Seven

Mrs Hally lifted the small cup in her hand and sipped her tea. She smiled at the prospect of her plan actually working out. Her plan was not fair per se but she was done playing fair where those stubborn grandsons of hers were concerned.

If it meant having Dexter come to her suite under the pretence of having tea, in order to meet Anelia, then so be it.

The only person she felt sorry for was the poor girl that wasn't going to be very pleased with her attempt at setting her up with her oldest grandson. However, the girl never had any man in her life to talk about. It didn't take an expert to figure out that she was very much single.

It was always her little sister that she greatly spoke of. And not that she had any particular problem with that. It was in fact quite commendable, that her sister came first before anything else. God knows what non-commendable acts other women of her age ever did nowadays.

But the fact still remained. She couldn't live contentedly by herself. Yes, she thought her sister was all she needed but Mrs Hally knew better. Some voids could not be filled by sisterly love. 

Anelia needed a companion. Everyone needed one in this lonely life. So, in a way, Mrs Hally felt that she was actually doing them, Anelia and Dexter included, a favour. 

The pure yet heartbroken woman who was not willing to take a shot at love and her brooding grandson with a mountainous belief that love did not exist. What could possibly go wrong? 

Mrs Hally hoped that them running into each would spark some interest in both parties. On the contrary, she wasn't aware of the fact that they had more than just run into each other.

Anelia came pounding down the stairs quicker than quicksand. So much so that she gave Mrs Hally a slight fright. She placed her cup of tea on the coffee table and got up.

The girl looked like she had just run a marathon. Her hair was all over the place and she seemed all but ready to bolt any minute now. Mrs Hally wasn't sure what reaction she had expected from Anelia but it definitely wasn't this one.

She looked...red in the face, for lack of a better word. She was angry and Mrs Hally guessed that it had everything to do with that grandson of hers.

Anelia took short, furtive glances upstairs every now and then. If anything that seemed to make her even more agitated, Mrs Hally realised.

"Whatever in the world happened?" She asked carefully.

Anelia ran a hand through her hair and took in a long gulp of calming air.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Hally but I need to go. I shouldn't be here."

Mrs Hally did not breath a word as the girl gathered her equipment at lightning speed and exited her suite softly. One moment she was there, the next it was like she had never been there in the first place.

Mrs Hally blinked at the turnout of events. She was at a loss of words. She was aware that Dexter could be very intimidating and a difficult man to deal with. Alright, maybe it went beyond that. The man had a talent at pushing people away and managing to throw in that biting tongue of his.

Still, she had hoped that Anelia would be the one to tame that. She had felt a more than fleeting chance that she could be the one. Could she have been wrong? Had she had overly high hopes?

She sighed sadly and sat down heavily on the soft couch. She loved her grandsons so much. They were all the family she had left. Her husband, God bless his soul, had passed on years ago and the void was still present in her heart.

On his deathbed, he had spoken gently to her.

"Get those bastards married, will you?"

Now what was she supposed to do when those were the last words of the love of her life. She had sworn to do just that. However, it was proving to be a lot more difficult than she had thought.

She and her husband had raised all three of them after their parents had died in a jet-crush. George and Katlyn had been flying home from a business expedition that had dragged on until midnight. 

What went wrong, nobody ever knew as there wasn't a single survivor. Of course speculations did arise. Something to do with uncanny weather. But at the end of it all, what point was there. Her only son and his dear wife were gone and no amount of speculation could bring them back.

She picked up her cup and headed towards the kitchen. She rinsed the cup, wiped it dry and placed it on the round kitchen table. She sighed dejectedly. 

Getting them all married was proving a lot harder than she had envisioned and she was getting too old to be playing matchmaker.

"Are we having breakfast or what?"

She turned around at that very familiar voice and narrowed her eyes at the main object of her thoughts. He looked poised and so relaxed like he had no care in the world about what he had just done.

"What did you do?" She asked him.

"What do you mean?" He asked back.

"Exactly that! What did you do?"

"Grandma, if I actually knew what you were talking about then I would provide you with an answer," he said before reaching out to an apple in the bowl on top of the table. He chomped on it, chewing away despite the glare his Grandmother sent his way.

"Oh, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about," she said cooly. "What did you do to that poor girl?"

"Oh," he said dryly. He was about to say something when he suddenly thought back to her call earlier on. He scoffed inwardly. It couldn't be, that was insane. 

Still, he asked, just to clear the ground. 

"When you said that you'd found me the perfect bride, you didn't actually mean that girl, did you?"

"So what if I did!" She exclaimed loudly. "What does it matter? She's ten times all the women you spend time around."

"I'm not dating some worker," he seethed.

"Dexter Black! I raised you better than that. You ought to be ashamed!"

Dexter clenched his jaw. He was almost fine with her trying to set him up with those other women, at least they almost measured up to his lavishness, but some lowly worker? That was completely out of the question and he was not having it. 

"Look Grandma, I'm not apologising for it alright?" He growled, to which she gasped. "I'm not getting involved with some worker and that's that. I have no idea what you were thinking but it's not happening," he rasped.

"All you have to do is get to know her!" She cried.

"No!"

