Chapter 14

Calm down. It was nothing. They’d only seen Sheng Huaixi put an arm around her waist; it wasn’t as if they’d seen her kiss her on the mouth.

Jiang Chao kept soothing herself, forcing her emotions to stay steady, even as the gazes from all around her burned so hot it felt as if they might sear straight through her thin outer layer.

After a light cough, Jiang Chao smoothed the expression from her face and let a small smile settle there. She skillfully eased out of Sheng Huaixi’s hold, her manner polite and respectful.

“Thank you, Director Sheng, for helping steady me on the way up. My foot doesn’t hurt anymore.”

When she finished speaking, she took a few stiff steps. Without turning around, Jiang Chao lifted a hand behind her and waved in Yuan Bai’s direction. A familiar set of footsteps came up behind her.

Another pair of hands settled at her lower back, supporting and steadying her.

“Are you okay?” Yuan Bai asked at just the right moment, looking down in concern at her ankle. Her suit pants covered the injury beneath.

No one knew how badly her ankle had been twisted.

Meeting Sheng Huaixi’s half-smiling gaze, Jiang Chao gave a faint smile and nodded. “Thanks to you steadying me in the elevator just now, Director, I definitely would’ve slipped and fallen otherwise.”

She enunciated each word clearly, deliberately stressing a few key points so the people watching around them could hear.

She might as well have said it outright: I have absolutely no private affair with Sheng Huaixi!

Sheng Huaixi didn’t speak. She only looked Jiang Chao over for a long while, her eyes cold as ice. Anyone caught in that gaze would feel a chill run down their spine.

The long silence spread between them. The coolness in that look made Jiang Chao feel an inexplicable unease, and a faint chill slid from her cheek down to the waist locked in someone’s arm.

Jiang Chao shuddered before she could stop herself. Yuan Bai, not understanding, thought it was because Jiang Chao’s ankle still hurt and she wasn’t standing steadily, so the hand at Jiang Chao’s waist tightened.

Sheng Huaixi narrowed her eyes dangerously. Her gaze shifted and slowly settled on the close distance between Jiang Chao and Yuan Bai.

Why aren’t you going in yet.

As the stalemate dragged on, Jiang Chao could clearly feel more and more eyes turning toward them. The smile at the corners of her mouth was starting to stiffen.

The more people looked over, the more Jiang Chao felt like a circus clown on display, performing some ridiculous act for their amusement.

Grinding her teeth, Jiang Chao forced out a smile, her sweet dimples showing as she looked straight at Sheng Huaixi and said softly, “Director Sheng, do you have any other instructions?”

This was a trick she’d recently discovered:

Sheng Huaixi seemed to especially like seeing her smile, particularly when the dimples at the corners of her mouth showed.

If she spoke to her at a time like this, Sheng Huaixi’s tone would soften a little.

“In a moment, read ten case studies and hand me a five-thousand-word reflection on my desk; today.”

Sheng Huaixi stepped forward, eyes straight ahead, not even glancing at the stunned look on Jiang Chao’s face as she passed between the two of them with cool authority.

After she had gone by, Sheng Huaixi’s eyes shifted slightly. Her gaze swept over the slender wrist tightly wrapped around Jiang Chao’s lower back, and her expression darkened. “Yuan Bai, go to Shengjing Entertainment at noon and speak with Fang Yunxi about the collaboration. Finalize the plan.”

Only after Sheng Huaixi’s figure had completely disappeared from the office did Yuan Bai help Jiang Chao back to her seat. The two of them sat there in silence, each enduring the sympathetic looks being cast their way.

One had been assigned five thousand words; the other had to go negotiate a collaboration with a famous figure known for being difficult and troublesome.

Silence settled between them—

“You must’ve provoked her,” Yuan Bai said gloomily.

Jiang Chao turned sideways in her chair and gave Yuan Bai a suspicious once-over from head to toe. “Did you offend her before?”

Those several thousand words of reflection she’d turned in over the past two days had already worn down Sheng Huaixi’s suspicion through her own personal service.

And yet now, in such a short time, Sheng Huaixi had brought that up again!

