Esmeralda's POV

"Mr Stone?" I call out into the phone.

"You can't be dead, you just can't be" he sobs gut wrenchingly and my heart clench in worry.

I notice the drawl in his voice and guess that he was probably drunk.

"Mr Stone, where are you?" I ask trying to sound calm.

"Tell me you're alive and you still love me. Tell me you don't hate me." he groans from the other side.

"Tell me Daisy" the pain in his shaking voice was so real that I felt it to my bones. I can't even start to imagine what he was going through right now.

"I'm alive" I say trying to ease his pain even though I'm not Daisy.

"Tell me you love me Daisy" he mutters.

"I l-love you Hunter" I say closing my eyes at the absurdness of it all.

I had never told any guy I loved him except my father and brother, not even Jack. Saying it so casually is........I don't even have a description for how it feels.

"I love you so much Daisy" he says with his voice drifting off. My heart skips even though I know his words were not meant for me.

Silence reigns for a few seconds and  I just hope that he has fallen asleep because nobody deserves that kind of pain and if sleep can take it away from him for just a few hours, then so be it.

"Why are you looking like someone just stole your puppy?" My heart jumps out of my chest when I hear Keesha's voice.

"Christ Keesha, there's this thing called knocking, it helps to not send people to their early grave with a heart attack" I remark trying to calm my heartbeat.

"What's the use of having a key to this apartment if I still have to knock? And who is Hunter? How come I don't know this guy? And how come you're declaring your love so soon into the relationship? Unless you have....." I cut her off from the relationship speech she's about to give me.

Why don't people know Mr. Stone's first name? Most people refer to him as the younger stone while the media referred to him as Stone Empire heir and the paparazzi address him as a playboy.

"It's not a new guy, and you might want to bring out the takeout you brought along for this crazy story" I say and she opens the pizza while I go get us drinks.

After settling down, I find myself telling her about everything; how Mr Stone and all his friends keeps mistaking me for his fiance all to what just happened right now.

"Finally some drama in your life, I'm tired of it being me all the time" she teases.

I smile because Keesha definitely had a lot of drama in her life. She's the most gorgeous woman I've ever set my eyes upon and she has always been so unlucky with family and guys; always attracting jerks who only wanted her body. One thing I admired the most about her is her strong spirit. Despite all, Keesha never let any of it affect her or at least she doesn't show it.

"They'll soon discover that I'm an imposter and forget about all this Daisy" I state.

"So the dress, Can I see it?" She says and I can practically feel the stars shining in her eyes.

I gesture to the bed and she picks up the dress with awe.

"I can now die in peace" she says falling on the bed with the dress in her hand. I stand up from the foot of the bed where we were sitting and join her on the bed.

"Quit being so dramatic and tell me what to do. I just got the job and I'm treading on eggshells here. If I reject a dress that probably costs more than my apartment, won't it be weird?" I ask bewildered about what to do.

"Well, you can fake sickness and not go..." She responds not taking her  eyes off the piece of clothing.

Yup, Keesha was in love.

With her being a fashion columnist, I'm not surprised she's so fascinated with a particular brand.

I groan and plop face down into my pillow.

"What's that?" She asks and I raise my head to see whatever it is she's talking about.

I notice that she was staring at the gash on my finger that I got when I was trying to pick up the broken frame's glasses.

"Oh that. It's nothing. I was just a bit careless in the kitchen" I say waving it off.

She stares at me suspiciously for a few seconds before relenting. I don't know why I didn't tell her what happened. A little part of me knew that it was because I didn't want her to have anything against Mr Stone. Why? I don't know. It's not like I'm a teenage girl trying to get my friend to approve of my boyfriend.

'You're an idiot' my snobby subconscious says.

I mentally search for an off button for her annoying voice.

'You can't get rid of me' she adds smugly.

And now I'm pretty sure I'm going crazy. Who in her right mind talks to a voice in her head?

"That's it! This wound is the perfect excuse" Keesha exclaims.

"K, I'm supposed to wear the dress on my body not on my finger" I respond.

"Not that you goof. You'll tell him that you can't attend the gala because you had a little kitchen accident, lost a lot of blood and the doctor prescribed rest for you. You don't need to thank me, you're welcome" she says beaming proudly.

I raise one eyebrow and get ready to point out all the loop holes in her plan when she beat me to it.

