Marriage Details
Tuesday, continued…
Anna Jones looked at Hou Yi and said, “Yi, will you and I go and get married?”
Looking Anna Jones in the eye, Hou Yi recognized that she was completely sincere in her offer. He responded quietly but clearly, “Yes, let us go and do so. But are you certain that you understand what you’re getting yourself into?”
Anna looked at him with a questioning look, as if to say, “Are you kidding me?” Rather than snapping a response, she stopped and took a few deep breaths to be calm when she spoke.
“Hou Yi, I am a qualified lawyer. Yes, in what some people in the world might consider a backwater in Australia, but a lawyer is a lawyer; we understand and apply the law. I understand what marriage is all about—it’s the legal commitment of two people to each other. The rest we can work out between ourselves. And I think that I can cope with being the wife of a businessman, who employs a few people in his business…”
“But…” Hou Yi tried to interrupt Anna and correct her impression of Hou Corporation, simply because he called it the family company. Given that his father and grandfather were willing to give it away for nothing to make him comply with their demands to marry, despite these two factors, he knew it was a huge international conglomerate, topping certain sectors here, one of the top companies in the country, and hugely powerful in certain fields around the world.
“Please do not interrupt me, Yi. As I was saying, I can cope with being the wife of a businessman, as long as he respects me and lets me work in some way to deal with the situation that ‘asshole’ has caused me.”
Anna briefly paused, as if thinking, then continued, “I need to pay off my debts that he has left me with and work out how I can fight to get back at least some of what he’s stolen. Marrying you will let me do that, get my revenge on him, as well as show that just because you didn’t want to marry me, it doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t want to marry me.”
Hou Yi realized correcting her view of Hou Enterprises—as the huge international conglomerate it was, its wealth, his personal wealth, and by implication the situation with the Lu’s—was not going to make any difference to the core reason about getting married to her. He could tell her the truth in the future when she needed to know.
“Are you certain then?” came his question.
“Absolutely certain,” came her strong, but quiet reply.
Hou Yi glanced down at his watch and realized that only 10 minutes had passed since he began talking to Anna, and they had almost come full circle in what was happening. He had arrived to get married, met a woman whose dreams had been shattered, and had been derailed from his plans. He had received a proposal for marriage. Accepting the proposal meant he could do what he had come here to do—get married. This proposed marriage would not only help Hou Enterprises but also allow Anna to get her revenge. Hou Yi realized he could get the revenge he wanted on the Lu’s and Yang’s—not only for the past but for how they worked to undermine the deal he struck with his father and grandfather. That made him think, who told them about the deal to allow them to plan this? Did it mean that there were spies in Hou Enterprises passing on information?
Marrying Anna and presenting his beautiful Western wife—whom he was almost certain was the woman from six months ago—to his family at the ancestral home would seal the deal with his father and grandfather, allowing him to take Hou Enterprises in the direction he had wanted without any interference. All he had to do was figure out how to explain Anna, rather than who the family believed he was marrying today. The details of how they met and all the other necessary information could be worked out before they arrived at the family compound.
“Given that you are certain, we can get married today.” Pausing for a second, Hou Yi looked at Anna Jones, thought about how she looked, and then said, “Please do not take this the wrong way, but I think that you need to go into the bathroom and wash your face so that the officials do not wonder what I did to you to get you to marry me.”
Anna Jones pulled out from her handbag a makeup compact and, using the mirror, looked at her face. “Oh my god, I look shocking; I need to tidy up. Do you know where there is a bathroom?”