“This is the first time I’ve seen her since my interview! How could I possibly have offended her?” Yuan Bai’s calm expression shattered completely. She turned her chair to face Jiang Chao and looked at her with a wronged, resentful air.

What the hell was Sheng Huaixi suddenly losing her mind over?

Jiang Chao lowered her chin in confusion and carefully retraced what had just happened, going over every detail again and again, but she still couldn’t figure it out.

Sheng Huaixi had kept glancing at her for so long; it couldn’t be because she was jealous Yuan Bai had stolen the job of helping her, could it?

The thought flashed through Jiang Chao’s mind for a moment before she gave a brisk laugh and tossed it aside.

Seeing the smile on her face, Yuan Bai suddenly remembered what had happened just now. With a nudge of her toe, she kicked Jiang Chao’s calf and leaned on her hand, curious.

“Tell me, why did you two sleep together last night?”

The words were startling enough to kill someone. Jiang Chao’s body lurched, and she grabbed the edge of the desk while lunging toward Yuan Bai, whose face looked far too innocent, frantically covering her mouth with her hand.

“My dear sister, could you be a little more discreet? I’m begging you.”

Yuan Bai caught her firmly, then took Jiang Chao’s wrist and mischievously shook her head. The flustered panic on Jiang Chao’s face only made her more excited.

“So you really did sleep together last night?”

“Yuan Bai!”

Jiang Chao ground her teeth. A flush of anger rose at the back of her neck. She pinched Yuan Bai’s cheek hard with her fingertips and yanked.

Yuan Bai gave a few pitiful howls and begged Jiang Chao to let her go.

In the end, Jiang Chao couldn’t bear to keep bullying her own younger sister. She finally loosened her hand, though she still shot Yuan Bai a glare and told her not to talk nonsense again.

Back in her seat, Jiang Chao straightened her messy clothes and explained, “There are legitimate reasons. We’re temporarily living together now, so of course we smell the same.”

Yuan Bai nodded in sudden understanding, her interest dropping at once. Her round eyes also drooped as she sighed in disappointment.

“How boring...”

Jiang Chao shot her an annoyed look and echoed her a couple of times. “Yes, yes, yes. So don’t go using that dog nose of yours on the two of us, okay?”

A thought turned over in her mind, and Jiang Chao remembered the other person Sheng Huaixi had mentioned. The memory of that last phone call surged up like a tide, and she suddenly turned her head.

“You and Fang—”

“Ah, I need to hurry up and work on the proposal. You should write your reflection too.”

The instant those familiar words started to come out, Yuan Bai immediately turned away, bent over, and clicked open her computer with the look of someone deeply devoted to work.

It was obvious she didn’t want to talk to Jiang Chao about Fang Yunxi.

There’s something going on here.

Jiang Chao raised her brows. She became a little interested in the person Yuan Bai, who was usually so blunt, was suddenly avoiding.

It seemed that the accidental one-night stand last time hadn’t ended so simply; those two must have had other things happen between them.

“Stop looking at me. Hurry up and write your five thousand words,” Yuan Bai reminded her. “Sheng Huaixi said you have to hand them in today.”

Patting her head, Jiang Chao pulled herself back and started working seriously.

The two of them didn’t exchange another word after that.

“Sister.”

Sheng Huaixi interlaced her fingers and rested them on the desk. Her posture was elegant and calm; her eyes never left the screen, their depths dark and unreadable.

The fluorescent light poured down from above. Beneath her long black lashes, those affectionate eyes were especially cold now, as if they had fallen into an icy ravine.

She hadn’t known that after only a few years, there would still be another “sister” beside Jiang Chao.

In the surveillance footage, Jiang Chao turned again and patted Yuan Bai’s shoulder affectionately. That smile on her face was exactly the same as when she smiled at her.

“Hah.”

The darkness in Sheng Huaixi’s eyes deepened slightly. She leaned back lazily in her chair, her gaze fixed without blinking on the intimate pair in the surveillance feed, her smile turning possessive.

So now she even had a little lover-sister, did she?

Jiang Chao.