Lost In The Middle Of Nowhere

Chapter IX

After eating, the girls decided to make their final run through the mall before parting ways. Quinn had volunteered for her driver to drop Ariana home after she dropped out at the studio but Ariana declined. She planned to hail a cab back to her apartment. Taking out her phone to check her messages while she walked, her eyes bulged when she saw the amount of missed calls from her father.

Her father had been in Syndey for an extra week since the banquet so his calls signaled that he had just landed in Melbourne and his personal security had informed him of the headlines he had missed.

Oh how peachy!

Ariana gulped nervously. While her father wasn't as strict as most, he definitely put the 'protect' in overprotective! Ariana didn't usually walk around with her bodyguards, not like she left the house much to begin with, but she knew her father always had ears and ears on her.

Surely his sources would have informed him about what happened at the banquet and the headlines which followed after. Knowing her father, his first order of business once the jet landed was to get a hold of his daughter and find out exactly what happened.

Ariana took a deep breath and called her father. The call connected on the first ring.

"Hm, that's strange. I don't seem to recognize this number,"

Ariana rolled her eyes at her father's sarcastic voice while she shuffled the shopping bags into one hand so she could comfortably hold the phone in the other as she prepared herself for the earful she expected to recieve.

"I apologize, sir. It seems I've called the wrong number—"

"Hey! Don't hang up on me. Where are your manners, child?"

Ariana chuckled and shook her head. Although her father was scolding her, she could still hear the smile in his voice.

"Alright, alright. Did you just land?"

"I landed over an hour ago and I called you multiple times. Why didn't you answer your phone?"

"I was at the mall with Quinn,"

"Shopping?"

"Mmhm. She has a shoot in Paris."

"That's good. Her career is taking off in leaps and bounds."

Ariana fidgeted for the right words to say.

"So...did you see the headlines?" She cautiously asked.

"If you're talking about your potential partnership with that stubborn Navarro brat, then yes, I have seen the incredibly foolish headlines." He muttered, like a petty child.

"He just came as my date dad." Ariana explained quickly.

"I thought the other brother was your date?"

"Talon? He was tied up with some work so Quinn asked Elliot to come in his place."

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds until Landon sighed.

"I want to hear the full story from the beginning to the end."

On the other end of the phone, Landon was leaning back the leather chair in his office, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand while the other held his phone to his ear. He wondered why on earth his daughter was a magnet for powerful businessmen. First, it was Stephan and now it was Elliot.

He should've expected this. With her beautiful face and impressive business acumen, he would need more than a shot gun and big shot law Connection to keep the bees from buzzing around; although he secretly didn't mind this particular bee to buzzing around.