The morning of February 14th Elle also woke up feeling excited. She had never celebrated a single Valentine"s day before her. As the director of the marketing department she couldn"t help but think of it as nothing more than a cheap consumer holiday. However, today was different. Today, for the first time, Elle was going to partic.i.p.ate in the ridiculousness of the holiday.Adam was busy with work as always, but Elle was also drowning in work recently. Her department had been working tirelessly over their new project; the days leading up to, and including, today would play a big part in determining how successful the new project would be.
That morning Elle awoke hours earlier than usual. There was going to be an early morning department meeting that would be held an hour before the typical start of the work day, which meant Elle had to arrive at work two hours before all the other employees to make sure all the material for the meeting was prepared.
Normally Elle would have had to drag herself out of bed, and thrown on whatever clothes were most comfortable, before unwillingly heading out into the cold. However, since it was Valentine"s day she got out of bed with fervour, and put more effort into her look than she normally might have.
For Elle this largely meant throwing some makeup into her purse for her to apply before meeting up with Adam later that day, but she also went through the trouble of curling her hair into loose waves and selecting a cute outfit.
Like Abby had, Elle also struggled with deciding what to wear since it was a cold day and she also had to go to work. At first Elle had wanted to wear the pink satin dress she had bought at the mall with Abby. The one Adam had complimented her in. But the dress was short, sleeveless, and it was more of a party dress than a work dress. Still, the childish girl in Elle wanted to wear something pretty. In the end Elle wore a navy blue jumpsuit and carefully packed the pink dress into a bag so that she could change into it later on. If she froze tonight so be it.
Elle was the first one to arrive at Tae. Not even the receptionist was in yet. She felt eerie as she took the elevator up to her department"s floor, which was full of empty desks. Since it was winter the sun hadn"t even risen yet. Once she was in her office however, Elle had her work to distract her. An hour later her and her team members were sitting at one of the big round tables in a board room and their meeting began.
For this project there was only a short timeline of a little over a month, not much time to run a huge campaign. Her team members had also all come up with many different creative ideas. So this time around Elle had gone for a different approach, they marketing team was running several smaller scale promotions during the time period. For Valentines day they had also done several social media advertis.e.m.e.nts which were cheap and easy to execute. All the senior team members each had their own campaign to run independently, but this meant that Elle, who was overseeing them all, had to keep track of various promotions which were all at various stages of execution.
One by one each team member gave a report on their status and Elle pointed out key factors to take note of.
"Execute the latter part of the operations carefully. Also make sure to complete the market research first. Hand the report in to me next week." Elle instructed simply. "Also make sure the data from today"s online transactions are on my desk tomorrow morning."
"Yes Director."
Hours later Elle was ma.s.saging her cramped neck as she walked back to her office. She was about to go inside but stopped with surprise in the doorway. On her desk sat a small bouquet of light pink baby"s breath flowers, beautifully arranged in a gla.s.s jar.
Elle looked around but all she could see were her team members returning to their desks. Had someone put these in her room while they were all still in the meeting? She sat down at her desk and pulled out her phone, taking a quick picture and sending it to Adam.
"Was this your doing?" She asked.
"And if it was?" He replied soon after.
"How did you manage to deliver them?" Elle asked incredulously.
"I"m the most powerful man in the country, it isn"t that difficult to deliver a single bouquet."
Elle laughed to herself. Even through the screen she could hear his teasing tone. "They"re beautiful. Thank you." She replied before setting her phone aside once more.
The rest of the day went by quickly, faster than Elle would have preferred. She was excited for her date tonight of course, but she also felt regretful when she looked at the stack of work sitting on her desk still waiting to be done.
Nevertheless, she abandoned her work and went into the private bathroom in her office to quickly get ready. She put on the satin dress and fixed her hair before putting on a nude shade of lipstick and some eyeliner. She put her knee-high boots and then returned to her desk to go through a bit more work while she waited for Adam.
After some discussion both of them agreed to have him pick her up from work and go to a restaurant and then to the same park he had taken her to when they had gone out for dinner all those months ago. It was a quite place, and not many people pa.s.sed through, which made it perfect for the secretive couple. Elle had often requested to take a walk through there after their dinner"s together on nights that weren"t so cold.
When she first suggested they go there tonight Adam had been hesitant. He asked if there wasn"t something more extravagant she wanted to do, but Elle was persistent. She enjoyed the simple pleasure of take a walk in the chilly air with her arm linked through his, so Adam obliged.
Elle waited almost a half hour before finally receiving Adam"s call. She answered it quickly, thinking he was downstairs, but his apologetic voice gave her bad news. He was still caught up in an important meeting that likely wouldn"t finish for another hour. He would have to cancel on her tonight.
"I"m so sorry." Adam"s sincere voice came through the phone.
"It"s okay." Elle couldn"t deny that she wasn"t a little disappointed, but it couldn"t be helped. He was in such a high position after all, there were bound to be times when his work would interrupt them. In fact, Elle was surprised that it had taken this long for such an occasion to arise. She had expected this from the beginning so she couldn"t feel angry about it now. "It was only dinner; we can try for another night instead."
Adam frowned on the other side of the line, he had been looking forward to tonight in his own way as well. This time the matter was out of his control, it was a meeting with the shareholders, it wasn"t something he could get out of easily.
"Tell me how to make it up to you." He asked.
Elle smiled. This is why she wouldn"t get angry, why it wouldn"t bother her if his work came between them. Even when he was in the middle of a meeting he stopped to call her, even when he was so busy he was considerate towards her.
"In that case I want to change out bet."
"To what?" Adam asked, amused by her reply.
"If I exceed the 80,000 sales I want to go on a trip with you. It doesn"t have to be far, but it has to last at least ten hours."
Adam smiled. How cute could she be? She could ask him for anything in the world and all she asked for was ten hours of his time?
"Okay." He agreed. "I have to go now; I"ll give you a call later."
"Okay. Have fun at your meeting." She teased. Their call ended and Elle looked back to the work on her own desk. Since she was here she might as well try to shorten the stack.
Only a few minutes pa.s.sed but Elle was feeling thoroughly tired and decided to call it a night. As she got up to pack her things she happened to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the gla.s.s. It was a shame she couldn"t show off her cute outfit tonight. Suddenly an idea crossed her mind. Elle grabbed her coat and headed out.