"Yeah....that's a horrible idea" she admits deflating.

"The last time I checked, the scar on your back was fading. Let me take a look" she requests and I look at her warily before taking off my pajama top and turning my back to her.

"So....." I prod.

"It's almost unnoticeable now. If I wasn't aware of it before, I wouldn't even know" she comments.

I know that the thing was fading but I'm very insecure about it.

"Yeah but...." I sigh putting my top back on.

"No buts, you're going to that gala. It's about time you get over all these insecurities. Jack was a jerk. Hey that almost rhymed. But jokes apart, he's a moron for everything he said, don't let him win by letting his words affect you" she says and I nod solemnly.

I know she's right but insecurities don't just die overnight.

We spend the rest of the night catching up before we fall asleep. Very ungracefully might I add, with her sprawled on her stomach snoring and me sleeping the other way around with my legs on the headrest.

**********************

On getting to work today, I find that Mr Stone isn't around. Not that I was worried about him. Definitely not.

I find it hard to type the emails i didn't send yesterday because of my wounded right index finger and because I couldn't concentrate. I squeak in pain as I accidentally pressed my wounded finger too hard on the keyboard.

"Is everything alright Miss Griffin?" I immediately look up when I hear Mr Stone's voice.

"Uhmm....yes, everything's perfect" I answer trying to analyze his expression.

Why was he acting like he didn't ask his own assistant to declare her love yesterday?

Not that I was expecting a thank you; that would be awkward. But.....

I then remember that he was probably drunk yesterday and he might not recall a thing.

That's good then.

"The company car will be picking you up by eight '0' clock in the evening. We'll meet at the venue for the gala" he says making a move to walk into his office.

'Well good morning to you too sir' I mutter sarcastically under my breath.

He turns back to say something but something else catches his attention and when I look down following his view, I notice he was staring at my now bleeding finger.

Nice.

"You're bleeding, what happened?" he questions.

A little kitchen accident, nothing much" I repeat my reply to Keesha.

"Come with me" he orders.

I start to shake my head but he has already turned to walk into his office. Nothing good ever comes out of that office. I sigh and stand up to follow him.

What's the worse that can happen?

Esmeralda's POV

He closes the door after me when I enter his office before opening another door and walking inside. I follow him and notice that it's a bathroom; a very fancy one.

He gestures for me to sit on the closed toilet seat and I mechanically do so. He then opens a box on the counter and takes out something I can’t see before turning to face me making my heart go into overdrive.

He crouches in front of me making his eyes level with mine and he just stares into them for a while before dragging his eyes down to the wound. The blood there was already drying up.

He grabs my wrist to view my finger at a better angle and all my nerves start to tingle. He dabs the wool in something but I was just too distracted to look at the stuff. He then guides me up and makes me wash the blood off before making me sit back down and using the damp wool to clean the surface of the wound.

I bite my lower lip hard to prevent me from screaming because of the sting. I have zero pain tolerance. I feel his thumb rub across the pulse point on my wrist in a soothing manner and my breath catches.

I watch the back of his head as he concentrates on what he's doing. He finishes what he's doing but doesn't make a move to stand up or look at me.

He continues to rub my wrist with his thumb and I sigh already far gone.

Suddenly he looks up and catches me staring and I find it hard to look away but it seems like he didn't because he stood up immediately.

"There you go. Next time please get yourself properly treated before coming into office. I don't want anything to slow down my employee’s efficiency" he says packing the stuffs he took out back into the small box.

My mouth opens and closes like a fish.

Jerk. It’s not like I declared my love for you yesterday or anything.

But instead of saying that, I smile brightly and thank him before walking out. With shaky legs, I walk out of the bathroom into his office, I glance at the wall that the picture was hanging on yesterday but it’s empty. I finally make it to my little office outside of his and I dump myself on my chair.

I need to get my head on straight if I want to keep working here.

Evening rolls around soon enough and apart from forwarding calls to Mr. Stone’s office, I have no other contact with him throughout the day.

By three ‘O’ clock, he calls my desk to tell me to go home early so as to get ready for the gala tonight and I groan after dropping the phone because I still have no excuse for not wearing the dress but I pack up my bags nonetheless and head home.

Thankfully, Esther doesn’t give me any problem before starting up. On getting home and unlocking my front door, I scream in fright when I see Keesha sitting on my couch while munching on some popcorn as she watches a movie.

