team member is here so I'd like to start the meeting." Even though I was well aware of Arinya's absence in the room but I still asked the question to know about her whereabouts.

"Sir, everyone apart from Miss Young is here." Miss Wilson replied.

"And where is she?" I asked in an authoritative and bossy tone but in reality I didn't mean it in that way.

"I am not aware about her whereabouts Sir but she submitted her design envelope yesterday only." She replied and I nodded.

"Sorry to intervene Sir but she must be here any minute now. I had a chat with her about an hour ago." Came the reply from Arinya's friend, Elle Grace, if I am remembering her name correctly this time.

"She'll join us then, let's start for now." I said plainly to act as if it doesn't matter to me and she obliged.

I asked every team member to design individually so that it'll be in a healthy competitive spirit and everyone will try to impersonate exquisiteness only. Thus, it'll benefit the business as their skills will be polished even more.

I deliberately kept Arinya's envelope at the last because I wanted to see her designs in her presence only. I was certain that until then she'd turn up for the meeting as claimed by her best friend. I was myself very excited to see her work as I know that her designing skills are spectacularly phenomenal.

I started off with other team member's designs and I was impeccably impressed with the hard work each one of them have put in it. I am glad that they obeyed my strict guidelines of bringing only the best variety to the table.

Once I was done with reviewing everyone else's designs I slightly glanced at the door but there was still no sign of Arinya. However, I couldn't keep everyone hanging because of one team member. I picked up Arinya's envelope and opened it. I slid all the designs out of the envelope with high expectations of getting my mind blown by her talent yet again but what I saw made me infuriated.

I flipped through all the pages and that only angered me more.

On all the pages there were different cuss words written. However, it came out of Arinya's envelope I am still not convinced that it's her doings.

Am I trusting her more than I should? Am I giving her too much liberty to do all of this? Maybe that's why she hasn't come to the meeting. Such thoughts clouded my mind but  I pushed them away.

Why would she do all this and get herself in unwanted trouble? I guess, it's someone else who is playing dirty games with her, but who?

"Is this a joke going on in here?" I directed my question at Miss Wilson and tossed the whole set of pages in front of her. She saw all the pages but her expression only conveyed that she had no clue about it.