Summer did not give her an answer immediately. Sensing her hesitation, Karen quickly explained, “Summer, it was my fault for being too busy to have a meal with you in the past. Please forgive me.”
Had Karen asked her to lunch with her privately in the past, she would have been in heaven. However, citing business as an excuse was a bit too irresponsible. Karen was a stay-at-home woman of a wealthy family, and she had an army of maids at her disposal. How busy could she be?
Summer could still remember the time when she and Karen were supposed to go for a movie together. She waited at the cinema, but Karen never showed up, and she waited until the show ended. When she got home, she only found out that Karen had gone to fetch Vicky because she had gotten too drunk. That was why she was left alone without even a call from Karen.
A faint smile lingered on her lips when she said, “Alright, send me the address.” She hung up just to find Jessica looking at her with a disappointed look. Summer asked, “What?”
“Your mom’s asking you out for lunch? You really want to go?”
“Why not?” Summer sat Jessica on the sofa. Before Jessica bit her head off, she immediately started to explain slowly, “I’ve got a plan. By the way, did you bring the brick?”
“It’s in the car. I’m getting it now.”
Summer could not access her room, and she had all her items inside. Waiting for the locksmith seemed like forever, so she had asked Jessica to bring her a brick to hack the lock-brute-force style.
Jessica wanted to stay and help Summer, but her manager called again, summoning her back to work immediately. She had been doing really well for the past two years. Before she set off, Jessica reluctantly said, “Summer, don’t forget to live-stream it when you hack the door. I want to see it.”
Summer was like “Did Jessica’s fans know that she was this puerile?”
…
Carrying the brick and approaching her room, Summer raised her hand and smashed the brick down at the lock. It was loud. Hearing the noise, Leonardo came up to check out what was going on. Seeing what she just did, he was transfixed for a second. He went up to her with his head low, smiling like a retard. You really don’t know what this woman will do next. He chuckled. Very precisely, Leonardo gripped her by the wrist and said in a low voice, “My cousin isn’t home. You can sleep in his room, or do you want to pay for it if you damage the door?”
He was right. It would not be that nice if she damaged anything. With much reluctance, Summer said, “But all my stuff’s in there…”
“There are women’s toiletries in his room, all prepared when you first married him.” He did not want to tell her that he had only instructed his men to put those things in there just very recently.
The situation never crossed her mind. Summer shook her head and guilelessly said, “But I don’t dare to sleep in his room.” She knew she risked being ridiculed by “Douglas” when she told him that, but what could she do? She just dared not.
It was something rather unexpected of her. Could it be that this woman was not the one who always talked back to him? Leonardo thought.
“I think I better hack the door. I believe he won’t ask me to pay; he’s not that miserly.” Did he not buy her a phone already? He did not even make a fuss about what happened online. He was much nicer than she had expected.
What she said reduced Leonardo to a nonplus. What more could he say since she stated that he was a magnanimous guy? The only option left was to help her hack the door. He took the brick from her hand and broke the lock in half in under three attempts.
“Thank you.” Summer blinked. Somehow “Douglas” no longer appeared that annoying in her eyes.
Leonardo did not say anything or look at her. He just turned around and left. Looking at him from behind, he seemed a little upset.
Just a few strides down the corridor, he saw a bodyguard running up to him, obviously after hearing the noise.
He shot the bodyguard a glance and said, “Nothing happened.” But the underlying message was, “Get the hell out of here.”
The bodyguard immediately turned around and went back downstairs, but he was still puzzled.
It was such a loud noise that everyone thought the couple must have been brutally hitting each other.
He had even bet his 100 bucks on it, but the young master did not look like he had quarreled with his wife.
The moment Leonardo went back to his room, he got a message from Carl Jones on Wechat. The audio message was over 40 seconds long. He pressed the play button and put down the phone.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you at this time of the day. How was last night? Were those things I sent over the other day useful? If you…”
Leonardo stopped the voice message halfway, pressed the power button, and locked the screen. He walked into the wardrobe. It was big, really big. One half was filled with business suits and men stuff, while the other half was women’s wear and the like.
Summer had to be very sick of him. If she had paid a little more attention to him, she would have noticed that he was sleeping in the master bedroom and that Douglas and Leonardo never appeared in person at the same time.
Perhaps it was because of prejudice. She thought that Leonardo was anything but a normal human. At the dining table earlier, when he told her that it was Leonardo who bought her the phone, there was a hint of bliss in her eyes. At that moment, he even got a little jealous of himself.
…
Summer closed the door behind her and lay on her bed where she felt most at ease. She got some shut-eye, and after a while, she awakened, cleaned herself up, and changed into a clean set of clothes.
Standing in front of the mirror and hesitating for a while, she decided not to fake her ugly appearance from now on. One, because it was troublesome; two, she had no plans to meet up with Karen for lunch. Furthermore, “Douglas” had found out about her makeup yet he said nothing about it. Since she and Leonardo had never met, faking her appearance would serve no purpose other than troubling herself.
However, when the scene of “Douglas” kissing her that morning came to mind, her heart started pounding and her face was smitten. When she came to her senses, realizing that she was subconsciously replaying the kissing scene in her mind, color instantly drained from her face. What was she thinking? For God’s sake, “Douglas” was Leonardo’s cousin.
Her face still looked a little pale when she pulled herself together and went out. Fate had it that she would bump into “Douglas” again at the landing.
Seeing her pale face, Leonardo brows were drawn together. “You okay?” he asked, reaching to feel her forehead. But Summer bounced away reflexively like a frightened bunny.
“I-I’m fine.” After she said that, she scurried down the stairs.
Leonardo stood on the spot, looking at his frozen hand in the air for a while before dropping it back down. Approaching the railing, he looked on as Summer ran out like a possessed woman. His face turned even more grave, but he came out of his daze very quickly and followed her because he was worried.