ALL THAT GLITTERS...

14.

I heard my aunt's loud laughter coming from the kitchen the very moment I stepped into the house, I followed the voices to the kitchen and found my aunt dicing something on a board and Seth seated comfortably on a kitchen stool with a small smile on his face.

I had never seen him smile much before today, it was either I was biased by my stupid hormones or he had the most charming smile in the world. And Of course, he had to have perfectly white teeth and the perfect pair of naturally pinkish lips to go with them.

Watching him from the corner of the doorway, I frowned at how out of place he looked and how tiny that stool was for his large form.

Seth wasn't a man who could fit in small places like these, he belonged behind a huge desk in an office, shouting orders at people. He belonged in houses with high ceilings with maids and butlers running around serving him the most expensive food in the world, not our small kitchen area.

"Lisa, it's good you're back." Lorraine said as soon as she spotted me walk into the room.

"I need to run to the market for a bit, we ran out of parsley and coriander, I cannot cook my special dish without them."

My aunt was big on herbs and spices, she could not cook without them, I was about to offer to go buy them when she cut me off.

"I invited Seth to stay for supper and he has been very good company but I'm sure I would exhaust him with my talking if I stayed here. Stay with him whilst I rush to the market, he is your friend, you wouldn't mind."

I did mind and Seth wasn't good company, even his mother knew that.

"Yeah, sure." I nodded. She didn't waste any time grabbing her keys and rushing out of the house leaving Seth and me alone.

The room turned silent after my aunt's departure, Seth hadn't said a word since I came in. He sat on the stool facing my direction, his eyes solemnly focused on my face. If there was one thing I completely loathed about him was how he managed to remain expressionless all the time, you could never tell what was going through his mind, he was like some stupid stone statue.

We stayed in our places without saying anything for some time before deciding that if he wasn't going to say something then I would.

"What are you doing?" I asked, eyeing him up to which he responded by lifting one perfectly shaped eyebrow.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" I had never heard him talk much and each time he did my stomach would do a small flip.

"Why are you here?" I pressed feeling rather annoyed by the fact that he was answering my question with another question.

Seth cocked his head to the side and slowly rose to his feet, without another word, he took one long stride towards me. Instinctively I took one step back and crossed my arms across my chest, and tried to give him my best glare.

He didn't seem affected at all as his form towered over me, this was the closest I have been to him and honestly, I liked what I saw. Seth was a truly magnificently gorgeous human being and seeing him this close had me awestruck, I didn't think it was something I could ever get used to.

Fed up with the uncomfortable silence, I walked around Seth and went straight for the fridge to grab myself a glass of juice. I wanted to ignore him but his powerful aura was hard to ignore, you could feel him every time he moved and that's exactly what he did, he moved to the shelves on the dining area to where some of our family photos were displayed.

I tried to keep my eyes off him and on an ingredient list aunt Lorraine had written on a piece of a sticky note she had left on the counter but each time I tried to focus on the words my eyes would end up straying to the other person in the room.

"She was beautiful. She looked like you."

His words startled me, I knew he was talking about mother and I knew he meant I look like her but the placement of his words had me flustered for a minute. I cleared my throat before moving to see the frame he was holding, keeping my distance I peered from behind him to see a photo of my mother and Lorraine on their graduation day.

"She was." I agreed with a small nod.

"You two were close?" he turned abruptly to look at me, I wanted to take a step back but I stood my ground.

"Yeah, I guess, I'm not so sure anymore." I whispered the last part as my mind trailed back to all the questions I had surrounding my mother's earlier life.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's nothing." I muttered and turned away from him.

"It's clearly something if it's bothering you." He pressed, clearly not planning on letting it go.

"I just feel like I don't know who she was anymore." I hated feeling that way towards the woman who was my best friend, we used to talk about everything but if she could lie about being an orphan it had me thinking what else she could've lied about.

"Where is this coming from? Don't tell me it's because of my mother's ridiculous questions."

His voice turned hard, I couldn't help but turn back to look at him, a frown was etched upon his face and his mouth in a hard line.

"No. Yes. A bit." Mrs Blackwell had me questioning things about our life I never thought about, things I wasn't sure I wanted answers to.

"Tell me." I felt the strangest urge to pour out everything, I barely knew the man yet the idea of telling him about the mystery of my mother didn't scare me as much as it did with everyone else.

I only hesitated for a minute before my lips spilt everything that had been troubling me concerning my mother's earlier life. I told him about the non-existence of her life before college, the lack of pictures, the holes in so many of the stories about her life growing up and my search for her information in orphanages. I was grateful that Seth didn't interrupt me, he stood and listened, a quality most men lacked but then again this man was the epitome of the modern man, there was nothing he couldn't do.

"I understand your concerns. What's the name of the university your mother graduated from? I can call in a favour, maybe there is something on her records that can help."

Of all the responses I had expected him to come up with, I hadn't expected him to say this and to be willing to help too. He didn't think I was paranoid or at least he didn't voice it our and that was enough for me.

My mother had attended the University of Jacksontown, it was a pretty big deal back home, it was the next best thing after Ivy League colleges, even Seth seemed taken aback by that information.

The fact that he had understood why this was important to me said a lot about him, I realized that I might have been wrong about him. In one conversation he had gotten a good in-depth look at my life but here I stood thinking about how I didn't know a damn thing about him, he didn't wear his emotions on his face like most people, like his sister.

I threw him a small smile and watched in turn as his lips curled up a bit in a small smile. It was better than the normal stone expressions, we stood for a fraction of a second smiling at each other, something had changed between us after that conversation. We weren't strangers anymore but we weren't friends quite yet, we were in the in-between and I liked that.

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