“Keesha” I exclaim exasperated.

“You should be used to this by now” She says without even turning to face me.

“I came by to help you get ready” She adds finally dropping the popcorn bowl and standing up to walk towards my room. I glare hard at her back before grudgingly following her.

‘Help you get ready’ in Keesha’s terms involves her sitting on my bed and watching me as I struggle to look presentable while munching on the popcorn she later went back to get from the sitting room.

“Why exactly are you here? You’re not doing anything but getting crumbs on my bed” I give her the stink eye when I catch her eyes through the mirror.

“I’m here to live vivaciously through you because I doubt I’ll ever get to wear a dress designed by Arianna Cade” She says wistfully.

“Tell you what? If you help me tame this wild mess I call my hair, I’ll let you borrow the dress anytime you want” I bait knowing that even if she doesn’t help with my hair, she can still wear the dress and she knows it too. I’ve got as much of her clothes in my closet as she does of mine.

She springs up from the bed in an instant and snatches up the straightener.

She ends up doing my make up too and the end result has me admiring myself continuously in the mirror. Although she straightened my hair, my hair was still a little bit curled but it looked longer. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why my face always looks different when Keesha does my make-up, and she also seems to like it when I do hers; says she likes my touch and all.

Finally, I slip on the dress and self-consciously tug on the back while Keesha gasps with eyes starry like that of a kid on Christmas morning.

“You look so gorgeous” She says looking so sincere that I shake off the self consciousness biting softly at me.

“Thank you” I reply smiling.

As I sit down to put on the laboutins I saved as hell for in celebration of my graduation, the door bell rings and Keesha springs to the front door to answer it.

A few minutes later, I walk out of my bedroom and see a strange man sitting on the couch.  He stands up immediately I step in and gestures politely to the door. I smile at him before waving bye to Keesha. On getting outside, I notice the limo and a childish grin appears on my face since I’ve never ridden in a limo before.

The man opens the door for me and I step in ready to let go of all the sophistication I don’t have and explore every inch of the limo. I however freeze when I see Mr. Stone sitting in the other corner.

“Thought it would be easier to go together” He says. “You look beautiful” He adds and my heart skips a beat.

“Thanks, you also look ummm…” I become tongue tied because I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to call my boss hot which is exactly the way he looks.

His smirk makes a slow appearance and I look away not completing my sentence. His subtle and yet suffocating scent envelopes me and I find it hard to stop myself from shifting closer to him and getting more.

I’m rescued from the battle going on in my head though when the limo pulls up in front of the stone hall. The driver comes around and opens the door for us and Mr. Stone gets out first before extending his arm to me.

I grab it and he helps me out ever so gently that my heart skips again. For a moment, I’m almost blinded by the camera flashes but my brain short circuits when Mr. Stone places his palm on my back; my naked back! He urges me forward with it while his thumb rubs slow circles on my back and I almost trip on my own feet. 

Is he even aware of what he’s doing to me?

And why does his touch feel oddly comforting and familiar

Esmeralda's POV

“Mr. Stone, is this your new girlfriend?”

“Mr. Stone, what do you have to say about Ever-fresh’s shade to your company in their new advert?”

“Mr. Stone, who is this young woman?”

He doesn’t answer any questions as his bodyguards pave way for us to pass through. His thumb continues its slow seduction and it takes all my willpower not to let out a soft moan.

Have some self control, you idiot.

“You only have to interact with people for the first half of it, by the time it gets to the second half, everyone will either be too drunk or too tired to socialize with new people” He says and I nod just as we step into the big hall.

I loop my arms around his arm and we walk into the party. People start approaching him and his expressionless face slips on as we move further into the room. He stops occasionally to talk with some people before we continue moving around.

My eyes widen when I see Jack on the other side of the room talking to a tall man with grey hair. Fortunately for me, he doesn’t notice me. Of course I should have known he’d be here; he belonged to this circle of the rich which is probably what gave him so much arrogance and made him think he could treat me anyhow he wanted.

Our relationship lasted for a year and a half and I really did love him in the beginning or at least the man he had first pretended to be. After about six months, his true colors started to shine through and I tried to hold on thinking it was just a phase.

It wasn’t and our relationship was toxic in every sense of the word.

He still had a pull on me but not because I still love him but because it’s impossible to care for someone for that long and just be able to stop all of a sudden.

