“Sorry, I’ve invaded your private napping space…” I admitted jokingly.


    “You shall be thoroughly punished…” Ace teased darkly.


    Aceughed teasingly and I began smiling like a fool.


    “Are you in your office?” I asked.


    “Come,” Ace replied in short before the line disconnected.


    …


    After spending hours bracing myself for the bad news that was toe, I found myself extremely surprised by the news that Ace brought to me.


    “Where did you go off to all morning? You missed out on quite a few meetings…” I inquired.


    “Nowhere…” Ace replied.


    In other words, it was none of my business. I pressed my lips into a thin line, but Ace didn’t go on exin anything to me. Instead, he changed the topicpletely.


    “There’s a partying up that I want you to attend with me,” Ace informed me casually.


    “A party?” I repeated curiously.


    “There’s a boring red-carpet eventing up at one of our client’s productunch event. That being said, it’s not a standard productunch event…” Ace exined a little.


    “And…you want me toe along?” I asked to make sure that I understood this properly.


    Did my job as his secretary include this in the package as well?


    “Of course. Why else would I bother inviting you if I didn’t want you there with me?” Ace replied sarcastically.


    “I don’t think that it’s a good idea…” I murmured.


    “Why not?” Ace asked with an amuse smile on his lips.


    “I don’t know…it might be strange for your secretary to turn up…” I voiced my concern softly.


    “It’spletely fine,” Ace replied dismissively.


    “People might get the wrong idea about us,” I continued protesting.


    He’s got to see how strange this was, right?


    People don’t really appear at public events escorted by their secretary, right?


    “Or the right one,” Ace replied before shing me a charming smile.


    “Can I not go?” I asked while still daring to harbor some hope.


    “No. You’reing along. This is the invitation,” Ace said as he handed over an boratevender-colored envelop to me.


    I opened the enveloped and pulled out the even more borately designed invitation card. After scanning the card with my eyes, I figured that it was theunch of a luxury jewelry line. I recognized the brand, and it was true that ourpany made theunchmercial for them as well as numerous other campaigns for other brands in their conglomerate in the past. My eyes zoomed in at the detail of the party set up and schedule before my eyes widened.


    “We need to dance? Like ballroom dancing?” I asked in disbelief.


    “Of course. It’s even stated in the invitation…” Ace replied like he already knew.


    Did he invite me so that I would be his dance partner?


    Suddenly the task at hand became even moreplicated. On top of that…Belonging to N?velDrama.Org.


    “Don’t tell me that you don’t know how to dance…” Ace guessed as he arched a brow at me.


    Of course, I didn’t know how to dance.


    “Is it supposed to be amon skill in our line of work?” I retorted.


    Of course, I had no idea how to dance. Not surprisingly, with the way that we were struggling financially, I never had a chance to take any of those extra sses to learn fancy things like ballroom dancing. It also never crossed my mind that I would need to dance like that in my life.


    “Maybe I shouldn’t go after all,” I told him.


    “Time to learn,” Ace interjected abruptly.


    “Huh?” I gasped in disbelief.


    “I’ll get you a teacher so don’t worry. I’m sure that you’ll get it down in no time at all,” Ace said encouragingly as he smiled a little mischievously at me.


    “No, please. That is absolutely not necessary,” I stated firmly.


    With everything that was going on, I had to learn how to dance now of all times?


    “So, you would prefer that I taught you myself?” Ace asked with an innocent smile on his lips.


    That is not what I meant. At all.


    …


    A few days passed by as if I was living in a vacuum. Everything felt quite empty and pretty much nothing happened in my life. I didn’t hear anything from Ace or the disciplinary board about the progress of the investigation rted to the information leak. Since Ace didn’t say anything, I decided not to ask. I was sure that the disciplinary board would call for me soon. Right now, all I could do was wait patiently for my judgement.


    The only thing that seemed to be making progress was my enrollment at a prestigious dancing school. I stared up at the dance studio in front of me while I wondered just how far Ace was going to take this. Ace stood at my side before he took my hand and turned to offer me a gleeful smile. At that moment, I felt like a kid being dragged to ballet school against her will. It wasn’t like my mother could afford something like that for me, so I didn’t truly know what it felt like to go to ballet school but that was my best guess.


    “Are you serious…?” I mumbled.


    “Well, there’s not much for you to do at work now so you might as well concentrate on this and count it as part of your work,” Ace replied smoothly.


    “Aha…” I muttered without knowing what else to say in response to that.


    “It’s just a short course but the instructor is supposed to be very gifted at what she does. Good luck, Rina. I’m sure that you’ll do great!” Ace said encouragingly.


    “Yeah…” I muttered.


    Ace dragged me after him into the dance studio without hesitation. I found out quickly from the dance instructor that Ace had enrolled me in a one-week intensive course that would ensure that I could dance presentably by the end of it. I had to say that I didn’t have much talent when it came to dancing; however, this was somehow part of my job now.


    “We’ll start off with the basics today. Please rx and just follow my lead,” the instructor said with a smile.


    –To be continued…