BEING HIS WIFE

🌾CHAPTER TWENTY TWO🌾

🍃LOVE, HATE, ABUSE AND REVIVAL🍃

   Mr. Stedman was standing in front of her carrying Ariana who was holding her stuffed teddy, almost bigger than her and giving a toothless smile when she saw Vanessa.

"It's you." Mr Stedman said. Not like he was even at ease to see her, his face was still as cold and stoic like it's always been. "Yes it's me and what do you want?" She asked him. "I wanted to drop her at Mrs. Kingalis place but she said she couldn't take care of her all night and proposed I bring her to her neighbor, I never it was you." He said.

Vanessa sized him up. He was wearing a black T-shirts and a jean shorts. He was clean shaven and styled his hair so good she could see the line made by the comb that might have ran through it.

"When are you coming back?" She asked him while the little girl struggled to come down from her father's carriage, came to her and stretched her hands so she'll carry her.

"I guess after midnight." He said to her and she nodded. He handed to her the girl's iPad and her milk bottle. "She takes this before she goes to bed." He said to Vanessa. She collected it. "Alright, good night." She said to him and closed the door. Phew.

She carried the girl to the dining table where Sekani was playing with a truck and made her sit beside him.

"Ariana, would you join us for dinner?" Sekani asked her. The girl nodded and licked her lips salivating on the meal that was in front of her. Maybe he doesn't cook much and she ends up eating much of junks and cereals, Vanessa thought to herself.

While they ate, she probed herself on Mr. Stedman's behavior and mannerisms. 'Where's his wife?' He appears to be very sophisticated and swanky and wealthy too, he drives a Range Rover Sports Car for Christ sake. Why move into a neighborhood like Pruette Estate?

Not that the Estate was bad, but she expected someone like him to be living in a mansion filled with servants and helpers that are paid to be on his beck and calls always.

No wife, just a daughter and a nanny.... She recalled Ariana telling her the first day she met that her mommy promised to come back but she didn't. Did she die? Is he a widower? Or maybe she left him? Maybe she left.

Who'll want to stay with a man that hardly smiles, he frowns as if the whole world owes him something or took something from him. Maybe that's why his daughter wants to leave him the first opportunity she has. If he smiles more, the girl won't want to leave him at the slightest opportunity she has.

Ariana wasn't a big eater and so was Sekani, although for her son, she does insist that he eat more but when he saw that she didn't scold Ariana for eating little, he dropped his cutleries.

"Mama, I'm done." He said to her. She couldn't do much about it, so she came over and cleaned up their table while Sekani took the dishes to the kitchen. Meanwhile Mr Stedman didn't leave immediately, he stood on the porch and wondered what was up with the lady.

Maybe she hates seeing my face, or better still, I remind her of someone she hates. He didn't actually go to the Kingalis though, he just went straight to her since he noticed his daughter liked her a lot. He'd spotted her the day they moved into that apartment, he saw her taking out grocery bags from the trunk of her car with her son helping out.

He really wanted to go closer and see her well but he couldn't, Ariana was throwing a fit that day and he'd to calm her down.

When he saw her again at the school going to drop her son, he decided to enrol Ariana in the school too and coincidentally they met on the day of the robber's incident.