Chapter 24 THE FIRST

Waking up the next day happened with a smile as I had known that the day would bring in even more smiles. Since Charles was drunk the night before, a proper talk didn’t happen, and we had gone to our respective rooms. But the day seemed to have come with a lot of happiness, so I got dressed and I stepped down.

On meeting the managers as they were working, I could guess that some talk about Charles and me was on, their expressions told me so. To ease the tension at least with my first point of contacts, I initiated a conversation about the day before to know what exactly happened and why Charles behaved the way he did because I also wanted to get surety on the way that I was feeling and the things that I was assuming about him.

From what I learned, he had created a ruckus when he didn’t find me at home that evening. My chauffeur, the house manager, and his assistant also told me that he made a big scene when he didn’t find me at home as they would share Charles’s stuff with me because they were even surprised to see him entertaining a girl in his life in a way that he had never done before.

They told me that he rushed straight to my room when he entered the house and didn’t see me watching TV in the hall and started to panic. Then he asked everybody if they had seen me. It was when he called the driver after all his calls went unanswered on my phone, did he get to know where I was, but that wasn’t enough to calm him down.

He scolded the driver for leaving me on my own and coming back home. Adding on to that, the driver did not even know where I was since he did not have my friend’s address. Fortunately, I called him back just on time. Otherwise, he was going to go crazy and find me in the city somehow.

I was loving to hear all of this from the chef and James as I was having breakfast. It did feel very special to me that I mattered so much to Charles. My doubts about the way he felt for me were growing stronger and stronger. I wanted to know if they had ever seen him behave like this with any of his friends before, so I asked them that.

And as surprising as it may have sounded to me back then, I was the very first girl he was so concerned about. It was slightly funny to me because we weren't even in a relationship. Then it sort of became a challenge for me to hold my horses until Charles opened up to me about the way that he felt for me. Either it was that or the other challenge was to somehow make him tell me what he thought of me.

There used to be some times when I would want to walk up to him and tell him upfront that I was going crazy about him, and living under one roof with him was the reason that it was all building up. But then I was also being selfish for not actually doing it because had he not felt the same for me, I would not have wanted to move out of the house and be away from me. Keeping my feelings to me at least let me be around him, and that was enough for me.

Seeing Charles stepping down the staircase, everyone got busy doing their thing. While I was still at the dining table, chewing food, I saw him coming towards the dining table on the other side of the big hall which was separated by a wall that led to the dining room. But the rooms were all so big for me, so I would rather call it a dining hall.

When he walked in, he didn’t even look at me. He went and sat on the other side ignoring me completely, and my heart started racing. I knew that things would be different in the morning after what happened last night, but such ignorance was definitely not expected from him. It broke my heart, and I felt as if I screwed this whole thing.

We were both quietly having breakfast, and even after I finished mine, I continued sitting there to give him company. But he was not interested in talking to me and was busy with his phone. I felt stupid for being in the room with him and not giving any attention. He didn’t even acknowledge me when he walked in.

The minute when I was about to get up from there and leave, I saw Edward crossing the room behind Charles. He showed me his palm asking me to stop, so I sat down again. In no time, he walked so quickly from there that it looked as if he almost disappeared.

Confused as to why Edward came into the dining room and stopped me from leaving from there. He was Charles’s assistant and not mine. In my opinion, he didn’t even know what happened the previous night. He spoke to me but not as much as the other people at home. We weren’t that close to tell each other what they could do because he was always busy with Charles’s office work, and he was also very reserved.

I started to think about what I must do now, and I saw Edward walking back into the room towards Charles. He also had a folder with him. Looking at me with a smile, he handed over the folder to Charles. Wondering what must be there in the folder, I look at Charles and wait for him to react.

He doesn’t like being disturbed at the dining table. This must be something really important to him that Edward disturbed him right in the middle of his meal when he was doing something on his phone.

As soon as Charles opened the file, he looked at me. I felt weird about being caught like that because I was already looking at him. He flipped the file towards me and lay it on the table for me to read. It was scary to me to even look at that file as I was curious to know what was there in it.