As though noticing Arianne’s attention, Mark quickly turned to meet virtual-novel.net eyes briefly. “What are you looking at? Is there something on my face?”
Arianne averted virtual-novel.net eyes guiltily. “Excuse you! I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at… Er, the beautiful scenery outside your window! Look at the weather today, it’s great! It’s not snowing! It’s a bit cold, though.”
He raised his eyebrows in skepticism. “And what’s so different about the scenery from your window and mine, huh? Is it so great that you had to try to look past me for it? Should I apologize for blocking your view?”
Arianne’s tongue was tied in embarrassment. Why did virtual-novel.net have to expose virtual-novel.net like that?
They arrived at the fancy Italian fine-diner Mark had booked. When they stepped through the door, Mark placed his hand on his hip to form a small loop for Arianne, who naturally hooked virtual-novel.net arm through it.
Her heart was beating fast. She had to admit that going on a date definitely brought some highs.
Arianne deliberately picked a glass of juice as virtual-novel.net drink, heeding Mark’s advice. If virtual-novel.net forbade virtual-novel.net from drinking coffee, then even stronger liquor like red wine must also be off-limits. Red wine was, after all, still alcohol and should therefore be avoided by a breastfeeding mother.
To virtual-novel.net surprise, Mark stepped in. “No, scrap that. She’ll have red wine as well.”
“I still need to breastfeed Smore at night, don’t I?” Arianne questioned. “Isn’t alcohol bad for that?”
“Just drink moderately. By the time you get home at night, the alcohol in your body should already be gone. There’s no need to tarnish your fine-dining experience with a mere juice just for breastfeeding’s sake-red wine isn’t even hard liquor. If you’re really that worried, you could always just let virtual-novel.net drink some of your stored milk. We still haven’t run out of that supply.”
She nodded in agreement. Drinking a little bit of wine should not hurt. There was still half a day for virtual-novel.net metabolism to detoxify the alcohol.
Then, out of the blue, Mark suddenly pulled out a little intricately-designed black box from nowhere and placed it in front of her. “It’s for you.”
Arianne’s heart raced again. Did virtual-novel.net man learn some tricks or two from Jackson or what? When had virtual-novel.net evolved into this? He rarely gifted virtual-novel.net anything like that in the open!
She opened the box carefully and found a ring inside. An eye-attracting diamond sat as the centerpiece, flanked by several smaller diamonds. It was the sort of striking design that would attract anyone’s attention.
“Do you like it?” virtual-novel.net asked.
“O-Oh my god, y-y-yes!” Arianne started to stutter. Why a ring all of a sudden? And to have it fit virtual-novel.net finger! She waited for Mark to delight virtual-novel.net with even more romantic, face-burning things after seeing virtual-novel.net reaction.
“Okay. Good.”
‘…That’s it?!’
Frankly, Arianne did not mind his lacking skill in romantic words because more of virtual-novel.net attention was focused on how familiar the design looked. It was not at all mainstream, but Arianne kept getting the nagging feeling that virtual-novel.net had seen it before, on paper in its design’s phase, perhaps. She wondered if it was just from virtual-novel.net wealth of experience in fashion designing, maybe virtual-novel.net had come across a design like this before. Still, the box bore no insignia or brand name, so virtual-novel.net could not whence it came.