Denise knew how to appreciate a good thing when she saw it. She drank in the beauty and the magnificence of this hotel and she loved it. It was just like how she would imagine anything owned by Ansel Winston to look like.She had been brought up as a pauper and she swore that if she was ever to become a mother, this was the life she was going to give her children. She was going to make up for what she had missed in her childhood.On the table, there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and there were wine glasses on a small transparent glass cabinet on the side of the room near the fire place. There were also appetisers and fruits cut and arranged in a beautiful manner on the same table. Denise felt bad that that beautiful art made with the fruits would have to be eaten. Ah, the ways of the rich!Alex invited her to sit and she did and she (Alex) went to pour the wine in the wine glasses."Don't pour for me. Sorry, but don't drink," Denise told her and Alex looked at her as i

They talked and laughed and didn't actually notice that time was moving. It was much, much later when the waiter came to pick the used plates that they realized that they had been talking and laughing like old pals for almost two hours.Denise was actually surprised that she could hold her own for that long when faced with an enigma like Ansel. She also realised that he was an easy going man and she shouldn't have feared him as much.Ansel, on the other hand, was on cloud nine. He was ecstatic. Who would have told him that his crush was that fun to be with. They were like two sides of the same coin. All Ansel knew was the high class stuff, business and closing deals but Denise knew the street life. She had been there and she knew more about the life of the poor and the middle class than Ansel did. They thus talked about all this and that without any care in the world but the downside came when Ansel asked her about her family. This was a topic she had never talked about with or to an

Denise sat there for a while frozen as if she was suspended in time. Her heart was beating a thousand beats a minute. If body organs could talk, her heart, her lungs and her small intestines would have talked of how nervous she was at that moment. She felt the proverbial butterflies in her stomach. If Dwayne wanted her dead, he had succeeded because if she didn't calm down and quickly, she would get a heart attack. She could feel the palpitations coming. "l am definitely hallucinating! That's it. I must be sick. Or have I been overworking myself? That must be it." Denise thought to herself as she sat there trying to control her breathing and staring at Ansel like a ghost.She thought she had heard him wrong. She must have. He couldn't have been serious, could he? She stood wanting some fresh air to help her think and when Ansel saw that, he felt his heart miss a beat. Did she want to leave without saying anything? Was he too direct and he frightened her?He couldn't let her just l

As is norm with all people, fear of losing is innate. No one loves losing and hope helps one deal with such fear. It is said that hope is the last thing we lose in anysituation. Thus, Ansel was hopeful that he had convinced Denise to agree to his proposal and he had this mininised his fear of rejection by hoping that she was in. He was hopeful that all would go well.After finishing his long speech, he stood there looking at her withva hopeful expression and his eyes fixated on her. She also looked at him wondering if he was the one who had said that much. Like everyone in Xela, she also had the same view about Ansel. The reason why he had been nicknamed the lceberg of Xera was not only because of his cold demeanor but also because of the fact that he rarely talked. Even when he was having a proper conversation with anyone, he would only give one word perfunctory answers or short commands. He thus gave people people this picture and impression that he never talked. There was in fa

The following morning, Denise woke up naturally and she felt refreshed. She realized that all she needed was a good night's sleep but the downside was that all the dreams she had had that night were all about Ansel. But she would rather dream about him than dream about anything else.The most vivid one she had was one about their wedding. She had said yes to Ansel and the next thing that happened was the wedding. The wedding happened on a beautiful big terrace of the biggest hotel in Xela and it was decorated beautifully and they had more than a thousand guests but Denise didn't know any of them.Her family wasn't there but she didn't expect them to be because in her memories, she hadn't invited them. She didn't want to invite them because she had an inkling that Georgina would destroy her wedding. She was wearing a long white flowing gown that was shaped like a fish that really accentuated her important parts and features making her look like a mermaid because it had a long shimme