It was lunchtime, and since it was a lovely warm day, Louise decided to take her lunch to the park. It wasn’t far, just next door to her office block - in fact, she could see most of the park from her desk on the fourth floor.
The picnic area could be found in the middle of the park, surrounded by a ring of beautifully red-barked Prunus serrula (Tibetan cherry) trees. Most of the picnic benches had already been taken, primarily by groups of other office workers and yummy mummies.
There was one table left, which Louise sat at with her back to her office building. For just half an hour, she wanted not to think about endless dull paperwork. Her lunch consisted of an egg salad sandwich, a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, a tiny bar of chocolate, and a crisp pink lady apple, all purchased from the supermarket around the corner. As she ate, she read the latest entry from her favourite romance series on her e-reader.
‘Is anyone sitting here?’ a voice asked.
Louise looked up. It was a handsome younger man, about ten years younger than her (she was in her mid-forties). Despite being exceptionally well dressed in an expensive suit, tie, shoes polished to within an inch of their lives, and a Swiss wristwatch, he looked uncomfortable. She thought he’d look much happier wearing more casual attire.
‘May I?’ He motioned towards the empty seat opposite her.
Flustered and realising she’d been staring at him for over a minute, she said, ‘Yes! P-p-please, sit.’
He smiled and sat. His lunch was just in a brown paper bag. There was a homemade cheese and pickle sandwich, a few carrot and celery sticks, and the plumpest-looking peach Louise had ever seen. They both sat in silence as they ate, occasionally smiling at each other as they read. He had a tatty old copy of Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.
Watching him was a pleasure - not just because he was one of the most attractive men she’d ever seen (and she knew that to be true considering how wet she was getting), but because she realised who he was. The man in front of her was none other than Ryan Simcox, one of the country’s wealthiest people with an estimated worth of around £2.7 billion. He was also the CEO of the very company she worked for - Simcox Engineering. No wonder he looked uncomfortable in his suit - he usually wore casual clothes. Louise suddenly became very self-conscious that she was eating with her boss (or, at least, her boss’s boss’s boss’s boss). However, glancing around, no one else seemed to have realised who he was. She tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on her book and not stare, but the peach made this impossible.