Then he stood up, jerking his chair back. With one last, hard look at me, he strode off, leaving me sitting at the table alone. I looked up after him, too numb to speak, a lump inexplicably rising up in my throat. Great, now I was going to make a complete spectacle of myself, crying, for heaven’s sake! Getting up, I headed for the beach at top speed, my head spinning like a top. I had to get a grip! I could not continue to behave like a prize jackass each and every time I was around this guy. Okay, so he was good-looking. Okay, correction he was drop-dead gorgeous! And I was undeniably attracted towards him. But he was also a hard-as-nails professional, a creative genius who thought no end of his talent and who’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want me interfering in his area of expertise. Sure, he flirted with me but he probably did that with every woman around. I mean, the guy was surrounded by a bevy of drooling beauties wherever he went! Hadn’t I seen him with Priyanka pretty much each time we ran into each other, including the time I’d had dinner with Gautam? All you had to do was be female and not totally unfortunate-looking for him to start acting flirty with you. The guy probably did it all the time on autopilot!

Besides, there was a serious conflict of interest with Yudi as far as I was concerned. For the first time that I could remember, I was enjoying work purely because of the stuff I was doing with the creative team on Bright Biscuits. This project could be a defining moment for me, a turning point in my career if all went well. And Yudi wanted me to do absolutely nothing with what I was enjoying the most. We were definitely at odds with each other.

I stopped pacing up and down and looked out towards the sea, now calm and inky black. A chilly breeze was blowing around me and the place was eerily quiet with just a few stragglers on the beach. Shuddering a little, I retraced my steps quickly towards my room. There were just twenty minutes to go before I got into the meeting I’d scheduled with Neil, Shubhra and Suketu. I was pretty sure Yudi wouldn’t be there after what he’d said to me back in the restaurant. Let him go to the blazes, I told myself furiously. But his harsh words continued to play in my head. From now on I was going to focus on my career and on my project. The last thing I needed was a flirty, temperamental creative guy, making my emotions run amok. It was the end of the Yudi chapter, and the beginning of a new phase—a phase that would see me take Bright Biscuits to new heights of glory; heights from which I would look down months later and sneer back at Mr Yudhishtir with the same mocking smile he always reserved for me. ‘Thank you for getting out of my hair, Mr Yudhishtir,’ I would say. ‘And let’s keep it that way! As you can see I’m managing quite well with my thick head and without your brilliant creative inputs. Maybe I’d do even better if you just hopped on to that blasted jet ski of yours and whizzed off to la-la land! I don’t need you!’