Training Stephanie

Long Flight to Houston

As Mark and Stephanie walked through to the lobby of the hotel, Stephanie was beyond appalled.

A spanking, no food, and now she was being force to carry her own bag!

Not that it was overly heavy or anything, but the simple fact of the matter was, Mark should have been a gentleman and offered to carry Stephanie's bags for her!

She was a lady after all!

As they rounded into the lobby, with Stephanie barely keeping up behind him, two women dressed in business attire, who were having a drink near the piano, noticeably frowned at Mark, at the mere sight of lady such as Stephanie being treated like a common Stepford Wife.

It was embarrassing.

Nearly out of breath, Stephanie looked over in the lobby through passing to see Paul standing at the front desk, speaking with a female reservationist, clearly flirting with the much younger woman.

"You know, where I come from, a man always does this sort of work. You're way too pretty to be doing all this hard stuff," Stephanie heard Paul say to the receptionist, who was honestly making the younger woman giggle.

Clearly she found the older man's flirtatious attempts at courtship to be somewhat endearing, as she was openly smiling and even appeared to be blushing.

However, Mark knew that they had no time for this at the moment.

They had a plane ride to catch in only an hour or so and he didn't plan on missing it because Paul had suddenly caught a case of the Love Jones.

He wanted to get out of this Godforsaken state.

Tapping him on the shoulder lightly, Mark gave Paul a rather stern look, as if to say "Come on, let's go."

He could flirt some other time.

Paul, mumbling something inaudible from underneath his breath, kindly told the clerk that he'd see her again sometime soon, but after walking away, he pointed a finger right in Mark's face, playfully scolding him.

Just then, Stephanie saw something in Mark that he had never seen before.

Mark was actually smiling — legitimately smiling — low chuckling actually, and it had nothing to do with world domination, evil and bad intentions, or anything else in between, either.

He was merely sharing a joke, a moment rather, with his mentor.

Obviously the two shared a very special bond with one another, and it was apparent that somewhere deep down inside of him, Mark actually had a sweet spot after all.

If only she could find it...

As the trio walked outside the hotel, Christian, dressed in plain clothes himself now, his long hair flying freely in the nighttime breeze, was once again awaiting Mark's arrival.

And that was something else that Stephanie just couldn't quite figure out.

Why was Christian seemingly following Mark around like his little puppy dog?

He carried their bags, he drove their cars; he was basically acting as Mark's personal manservant, even more so than Ryan, and this honestly just stuck out to her like a sore thumb.

Stephanie had witnessed him carpool with plenty of superstars throughout the years, but now, all of the sudden, Mark Calaway needed a driver?

Was he really taking his role as the new "Vince McMahon" that seriously?

Christian opened the trunk of the four door sedan and reached out to grab Stephanie's bag.

Like her, Christian was also sporting a very visible limp, and it was Stephanie's guess that maybe he had hurt himself in the ring. He had been hitting it extra hard lately, seemingly trying to prove himself to the rest of the Ministry.