The Eleventh Hour

Chapter 51

[photo on the side is the 'cringe' photo Lola took of herself :P gotta love her!]

We walked into the building, into a spacious reception area.

My pace slowed as I looked around – it seemed to be empty apart from two security guards on the door and a lady sat at the grey coloured marble desk area in the middle, making the huge room look impossibly bigger.

The back wall – the only one not made out of glass – was a simple cream colour which complemented all the grey coloured marble going on, with the glistening dark tiled floor only adding to it.

There were two grand staircases against the left and right wall glass, branching out leading up to god knows what. The back wall held what looked like two separate elevators and half a dozen doors, again leading to god knows what.

It actually intimidated me to step into a place like this – oddly, I felt sort of inferior to the world just being in the reception, the room was minimal but beautiful.

Tre and Jenks were still flanking Roxy and I as we made our way closer to the lady at the desk. She looked to be in her early forties with naturally curly brown hair and red rimmed spectacles. As we approached closer, she looked up from the work she seemed to be immersed in and I saw her deep brown eyes widen dramatically as they locked onto mine. She dropped her pen and then spluttered and jerked, before raising from her chair.

Witnessing that odd reaction unnerved me. It made me slowly turn my head to look behind me, to see if there was some sort of three headed flying gargoyle behind me in explanation but no, there wasn’t.

“Miss Summers.”

I smiled politely at her in response. It was nice she knew who I was, it meant she knew who I was here to see.

Her face seemed to soften and relax. “I’m Lynnette, it’s so good to finally meet you.” She held out her hand which I took, giving it a shake.

“Hi, Lynnette.”

Jenks stepped into view from my right, holding his arm out towards one of the elevators, his no-nonsense, no-time-wasting manner in full motion. “This way, Miss Summers.”

I rolled my eyes as I followed him, earning a quiet chuckle from Tre. He knew how I hated the formalities, though it seemed like Jackson and Jenks were intent on only addressing me by my surname.

I smiled at Lynnette as we passed and followed Jenks to the elevator. When we were inside, I looked down at Roxy to find pure excitement evident on her face. It was a surprise that she’d been so quiet, but I knew she was close to bouncing on the spot.

Jenks pressed the button to the top floor and as soon as we started moving, I began to feel a weird sensation of nervous-excitement. I couldn’t believe I’d never actually visited this building, or the one in New York. I never really got the world of business so had never thought to visit Nate’s workplace, but now that I was here, I was fascinated. And knowing Nate, this was gonna be one damn gorgeous building.

Ironically, I’d passed this place hundreds of times in recent years during shopping trips in Manchester with friends – completely unaware it belonged to a man I’d one day proudly be able to call the love of my life – My Mr Violet.

After a short but silent elevator ride, the doors finally pinged open.

We stepped into a room as big as the reception area, all the walls were again made of glass. The same colour theme ran through here as it did downstairs, but the biggest difference about this floor was the amount of people walking in all directions. They were all impeccably dressed in expensive looking suits and wore identical work-mode expressions, nobody even looked our way.