護花近衛 - 第5章 怎麼像找對象？ - 墨香閣

Gu Pengzhan's warmth left Wei Zhao almost overwhelmed by the honor. It was the first time he had ever met an employer so enthusiastic. Though he had been invited here to carry out a certain mission, for the chairman of a Fortune 500 listed company to treat him this way made Wei Zhao curious. Why did it feel like a meeting between equals?

"Mr. Lin! I know as well that asking a man of your standing to stoop to such work may put you in a difficult position..." Gu Pengzhan hesitated a moment before he spoke.

Gu Pengzhan sounded more outrageous with every word, until even a thick-skinned man like Wei Zhao grew embarrassed and hurried to say, "No stooping at all... Back home I weave straw sandals and earn only a few hundred a month. The old man said this job would feed me for a lifetime..."

Wei Zhao thought to himself that this employer was truly decent. He had invited him here to work and was still so polite, unlike some people who, once they had paid him, began to pick and carp at everything.

"What? Weaving straw sandals?" Gu Pengzhan froze and looked Wei Zhao carefully up and down. He had not mistaken the man, had he? But what was all this talk? Could Old Lin really make him weave sandals every day for those few hundred? Gu Pengzhan was left speechless. From his own old father he had vaguely heard of some of Wei Zhao's exploits. The reward for that hostage rescue in Africa alone must have been counted in hundreds of millions of American dollars, and yet he wove straw sandals for a living?

"Yes, one pair of straw sandals sells for four yuan. If I weave three or five pairs a day, that is several hundred a month." Wei Zhao nodded. He himself faintly sensed something was wrong. The old man did not seem like a poor wretch at all.

Gu Pengzhan could not meddle in another man's private affairs. Hearing Wei Zhao's words, he could only shake his head helplessly and say, "From now on your salary will be thirty thousand a month. That covers your school fees and daily expenses. Of course, whatever you spend on my daughter can be reimbursed separately through Li Fu."

"Thirty thousand? Did the old man not say a few thousand?" Wei Zhao froze. No way? So high a salary? Had he known this, why would he have brought any money at all, sparing himself the sight of the old man's pained face. Wei Zhao recalled the scene when he had pried those forty-nine thousand yuan from the old man. "Wait, Mr. Gu, what did you just say? Going to school? School fees? And money spent on your daughter? What does that mean? I do not quite understand..."

Wei Zhao was thoroughly puzzled. What on earth did Gu Pengzhan mean? Had he not come here to carry out a mission?

"Oh? Did Old Master Lin not tell you beforehand? This way, please. We will discuss the details upstairs." Gu Pengzhan smiled faintly, made a gesture of invitation, and walked shoulder to shoulder with Wei Zhao toward the elevator.

In any case Gu Pengzhan was now his employer, and besides, the salary he offered was truly not low. Although what Gu Pengzhan had said sounded baffling, Wei Zhao had encountered plenty of strange missions over the years.

So as he walked with Gu Pengzhan, Wei Zhao deliberately slowed his pace, falling back as if to follow behind him, yet Gu Pengzhan quite deliberately kept his own steps level with Wei Zhao's.

Wei Zhao saw it clearly and felt some surprise. Why did Gu Pengzhan's attitude toward him seem overly warm? Strange though it was, Wei Zhao did not ask aloud. After all, it was his first meeting with Gu Pengzhan, and the two were not yet familiar. Some things were better left unsaid until, with time, everything would become clear on its own.

Gu Pengzhan's office sat on the top floor of the Pengzhan Building. It was two hundred square meters in size, with one whole wall made of great floor-to-ceiling windows that filled the room with unusually bright light.