Chapter 18: Not a Gentleman
Not a Gentleman
ERIC’s POV
I paced around the room resisting the urge to knock on the bathroom door. She was taking a long time to come out and I was getting worried. She wasn’t crying again in there, was she? Almost twenty minutes and she was still in there. How could she take that much time with such a little body?
The door finally opened and I turned around and watched her step out in a towel around her chest and head.
Mmm… not bad, she looked cute. I looked up at her and saw her blushing so hard with her head bowed. She wasn’t expecting me to leave the room for her to get dressed, was she? Because I’ve never been a gentleman.
“Come here, wife.” I beckoned to her and watched her take those slow steps toward me. I lifted her chin once she was close to me and searched her cat-shaped hazel eyes for any visible sign that she had cried again, but there were no signs that she had teared up. I for one was surprised, but then again, it felt good knowing that she hadn’t.
I slid a hand into hers and pulled her along with me. “Come let’s get you dressed.”
“Huh!” She murmured. I looked down at her innocent expression of confusion.
“Do you suddenly not understand English, wife?”
The moment I asked her that, her cheeks turned red and she looked away. I almost chuckled at her cuteness.
“Now come along,” I said, pulling her with me toward the dressing table. “You don’t want to be late for breakfast.”
I pulled out the seat on the table and made her sit on it. Then I proceeded to unwrap the wet towel from her head. Her hair was damp and silky and I couldn’t resist the urge to run my fingers through it. Through the mirror, I saw her eyes flutter open at the action. A quick image flashed across my mind, but I had to resist the urge to tease her with my thoughts.
I took out the hand dryer from one of the drawers on the table and plugged it in. Hair drying was one of the many things I knew how to do. Although I had never tried doing it, I had watched Jessica do it on herself a few times, so, I could only hope it was as easy as she made it look.
“How in women’s name is this thing even done?” I murmured to myself, continuously pressing the switch, tasting Its temperature. A light giggle caught my attention. I looked in front and saw the little woman laughing.
For a moment, my entire being froze into her beautiful smile. It was my first time seeing her Express such genuine emotion as laughter and the feeling was heaven. Almost unexplainable. I could barely describe how I felt.
“Are you laughing at me, wife?” I inhaled deeply, pressing on my resist button.
She shook her head innocently but still grinned. I tasted the temperature once more and decided to use the lowest heat. “You see wife, I’m good at it,” I told her after drying her hair. Then I pointed to the clothes on the couch. “Get dressed and come downstairs,” I said and left her to get dressed.
I strode downstairs to a scene I had gotten quite familiar with. The hassle from the maids getting their work done and the usual bowing of the head when they chanted the usual chorus, ‘good morning Mr. Arnold’. From every corner, the greetings came and as always, I ignored them all and walked on to the dining room as I didn’t know how to answer them all.
I took my favorite seat at the end of the dining while waiting for Rayne to come down. Yet again, she was taking a long time and I was starting to wonder if she was intentionally doing it. I let out a sigh when I didn’t see her after five minutes. I have never been the patient type in my life. Once, I had canceled an important business deal because the company had delayed our appointment. They had made me sit for five minutes, waiting for their MD to show up. But, here I was, after five minutes of delay still waiting for a little woman who had no important business deal to offer me to come downstairs. Well, she might not have any important deal to strike, but she had something I was rapidly getting interested in. Plus, I could always get my revenge by teasing her and at the moment, I knew just what to do to her.
A distant chattering of feminine voices caught my attention. I turned in the direction where they were coming from and saw the little woman descending the grand stairs with the model. How had I forgotten that she’d be around for two weeks?Copyright by Nôv/elDrama.Org.
Spending my honeymoon with any other person around wasn’t what I had planned and also, spending it here in my house in Los Angeles wasn’t either. I had intended for something else; special, beautiful, memorable in a beautiful city like Dubai, but, after watching her curled up on the couch like a scared little kitten that night, I thought it’d be better if she got settled first and that too, with the help of someone she was more comfortable around.
She looked cute in the purple two-piece short and singlet I had gotten her, and her hair was parked in a ponytail. I see why they had taken that long because I don’t remember doing that to her hair, but she looked cute, like a sixteen-year-old girl in a cheerleading squad.
“Good morning, Eric.” The model greeted me and I nodded at her. I wasn’t used to answering greetings. She took a seat on one of the chairs by the left wing of the dining room, six seats farther from where I was sitting. Rayne drew out the chair opposite to the model and was going to sit, but I stopped her.
“Come sit with me, wife.”