Temptations

Chapter 8

Jean poured herself a bowl of cereal and sat at the dining table. She has been staying here for a little over a week and wanted to show Clinton that she was grateful.

When Clinton came into the kitchen, he looked at Jean and smiled. He was becoming drawn to Jean and constantly caught himself admiring her beauty.

"Good morning," she grinned.

"Morning," he nonchalantly said. Clinton knew he did not have a chance with her and tried his best to get those thoughts out of his head. "How are you this morning?"

"I'm doing good but I also wanted to talk to you about something," she said.

"Okay, what's going on?" he asked joining her at the table.

"Well, I want to introduce a new department within the company. " She brought him a folder full of papers. " I think commercial real estate could be a great asset to this company."

"Jean, we are still a new company and this could be a huge risk financially."

"Yes, it would be at first but  I did the numbers," She watched as he started flipping through the folder. "The apartment industry is a trillion-dollar company that houses thirty-nine million Americans and we would start slow, we could buy out a small estate or abandon ones and renovate them," she reported.

"What about new hires Jean?"

"Well, we can hire interns and slowly integrate them into the company as the profit returns." she proposed.

A smile went across his face, "I'm not going to lie to you Jean, I can't guarantee this department because this is very risky but I will talk to the board and get their opinions."

"I have one more thing to add," she said.

"What is it?"

"If the board agrees to this department, I want to be the head of it! We both know I'm well qualified," she stated.

"Done," he said.

"Really," she asked.

"Yes, like you said you're qualified. And I would rather hire within the company, rather than an outsider!"

"Thank you, thank you! I could kiss you right now!" she smiled. "Oh, why not?" she gently kissed him on the cheek.

"You're welcome," he smiled back. The little kiss flowed through his whole body. " Just, umm, remember to email the board this file."

"Already done," she said doing her happy dance.

When Jean went back into the room, she laid on the bed and stared at her lock screen. The picture was of her family, smiles pasted on all their faces.

This picture brought back the memory of her parent's death. Jean had come home drunk at seven in the morning and of course, her parents became upset that their twenty-year-old was drinking. And  Jean became upset too and said, "I hate you, I wish you were never my parents!" and locked herself in the room.

Her parents decided to talk to her after work but that same day a truck driver fell asleep on the wheel and crashed head first into their car. The guilt has never gone away since that day.

With tears in her eyes, she decided to call Rue.

"Hey Nana."

"No, I just want to speak to Rue"

"I don't care about the case right now, just put my sister on the phone, PLEASE!"

"You can put the phone on speaker and listen if you want to! Just let me talk to her!"