I Like Your Shoes | ✓

P r o l o g u e

I hate everybody.

"Yes, even you, Mr Cadwallader." I mumble at my golden retriever as he snuggles deeper into my lap.

"The fact that you can sleep while I'm distraught with worry amazes me, Mr Cadwallader." He looks up at me with his head cocked to one side and his ears flat against his head. He gives an assuring whimper.

"I was correct in the decision of bringing you home, Mr Cadwallader, even though I had to go against my Mother." I shudder as my mother's disapproving face fills my head.

Mr Cadwallader gives me a huge grin, as if he were brimming with happiness. I didn't feel quite so optimistic.

"What am I going to do?" I question myself and God as Mr Cadwallader's head droops and he goes back to sleep.

Great company.

It's been three days since the letter arrived, and a month since I gave that horrendous interview.

I still remember making an appearance at the Achorn House, clad in just my white cotton shirt and plain blue jeans, my hair falling straight and lifeless past my shoulders, and deep, dark circles under my pale blue eyes. A hungover, hippie of a woman.

I didn't mean to party the previous night of my interview, I swear on the River Styx. It just happens so that my best friend, Caecelia Pace, could be very persuasive if she needed something. And this time, it was Lionel Francis, the new model she'd managed to snare for her rising career in model photography. I don't know, but that's what she told me.

After an hour of champagne and watching Caecelia straddle some poor guy when she realised that Francis already had a boyfriend, I finally managed to make it home and sleep, already dreading the horrible day that I was sure was about to come.

And boy did I dread that day.

The doors that led to Achorn house were made of glass, my numb head noticed as I got out of my beat down Prius. The glass shone magnificently as it caught the sun, but given my sorry state, I couldn't quite enjoy the view.

I would treat myself with a generous cup of coffee if I walk out of this office with a job.

If.

I'd never heard of the Achorn house before, much to the horror of Caecelia, since, I quote, "It is owned by the richest man in all of America and has a lovely boy for a son, who was twenty three, a perfect match for me, with bright blue eyes that shone like beautiful Lapis Lazulis, and who also happens to be an author, and given my 'excessive compulsive obsession with words' would be the man who mans me. And then as his personal secretary, I might, I should, manage to capture his heart with my sweet, heartwarming, yet underdeveloped charm", or in simple words, I must dress scantily in one of her dresses to catch the eyes of a guy who didn't sound so promising in the first place.

No wonder my mother hates her.

Back at the Achorn house, I enter through the sliding doors, the kind that senses your presence and swishes open of it's own accord, and peer anxiously at my queer sorroundings.

It's so bland, was my first thought.

I shouldn't be here, was my second.

I swallow to keep the urge to hurl down. But before I could find the bathroom, a cool, collected voice calls out from behind me.

"Miss Bellemore, so glad you could come."

Let's see the Lapis Lazulis, shall we?

~•~

Hey there!

Welcome to another romance from the fingertips of a love deprived author.

No, I ain't love deprived, I got my books.

Well, well. Let's see how this book turns out, shall we? Do vote, comment and share.

Until next chapter!