Spice

4 || Anise

Jared watched Bailey stand up from the bed with her usual ramrod straight posture. The woman never let up that stifling propriety for even a second, to the point where looking at her was almost painful.

He didn't know why it got on his nerves so much, but he increasingly felt that Bailey just got worse and worse.

His face pulled into a sneer that he tried his best to hide, but the antipathy that emanated from the both of them was impossible to conceal. As Bailey took steps toward him, he felt his chest tighten as if he was about to throw up his heart.

She walked right past him, not even sparing a single glance, and went straight out of the door.

When she passed him, the top of her head was at the level of his chin, and if he hadn't woken up in such a compromising position in the morning, he would have wondered what perfume she was using.

Bailey smelled warm and spicy, and that just seemed to be her natural scent. He didn't know how to pinpoint anything on her, but the smell reminded him of mulled wine.

Jared turned to follow after her and didn't really think much of anything. It was a sophisticated scent, and with the way she was so wound up all the time, he just figured that it made sense how she would smell like that.

Because they'd taken longer at work than the previous day, it was now past six in the evening, and the sun was almost beginning to set.

Bailey stopped on the sidewalk in front of the hotel to look at him, standing against the light with her usual blank expression and her arms crossed.

She looked passionless, callous, and not the least bit impressed with having to be made to wait for anything.

The softer sunlight hit the side of her face, bringing golden streaks of light to life in her sky grey eyes. It bounced against the side of her nose and stretched over the fleshy curves of her lips, making a halo effect on her bare skin.

Jared felt like for a moment, he was looking at a cruel angel, but that couldn't be right. When had Bailey ever given the impression of being angelic? Angels probably hated her.

"I found a Vietnamese place nearby." He made a vague motion with his chin in a certain direction and motioned with his hand for good measure. "It's about a ten minute walk if you don't mind not taking a taxi."

"It's fine," she said flatly, quickly sucking dry any possibility of cordial comfort between them.

Tense silence it is, then.

Jared held back the irritated twitch of his eyelid and turned to lead the way toward their destination.

He really did not like this woman, and it had everything to do with the fact that she was a block of ice.

When Victor had first introduced her to his friends in college, Jared had understood the sight of them together. Bailey was striking and graceful, but she was also aloof and detached.

Victor had a similar quality at a first glance, but his was different. He wasn't aloof, he was just very shy. Standing beside her, he usually looked as cold as she did.

The more Bailey interacted with Vic's friends, the more Jared thought that they didn't make sense at all.

Bailey was not just a take-charge woman and very nit-picky, but she was also heartless. Jared had personally witnessed her make someone cry once, and when she spoke to people she deemed beneath her, which was almost everyone, it was like she didn't know the meaning of empathy.

More than once, he saw his friend roll over in the mud just keep her happy, and just as often, he had advised Victor to make use of the word 'no.'

But, Victor's fatal flaw was that he was a pushover and he had not been his fiancée's match. He was completely incapable of keeping her in check.