In Love With Mr. Billionaire

CHAPTER 8- CONFUSED

That night, I skipped dinner. Part of it was because all three of them were still pissed about not getting the deal and were speculating the probable reasons, mostly blaming it on the employees' inefficiency. I, who did know the reason, could not sit there with them and pretend to be unaware. The other part of the reason, ironically, was the dinner plan with Mr Woodwords.

I paced around my room, trying to come up with an excuse to avoid the meeting. My brain seemed to have stopped working as, even after almost twenty minutes of walking around my room, there was still nothing that I could think of.

Also, if I did manage to come up with an excuse, would it make a difference? For a man like Mr Woodwords, who doesn't ask and was not willing to take a no for an answer, how long was it going to take him to see through my lie and know I was trying to avoid him? I bet, no longer than it would take me to say the words.

I massaged my temples because the stress made me feel like my head was going to explode. My phone buzzed and I sighed. I did not wish to talk to anyone at the moment, but seeing Nadia's face on the screen made me change my mind. Just like a drowning man reaching for a floating buoy, I jumped on my bed to grab my phone.

"Perfect timing, Nadia. Perfect timing!" I said, dramatically.

"I asked you to stop by my place after work," came the monotonous reply. Right. She had.

"I was going to." Since I could sense her hidden anger behind the monotonic tone, I chose my words cautiously. "But then Mr Woodwords offered to drive me home."

"Aaron Woodwords?" She asked. There was a slight change in her voice from the earlier monotonous one. It was a good sign.

I hummed in response.

"He doesn't hate you? He is not planning your murder? After everything you did? Oh wait, don't tell me he threatened you," Nadia's tone was starting to get higher in concern.

"He asked me to have dinner with him," I told her.

The other end fell silent and I had to take it away from my ear to check if Nadia was still on the call or not. She was.

"Did you say yes?" Nadia asked. She sounded cautious.

"Actually, he didn't ask."

Another thirty seconds of a pause followed before she spoke again.

"Are you sure it's for dinner and he is not planning to take you to a remote location and kill you?" I had not thought about that earlier, but now I do wonder about the possibility.

"That's not the problem here, Nadia," I sighed. In all honesty, if he actually wanted me dead he would not need a remote location; all he had to do was politely ask my dad and he would happily bury me alive. "He asked me for dinner and you know Lahaina is after him."

"Why do you care about her? Let her cry all she wants," Nadia said in a tone of indifference.

I went on to tell her how Lahaina was not the one I was worried about, it was my father. The Brooklyn deal rejection was also an important detail to my situation and I left no details when I told her about it. Nadia listened patiently, pausing me sometimes in mid to ask a few questions which I answered earnestly.

"Now give me a good excuse. One that might actually work," I begged.

"Do you really not want to have dinner with him, Caro?" she asked.

The question sent me into deep thought. I was too focused on why I can't have dinner with Mr Woodwords that the thought, that it could also be my voluntary choice, had never crossed my mind. I had been so hell-bent on saying 'no' to him that saying a 'yes' did not even look like an option to me.