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FIFTY ONE

Author: Joy Teo
last update Last Updated: 2021-05-23 22:20:43

Fabian got up from the edge of the bed where he was sitting and was just about to head to the study when Amber flashed into view with a look of anxiety.

“Fabian, I need to head back to Margaret’s for some fresh cream. There’s none in the kitchen.”

He narrowed his eyes, what was the woman talking about?

As if sensing his confusion, Amber pointed downstairs, “I’m baking a cake. It needs icing. I need to get it from Margaret’s.”

Fabian frowned, cocking his head. One would have thought it was a matter of life or death from the way she was talking. He raised two hands offering a solution, “We could buy online?”

She shook her head furiously and a few strands of her flaming curls sprung free from her bun, tumbling down the nape of her neck, “No, no, no…you don’t understand.”

Damn right I don’t, he thought. Was she trying to stop him from going to the study?

She placed her hands on her hips in exasperation, “Margaret’s icing i

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    Amber had never held a man’s hand before, let alone enjoy a long car ride with one. It was a wonderful feeling, having a gentle warm hand envelope her own as the car cruised on auto-drive all the way to Margaret's.Sitting next to Fabian gave her a fuzzy warm feeling, like how one would feel stepping into the sun after a long winter’s night. It was a drive she would remember for a long long time.“Here, it’s for you,” Fabian broke the silence, surprising her with a white rectangular box with his free hand. She unclasped his hand unwillingly and accepted the box.“Open it,” he nodded in her direction, suppressing a smile.Slowly, she pried open the box and what lay before her made her gasp. It was a brand new phone!But it’s not even my birthday, her mouth dropped open.“Your phone’s old,” he said frankly.“But it still works…” her voice trail

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  • The CEO's Escort   FIFTY THREE

    “Margaret?”Amber walked into the bakery to find the place cleaned up and remembered that Margaret usually closed early around this time of the year. A little girl of three years sat on top of the counter with a rainbow-coloured lollipop in her mouth. Amber knew the little girl well for she often came with her mother for Margaret’s buns and pastries. She could hear Margaret talking to the girl’s mother in the kitchen behind a swing door.“Hello Darcy,” Amber smiled and ruffled at the little girl’s head. Darcy smiled back, swinging her legs back and forth as she sat atop the counter playing with an origami.“Waiting for your mummy?”Darcy nodded licking at her lollipop, her tongue was a mixture of purple, green and pink as she swooped her origami in the air mimicking the flight of a bird. Amber’s heart skipped a beat.A paper crane.It struck Amber as odd that the folding of

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    It was late in the afternoon by the time they got back to Fabian’s place. The sun had gone into hiding behind the brewing dark clouds. Lunch at Margaret’s had been wonderful and peppered with light but meaningful conversation. Fabian cupped his chin as he sat at the kitchen table smiling away at the memory of the older woman making a fuss over him. She reminded him more and more of his own mother.Not that he could remember his own mother’s face. He had been too young when she left and memories of her face had become a blur over the years. Still, he felt that his mother would probably look a bit like Margaret. They were roughly about the same age too. He liked her, a lot. And it wasn't something that happened to him often.He found it amusing that the older woman nagged at him to finish his meal and scolded him for touching dirty dishes in the sink. He chuckled.“What are you laughing at?” Amber asked. She was busy cleaning up the m

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  • The CEO's Escort   EIGHTY TWO

    Amber slipped in and out of unconsciousness. She could hear muffled shoutings and saw a silhouette of a man hovering over her, his eyes filled with worry. Fabian? She thought and then all became black. Her eyes opened again, this time she saw gratings of white light on the ceiling whizzing past one after another as she was wheeled into a very cold room. She shivered and tried to call out but her voice got caught in her throat. It was as if her whole body was paralysed. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine..now breathe!” someone said and slipped an oxygen mask over her. For some reason, the gas from the mask made her feel sleepy and her eyelids slowly slid to a close and soon she drifted back into unconsciousness. *** Margaret ran together with a group of nurses pushing the bloodied stretcher that Amber laid on only to be stopped by a nurse in light blue scrubs. “Ma’am, please wait outside, we’ll take it from here.” “M

  • The CEO's Escort   EIGHTY ONE

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  • The CEO's Escort   SEVENTY NINE

