The day ahead was going to be a marathon for Leonard, with back-to-back meetings filling his schedule. Contracts and documents needed his signature, a customer's party needed organizing, and a restructuring meeting with the company's board of directors was also on the agenda. To make matters worse, he had to review the list of candidates for several open positions and decide who to interview.
Leonard was anything but lazy - just minutes before, he had wrapped up a meeting with a client, discussing potential improvements to their new gaming app. He was barely able to catch his breath before the next task loomed.
"Sir, it's already past one. The candidates to be interviewed have already arrived." Kim said to him.
The sound of the limo's engine interrupted his thoughts, and he caught sight of his car pulling up outside. As his assistant opened the door and motioned for him to enter, Leonard's exhaustion finally caught up with him. He sighed heavily and said, "Can't we postpone this review until tomorrow when my schedule is a bit lighter?" He knew the answer before the words were out of his mouth.
His assistant frowned and replied, "I'm afraid not, Mr. Leonard. The review is critical, and the team is waiting on your feedback. We can't afford to delay it any longer. You have to do it if you are to meet up with Tim's deadline"
Leo nodded and without saying any further word, they drove for the office.
As Leonard walked into his office, his HR head, Stuart, was already there with two neat stacks of papers on his desk.
"What's all this?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The resumes of the candidates you need to interview for the open positions, sir," Stuart replied, his voice faltering slightly with nervousness. "It's critical that you review them today and decide which candidates you want to interview."
Leonard's face darkened as he looked at the piles of paper on his desk. "I don't have time for this," he snapped, but still he picked up the resume and started going through it. Flinging the ones, he rejected back at Stuart.
"How could you even possibly let someone with such poor experience, submit a resume here? What do you think we do here? Take start-ups?" Leo thundered. His words were filled with anger and stress from all the work he had been doing since 2 a.m. this morning.
"I'm sorry, sir. We've been under a lot of pressure to fill the positions quickly, and our HR department has been stretched thin. We don't have the resources to vet all the candidates thoroughly," Stuart stammered, his face reddening under Leo's glare. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm sure we can work together to find the best candidates for the roles."
"Save your excuse," Leo cuts him short;
"Any more error from you would cost you your job." He warns and returns his eyes to the copies.
Stuart turned his gaze to Secretary Kim who mouthed a sorry to him.
The moment he saw the next candidate's name in the resume, his eyes popped wide open in shock. There, staring up at him in bold, black letters, was the name "Anna Briggs." He couldn't believe it. It had to be a mistake, or some sort of cruel joke.
Were his eyes playing a prank on him? He wondered.
"What is the name of this person?" he turned to Kim.
"Anna Briggs, sir."
"She's a…"
"That will be all." He cuts Kim's words short.
It can't be. Leonard was shocked and went into denial. If it wasn't that Kim had read out her name from the resume, he would have still found it hard to believe.
He pushed the rest of the copies to Stuart and asked him to interview them and they left.
He fished out the CV, which she had mistakenly mixed with his ruined document, from his drawer.
This was just what he needed to re-energize and stop himself from overthinking about a girl he knew nothing about.
She placed the coffee in front of him and left.
He took a sip and tried to shrug off all the thoughts about her from his head.
Leo closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes again, but the strange feeling lingered. He was still unsettled, and his curiosity was beginning to get the better of him.
Without thinking, he picked up the resume and re-read it. As he studied the details. In his opinion she was below the standard he had set for his company and on a normal condition, he would fling the resume at Stuart. But this wasn't a normal condition.
He closed it and relaxed his back again on his seat.
He had a lot on his plate and wasn't going to let a common girl distract him from it. Besides, he was Leonard Snow.
He tried to think about the rest of his day and the meetings, he would have to attend after this. He even brought out the documents and tried going through them, but he couldn't focus on anything he was seeing on the document, which was unlike him.
He had never paid interest in any woman. Not even his birth mother.
His mother gave him up.
And to think that she could not even do him the courtesy of at least taking him to the orphanage or hospital.
he felt a sense of anger and resentment building within him. The memory of his birth mother abandoning him in a gas station restroom came rushing back, if it wasn't for Mrs. Caitlyn Snow who found him and took him in. he wouldn't have been here today. The memory of this made his mood all sour.
Anna's entrance was as ungraceful as ever. She tripped on the threshold, sending a stack of papers flying as she fell to the floor.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. Her face was red with embarrassment as she picked herself up from the floor.
She fell again.
It was her. Definitely her!
Does she like falling? He wondered with his brows knitted.
"Please, have a seat." He said, pointing to the seat in front of his desk.