"I will make this clear," Vine started to talk. "Listen carefully, I don't know what your intentions are, and I don't care. You are here because my grandparents wanted you here, mainly because of the child that you are carrying."
Kiara swallowed hard, not knowing what to say or do.
"My grandparents, if I must tell you, do not control me. I do what I feel like doing whenever I feel like doing it! You being here means that I agreed to that nonsense, only because there is a chance that the child that you are carrying is mine. Do you understand me?"
Kiara remained silent and looked at Vine with eyes full of shock. The young man was really rude.
"Answer me!" he hissed sternly.
"I understand," Kiara said in a low voice.
"If the child is mine, I will stand up and be a father to that child. But I want you to understand this very well: I do not love you. I will not repeat myself for any reason whatsoever. I do not love you. Do you hear me? I said I do not love you."
Kiara looked down and before she knew it, a huge tear drop rolled down her cheek and it fell on the back of her palm. She silently wiped it off.
"Crying?" Vine snickered, lowering himself to Kiara's level. He was in a crouching position, his hands resting on his knees.
"I …I also do not love you," Kiara spoke, her voice chocked.
"What are the tears for, then? You don't have to develop any feelings for me, for I have no plans of ever loving you. My heart can never love you. You're beautiful and all, I agree, but I am not in this for love."
"Neither am I! Gareth took me by force from my home…"
Vine laughed out loud and said, "He took you by force? Well from the video that I saw, and I still have it, you willingly walked to the car, and even asked one of my employees to go back in and get your diary. You wanted to come here."
"I did not!" Kiara cried.
"So why are you here?" he raised a brow in a mocking gesture.
"I am here because Gareth took me. And since there is a chance that you are the father of my child, I agreed to come."
Vine stood up, straightened himself and walked slowly towards the window. He opened it wide and stood there, admiring the flowers in the garden below.
"Well, let's go outside. First I will give you a tour of the mansion, not that I care but because I figure you have to know your way around this place. Spending all your time curled up in blankets won't do anyone any good, not the child that you're carrying. If that child is mine, by any chance, then I won't have the mother sleeping all day long, doing absolutely nothing to make sure that she is physically active."
He opened the window and moved slowly towards the centre of the room.
"Do you like swimming?" he asked.
"Yes, I…I do."
"And what's with the stammering?"
The young lady did not respond. She hoped with all her mind that Vine would either receive a call or be summoned by his grandparents…anything to get him off her back.
"Let's go," he started walking towards the exit.
"No, I am tired and I wanted to take some rest," the young lady said, wondering what was going on in Vine's mind.
"You're coming with me. I wasn't negotiating with you. I was telling you. I'll be waiting just outside the door," Vine spoke with finality and then he left.
She hesitantly left the room to see Vine waiting for her outside. The two started walking down the long corridor.
"That wing you see, if you follow that passage, it leads to my wing," he explained.
"OK" was all Kiara could say.
"Do you want us to go there and have a closer look? I have my personal gym there, but if you want to use a gym, there are two others which are available for you. Has Tessa shown you?"
"No, she had not yet shown me."
"Which gym do you go to? Before you came here, did you have membership with any gym?"
"I…I…no, I was planning to register but I had not yet done so."
Kiara's eyes remained fixed in the direction of Vine's wing. From just seeing the hallway and the wall decorations, she thought the place was too beautiful, and wondered how the inside rooms looked like. Following her gaze, the young man asked,
"Do you want to go and see the place? My bedrooms, my study, my bar and everything else?"
"No. I'm good seeing your wing from here."
Vine laughed before asking, "Why don't you want to go? Just because I do not love you doesn't mean that you shouldn't see my wing. After all, you are going to move in with me in that wing."
"Never! I will never move in there!" Kiara spoke a bit too loud and stood in her tracks.
"Let's go, why are you stopping? If I decide that you move, you will. I call the shots here. You don't get to oppose me, girl."
Kiara started to feel sad and scared at the same time. Vine seemed to be very controlling. While at first she thought he was just joking about her moving in with him in his wing, she later on learnt that he meant every word, because his tone was dead serious.
"Come here, I want to show you the room where I used to sleep in until I was ten or so."
She followed silently.
They moved from one room to another. Kiara had never been to a place so luxurious. Everything was of very high quality, and whenever they moved, if they met any workers, they would bow and greet the couple with the utmost respect.
