Chapter 4

• Adeline's POV
• He looked in my direction and I quickly put my head down to be covered by my laptop. "What's he doing here? I thought he lived in Linsdon..." I thought to myself. I peeked up again. His friend stood by him; he had dark hair with brown highlights that fell to his shoulders. His brown eyes were admiring the waitress that stopped at their table to serve them. She seemed to have been admiring his moustache and the beard that decorated his jawline. He complimented her tiny outfit and she blushed.... it made my stomach turn a little, not because I was jealous.
• I shut my eyes for a minute, the blonde guy must have been him, but if not by the water fountain, then I must have seen him on the news... That's it! The news. The man sitting a few feet away from my table was the duke's son, the Cabinet Minister of Culture... Ethan Coleman. "Oh no, I slept with a politician, this is beneath me," I picked up my laptop whilst keeping my back faced at their table. I needed to leave, right as I was about to leave the money on the table and run out...." Ethan, you make her sound like Cinderella in your bed, she made you dirty. Now be a big boy and move on," his friend said. "I can't, I refuse to be treated like a wounded dog."
• He paused and lifted his nose as though to sniff something in the air. I held my breath and shut my eyes as I walked out through the door, clenching my hands to my chest and hoping that it wasn't my scent that he caught on to. Hoping and praying to the gods that this man wasn't following behind me... It would've been so much easier with just the one person in the café, but I suppose it would've made me feel guilty or guiltier than what I did. I don't know how long I sat on the bench outside waiting for my heartbeat to settle down enough to get on my bike, and before I knew it, I'd been there for hours.
• How many people had seen me go into that café before he walked in? What would they think of me if they saw us? That night in the dark, I probably didn't want to hear the details of their thoughts... I snapped out of my trance and noticed the Range Rover SUV parked a few blocks away from me. He could see me. For how long had he been there? Why haven't I left yet? I was too nervous to try and find out, my body seemed frozen to the spot, I just sat there waiting. Waiting for someone or something to come out and say a word to me...…anything, but that;
• "Hi...."
• I hadn't noticed how badly the sun was hitting me until a figure blocked it from directly reaching my skin, and my heart started racing instantly. Did he walk here from his car? How did I not notice him? I slowly started to move my head towards the body that was standing beside me, my eyes tightly shut...
• "Hi..."
• My mind went blank, and my eyes opened wide, almost in shock, "Marilyn?! Oh, lord! Don't sneak up on me like that. What are you doing here?"
• "Who are you so afraid of? I didn't even sneak up on you!" She was right, I was paranoid. "I thought I saw....," I turned my head towards the SUV that was parked and I saw a man standing next to the passenger door, he was obstructing Ethan's view, and that must have been his friend from the coffee shop.
• I didn't want to wait any longer, I grabbed the shake that Marilyn was handing me and asked her to get on my bike. " You're in an awful rush all of a sudden..." she said, in confusion. I nodded and assured her that I'd explain later. When we got home, I immediately mentioned to Marilyn that I had seen the guy at the coffee shop I was at before she met me at that bench.
• "So, you mean to tell me that you lured the hot cabinet minister in and you just left like... that? Wow, no more cocaine for you, sweetie, for real!" She joked. "I'm not proud of it, seriously. I just didn't think it was the time to address it. What if he knows that I'm the reason why he was in that magazine and he was there for revenge?" I responded. "Why did he let you take him on like that then?" Marilyn made a good point, but not satisfying enough for me to say anything.
• I wasn't being fully honest with myself, but I didn't care.
• "Anyway... I put hard wax on Jeff's beard and chest hair. I told my co-workers what a shitty man he was, so they helped. He's going to be in pain for a while," I could tell Marilyn was trying to cheer me up.
• She lived with me long enough to tell me when I was in deep thought, I pulled myself out of it and spoke, "Thank you, my darling. I'll take you out to dinner tomorrow evening. There's a celebrity I need to 'capture'." I needed to plan for bigger fish. A celebrity had been in town for a while now and rumor had it that he'd been a bad boy.... and I knew he'd be stopping for dinner the next night with some hottie at the fancy Arlene Restaurant. I planned to be there.