Chapter 2
Now I stared at the new voice-call request on my screen. After a moment’s hesitation, I accepted.
He let out a low gasp, his breathing slightly ragged. “Baby, did you hang up by accident just now?”
Heat crept into my ears. Whenever I called him, I always hid beneath my covers and deliberately pitched my voice into something soft and sultry. It was nothing like the obedient young woman I appeared to be during the day.
It was what happened when an honest person finally threw caution to the wind.
Pushing the thought away, I slipped beneath the quilt again and said in my most seductive voice, “Mm-hmm. It was an accident.”
“Baby, you’ve been talking for such a long time tonight. I’m getting sleepy. Why don’t I… go to bed?”
[I’m dying. She really knows how to torture a man.]
[The male lead is in heaven right now.]
[And she expects him to stop halfway through?]
Jiang Tingche’s voice turned coaxing. “Baby, give me twenty more minutes. Then it’ll be exactly one hour.”
I gave a quiet hum of agreement.
Twenty minutes later, I ended the call right on time.
Panic prickled beneath my skin.
According to the original plan, I would return the account to Xia Yu when I went to work the next morning. She would take over from there and meet Jiang Tingche in person. Once I received the rest of my payment, I would bury the secret forever.
Before tonight, I had assumed my online boyfriend was someone whose real life would never intersect with mine. Now that I knew he was Jiang Tingche, everything had become far more complicated.
A year ago, my lease expired. Wanting to live close to work, I searched for a roommate in an upscale residential complex near the bank.
Flyer in hand, I went to meet a woman who worked in a nearby office tower and had advertised for a roommate. Instead, I got off on the wrong floor and rang Jiang Tingche’s doorbell.
He had just showered. Wearing nothing but a bathrobe, he opened the door and asked coldly, “Who are you looking for?”
Jiang Tingche stood six foot three, with the body of a top model. Droplets of water slid from his chest toward his sharply defined abs.
What experience did a good girl like me have with a sight like that?
My ears turned scarlet. “I… I’m here to see the apartment. I think I have the wrong floor.”
He said nothing and closed the door.
The woman looking for a roommate had already found someone by then. I spent days searching the complex without finding anything suitable, and I couldn’t afford the expensive rent alone. My previous landlord was pressing me to move out within three days.
One afternoon, I sat dejectedly on a bench in the complex and wondered when I would finally have a home of my own, somewhere no landlord could force me to leave.
Jiang Tingche happened to come downstairs with his trash. He looked at me, hesitated, then asked, “Still haven’t found a place?”
“No. My landlord wants me gone tomorrow, but I’ll keep looking.”
I gathered my courage and stood to continue my search.
Jiang Tingche stopped me. “I have an empty room. If you don’t mind, I can rent it to you cheaply.”
That was how I became his tenant.
His apartment had three bedrooms and the austere elegance of a luxury showroom. The master bedroom was his, and one room served as his study. The remaining bedroom had its own private terrace.
I loved it.
More importantly, his rent was unbelievably low: only two thousand yuan a month.
In Hai City, a three-bedroom apartment in that complex normally rented for ten thousand. Even with roommates, my share should have been four or five thousand.
Two thousand was practically charity.
I guessed Jiang Tingche was a wealthy heir who preferred to keep a low profile. This apartment was probably only one of many properties he owned. His clothes came from obscure bespoke labels and cost over ten thousand yuan apiece. Even an ordinary bottle of body wash in his bathroom cost more than two thousand.
Mine cost a few dozen yuan.
Once, unable to resist, I secretly tried his body wash. I couldn’t bear to waste it, so I used only a tiny dab to sample the fragrance.
That night, the clean, faintly seductive scent filled even my dreams, as if Jiang Tingche were holding me while I slept.
If I continued living here, the truth about my stand-in romance would come out sooner or later.
It seemed I needed to find a new home.