"Good day to you too," Kiara kept responding to them.
"You don't need to respond," Vine finally commented.
"Why not?"
"Who has the time to talk to all of them? Can't you see that they are shocked to see you responding? When they greet you, they're not expecting a response."
"Oh," Kiara gasped.
They walked on in silence, until they were outside in the garden.
Vine planted himself on a garden chair and ordered Kiara to take the chair next to him.
"Tell me about yourself," he demanded.
"I…I am an only child. I just graduated from university. I'm a computer programmer. I…I go to church sometimes, with my mother. I…I…"
"Isn't it amazing how you hardly know yourself? You can't even construct three meaningful sentences to explain who you are."
"What exactly do you want to know about me?" Kiara was becoming agitated.
"I want to know everything about you, for example what skill do you have? How do you manage to have more than one men as a possible father to your child. I want to know how many one night stands you have…"
"You made me drunk and you took advantage of me!"
"Oh did I? Were you not begging me to sleep with you, when I wanted absolutely nothing to do with you?"
"Please don't be like that! I was drunk and even before I took those wines, I told you multiple times that I had never taken strong drinks before. I…"
"Enough about that whining. Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do in your spare time? What talents do you have? What are your favourites… favourite flowers, food, and anything in those lines."
"Favourite flower, I…umm, I don't really like flowers."
"You do love them, but the only reason why you think you do not is because no-one ever bought them for you. You yourself could not afford to buy any flowers for yourself, and that lousy boyfriend of yours couldn't buy you any as well."
"I love roses!" Kiara said in a defensive way.
"What a regular, boring person you are. Roses, of all the flowers. So that Jeremy of yours used to buy you some cheap roses?"
Shocked that Vine actually remembered Jeremy's name, Kiara struggled to keep calm under his derision.
"Umm, he never really bought much flowers."
"He couldn't afford them," Vine scorned.
"Well he could, but he bought what I wanted the most. I didn't like flowers a lot, so he chose to give me what I wanted."
"Which is?" Vine asked.
"Ice cream," she said in a low tone.
Vine did not respond. He stood up and started to walk towards the water fountain which was in the middle of the garden.
"Come with me," he commanded.
She hated it when he sent out those commands, but all the same she stood up and started following him.
"I'll tell you this; the only reason why you think that you don't like flowers is because your lousy boyfriend could not afford them. You see, he had to live on a tight budget which only allowed him to buy you ice cream, and I have no doubt that the ice cream was of terribly cheap quality. After a while, you shall soon realise that you too can love flowers."
The most painful part of it all was the way in which Vine spoke. Composed, in a low tone, without raising his voice for any reason whatsoever, he spoke like a gentleman. If anyone was to see them and not hear what he as saying, they would have thought that he was talking some sweet things. At times he even gave a brief wicked grin to go along with his scorn.
Kiara remained silent. She stretched her hand and picked on a beautiful flower. It was purple in colour.
"That's a saffron crocus. It has some healing properties to it. They also use it to make spices," Vine explained.
Kiara was shocked again. The man seemed to know a lot of staff.
"I don't think I like its smell," she said with a grimace.
They walked on in silence until Vine broke the silence with,
"So tell me, in addition to sleeping with strangers, what else do you do? Or should I say targeting rich men so that you can worm your way into their bed…besides that, what else is your hobby?"
Kiara did not respond. She felt hot tears stinging her eyelids, and she looked aside so that Vine would not see the tears but she was too late, for he had already seen the tears.
"Crying? You're good at crying too, aren't you?"
"Vine, you're being very unfair. I understand that you don't love me, but do you have to be that mean?"
"I hate it when some waitress pops out of nowhere and tries to define my destiny."
"But I never wanted to be here. If you had not sent your men to take me, I was never going to come here," she sniffed and used the back of her hand to wipe off the tears that were beginning to fall.
Watching from the widow was lady Pinkerton. Kiara was facing the opposite side from the woman was, thus she did not see her wiping off some tears. She called Gareth to come to the window with her, and she commented,
"It seems like he really likes her. I knew that he was going to like her. Our bride is pretty," she could not hide her joy.
"That is good news, ma'am," Gareth said.
They were not able to hear what the two were talking about, but they watched as the two walked towards the fountain, and they saw her picking a flower, and they watched as the two talked to each other. The grandmother was beside herself with joy. She could not believe it; she almost exploded from overexcitement.