CEO Of My Heart

It would be so simple to say yes, so Henry decided why not .   He finally relented . "You know actually I might take you up on that . " Ellie couldn"t believe, but before she could celebrate properly, he reminded her .   "It would be nice to accompany you as a good partner just as I am about to mail off the court filing .   It would probably be wish if we looked like we were getting along while the tabloids go crazy over our coupling . "

Advertis.e.m.e.nt.i.t wasn"t quite the reaction Ellie had wanted as she thought of what the media would say about them with trepidation, but, it was better than nothing from Henry at all .   He had said yes, that was enough for her so she turned to the house . "I still need to call Nona and tell him what has happened with our family . I will probably give him choice over what he would like to take from the inheritance .   I will probably ask Lopez what would be appropriate for me to give Nolan . But, I"m sure he will want to see what houses are available . I"m sure he will be bittersweet about this whole thing . " She looked back at Henry who looked like he was about to follow her .   "Is it alright if I spend the rest of the say on my own instead of together like we planned? I need to visit an old friend from my childhood . She"s here in the city, according to what my other friends have told me . I don"t mind you meeting her, but with recent events, there are a lot of family things I would like her help with understanding . "

Henry looked confused, but then just stiffened his emotions to cold indifference as he moved to give her s.p.a.ce to go without him .   "Why would I want to go with you? It"s a personal friend . You are free to come and go as you please . If she is a good friend, don"t worry about using my credit card to pay .   Any friend of yours is also mine . I do enjoy your friends, I like seeing you happy while you here . But, I do understand as in this is a place that you"d rather not have everyone exposed to .   It"s alright . I"m sure I"ll meet her another time . "

"Those are my thoughts exactly .   Thank you for understanding . " She tried to give him a hug, but he was frozen .   Ellie just kissed his cheek and left . Henry was weird . The friend was a childhood friend from Rochester whom she had just wanted to reconnect with to ask questions about her childhood .   Sometimes she wondered if Henry was meeting her friends as an effort to find someone he liked before she left her . If a relationship did happen between Henry and her friend, she wondered whether she could accept it and move back?  It wasn"t like they were getting much closer . Even if she had invited Helen here, just to talk to her, it probably wouldn"t have made much difference .

It had been a long time since Ellie had taken the subway by herself .   She had decided to decline on Michael"s offer of driving her as she wanted to keep her independence .   She liked to think that if she wanted to she could just walk away from everything, as she thought about the mess she had left behind at the Wong Building .   She still felt unsure about her sudden coming into so much money . Although a lot of perks had come, as in she didn"t have to go back to racing professionally or head back to college -- to think she was filling an ancestral role was strange to her .   To think such a position was something she was going to hold for the rest of her life and pa.s.s on to her children was still something she had trouble accepting . Maybe it was because she had become an adult somewhere there was no aristocracy . Still, Ellie knew that it would be a challenge to generate enough revenue to cover the costs of running Stanford Hall .   It was a complicated affair as it was both a public museum that needed to bring in visitor and her house that she would like to live in .

It had also been perplexing that she had suddenly to learn about farming and land usage .   She wished that she had taken some cla.s.ses in agriculture in her time in college . Ellie also wished that she had spent more than just her primary school years in English .   Although it was anxiety inducing to think of all the things she had to do, it would be something she would have a lot of help in tacking . It was of more concern to her as to how Henry was feeling now that he had unintentionally become an English baron by marrying her .   As much as her new t.i.tles were a shock to her, they were to him .  

It had been such a long time that Ellie had come to a coffee shop and she found it to be a lot less enchanting as she had found it when she had been in college .   The place was busy and filled with people who quickly wanted their order and leaving . It took only a couple minutes for a spot to open up and Ellie to save it for her guest .   She was trying to filter out the harsh sounds of people finding with a book she had been trying to finish for a couple days now when she heard someone sliding into the bench on the other side of the table .   She was about to say something foul when she saw her friend, Helen, smiling with her fingerless gloves around an open cup of coffee . The smell was peppermint which instantly calmed Ellie as she looked into her friend"s warm eyes .   Helen had one arm in a sling which Ellie remembered had come to be so because of her friends crazy decision to parachute . The parachute had not deployed correctly so Helen had been unable to use her arm for a couple months . But she was still chipper as she spoke about how annoyed she was that she could not work as a graphic designer for a while as her left hand was impossible to train .   "Cat got your tongue, Ellie? I thought you were going to bring your Henry with you when you came to see me? What"s the change in plans?"