However, I hated him for how humiliated he made me feel ever time he appeared in the papers with another lady.

He kept our relationship secret from the media with the excuse that he wanted to keep me away from the public eyes scrutiny. I should have known back then that he was only protecting his image and not mine. But even after everything, I’d still take him back because I was naïve and I believed myself to be in love.

Not anymore.

Mr. Stone finally guides us to a table and pulls out a chair for me and I thank him before sitting down. Seated at the table are his sister, the two guys I ran into a day before; Tyler and Blake I think, two elderly couple and the tall elderly man Jack was talking to earlier. My heart hurt for unknown reasons because of how frail the latter looked. He doesn’t look well and he’s currently staring at me like he would a ghost.

“Mr. Heart, this is Esmeralda, my assistant” Mr. Stone introduces me to the man with a worried crease between his brows.

“Oh…It’s so nice to meet you Esmeralda. You look a lot like someone I used to know” The man says wistfully as he extends his hand to me with a weak smile.

Let me guess? It’s Daisy. Again.

I accept his handshake with a fond smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Heart”

A man takes that moment to walk onto the stage and everyone finds their seats and settles down as the program begins.

The MC greets everyone and chatters on for a while before inviting Mr. Stone up for a speech.

My stomach tightens as Mr. Stone stands up in all his 6’4 glory and walks to the podium. I could very well almost see the drool dripping from most ladies’ mouth; I’m not sure I don’t have drool falling from my mouth either. My eyes refuse to move away from his figure as he begins his speech and my brain tries to comprehend why I feel so attracted to him; well apart from the fact that he’s gorgeous.

He finishes his speech by inviting the kids from the orphanage the donations are going to for their musical recital.

For the next fifteen minutes, everyone is enraptured by the kid’s voices and talent and they are rewarded by a standing ovation making huge grins appear on their cute faces.

The real band invited for the evening then start to play and most people start getting up to dance. I search the room for Hunter and I see him talking to the girl who brought my dress to the office. Jennifer, was it?

Since the elderly couple sitting at our table has already gotten up to go and dance, I’m left alone with Mr. Heart. From the side of my eyes, I see how left out the man feels.

“Will you dance with me, Mr. Heart?” I ask before I can think again.

His eyes light up and he smiles at me before taking my hand. As he stands up, I’m surprised by how huge the man actually is, he definitely doesn’t look frail while on his feet.

We walk to the dance floor and start dancing. By the time we’re done dancing, I’m laughing with tears in my eyes; the man is hilarious.

“I’d like to meet this lazy dog of yours. King, right?” I say with a huge smile as we stop dancing to go back to our seat.

“I have a feeling he’d be happy to meet you t…” Mr. Heart doesn’t get to finish his sentence before someone interrupts him.

“May I steal this lady for a dance” I turn around to see Jack standing right behind me with a wolfish grin on his face.

“Sure, If the lady wants to” Mr. Heart responds.

Since I don’t want to cause a scene, I reluctantly take Jack’s hand and try to smile without it seeming forced in Mr. Heart’s direction.

“You look beautiful Esme” Jack says.

That never stopped you from cheating before. I snipe at him in my head but instead of saying that out loud, I say;

“Thanks”

Given my rotten luck, a slow song starts playing and he pulls me close as we start swaying from side to side. My mind knows it shouldn’t feel comfortable but a part of my heart is a traitor. It still cares for the asshole; no matter how small that part is.

“I miss you so much Esme. I know I was a jerk but I love you, I really do, please forgive me” He whispers in my ear and I start praying for the song to end fast. I’ve had enough of his lies.

Oh, how I wish Keesha was here.

I look over his shoulder to see Mr. Stone dancing with Jennifer and I break a little more.

God Esme, you always choose the worst kinds of guys to fancy. Either he’s a cheater or he’s already taken.

“Esme, please look at me” Jack says tilting my head up.

“I want; no I need you in my life. I know this won’t change the past but those girls meant nothing to me. You’re the only one I care for”

His audacity! When will this damn music end?

A tear slips from one eye unwillingly. Jack always brought out this feeling in me, always making me feel like I’m not and will never be enough for a guy like him.

“Just stop” I croak out.

“May I cut in?” The deep timbre of Mr. Stone’s voice rescues me from the dark pit of self-pity I was sinking into.

Thank heavens.