Forbidden Heat novel Chapter 394

**A week later**

Although it had been decided that Charles would help out on the project, things didn’t work out quite as I had expected. At first, I thought that he would be spending time working with Reiner and me at the office on the project. However, as it turned out, Charles working on the project meant that he would engage in a few calls with Reiner to give advice each week and if required, he would come to meet Reiner in person.

I wasn’t sure if this was the original plan or if this was what Reiner decided afterwards and I had no way of finding out. However, from this arrangement, I had next to no exposure to Charles at all for the project. It wasn’t like I was eager to meet or talk to Charles in the office. After all, I could meet him at the bar or elsewhere if I wanted to. It was just a shame that I couldn’t learn more from him even though he was acting as the expert on our project.

Of course, it would be a suicide mission to voice this concern to Reiner because he definitely would have taken it the wrong way. So, in the end, I just kept this to myself. After that meeting with Charles in the office, Reiner had been in a bitter mood. Although it had been a little over a week since then, his mood showed no signs of improving and I didn’t quite know what to do about it. We continued working together at work, but Reiner spoke to me a lot less and he didn’t seem to enjoy working with me like he did before.

Precisely because of that, I found my work daunting and dealing with him became difficult once again. That didn’t mean that I didn’t try to make things better between us. I tried a couple of things.

“Knight, want to go out for lunch? You don’t have any meetings this afternoon,” I suggested with a beautiful smile.

“I’m a little busy. You should go ahead,” Reiner replied without a second thought.

Inviting him out to lunch took a lot of nerve on my part and he turned me down just like that. Just remembering it made me scrunch up the recycled paper that I was holding. After that, I tried finding new topics related to work to report to him so that I could start a conversation with him. That didn’t work out very well either.

As a result of my depressing day job, I started working at the bar after work more often during the past week. Seeing Kat and my other colleagues made me feel better. I learnt that there are many things in life that gave me happiness and meaning to go on even if my love life and relationships were in shambles.

“Are you working at the bar again tonight?” Reiner asked.

I looked up from the report that I was reading and stared at him in wonder. I wondered what amazed me more, the fact that he spoke to me first or the fact that he was interested in what I was going to do. Then the way he phrased his question gave me pause. We haven’t really been talking this past week, so when did I tell him that I’ve been working at the bar?

Perhaps, he just naturally assumed that I had been working at the bar?

“Oh, yes. It’s my shift today and one of the staff called in sick so I really need to help out over there,” I replied, trying to sound casual.