Meet you at nightfall

Chapter 4

Anna wiped her mouth hastily and took the menu from her colleague. She wanted to trot over to Mr. L, but after seeing the sexy and lazy posture of the woman sitting opposite him, she hesitated for a moment, tried to recall the posture of the female model on TV, and walked over with a catwalk.

She was wearing a sky blue waiter uniform, which was a disaster for a girl with honey skin, but it made her look innocent and charming. However, these charms turned into the ridiculousness of a little girl imitating her mother's lipstick under her clumsy catwalk. Fortunately, she was beautiful enough, even if she was ridiculous, she was still moving.

Anna was completely unaware of her moving and ridiculousness. She walked to table A2 with a catwalk and asked in the sweetest voice of her life: "Good afternoon, can I order for the two of you now?"

Mr. L finally looked at her.

This look turned into an infinitely slow-motion picture in a movie in Anna's eyes. However, his eyes did not stay on her face. He quickly lowered his eyes, flipped through the menu with two fingers, and then handed the menu to the woman opposite: "Ladies first."

This was the first sentence she heard him say, in a standard Oxford accent, with a very low and magnetic tone, as if there was a double bass string in his chest. Unfortunately, it was said to other women.

She couldn't help but feel a little depressed, and then found that she had no reason to be depressed, so she became even more depressed.

The woman took the menu, flipped through it for a long time with her little finger painted with red nail polish, pointed at the picture of the food with her index finger, and said condescendingly: "This one."

It was a plate of extremely expensive and very small vegetable salad. Anna didn't like her arrogant attitude, but she could only write down the name of the salad obediently.

The menu fell into Mr. L's hands. She thought to herself, if he also ordered food so arrogantly, she would not like him.

Unexpectedly, Mr. L gave her a respectful smile and asked gently, "Do you have red wine?"

His polite attitude made her stunned for a moment, and her heart beat faster: "Yes."

This time her heart beat even stronger than last time, almost jumping to the throat, and her head was dizzy. She was scared and thought that hypoglycemia was about to occur again. She took a deep breath and lowered her head to open the menu: "However, we only have Burgundy and Bordeaux... Only sell whole bottles, not individual ones."

As she said this, she couldn't help but complain in her heart that the manager was too stingy. These wines were ridiculously expensive, and a bottle would cost about 180 US dollars. Such expensive wines were only sold by the whole bottle... What if Mr. L wanted to drink but couldn't afford it?

Mr. L didn't care about how the wines were sold, nor about their high prices: "Let's have Burgundy." After saying that, he closed the menu and handed it to Anna, "Thank you."

She took the menu with both hands and said nervously: "You're welcome."

When handing the menu to the kitchen, Anna's mind was full of Mr. L's gentle and respectful smile, and she completely forgot to learn to walk like a female model. For the first time, her heart surged because of a strange man. When he smiled at her, she felt like she heard the sound of cicadas in the hot summer, and even her breathing was hot. Of course, when he smiled at the woman, she would also hear the sound of cicadas in the hot summer, but it was just thousands of cicadas buzzing, so annoying that she wanted to put the plate on his face.

While rehearsing a childish situation drama in her mind, Anna pricked up her ears and eavesdropped on the conversation between Mr. L and the woman. It turned out that this woman was not Mr. L's lover or mistress, but a wealthy man's personal secretary. She asked Mr. L out in the name of the wealthy man, but she was reluctant to tell him where the wealthy man was. More than ten minutes passed, and she not only did not mention the business of the rich man to him, but also kept teasing him.

From Anna's perspective, the woman had taken off her red Mary Jane shoes and gently hooked the inside of Mr. L's calf with her toes wrapped in stockings.

Any man would be excited to see this scene, but Mr. L shook the crystal glass and smiled a little coldly: "Madam, you should know how precious my time is."

The woman said pitifully: "Of course I know how precious Mr. Sheffield's time is... I don't mean to waste your time. I asked you out just to say thank you. The perfume you gave me is very nice."

It turned out that his last name was Sheffield, a very familiar last name... Wait, was it him who took the initiative to tease this woman?

Mr. L was also a little confused: "Perfume?"

The woman opened her handbag and took out an amber-colored women's perfume bottle: "This is it. Have you forgotten?"

Mr. L put down the crystal glass, rested his right elbow on the table, and gently rubbed his eyebrows with his fingers, as if trying to recall when he gave this bottle of perfume. After a long time, he shook his head and whispered, "Sorry, I really can't remember it."

