Back Then, I Adored You

It did not seem appropriate to be the second girl in a room with a couple on whom she intruded. Xu Wennuan wanted to leave quietly before they noticed her; however, before she had started backtracking, the coffee had finished brewing, and the secretary turned around with a cup of coffee. She was overly indulgent when she offered the coffee to Lu Bancheng. When she handed it to him, she giggled with her head tilted to one side and said, “Mr. Lu, would you like to try the coffee?”

Lu Bancheng looked up from his cell phone to the coffee she was holding for a few seconds. As he did, he noticed Xu Wennuan turning around at the dining room door to leave. He calmed himself down a bit, but even though his reaction was subtle, the secretary had still noticed the change in him. She followed his eyes to Xu Wennuan, who was standing at the door and looking at her.

The secretary was shocked since she had never imagined Lu Bancheng would invite her into his apartment when another woman was there. The smile on her face started to fade, and her shocked expression turned to confusion. She looked from Lu Bancheng to Xu Wennuan.

What woman would come to Lu Bancheng’s house so late at night? Does Mr. Lu have a girlfriend, and he’s not even single? If he does have a girlfriend, why would he bring me to his apartment?

The secretary thought about it for a long time in the dead silence and definitively determined that something was not right. She looked up at Lu Bancheng with long, artificial eyelashes, whereupon he looked away from Xu Wennuan, whom he pretended he had not seen.

He gently took the coffee from the secretary and said politely in a deep voice, “Thank you.” He raised the cup to his mouth to take a sip. After a moment, he turned to the secretary and said, “It tastes pretty good.”

Hearing the compliment, the secretary put a bright smile on her face and started to talk at length. She ended by promiscuously hinting to him, “I can make coffee for you more often if Mr. Lu likes it.”

Lu Bancheng glanced at Xu Wennuan out of the corner of his eye after the secretary made her not-so-subtle proposal. Although Xu Wennuan’s face was pale from drinking earlier, she maintained a calm look, despite the rude conversation playing out in front of her.

Suddenly, Lu Bancheng became internally enraged, but he managed to appear even nicer than before. He gave the secretary a smile, understanding what she had meant, and did not turn her down. “Sounds good,” he replied.

We are all adults. They both know what I was implying.

As this point, the secretary decided the woman just outside the dining room could not be Lu Bancheng’s girlfriend; if she were, he would not have accepted her offer.

The secretary started to regain her good mood again, now that she was confident that Lu Bancheng was interested in her. She then became bolder. “Mr. Lu, who is she?”

Lu Bancheng’s hand holding his coffee shook a bit. He looked down at his cup and watched the heat rising from the coffee.

Who is she? She is my legal wife, who wants nothing to do with me.

“Mr. Lu?” the secretary asked again when Lu Bancheng had not answered for several moments.

Lu Bancheng gathered the nerve to looked up directly at Xu Wennuan. She was so skinny. He turned to the secretary and said, “She’s just a nanny—does my house cleaning.”