Chapter 149: Li Ruobing! Are You Acting Cute with Me?

Chapter 149: Li Ruobing! Are You Acting Cute with Me?

Both siblings froze.

Wu Chen and Li Maoren came out one after the other, almost together. It looked as though Li Maoren were personally seeing Wu Chen off, and yet it did not quite feel like that either. They had not stopped at the doorway to exchange a few last words; they had simply walked out together, both of them stepping all the way into the corridor.

Nor was it easy to read from their faces what had passed between them.

Because both looked perfectly normal.

Wu Chen wore his habitual faint smile, relaxed and calm. Li Maoren’s face carried almost no expression at all, which made any emotion impossible to catch. He was always like that.

Too normal.

And that was the abnormality.

The two of them had been talking for a full two hours and more. Both Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai knew their father was hostile toward Wu Chen, because Wu Chen had become an obstacle to the Li–Ding marriage alliance. Li Ruotai knew, too, that his father had been convinced Wu Chen was nothing but his sister’s fake boyfriend. If he had confirmed the fraud, he should not be behaving like this. If he had confirmed it was real, he should be behaving like this even less.

“Dad…” Li Ruotai spoke first when he saw his father emerge.

Li Ruobing simply stepped forward, slid her arm through Wu Chen’s, and glanced at him. “Finished talking?”

“Mm.” Wu Chen smiled and nodded, then glanced at Li Maoren. “Uncle, where are we eating?”

“You decide.” Li Maoren looked at Wu Chen, then turned to his son. “Atai, find somewhere.”

The siblings’ expressions went strange all over again.

They had even agreed to have lunch together?

It was bizarre. The atmosphere between Wu Chen and Li Maoren was neither good nor bad, neither distant nor close. One of them was Li Ruobing’s boyfriend, the other her father. However you turned it over, this was not how it should look.

The siblings exchanged a glance.

“Nanguo Club, then…” Li Ruotai said.

“Fine.” Li Maoren raised his wrist and checked the time. “Let’s go.”

Time to eat.

The ride down in the elevator was eerily silent.

Li Ruobing wanted to ask Wu Chen what had happened.

Li Ruotai wanted to ask his father the same thing.

And with Wu Chen and Li Maoren both standing right there, along with a group of bodyguards, neither of them could very well ask.

They reached the underground garage.

Without a single word exchanged between them, Wu Chen and Li Maoren got into the back seat of the same car and pulled the doors shut on either side. Li Ruobing, who had been about to draw Wu Chen toward her own car, and Li Ruotai, who had meant to ride with his father, both stopped short with peculiar looks on their faces.

The siblings drew off to one side.

“What’s going on?” Li Ruobing asked quietly.

“How would I know…” Li Ruotai was just as lost.

Both of them were dying of curiosity.

“Let’s eat first,” Li Ruobing murmured, and walked to her car.

A little over twenty minutes later, past noon, they arrived at Nanguo Club.

It was a high-end, members-only private club that had opened only a few years earlier. Tucked away in an alley, closed to the general public, it offered exceptional privacy and accepted only a fixed number of dining guests each day. Ordinarily a reservation had to be made well in advance.

Li Ruotai needed no reservation.

He was one of Nanguo Club’s owners behind the scenes.

A private room on the top floor.

Everyone took their seats. Li Ruotai summoned the manager, tilted his head to give a few quiet instructions, then sent him away. He ordered nothing; he had telephoned ahead on the drive over and arranged it all. Calling the manager in had only been to reiterate a few details.

The kitchen served distinctive private-kitchen fare, but at bottom this was not a place people came to for the food. It was a place to socialize and talk business.

Nobody spoke.

The atmosphere was wrong.

Li Maoren seemed weighted with something. Every so often he would glance at Wu Chen, then drift off again into thoughts no one could see.

Li Ruobing signaled her brother with her eyes.

“Dad… have some tea.” Li Ruotai stood, took up the teapot, and poured for Li Maoren, then for Wu Chen and Li Ruobing. “The food will be a while yet. Have some tea first.”

Li Maoren looked at his son and rested a hand on his cup without lifting it.

“Dad… what did the two of you talk about?” Li Ruotai asked, casually, once he had sat down.

“Away with you. Don’t ask.” Li Maoren shot his son a look and refused.

“What’s so secret about it?” Li Ruobing cut in at once, needled by her father’s tone. She touched Wu Chen’s hand beside her and tilted her head. “Darling, you tell me. What did you talk about?”

The siblings had worked it out in the car. Both understood that asking separately would get them nowhere. Li Ruobing could not ask her father—the relationship was poor and it would slide into a quarrel. Ask Wu Chen and he would simply say, Guess. Li Ruotai, for his part, did not dare press his father; if he asked once and got nothing, there was no point asking again. He would not say.

So they had joined forces and agreed to work the two of them in turn at the table.

Precisely because Wu Chen and Li Maoren were both present, unless they had arranged it beforehand, surely one of them would have to talk.

“So curious?” Wu Chen glanced at Li Ruobing with a smile. “Guess.”

Li Ruobing understood.

So did Li Ruotai.

The two really had arranged it. Neither of them was going to say a word.

In fact, they had arranged nothing. Near the end of their conversation Li Maoren had asked Wu Chen, “Does Bingbing know about any of this?” Wu Chen had answered, “No. And she doesn’t need to.” Nothing further had been said.

They had not spelled it out, and they had struck no agreement. But both understood.

What Wu Chen had told him was too consequential by far.

And Li Maoren had to verify whether any of it was true. Until he had, there was no need for Li Ruobing or Li Ruotai to know. Even if it proved true, the Li family would need time to lay its plans, and until they were ready to move in earnest there was still no reason to tell them.

In its way it was protection. Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai were, after all, only juniors of the Li family’s third generation, still a long way from taking hold of the family’s core power. Unless their participation was immediately required, matters capable of altering the whole family’s fortunes did not need to reach them at once. Knowing less could be the better thing.

Lunch passed in a somewhat leaden mood.

Apart from Wu Chen, who ate with easy unconcern, all three Lis were off. Li Maoren sat heavy with thought and kept drifting away; Li Ruotai and Li Ruobing kept fishing and could not land a single useful word.

After lunch.

Li Maoren and Li Ruotai went back together to Crown Entertainment. Father and son still had Li Ruotai’s trouble to discuss, and Li Maoren would fly out that afternoon.

Wu Chen and Li Ruobing went the other way, back to Huancai Fashion first.

The four said their goodbyes outside Nanguo Club and separated.

On the drive back:

“Nothing you want to tell me?” Li Ruobing asked in the car.

“No.” Wu Chen answered flatly, then glanced at her with a smile.

Li Ruobing stopped talking.

She did not say another word to him the whole way back to the company, because she was angry. She had been angry through lunch. Her relations with her family were bad to begin with, and with her father they were dreadful. She regarded Wu Chen as one of her own. They had only formally settled their relationship that very day, and it had plainly been the two of them together against her father.

And now look. Wu Chen had joined with her father to keep things from her. He would not even tell her what they had discussed, as though she were the outsider…

Li Ruobing felt “wounded.”

Half an hour later.

Huancai Fashion, the president’s office.

Li Ruobing and Wu Chen came in one after the other. She walked briskly, her face cold. At the coffee table she set down her bag. Wu Chen came over and was about to sit when she spun around and shoved him hard.

The push dropped him into an armchair.

Li Ruobing stepped in, twisted, and sat straight down in his lap. Both arms went round his neck; she leaned close, pressed her lips together, and stared at him. “Tell me!”

“Li Ruobing! Are you… acting cute with me?” Wu Chen asked, surprised into a smile.