When Zaria was done dressing, she was greeted by the off scene in the living room. She swept her gaze between her parents who were engrossed in whatever they were discussing. Lucy was laughing her heart out at something that Theodore said and he instinctively placed his palm behind her head in fear that she would get hurt even though the backrest of the cough was too fluffy to hurt.

She stopped moving, afraid to disrupt the rare scene. She quickly realized that she was the subject of their laughter. She followed Theodore's gaze to Lucy's lap, where there was a photo album.

"This is Ximena. You must have met her." She heard Theodore say as he pointed at one of the pictures. When Lucy nodded, Theodore hummed in approval. "She is Zaria's best friend. She did all the dirty work that I had to do when Zaria was a teenager."

"What dirty work?" Lucy asked.

"Kicking teenage boy butt." Theodore laughed.

Lucy threw her head back laughing again, even though Zaria didn't find anything funny about their conversation. Were they high?

Lucy looked at the photo once again when she finished laughing. "She was so pretty. It's no wonder you had to do dirty work. There must have been a hoard of boys pining for her."

"Of course, she is pretty. She takes after you." Flirted Theodore, glancing at Lucy's side profile.

The latter tilted her head to glance at him and remained silent as though she was contemplating what to say. In the end, she chuckled. "You can say Zeus is handsome for a similar reason. He has always had women swooning for him, but he is so boring, he pays none of them any attention."

Zaria would have loved to continue watching them flatter each other and indirectly flirt but they would be late at this rate, so she walked to them.

"Honey, you are done." There was a hint of regret in Lucy's tone.

Zaria hugged her, feeling bad for bursting her bubble. "Did you wait for too long?"

"She won't tell you but time flies when she is with me." Theodore half-joked and they all laughed.

"Where is Xim?" He glanced behind Zaria and realized that the latter had not followed her out.

"She fell asleep. Could you wake her when dinner is ready?" She asked.

"Of course. I would even if you didn't ask me. Is she feeling unwell?"

"She is just tired." She saw that Lucy was ready to go and kissed her father's cheek. "We'll get going now. Bye dad. We will miss you."

She would be back in only a few hours. It was clear who she thought would miss him. Theodore pinched her ear slightly. "Don't be naughty."

Although that was what he said, he couldn't help glancing at Lucy as if to confirm whether she looked like she thought she would miss him. The latter was busy rummaging through her bag for heaven-knows-what. She was probably only pretending to not be part of the conversation. He smiled. "I will miss you too."

Zaria chuckled. These two were a match made in heaven.

….

They arrived at the banquet hall just as Desmond got down from his car. She was about to go to him when he circled the car and opened the shotgun seat. Her eyes narrowed.

He had not explained why he couldn't pick her up and had sent Lucy instead. It turned out that it was because he had another partner? She glared daggers at him as he helped out whoever was inside the car. She knew that she would not be able to see them even if she craned her neck so she waited to see the woman who would leave the car. She was certain it was a woman even without seeing the other party. Sure enough, she caught a sliver of what must be a white scarf in a few seconds.

"Zaria?" Lucy laughed. "You are spacing out. Is something the matter?"

"Nothing." Her mood was sour. This was a formal charity banquet and most of the men were either wearing suits or tuxedos. That scarf was a woman no matter how hard she wanted to convince herself. "Let's go in."

Lucy found her weird but followed her to the banquet hall nonetheless. It didn't take long for her to figure out why Zaria was upset. When she saw Desmond come in, she finally understood. Her baby was jealous!

She wanted to say something about it but for some reason, she shut her mouth and continued to watch her daughter's jealous antics.

Zaria soon blended in and made small talk with some of the other guests.

"You came too." Liam seemed to appear out of thin air and smiled when he saw her.

Her first reaction was to narrow her eyes at the man like he was an enemy. In actual sense, he was. Anyone who made Ximena upset deserved hell and he had made her so sad that she decided to sleep it off.

"Uh…did I do something wrong?" He didn't understand why she was glaring at him so fiercely.

She beckoned for him to lean over. When he did out of reflex, she lowered her voice to ask, "Do you know how meat turns into minced meat?"

"It's ground in a mincer…?" He didn't comprehend her sudden question.

Her smile turned sinister. "It's great that you know what will happen to your balls if you keep messing with Ximena."

He swallowed as he watched her leave, scolding himself for the kind of pit he had dug for himself. These women were scary!

…

"There you are." Desmond grabbed Zaria's shoulders as she almost brushed past him without seeing him.

She glanced up at him then at his side and raised an eyebrow. "Did you ditch your date?"

"My date?" He chuckled.

She crossed her arms. "Don't feign oblivion." She was certain that his date was not Natalie either, because she had just seen her across the hall and she was wearing a purple gown that certainly didn't need a scarf.

He chuckled at her reaction and pulled her towards a woman who had her back to them. It was too late for her to bolt away when she recognized the scarf.

"Grandma." He called, and the woman turned with a smile. He glanced at his jealous girlfriend who looked like she wanted to dig a hole to disappear into, then back at his grandmother. "You don't believe me when I tell you that you are beautiful. Will you finally believe me when I tell you that my girlfriend is jealous of you?"