The woman seemed very disappointed and sighed sadly, "You don't know how happy I was when I received this bottle of perfume. You were the entrepreneur I admired most when I was a student. I watched the video of your speech at the University of Chicago over and over again... Please forgive my presumption. If I hadn't pretended to be my boss and asked you out, I wouldn't have had the chance to talk to you..." As she said this, she held Mr. L's wrist with one hand and unbuttoned two buttons with the other hand, revealing her deep collarbone and cleavage. "I'm really sorry. If you want to blame someone, blame this bottle of perfume that shouldn't have been given away."

So that's it. Anna was suddenly very disappointed with Mr. L. It turned out that he gave the woman perfume first, disturbing her heart, and waiting for her to take the initiative to ask him out... In this way, he could take advantage of the woman and pretend to be unaware and maintain the illusion of being righteous. Bah, she thought he was at a disadvantage, a shameless old man!

Just when she was about to decide that she didn't like this man, she heard Mr. L say lightly: "You're right, this is indeed a bottle of perfume that shouldn't be given away."

After the voice fell, he pulled out his hand in the extremely stunned look of the woman, took the bottle of perfume and said: "I take it back."

The woman stared at him in astonishment, her expression was almost funny.

Mr. L took a sip of wine and asked slowly: "Anything else?"

The woman was stunned, really stunned. She had used this trick to hook up with many rich old men, but she had never encountered such a situation. Sheffield did not give her the bottle of perfume, she bought it with her own money, but... is this the point? A normal man would only want to take her to the hotel when he saw her unbuttoning her clothes, instead of taking the perfume back like Sheffield did.

Her mind was in a mess, and she didn't know what she did wrong. She wanted to leave but was reluctant. At this time, Mr. L turned the perfume bottle and gave a fatal blow: "Are you reluctant to part with this bottle of perfume?"

Hearing this, the woman's cheeks and neck immediately turned red: "... I'm not reluctant to part with it!"

She unconsciously raised her voice, attracting the attention of the people around her. Feeling the inquiring gazes of the people around her, she almost wanted to turn into a wisp of smoke and disappear on the spot. The means that successfully seduced so many men were actually useless in front of this old guy... What a descendant of the nobility, what a British gentleman, they are all lies! This old guy looks gentle and solemn, but in fact his words are more harsh than those of the women in the slums.

The woman was so ashamed that she didn't even say hello. She hurriedly buttoned her collar, put on her shoes, picked up her handbag, and left the restaurant without looking back.

Faced with the woman's departure, Mr. L did not react at all, and seemed to have no regrets about losing a vivid and fragrant encounter. He shook the crystal glass, took a sip of wine, and uttered a word with some sarcasm: "femina..."

Anna's mother once received an old professor. When the old professor was extremely excited, he would shout at the top of his voice, "Oh, God, femina!" Thanks to him, Anna knew that this was the Latin meaning of "woman". But why did Mr. L sigh "woman"? Doesn't he like women?

Thinking of this, she looked at Mr. L nervously, fearing that he was a homosexual. When Anna was studying, she saw many male classmates having trysts in the grove, and also saw male classmates who were exposed to homosexuality being called "monsters" and "freaks". She liked this man and didn't want him to be called a "monster" at his age.

Mr. L didn't know that the little girl in front of him was worried that he would be called an "old monster". He calmly finished a glass of wine and waved to her: "Little girl, pay the bill."

"Oh, okay." Anna walked over and took the bill he handed over. She looked down and counted, and found that there were five more dollars. Just as she was about to return it to him, she heard him say concisely: "Tip."

Anna was stunned for a moment. This was the first time she received such a large tip, and it was given by someone she liked. For a moment, she couldn't help blushing to the root of her neck, and her ears were hot: "Ah... Thank you."

"You're welcome." He smiled slightly, stood up, adjusted his cufflinks, picked up the cane next to him, and prepared to leave. At this time, he seemed to remember something and pointed to the amber perfume bottle on the table: "The base notes of this perfume are orange, rose and musk, which is very suitable for a young girl like you. You can use it."

Anna blinked, and before she could react, he turned and walked away.

A female colleague saw this and said sourly: "What a lucky guy, I got a bottle of Penhaligon's perfume for free."

Anna's knowledge was limited, and she didn't know what brand Penhaligon's was, but she could tell from her colleague's sour tone that it was a bottle of expensive perfume.

In other words, he gave her a valuable gift.

Anna inhaled and exhaled, desperately pressing the tip of her tongue against her palate to prevent herself from laughing. She bent her big eyes and hummed a ballad, as happy as if she had received a small toy given as an extra gift from a fast food restaurant. She put the perfume bottle on the table into her pocket, smiled, and wiped the table clean.

She knew very well that this was most likely the last time she would have an intersection with Mr. L, so she especially cherished this bottle of perfume that had been used by other women.

So when she got off work, she found that the bottle of perfume had disappeared in the locker room, and she was furious.