Chapter 123



The next afternoon, Alayna drove and sent Hayden to the hotel.

“Do you want me to send you in?” Alayna teased, “Maybe I can see Joseph and if you’re shy, I can help you answer.”

“Can you cut the crap?”. Hayden rolled his eyes, “Please open the trunk. Thank you for taking care of Stella during this time.”

“No worries.” Alayna leaned back in her seat and blinked at him, “You’d better think hard about your situation, for example, getting a stepfather for Stella. You don’t have to think about anything else.”

Hayden was speechless. Alayna hadn’t stopped talking about Joseph since the day began. He even suspected that Joseph had bribed Alayna to help him rush her.

After grabbing her suitcase, she made sure Alayna left before entering the hotel with her suitcase.

She went to the room and swiped her room card, “How come it’s a suite?” She commented in surprise and entered the room.

She didn’t look closely when she got the message and thought it was a regular room. When she entered the room she realized that all the rooms on this level were suites. What was going on?

This suite was one of the largest. The bedroom and living room were separated by a large decorative partition. She dragged her suitcase into the room and heard the bathroom door open. Soon after, an image that excited her filled her eyes.

Joseph was coming out of the bathroom with a white towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was still dripping with water, these were sliding down his chest and falling onto the towel, making her imagination run wild.

“Have you seen enough?” Joseph looked at her and sneered.

Hayden looked away quickly, then asked anxiously, “Why are you here?”

Joseph stepped forward and asked in turn, “Don’t you know that this suite has always been reserved for me?”

“I…I didn’t know…”. Hayden was startled, “Then I must have been mistaken…”. She dragged her suitcase and turned to leave.

Before she left the room, the electronic lock on the door beeped audibly. It was followed by the sound of hotel staff conversing.

Hayden’s heart froze and he quickly turned to cover Joseph’s mouth, after looking around, he dragged Joseph to hide on the balcony linked outside the room and tried to use the curtains to hide them.

There would be a big misunderstanding if anyone saw her with Joseph like that in a room.

Hayden sighed in relief when they were properly concealed. Then her hand was forcibly removed and Joseph asked, “What are you doing?”

Hayden pulled herself together and looked at Joseph as she pleaded, “Please, I beg you to do this for me. Take it as help for my work.”

A thought crossed Joseph’s eyes as he saw her pitiful attitude. He slowly took a step closer to her. Hayden’s expression changed and he took a step back. He took another step closer. Hayden felt his entire back go cold as he backed up against a pane of glass. There was nowhere to back up anymore and it didn’t look like Joseph was going to stop. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed her against the glass. He leaned into her and blocked all sunlight from her.

“Get off me.” Hayden lowered her voice as her face paled in horror.

How had she forgotten that Joseph was practically a daredevil when they were together in private? Why did she drag him away? Wasn’t it better to leave him in the room for the hotel staff to deal with? What were you thinking Hayden!

At first Joseph was teasing her and didn’t think much of it, but he found it especially adorable when he saw her go from shy to furious. She looked like she wanted to devour him, but she couldn’t and was like a wildcat gone wild.

“Why is there a suitcase in here?” Said the hotel staff suddenly and they both froze in their tracks.

Hayden’s face went pale, his heart pounding as he gritted his teeth and looked at Joseph as if warning him that he would bite him if he dared to do anything.

“It’s Mr. Beckham’s suitcase. It arrived at noon. Aren’t we going to receive the VIPs tomorrow? Mr. Beckham will be accompanying them for the entire trip, so he will be staying at the hotel for the entire time.”

“Oh, so where is Mr. Beckham, he’s not here?”.

“He must have gone out. Hey, put it down, no way do you touch Mr. Beckham’s things. We’d better clean the room first.”

“Good thing you remembered. I almost forgot.”

The noise of them tidying the room was silenced and Hayden let out a sigh of relief. Before he could complete his sigh, he heard them talking again, but now they lowered their voices.

“Ally, had Mr. Beckham and Ms. Downey done those things?”

“You heard that too? They’ve been the leading characters in the gossip here. That day when Lillian wanted to kill herself, Mr. Beckham carried Miss Downey in front of so many people. They’d be blind if you didn’t realize what that meant.”

“So, does it mean that the marriage between Mr. Beckham and Violet is off?”.

“Who knows, Miss Downey has a family too. Her daughter is so grown up now and yet she did something like that. What a shameless thing to do! I admired her in the past, but now it seems she has been sleeping with Mr. Beckham to become the manager of this hotel.”

“Yes, I think so too. I even heard that her husband gave her a room full of roses. But then, almost immediately she gets involved with Mr. Beckham. She must have some effective tactics, so many women couldn’t even get close to Mr. Beckham and I wonder what tactics she used?”

“What else could it be but that kind of skills in bed?”.

Hayden was speechless as she clenched her fists. She frowned deeply and her expression turned dark. She knew there would be a lot of gossip after that day and she was mentally prepared for it. But it was one thing to be prepared and another to hear it personally.

Joseph looked down at her and saw her angry expression gradually change. The way she was holding on in agony made his heart ache.

He let go of her hand and went to open the door. Immediately sunlight shone into the room.

“Mr. Beckham…” The two voices were stunned and sounded terrified.

“I see you can talk about this so well behind our backs, why don’t you say it in front of us, who in the hotel is spreading this and what are they saying?”.

When the two employees saw Joseph and Hayden, they were terrified as if they had seen a ghost. They were so shocked they couldn’t even speak properly.

“Mr. Beckham, we heard it from others too and simply repeated it. We were wrong to do so. We didn’t see anything. How could it have anything to do with Miss Downey? We were wrong to talk like that.”

“Really?” Joseph looked coldly at the two employees, “You all had spread the news very well. There’s a lot more going on between Miss Downey and me than what you all are talking about.”

Hearing this, Hayden immediately looked at Joseph in surprise. Before she could defend herself, her cold back was being enveloped by a warm arm as he took her by the hand and said to the two hotel employees, “Do you see clearly now?”

.

.

.