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  • The CEO's Escort   SEVENTY EIGHT

    Amber washed her face and dried it with the back of her sleeves before looking down and pressing her stomach with both hands. Her eyebrows knitted together as she thought back to what the tattooed inmate said earlier.Pregnant? She shook her head at the absurdity; her ponytail swinging along as she did. She was sure her bouts of nausea and vomiting were due to some kind of food poisoning.But didn’t you miss taking the morning pills after consummating with Fabian? A little voice whispered in her mind.And not just once. You missed the pill twice! The voice grew stronger, eating away her earlier assumption about food poisoning. Gently, her hand cradled her stomach as the possibility of carrying a life within her own body tugged at her heart. It was a strange feeling.“Sweetheart, it’s time. If you want, we can have a doctor take a look at you after the trial,” the police officer hurried her, snapping Amber

  • The CEO's Escort   SEVENTY SEVEN

    Anson Banks sat at the edge of the bed looking at a photo on his mobile. It was a selfie of both Amber and himself taken during his high school graduation. His graduation hat was lopsided and she had on a goofy grin; how happy they had been then. It was a picture worth a thousand words. “There you go,” Kirk the policeman stood back up, taking the cuffs from Anson’s ankles. “You’re a free man now.” A free man….the words danced around his mind like gipsies around a bonfire. Only the fire was too bright and too hot. He winced at the words knowing that his freedom came at a price - a price that his sister was paying for with her own freedom. Anson sighed and slipped the phone into the back pocket of his loose khaki slacks. The bandages had come off but his skin was still raw and extremely sensitive. Part of the skin on his thigh had been scraped off when he hit the asphalt in the accident and because of that, the doctor had advised him to wear loose and

  • The CEO's Escort   SEVENTY SIX

    It was Amber’s third day in the detention centre and to her surprise, she found herself adapting quite well to the place. In fact, she had been sleeping a lot in her holding cell, often waking up only for meals or to answer nature’s call. All requests for visitations from Margaret and Fabian had been denied. She did not want to talk to them.It’s better this way, she thought to herself as she sat huddled on her makeshift bed and staring up at the lone window to her cell. A warm stream of sunlight shone on her bed, and she gently waved her hands through the sunbeam, playing with the dust particles.“Lunchtime!” a police officer called out as she slid a tray of pepperoni pizza, wobbly strawberry gelatin and bottled water into Amber’s cell. In the next cell, a young inmate with about a million piercings stood up from her bed and cheered, “Pizza! My favourite!”Amber took one look at her lunch tray and a nause

  • The CEO's Escort   SEVENTY FIVE

    Fabian walked to the nurse’s station and frowned, rapping his knuckles against the surface of the desk. “Fabian Williams!” A lanky young man in a janitor’s jumper shot straight up at the sight of him from a chair at the nurse’s station. He had been slouching off, ogling at the busty nurse who was also too engrossed with the man’s busy hands to notice Fabian’s arrival. “I’m here to see Anson Banks.” “Oh, but we have orders to restrict the number of visitors…” the same nurse from the day before got up from her chair, soothing her crumpled uniform. It seemed to Fabian that the man in the janitor’s jumper did more than just ogle at the nurse. But it was non of his business and Fabian was not used to taking ‘no’ for an answer, “Where’s the official notice? I don’t see any.” The man in the jumper scratched the back of his neck sheepishly and stammered, “Well..uh…Detective Grant said –“ Fabian’s eyes narrowed with disapproval as he lo

  • The CEO's Escort   SEVENTY FOUR

    The detention centre was a simple one. It held two barred cells, each with a makeshift bed with a thin woolly blanket and a standalone sink. The walls were all painted a depressing dull grey with only a little square window at the top of each cell. Amber gulped as she stepped forward towards a desk where an intimidating female police officer sat, going through her files.“Name?” the officer asked, not looking up.“Amber Banks,” Amber answered, her bright green eyes darting back and forth taking in her grim surrounding. The officer nodded as she pressed a stamp onto Amber’s file.Fabian was outside the detention centre with his attorney, trying to get Amber out on bail but she had a feeling that chances were slim. After all, who would let a murder suspect out on bail?“Age?”“Twenty-one.”“Hun, you gotta speak louder. You’re as soft as a mouse!”Amber jumped a litt

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