Tangled || ArShi FF

Chapter 8 - It's complicated

Payal stayed over at Khushi's place for the weekend. The girls had a lot of catching up to do. Khushi had again put her work on the backburner and it had started to mount. Come Monday, she immersed herself fully in getting rid of all the pending work. Fuelling her self on coffee and whatever Lavanya ordered from restaurants, Khushi spent the next few days doing nothing but work.

By end of the week, she could finally breathe easy. She had gone through most of her old files. She made a resolution of going back to her old routine of working on weekends. This weekend, she was busy with Payal, the 2 weekends before that, with her stranger. And then it hit her-

Oh Sh*t! She hadn't contacted her stranger for days. 

On Saturday night, she had said she'd talk later and today was Friday. She took out her personal iPhone and unlocked it. She was about to start with an apology when there was a knock on her door. It was Arnav.

"May I come in?" he asked with a smile.

"Lavanya is supposed to call me before sending someone into my cabin," she replied, confused.

He entered her office and took a seat across the table.

"Lavanya is on her lunch break," he informed and Khushi looked at her phone. It was 2pm.

He continued, "Did you not realize it was lunch time already? You seriously need to take a break from work."

"Taking a break from work is what put me in this situation in the first place," she responded, "Any way, why are you here?"

"See I am offended," Arnav replied, mock frowning, "I thought we were friends. Didn't we shake on it last Saturday?"

"I remember," she replied reminiscing about their dinner from a few days ago.

"I am here to take you out for lunch." He stated.

Khushi raised her eyebrow, "You and me? Lunch?"

Arnav waved his hand, "Relax Miss Gupta. This is not a date."

Khushi was hungry and she had her afternoon free. She stood up and picked her handbag gesturing Arnav to lead.

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They went to a pizzeria, 2 blocks from the office. After placing the order for a pizza and pasta with iced teas, Khushi spoke, "I have been meaning to talk to you about Magnolia."

Arnav's ears perked up, "Oh?"

The waiter placed the iced teas on the table. Khushi thanked him and took a sip, "I have been going over the data and I think this is a good time for us to expand- increase production. The owner of the plot of land, next to our factory wants to sell. We could buy it."

"Oh." Arnav repeated the word, timidly.

Khushi went on enthusiastically about her idea. She had, like always, done her due diligence. The idea seemed promising; buy a new piece of land, build a new factory and increase production. She had set the timeline of a couple of years.

Arnav felt a pang of guilt. He looked at the way her eyes shone when she explained him how they could capture more market share, how she could grow her company further. She didn't know that he wasn't there to see Magnolia grow. He was there to vote against her and in favor of selling the company, then buying it from Sheetal for scraps.

Children's toys wasn't a sector he deemed very profitable so once he bought Magnolia, he'd have sold the unrequired portions and retained the rest to be used for one of his other businesses. In roughly 2 months, Magnolia would no longer exist.