Chapter 5

We turned our heads. Not far behind us, a wheelchair lay overturned, and an old man was dragging his leg, struggling to crawl along the floor.

Xiao Chen and I moved to help him back into the chair, but he shook us off hard.

“Get lost…”

His breath came out in harsh, rasping wheezes, broken by violent coughing, as he glared at us.

We were baffled. Not only had our warm faces just been slapped with his cold backside, this guy was downright rude.

“What’s wrong with you-”

I was just about to blow up at him when a handsome young man came running over, bowing his head and apologizing over and over.

He had a high, straight nose, refined features, and a disarming smile.

He helped the old man up off the ground and, ignoring the old man’s curses, pushed him off to a distance first, then came back and bowed to us again.

“I’m really sorry. Ever since he became disabled, his temper’s been terrible.”

“Please don’t take it to heart, ladies,” he said, pulling two shopping cards from his pocket and handing them to us. “This is just a little something to apologize.”

“Isn’t this a shopping card for the SKP in A City?” Xiao Chen exclaimed, all her anger gone in an instant.

I checked the amounts on the cards-thirty thousand in total. I couldn’t help but suck in a breath.

So the people on this cruise really were mostly rich. This was generous to the point of absurdity.

He flashed us a smile. “You two can use those to buy yourselves a bag when you’re back on shore.”

After a bit of polite refusal, Xiao Chen and I accepted them and thanked him profusely.

With a face like that, he could’ve smoothed things over without spending a cent, but he’d chosen to throw money at the problem anyway.

The handsome guy’s surname was Wang. He said the old man just now was his uncle-and that this cruise ship was his uncle’s design.

“What?”

Thinking of the ship’s interior-the richly textured carved lines on the walls and floors, the elegant color palette-Xiao Chen and I exchanged a look.

It was really hard to connect all that with that uncivil old man.

“He’s a well-known designer. A lot of luxury buildings and cruise ships were designed by him.

“But ever since the car accident left him disabled, his temper’s become violent and unpredictable. He thinks everyone is just pitying him.

“He designed all of this, but he can’t experience it with his own two feet.

“This trip only happened because I pestered him for ages to get him to come out and relax a little.”

After listening to what the handsome Xiao Wang said, we found ourselves understanding the old man’s earlier rudeness, and we kept praising Xiao Wang for being such a dutiful nephew.

He gave us a shy smile, then turned to say goodbye and went back to take care of his uncle.

A surge of restless desire rose in my chest, stronger than anything I’d felt before.

That Xiao Wang was just too handsome.

I stared at his back, a confident, possessive smile curling at my lips.