Chapter 222 - Angela Who? (3)
A soft knock on the door pulled Zaria out of her thoughts.
"Zaria?" Came Ximena's worried voice. "Are you alright in there?"
She blinked her tears away rapidly and rushed to the door, stopping to wipe the drops that had seeped from her eyes before pulling it open. As expected, Ximena was driving herself crazy with worry along with Theodore and Des.
"I'm okay." She reassured them with a broken voice.
"Just okay?" Ximena's question was a mutter. It was clear what she hoped for. When Zaria didn't answer her, she felt like she was going crazy. "Come on. Put me out of this misery, will you? Am I becoming a godmother?"
"And am I becoming a grandfather?" Theodore added worriedly, trying to read his daughter's expression.
She broke into a sudden smile and jumped into their arms with nearly enough force to knock them down. Ximena steadied her.
"I'm pregnant. I can't believe it either." She held their hands in disbelief, wondering if it was just a dream.
"You just made me the happiest woman on earth." Ximena hugged her again, before hugging Theodore and Des. "Did you hear that, Des? She's going to have a baby."
"Zaria," Theodore's eyes welled up. "Congratulations, princess."
The father and daughter embraced emotionally. Des slotted himself between their legs to share the joy and Zaria picked him up, cuddling him close to her chest.
"Are you ready to eat something now? Because I'm not going to let you starve my future child just because you are not in the mood to eat." Ximena looked at Zaria authoritatively, making the latter laugh.
"Have you become the food police now? I ate at Desmond's." She patted her friend's shoulder. "Don't worry. I would never starve your godchild."
She dashed back to the living room and sat on the couch to calm down, but she was anything but calm when she noticed Theodore's gaze on her. His eyes seemed to follow her every movement and just like Des, he was following her like a shadow.
"Is everything okay?" She laughed at his antics, feeling embarrassed from how he was looking at her. It was almost as though he was seeing someone else through her.
Theodore shook his head and nodded immediately. He was clearly distracted.
"It still feels like yesterday." He mumbled, barely audibly.
"Yup, this is going to be awesome." Ximena, who was making a fruit salad for Zaria at the side, rushed back to sit near her friend to listen to what she knew must be yet another distant memory of Theodore's.
She was right. Theodore had a smile as he reminisced. "It was not long after our wedding. I had just gotten back from work when Lucy jumped into my arms, in tears, and told me that we were going to have a baby."
"Aww that must have been so lovely." Ximena hugged Zaria's arm excitedly.
"It was." He smiled emotionally. "The months leading to our baby's birth were the loveliest. And when I finally met our Zaria, I burst into tears. She was so small, and I vowed to protect her with my life. How could a human be so tiny yet mean the whole world to me?" He looked at his daughter lovingly. "Yet, after what feels like only a few days, she is making me the happiest man on earth. Again. I'm a grandpa."
His words expressed his disbelief. He pinched himself to prove that he was not in a dream.
"If you go on, you are going to make me cry." Zaria dabbed at her eyes, wondering how Lucy would take the news.
___
"I'm going to be a grandma?" Lucy spun in surprise. "Wait. You're serious. I'm going to be a grandma." She hugged the pillow to her chest, realizing that Zaria was not joking. Needless to say, she took the news exactly the way Zaria expected her to.
It had been Ximena's suggestion to give Lucy a customized pillow, with the words "see you soon, grandma" written on it. The latter was hugging it like it was her precious grandchild.
"Yes you are." Zaria pulled the pillow out of her hands. "I'm sorry to break your moment but we have a meeting to get to."
"What's that got to do with my pillow?" Lucy expressed her displeasure at the lack of her pillow.
"You are not going to parade it around and let everyone know that your child is expecting, are you?" She asked.
Lucy thought about it and realized that once Zaria's bump started to show, the employees might put two and two together and find out that she was her daughter. She reluctantly left her pillow so they would go to the meeting.
They were in time and Desmond arrived a few minutes later, having rushed in from another meeting outside the company. He apologized and took his seat, then started the meeting, but not before shooting his girlfriend a loving look.
She coughed to hold back a smile and was somewhat happy that they were not sitting near each other during the meeting.
"The Regal Hotel is officially a disaster. We have already tried our best at marketing, almost impacting other departments negatively while at it, but the results are still unfortunate." The Marketing manager, a middle-aged man, reported, shooting daggers at Zaria who was the one to acquire the hotel on behalf of the company.
"If you claim to be doing your best, yet you do not get the desired results, then you are clearly not doing much." Desmond fired back to protect his girlfriend.
"We are doing all we can, sir. But there is no way to save a project that was sold off for being on the verge of collapse." Argued another employee. "This is affecting the performance of our other hotels, sir." He added.
"This is why we are having this meeting in the first place." Lucy chimed in, before turning to Zaria. "Miss Williams, your employees seem to think this problem was caused by you. Do you have any suggestions to fix it?"
Zaria cursed inwardly, because she didn't. She had been unable to get to the bottom of it until this morning and had to think on her feet now that she had been called out in a meeting.
"I checked the customer reviews and realized that there are very few positive ones that mention the view. On the other hand, a huge chunk of the negative ones mention the boring view of the city."
"Miss Williams, you must be misunderstanding our role. We are not in charge of changing the outlook of the city." Remarked the marketing director, finding it absurd that she would believe that was what customers thought.
She shrugged in response. "Customers have their own peculiarities. Why they focus so much on the view, I couldn't tell you for sure, but I do know that there are many artists and designers who draw inspiration from what they see. Since it is a problem that has been raised by our customers, we should solve it to give more satisfaction and I have just the idea."
She paused, almost laughing at the wild thought of demolishing the Regal Hotel and building it in a different location.
In actual fact, she knew that it was one of Nathaniel's blows. All the view-related comments were made by his trolls, because he knew that there was nothing that could be done about the fact that Regal Hotel had nothing interesting to look at outside it. Or so he thought.
"We could replace all the windows in the suites with one way high definition screens. This way, everyone will get a view of what they want. The feeling will be less magical if we let them know that what they are seeing or hearing is not from real nature, so we can instead have the guests fill in short questionnaires on arrival to get a feel of their interests. If they do realize that what they are seeing is an illusion, they will be impressed by how realistic it feels and that might even boost the ratings." She concluded, having thought of the details on the spot.
____
AN
As part of motivation, I like listening to music while writing. So I made a Spotify playlist and I won't mind having music suggestions from my readers.. If you are interested, let me know in the comments and I will share the link for you to add songs you like.
Follow current novels on freewe(b)novel.c(o)m