Chapter 61.2

Chapter 61.2

The new system, which allowed customers to directly book hotels online and even shop at department stores, was, in his view, a paradigm shift close to a revolution. If the Lafayette-Lowell Group adopted it before its competitors, it could enjoy the advantage of being the first mover.

There was no time to explain and persuade the old-fashioned executives, who didn’t even know how to turn on a computer or use a word processor, about the new business model using rapidly growing IT technology. His goal was to quickly develop the software by hiring experts and apply it to the hotel chain by next year.

He was annoyed by the fact that he had come all the way downtown, a place he wouldn’t normally visit, and wasted an hour and a half on a fruitless dinner, after reading the most exciting report he had seen recently.

He glanced down at his watch and saw that it was just past eight thirty. He had planned to return to the office by nine to finish reading the report, and then—

[…dre. André!]

Lorraine called out to André in a sharp voice as he was lost in thought and taking out his wallet. He paused and looked up.

[I’m not drunk. So listen to me until the end.]

As much as he wanted to get up and leave immediately, turning a member of the Collins family, who was at least friendly to him, into an enemy would be foolish. André crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

[Five minutes. No more than that.]

Lorraine glared at him.

[You really are still as annoying now as you were when you were young.]

[Tell me something I don’t know.]

André sneered, staring at her with skeptical eyes.

Lorraine, with her platinum blonde hair neatly tied back at the nape of her neck and her cool ice-blue eyes glaring at him, was a classic beauty. Women from old money, including his mother, adhered to a timeless, classic style, and Lorraine was no exception.

From the simple beige shift dress that fit her slender frame perfectly to the pearl earrings that clung to her earlobes, the Patek Philippe watch, and the diamond tennis bracelet layered with it, she was impeccably elegant and sophisticated.

Thanks to this, Lorraine was often mentioned in upper-class magazines like Tatler or Town and Country as a best-dressed New Yorker representing the city’s socialites.

He recalled how his mother, who was cold to everyone else, was particularly warm to her. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps his mother had secretly hoped that he and Lorraine, who had grown up in similar circumstances, would naturally get along from a young age and eventually develop into something more.

But to André, Lorraine was just one of many acquaintances he had known for a long time.

To borrow the crude vocabulary of the gangster Park Doosik, he had never recognized her as a woman or “felt h0rn1y” for her. Being attracted to someone was a matter of instinct, a combination of primal desire and immediate reaction, and it wasn’t something that could be forced.

Lorraine, likewise, had no romantic interest in him.

André knew the look in a woman’s eyes when she was in love.

Like fireflies dancing and illuminating the dark night, the radiance felt deep within the pupils could not be hidden. When he gazed into those eyes, fragments of affection contained within them scattered beautifully like dazzling fireworks.

Warm brown eyes, melting like caramel.

Suddenly, he felt nauseous.

André stared at Lorraine as he downed the water in the glass on the table in one gulp. The look in her eyes as she proposed was cold and resolute. He already knew from Gerard that she had a boyfriend she had been seeing for quite some time.

She was a woman who had no reason to sacrifice herself to help André defend his management rights. So, there must be a reason she wasn’t revealing for suddenly asking him to marry her. What could it be?

Lorraine shrugged as if it were nothing.

[If you agree to marry me, Collins Company’s 7% stake will side with Lafayette. You need that, don’t you?]

André suppressed his frustration and sighed. That was a conclusion even a fool could reach. He frowned and snapped.

[I told you to tell me something I don’t know.]

Only then did Lorraine look directly at André, her jaw tightening. Her eyes, with her head held high and her shoulders squared, seemed to have shards of Arctic ice embedded in them. With a face like a cat with its fur standing on end, she opened her mouth.