The moment I saw his smile, I realized how much I’ve missed it, and it has only been a day since I last saw it. What made me think that I could go on without seeing that smile of his forever?
“I’m still very surprised about Claudia’s…umm…circumstances…” I mumbled.
“It’s honestly not as bad as she thinks it is. She’s gotten too paranoid about it and thinks that my friend won’t marry her or take responsibility for their child. That’s not true at all, but no matter how many times I try to tell her this, she wouldn’t believe me…” Ace said before pursing his lips together.
“Well, there’s got to be a reason why she thinks that way…” I murmured in wonder.
“My friend is definitely a player and famous for his numerous affairs. That and adding on the fact that the baby was kind of unplanned, might be what is making her think that way. However, with that being said, he’s a very responsible man so I have no doubt that he’ll take responsibility. He really likes her too…” Ace explained before grinning at me.
Someone who’s a player and famous for his numerous affairs really just sounded a little like…
My eyes landed on the subject of my thought before I shook my head a little as I tried to clear that thought away from my mind.
“I see. I hope things go well between them…” I said before letting out a small sigh.
“The truth is my father was the one who chose Claudia to be my secretary,” Ace said as if he just recalled that fact.
“Really?” I asked in pure surprise.
The Chairman chose Claudia? Why?
“Why do you seem so surprised? My father had very good reasons to choose her. Claudia is actually very close to my father and still is,” Ace explained.
“Oh, I didn’t know that…” I murmured.
Now that I thought about it, she did threaten to tell the Chairman about what happened to her if Ace didn’t help her out. The more I learnt and heard about her, the more I thought that Claudia was such an extraordinary and quite scary woman.
“She’s sort of like a distant cousin of mine and that makes my father her uncle. Claudia is smart and very calculating. My father apparently likes all of her outstanding qualities and so they’ve been close ever since she was young,” Ace said before he smiled at me.
“Wait. She’s your cousin?” I asked in pure shock.
I did not expect this on top of everything else that I had just learnt about her. My eyes blinked rapidly in surprise as I tried to digest this new piece of information.
“When I came back to work at the company to take over as the new CEO, my father installed her automatically as my secretary to make sure that I would ‘behave’. Basically, she was acting like a spy that my father had sent. She would report to my father about every single little thing that I did,” Ace explained before he grinned at me.
“Oh…” I mumbled.
“I don’t dislike her and she’s not the enemy or anything like that. We work together very well. Claudia has talent in what she does, and she played a big part in getting me where I am today as the CEO. That being said, working with her meant that I couldn’t fool around at all…” Ace said before winking mischievously at me.
Now that I thought about it, when I first met Claudia, she seemed to be watching Ace intensely as if she was keeping tabs on him. I wondered if she was sent not just to help Ace with his work but to also make sure that he observed the no-dating rule in the company. I wondered how successful she really was…
“Right…” I murmured without knowing what to comment about that.
I wasn’t quite sure why he was telling me all of these things, but it did help ease my mind a little. After being left in the dark for so long while I tried to navigate through the webs of misunderstandings, it felt a little reassuring that he was talking to me and telling me things openly. I wished that Ace would be more opened with me like this on more topics so that I could learn more about him.
“I wasn’t lying when I told you that she had some health issues. The thing is, Claudia had some complications earlier on in her pregnancy and because of that, I was the one who convinced her to stop working to take better care of health. She was very stubborn about it at first but finally she decided to quit,” Ace explained.
“I see. I do remember you telling me that she had some health issues…” I said with a nod of my head.
He really was explaining everything so flawlessly that it caught me by surprise. If only he was this open with me when I asked him about his career, then I might learn so much more about him and from him. I knew better than to press and push Ace. All I could do was hope that someday, he would open up more towards me and tell me or show me everything that I wanted to know about him, which was pretty much everything. Without knowing it, my curiosity about Ace had grown and that drew me even more to him.
“Well, that’s about all that I wanted to tell you. Any other questions?” he asked with a small laugh.
“Nope. Thank you so much…for telling me all this,” I replied with a smile.
“Then, I have a question for you,” he said as he stared intensely at me from across the coffee table.
I wondered what he was going to ask even after the long conversation that we just had.
“What is it?” I asked in wonder.
“What would you do if I had told you that Claudia’s pregnant with my child?” Ace asked as his hazel brown eyes focused on my face.
I blinked a couple of times at his unexpected question as my mind went totally blank.
--To be continued…
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