Tired of the pushing and pulling, she sighed. She shook her head a little as she realised that Dexter wouldn't listen to reason. 

Softly, almost inaudibly, she spoke out.

"You know, not every woman is like Fr...," she stopped short when she heard the shrill sound of glass breaking.

Dexter stood near the large table turned away from her, breathing heavily. His hands fell on either side of him, folded into two very tight fists.

"Don't say that name in my face," he growled and walked away.

She tried to call him back but it was futile where he was concerned. He was always the one with quite the temper, that one. Always throwing things around when things didn't go his way. 

He was probably better left alone for now. She looked at the broken china on the floor and sighed. Clearly, it was still a sore subject to her grandson.

She shook her head and made to clear the broken pieces on the floor. She hated messes. Especially the much larger one that stood before her. Hopefully, she managed to clear it up on time.

•••

Anelia stabbed the down-button on the elevator repeatedly. The elevator couldn't get there any faster than she could wait any longer. She contemplated using the stairs and almost did. On second thought, she realised that that wasn't exactly clever.

She would die of exhaustion before she even made it three floors down. With that she huffed with irritation.

The nerve of that man! How dare he insist that she was trying to seduce him.

She stomped her foot a little dramatically. She had never in her entire existence done that and she wouldn't even know where to where if she had to. Which she would never.

Besides, what did he take her for? Some woman who went around getting naked at a whim, in front of strange men? Argh!

However, for a moment, she placed the blame partly on herself. Getting so comfortable in that bedroom as if she owned it.

Of course, she could not have known that that certain man was going to walk in right at the moment when she happened to be in her birthday suit. 

At that thought, her cheeks painted a rosy red as she blushed viciously. He had seen her naked! She palmed her face in embarrassment. 

Not to mention kissing her like that. So...intimately. That was all the intimate she had been with a man in ever and it just had to be with someone way out of her league and as infuriating as him.

So, what if he was unbelievably attractive. That didn't give him the right to go around kissing people as he liked. 

And robbing her of her first kiss just like that!

She stabbed the button again. A few seconds later, it swooshed open. She grabbed her bucket of cleaning equipment, raised her head and froze. That reaction felt closely familiar but she pushed that thought to the back of her mind.

She blinked at the man before her. Was it just her lucky day or what? Before her stood a man that oozed fineness, it seemed surreal. 

His hair, a silky smooth lot, was combed neatly to the back. He had on a tight maroon suit that edged towards a rather warm copper colour of dark red. It was something in between. She couldn't quite explain it. He sported a matching colour of shinier shoes.

Nonetheless, it wasn't his dress-code that had captured her eye. It was his face. It was all ridged and sharp-jawed. If that made sense. And most importantly, it felt like she was looking at a complete replica of the man she had encountered a short while ago.

Except younger. She blinked, at a loss.

Anelia soon realised that she had made no effort whatsoever to enter the elevator that she had all but impatiently been waiting for only a few seconds ago. The man curiously looked at her. He tilted his head to the side a little. 

It dawned on her that she was staring and so, she looked down in mortification. She was still stuck between apologising for staring and simply waiting for the elevator to close before her face, when she heard that familiar ding.

Unfortunately, she didn't hear the swoosh that she was silently praying for. The elevator had not closed. She looked up in surprise to find that the man had stuck his hand out and held the doors open before they could so much as meet halfway.

She swiftly entered the elevator and scrambled into the far corner, murmuring a quiet thank you at the man. He nodded politely at her and faced ahead.

She remained quiet and looked as far away from the man as was vision-ably possible. She wanted to appear as invisible as possible. That thought went down the drain when the sound of her ringtone blazed through the elevator. 

It was a ridiculous tone that entailed the sound of a mooing cow. The blush that surfaced was inevitable. She took her phone out and immediately pressed the silent button. Anelia never failed to put her phone on silent at work, another of the many Hotel regulations. Today was clearly not her day. 

Briefly looking at the notification on her phone, it showed that she had received a message from La Vida's Head of staff Department.

Swiping over the screen, the message popped open. Scrolling over the common greeting, she stopped at the label Schedules. She scrolled past the penthouse workers that was labelled in bold. Of course, she wouldn't be selected to work there. 

Yesterday was her first and possibly last time  to work in the esteemed penthouse. The only reason being that she had happened to be free at the right time. Veronica had been held up and she had been the one to clean.

Thing is Anelia knew better where those Dappers were involved.

She went to the section of workers that weren't working anywhere fancy in the Hotel. She scrolled up to the long list of surnames that began with the letter T. To her utter surprise, she couldn't find her surname in the long chain of names.

She squinted her eyes at the screen as if that would magically make her name appear. After double-checking, her name was still missing. She scrolled up but only had the message bounce back down to show that she had reached the end.

With no other option left to do but to scroll down and back to that section that she had skipped offhandedly, she set to looking for her name.

She focused so hard on the tiny screen, she had no idea that the man beside was watching her antics with an amused expression. She scrolled to that same letter that she was so focused on finding and came to a stop. She was the only person whose surname began with a T. 

Telford Anelia.

There it was in an unmistakable bold. It stood there under the esteemed penthouse label, as if mocking her offhandedness. Before she knew it, she had exclaimed out loud.

"What the actual fudge!"