“It’s not like I want to be like this either,” Daisy screamed in between sobs. “I’m suffering too, you know. What makes you think it’s easy to make a decision on this? I would’ve aborted this child long ago if I were as cold-blooded as you think. You disappoint me, Henson.
“You’d better not meddle in my affairs ever again in the future, I tell you. Just live your happy little life with Wendy and I hope you never think about all the horrible things you said to me just now in the dead of night ever again. I wish you all the best,”
With that, she hung up.
He fell silent as he walked over to the window.
A few minutes later, his phone rang. Donald had called.
“Master Henson, I’m here to inform you that Madam Daisy has left the premises crying. She refuses to stay no matter how hard I plead with her,” he reported anxiously.
“Call the driver and ask him to send her back to Mason’s place,” Henson instructed.
“But… She insisted on walking home alone,”
“Send someone to tail her then. I’ll let Mason pick her up instead,”
“Understood, Master Henson,”
Henson then hung up and immediately called Mason afterwards.
“I finally found out that Daisy’s pregnant, Mason. This child belongs to the Charles family and is yours as well so it’s imperative that she bears it. You don’t have to give in, you know,” he started.
“She finally told you?” Mason asked on the other side.
“She didn’t, she told Wendy and Wendy relayed the news to me,” Henson explained.
“But she’s so stubborn,” Mason argued.
“If she doesn’t give birth to this child, then I don’t think she has the right to stay in our family any longer. She’s still indecisive about the matter, so you shouldn’t always go along with everything she says. This is a life we’re talking about here, so we shouldn’t joke about it. Didn’t you tell me that you always wanted a child? I don’t care if you need to coax or scare her to make it happen, but she must give birth to it no matter what,” Henson insisted.
“Henson… Do you hate me?” Mason asked.
“Don’t start. What’s in the past is in the past. You should treasure one another right now. Now that I also have someone I vowed to protect for the rest of my life, let’s just live happily together, alright? Please go and pick her up now, Mason. I suppose there are some things that can only be ironed out between the two of you in private,” Henson replied.
“Alright,” Mason grunted in reply.
After hanging up, he fished out a cigarette and lit it up as he stood by the window.
Just as he was about to put the cigarette up to his lips, the kitchen door swung open
and he saw Wendy peeking her head out. “What do you-”
Just as she was about to ask, she noticed him smoking. This made her frown as she marched out of the kitchen to go right up to him. She then snatched the cigarette out of his fingers, extinguished it and flung it into a corner.
Her glare on him showed that she was highly displeased at him.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked, puzzled.
“I’m aware that the woman you used to love is now pregnant and you’re sad that the child isn’t yours, but even so, you shouldn’t resort to these tactics to numb yourself. What’s done is done, you can’t change squat about it,” she lectured.
“What tactics?” he asked.
She then pointed to the cigarette butt on the floor and continued, “My mother used to smoke three to four packs of cigarettes a day during her later stages of depression. She told me that smoking helped her forget her pain for a while. My home was full of smoke every day because of that.
“Now, when I see people who smoke, I’ll be reminded of my mother’s depressed expression. So, if you really need a smoke break, please go somewhere I can’t see the next time. I just hate it when people smoke,”
She glared at him with a kind of fierceness in her eyes.
“So, that’s why,” he thought while flashing her a loving smile. He then extended an arm to ruffle her hair. “I didn’t smoke, by the way,” he said.
At this, she tilted her head so that he couldn’t touch her. “But I saw it with my own eyes. How dare you still try to get out of this,” she hissed.
“I’m not trying to get out of anything. Give it a whiff if you don’t believe me,” he said and lowered his head to lean in for a kiss. She closed her eyes accordingly. Indeed, she couldn’t taste even a hint of cigarette smoke on him at all.
When she tilted her head, he went in to deepen the kiss.
After he was satisfied, he let go and looked into her eyes, his own filled with determination. “So? Do I reek of tobacco?” he teased.
She then lowered her head and looked at the cigarette butt on the floor.
The cigarette had already burned three-quarters way down…
His gaze followed hers down and he chuckled afterwards. “I DID light up a cigarette just now, but I didn’t smoke it. If you only came out of the kitchen now, then I probably would’ve taken a few puffs. But since you came out at the right time, you managed to stop me from inflicting lung damage upon myself,” he explained.
She rolled her eyes at him at that, then spun around to return to the kitchen,
he’d grabbed hold of her wrist. “Don’t you just love getting angry, little missy. I promise to never smoke in front of you ever again, okay?”
“Who says I’m angry? I was boiling water in the kitchen,” she said flatly.
“Then, what was it you wanted to say to me just now?” he asked.
“I wanted to ask you if you preferred noodles or rice,” she said flatly.
“I’ll eat everything you cook,” he replied.
“Noodles it is, then,” she answered and disappeared back into the kitchen.
He smiled and followed suit.
She then stared at him, bewildered and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Helping you,” he answered amusedly.
“With what?” she asked.
“You can do it!’ Moral support,” he joked.
She was speechless. Didn’t he know that the way he was acting right now really made her want to hit him?!
The next day, Henson wore the suit Wendy bought for him to his company, just like how he said he would.
“Wouldn’t a giant of a CEO such as himself be made fun of for wearing something like that?” she thought to herself.
Then again, maybe she could be worried for nothing. Surely, the only people who could even ridicule him must be some bigshot themselves, no?
When she stepped into her office, she flung her handbag into the cupboard.
Carmen was gossiping as usual.
The moment she saw Wendy come in, she pulled her aside and started chatting away. “It appears that you have a golden phoenix in your class, Miss Evans,” she said.
“‘Golden phoenix’? ‘Golden dragon’, more like,” Ian scoffed.
“Whatever, Golden Dragon. It’s Howell Charles, the fourth young master of the Charles Group, a very wealthy young master indeed,” she continued.
When Wendy shifted her gaze to her, she recalled the incident where Howell’s identity had been exposed by his own older brother last Friday.
“Don’t tell me everyone on campus knows about it now?” she asked while scratching her temples.
“Of course everyone knows by now. I’m still salty over the fact that could’ve found out about this yesterday if not for the fact that I didn’t check the forums after going out for a barbeque with a few friends over the weekend though. Oh, right! I’ve also heard people say that you’re really close to him, so is it true that you two are a couple?” she asked giddily.
Linda, who was sitting opposite her, suddenly spat out her honey water after hearing that.
“Are you alright, Linda?” Carmen asked as she turned to look at her incedulously.
Linda waved her hands about and looked at Wendy instead. “Oopsies,” she seemed to say to her with her gaze.
“You know, you shouldn’t just believe everything you hear, Carmen. Howell is my student and I treat all of my students good equally. Plus, I would never go out with one of my students,” Wendy said.
“Oh really, Miss Evans? I hope you’re not lying because I feel that you two really have something special going on. Just look at how the boy keeps coming up to you during his basketball matches,” Carmen remarked.
Wendy didn’t know how to reply to that for a while. “What do you mean by that? I’m an educator, so how is him coming up to me during half-time inappropriate?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“Well, why would people say that you two are a couple then?” Carmen asked back.
“How would I know? Where did this even come from, anyways? The person who said it should take responsibility for their accusation,” Wendy huffed.
Linda also joined in by nodding her head afterwards. “I don’t think anything’s amiss too, Carmen. You really shouldn’t just take everything everyone says as fact,” she said.
Carmen pouted and laughed at that. Was she the one who was overthinking things?
But she really did feel that something was up though.