“Welcome back home!” I greeted Hayden happily. I waved a hand at him while my other arm was busy holding Little Hayden. Hayden looked at me with a brief look of surprise before his eyes narrowed suspiciously at me and then at the puppy in my arm. I had decided to surprise Hayden a little for a change by waiting for him right at the steps to the main door of the mansion. “Why are you standing out here?” he asked. “Waiting for you to come back, obviously,” I replied. “Hmm…” he murmured. Maybe it’s just my own imagination or the light playing tricks, but I thought Hayden looked a little happy just now. “Little Hayden say, ‘welcome back’ too, Hayden,” I talked to the puppy in a sweet cooing voice. “Why are you talking to the dog? He probably doesn’t understand a thing,” Hayden muttered darkly. “I think he does understand somethings…” I countered stubbornly. “Let’s go inside. You don’t need to wait for me outside,” Hayden said a little sternly as he walked past me into the mansion
“He really likes you…” I said with a smile.Time for Little Hayden to earn some favor points so that he can keep his name and also his life. Hayden looked down at the puppy and sighed again. I wondered if he regretted getting the little thing and prayed that that wasn’t so. “What did you want to show me?” Hayden asked. “You bought dog toys, right? I was with Little Hayden earlier in the garden, but I was too busy working on my sketches, so he had to play all alone…” I mumbled. “And?” Hayden urged to me to get to my point. Well…“I was just thinking that it’ll be nice if you could…you know…play with him a little outside. Of course, when you have the time like on the weekends…” I suggested hesitantly as I reached out a hand to stroke Little Hayden for some courage. Hayden looked at me with an incredulous expression like I had asked for something quite crazy. Did I just ask for something that crazy? I started to doubt myself for a moment. Hayden stared at me for a moment longer befo
It was so unusual for me to receive so many emails like this all at once. Were these spam emails? I frowned as I pressed on the notification to open my mailbox to check. I gasped in shock when I found out that the emails were notifications for form submission on my website. It can’t be, there’s so many. My first reaction was that someone must have started spamming or abusing the form on my website by filling it with nonsense. “Come along, Little Hayden,” I called out to the puppy for him to follow me out of the art studio. I decided to quickly check the form submission on the website on my computer just to be sure. If someone was spamming it, then I must report it. I sat down in front of the computer and pulled up the backend of my website to check on the submission form responses. There were so many of them and they were all sent from different people? My eyes narrowed as I focused on scanning the headings of the form submissions. There were almost twenty of them and the notificat
All I could do was blink rapidly to make sure that I wasn’t just seeing things. No matter what I did, I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture on the front cover of the magazine or calm the racing beat of my heart. I stared down at the magazine in my hand while Auntie chatted away proudly about Hayden's achievements. However, her words were lost to me as my mind zoned in to focus on the picture that was printed on the magazine cover. Hayden stared back at me from the sketch that I had drawn of him. It felt like forever had passed since I last saw this drawing. Back then when our contract was coming to an end, I drew a picture of Hayden as a farewell gift for him. Back then, I honestly thought that we would never see each other again and I never thought that I would see this drawing again either. But how did my drawing end up on the cover of this magazine. My eyes narrowed as I suspected that the rapid inflow of commission requests definitely had something to do with the fact that my
“Really?” I asked as I narrowed my eyes at him.“Sure…” he replied as he smiled back at me with a mischievous spark in his light blue eyes. He’s crazy and so reckless. I knew that but still this is something else altogether…“I don’t even know what to say or what to do. This is crazy, Hayden,” I mumbled softly before sighing loudly.I have never felt so overwhelmed like this before. “Some of my friends and other business partners asked about your work too, and of course, I utilized my perfect sales skill to pitch your talent to them. Guess my hard work paid off. These people are loaded so you can rip them off with whatever price that you want,” Hayden said with a proud laugh. “Why did you do that?” I asked before rubbing my temples. This is all too much. He could have checked with me first on whether I was ready for this. “To help you find clients for your work. Why else?” Hayden said with a shrug. It was apparent that he couldn’t understand why I was so distressed about all thi
Opening up the responses to the request form, I started going through them one by one and sorting them based on the detail of the request. As I read the requests, my brain began thinking about ways that I could complete my work without meeting the client in person. I could paint from a photograph and some requests actually wanted me to paint based on a photograph so I could work on those requests without any issues. For other requests, would doing some kind of video call help act as a reasonably good alternate method? Honestly, I haven’t tried it before, but it might be worth a shot. The issue was that most clients probably didn’t know the process of getting their portrait painted. Perhaps, I could get back to them to ask if it was fine if I didn’t paint them in person. There were so many requests that I had to find some way to prioritize them. I hated to admit it, but Hayden was right. I wondered how many portraits I could finish in a month. Perhaps one per week? That would make it
I should head back. It’s too late in the night now and Hayden is probably sleeping. If I knock on his door now, I’d just disturb him and wake him up from his slumber. So many reasons ran through my mind as I stood there in front of his door in silence without moving. My body wouldn’t move as my fear started taking over. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was walk away from the door and head back to the safety and sanctuary of my own bedroom. Deep down, I knew that all those reasons that my mind was conjuring up were nothing more than convenient excuses for me to head back so that I wouldn’t have to face Hayden right now. The truth was that I was scared.While I stood there rooted to the spot, to my utmost disbelief, the large door behind me creaked opened and light shone into the dark hallway. It seemed like my choice was just made for me. My body froze in place in shock as more light shone into the dark hallway. Slowly, I managed to move my body and turned my neck around towards the opene
My body stiffened as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me back against his hard frame. I could feel the hardness of his muscles against my back along with his body heat. The nightgown and robe that I had on was made of very thin satin and it didn’t provide much barrier between our tightly pressed bodies. I could feel his breath in my ear and knew that he was staring down at my face. I kept my eyes averted as I tried to think of what to say. “Answer me,” Hayden commanded in a low voice.When I lapsed into silence as I hesitated, he started punishing me by hugging me even tighter than before. I need to answer him before he either crushes my ribs or I run out of breath. “I didn’t…come here to…sleep with you…” I managed to say in a struggle. Hayden’s arms around my body relaxed and I quickly drew in a deep breath before I lost my chance to breathe. He’s such a bully…If I thought that Hayden was satisfied with my answer, I quickly found out that I was so wrong. “Do you re