"Are you sure you are still willing to become the fourth wife?"
To avoid his probing gaze, Violet inconspicuously covered the right side of her face with a gloved hand and faced the window, muttering, "I had no idea that this kind of character back story I only see in television dramas also happen in real life."
Violet wasn't sure if he heard her talking to herself when he said, "You seem to have no idea what you were getting into. Does this mean that my father wasn't honest to you before he decided to take you home?" He sounded confused but curious. "That's new."
The chairman' son must have perceived his father as straightforward to his future wife when it came to their twisted family dynamics.
"How many stepbrothers do you have?" She asked.
"So, you really don't know?"
The man responded to her question with a question.
Would she be wasting her time asking him something she already knew?
With her right hand still shielding her side profile, Violet rolled her eyes.
She was glad that the man couldn't see her do it.
"I don't." She replied.
"I have three brothers."
"All from different mothers?"
Violet wanted him to clarify.
"Hm."
She closed her eyes
That brief hum again.
Was that a yes or a no?
The chairman's son must have gotten bored from answering such trivial queries at that point so she decided to make him the subject of the conversation this time.
He seemed to have some narcissistic tendencies so he would probably appreciate it.
After taking great pains of trying not to pay her intolerable companion any heed but could no longer stay firm, she settled her raised hand back to her lap and bestowed him a quick glance.
If she was normal, Violet would have quizzed him about this ages ago.
At least, it wasn't too late to ask... or so she thought.
She didn't intend to feed his already full ego so she made an effort to sound like a robot---monotonous and impassive.
To be fair, the chairman's son didn't seem interested to know her name, either.
He immediately assumed that a young woman like her was his future stepmother and that was it.
From his behavior so far, this handsome man seemed crazier than she was.
"What's your name?"
His light brown eyebrows wiggled in disbelief. "You don't even know who I am?" He threw back his head and laughed, all the while clapping his hands like a drunken seal. "Wow." He exclaimed as he searched her face, checking if she was being coy or sarcastic. "Wow~" He drawled while nodding his head a little. "That's humbling."
If the mere act of asking his name, which should be a common question to ask a stranger whom one believed they would have to interact with for few minutes, humbled him, this man must have thought of himself as the cream of the crop the moment this conversation started.
"I'm Arthur Blackwell." The chairman's son tilted his chin proudly, expecting her to recognize him the moment he uttered his name.
Violet wasn't prepared at at all.
She blinked while staring at him with furrowed brows.
It was true that the name sounded familiar but she couldn't place where she heard it before.
Maybe, his name was just too common or something.
As uncomfortable silence fell around them, the smug look on his handsome countenance was slowly replaced with an awkward grin.
When he immediately broke eye contact as she was still trying to figure out where she had seen him somewhere, she noticed that his ears had turned bright red.
'Was this the first time that this self-absorbed man was taken down a peg?'
She suppressed the evil laugh bubbling from her throat.
Lip pressed into a tight line, Arthur cleared his throat and said with a scowl, "I'm the hottest High Fashion model in the industry right now. Where you living under a rock or were you just pretending not to recognize me hoping that I'll pay extra attention to you than the rest of the girls?"
'This isn't Wattpad, idiot!' Violet snapped at him in her mind. 'And, it wasn't like you're part of a boy band or something.'
She didn't even know whether she should laugh or cry the instant she heard that.
Where did Arthur even get the audacity to accuse her of doing such a thing?
She wanted to shut him down so bad but all she could do was slap her forehead gently at the absurdity of it all.
How popular could he be?
However, Violet's bright future might be in his hands and she wasn't about to sabotage it because of a stupid argument.
A brief, weighty silence.
That was her cue to ignore him this time.
She urged her entire body to scoot away from him even as her body told her the exact opposite.
From her unconscious reactions alone, Violet couldn't deny that she was----a teeny, tiny little bit---attracted to him.
Of course, she didn't like it.
If she couldn't get these strange impulses under control, especially when she was diagnosed with Alien Hands Disorder, she might as well blow up her chances of a successful future into smithereens.
The weighty realization made her squirm in her seat from discomfort.
She was close to hoping against hope that the chairman was, indeed, her stepbrother.
"Where is the remote?" Violet asked carefully as she inspected both of their reflections at the dark touchscreen television across them. "Is it alright if I turn on the television? I want to watch something."
Violet would attempt everything just to kill time and drown out the awkward silence with some background noise.
"No. I'd rather talk to you."