As soon as Nora entered the dining hall, someone came forward and asked respectfully, "Are you Ms. Smith?"
Nora nodded casually.
The man immediately said, "Please come with me."
Did Justin need to go to such extents just to arrange a private room for them to have a chat?
The puzzled woman followed behind the service staff. After taking a couple of steps forward, she discovered that a red carpet had been laid out on the ground and there were a lot of balloons and flowers on both sides. It looked very romantic at first glance.
People around them were already gesturing at them.
Nora’s lip corners spasmed. She asked, "Is this a mistake?"
The waiter looked down at the business card in his hand. "Are you Ms. Nora Smith?"
"That’s correct, then." The waiter smiled and said, "Please come with me."
She followed the service staff hesitantly and asked, "What’s going on?"
The service staff replied, "Someone has prepared a surprise for you, but I can’t tell you what it is yet."
Justin had prepared a surprise?
Nora’s first reaction was to wonder if the man had gone crazy again.
Then, she suddenly realized that she was actually looking forward to the surprise somewhat.
Nora reached the other end of the hallway while her thoughts were still running wild. The moment she turned the corner, she saw someone standing there with a bouquet of flowers in his hands.
The man was dressed in a suit and looked pretty handsome. He came right up to her, got down on one knee, and said, "Ms. Smith, please marry me!"
Question marks appeared all over Nora’s head at once: ???
Winston’s disreputable buddies stood on either side of him. Tina was also standing at the back of the crowd. Everyone was clapping as they shouted, "Marry him! Marry him!"
The noise made the people around them look over. Everyone stopped, gathered around them, and clamored along, "Marry him!"
Nora instantly became even more confused!
She took a step back and asked with a frown, "Did you get the wrong person?"
A smiling Winston replied, "Ms. Nora Smith, you’re so humorous... You’ve been on my mind ever since the moment I saw you dancing. Your graceful bearing has been etched deeply in my mind. Before meeting you, I’d never believed in love at first sight, but you’ve made me understand the meaning of this phrase now. Doesn’t the fact that you’re here indicative of how you feel?"
His words became mushier and mushier as he spoke, causing Nora’s brows to draw together.
She took another step back. "I’m here to meet someone."
"Yes, I, Winston Myers, am exactly who you’re looking for!"
Winston offered her the bouquet again. "Beautiful flowers for a beautiful lady... What a perfect match!"
She frowned and said, "Sorry, I really don’t know who you are. I have something on, so please let me through."
In the midst of the audience’s puzzlement, Winston frowned and said, "Ms. Smith, surely you’re going too far? I already asked someone to go to your house to discuss our marriage yesterday, and also said that I’ll be waiting and proposing to you here."
He grabbed Nora’s shoulder. "How can you possibly not know who I am when you’re already here?!"
Unfortunately, before he could touch Nora, her delicate and slender fingers had already tightened around his wrist. With a light pull, she threw Winston over her shoulder and he fell onto the ground!
He had never been one to take the short end of the stick from others. Upon being thrown to the ground in front of everyone, he became embarrassed and angry. He got up and snapped, "What are you doing?"
Tina also walked out from behind the crowd at this point. She frowned and chastised, "Ms. Smith, even if you don’t think Mr. Myers is good enough for you, you shouldn’t humiliate him like that!"
"I’m not good enough for her?" Winston was infuriated. Tina always knew how to hit a raw nerve for him. He stretched out his finger and pointed at Nora in the face while saying, "I’m not good enough for you? It’s more like you’re not good enough for me! What makes you, a woman saddled with a child, think you’re too good for me?"
The people around them were all Winston’s friends, so they were all speaking up for him.
"What right does someone who grew up elsewhere have to look down on people like us who grew up in New York?"
"Mr. Myers is a native New Yorker! He has a lot of connections in New York!"
"I heard that she got herself pregnant before marriage.... If it wasn’t for that pretty face of hers, and for her reputation as a lucky star or whatnot, would anyone even approach them to ask for her hand in marriage?"
"Exactly. If you think even Mr. Myers is not good enough for you, then who do you think is good enough? Surely you’re not dreaming of Joel Smith or Justin Hunt, right? They’re way out of your league!"
Everyone started to pass comments, but what they said was very annoying and tiresome to Nora.
She looked at the people in front of her mockingly and clicked her tongue in annoyance and said dispassionately, "Did the New York Center open their doors and let all of you out?"
Her words made everyone fall silent for a moment.
But right after, a furor went through the crowd!
The New York Center’s full name was the New York Psychiatric Center. As the name indicated, it was a hospital that specialized in mental illnesses. Patients who couldn’t recover were typically kept there, which made it more or less the same as keeping them under surveillance.
In other words, Nora was mocking everyone and calling them lunatics!
"Do you really need to say such mean things, Ms. Smith?" Tina sighed and said, "Your previous engagement has already been annulled, so you should stop being so choosy. It’s your blessing to be able to marry Mr. Myers."
Someone next to her asked curiously, "Her previous engagement was annulled? By who?"
Tina said pretentiously, "This concerns Ms. Smith’s privacy, after all, so I..."
Tina finally replied, "It’s the Grays..."
"The Grays? Which? Why haven’t I heard of them before? Are there any powerful Grays in New York?"
"I don’t think so..."
Tina waved and said, "The Grays aren’t from New York; they’re from California. As all of you know, Ms. Smith grew up outside of New York, away from the Andersons. I heard that her father is just a small businessman... I guess the Grays can also be considered a wealthy family over there?"
While the Grays were considered pretty impressive in California, they were completely not up to par in New York.
Everyone suddenly burst into laughter. "It can’t get any more embarrassing to have your engagement annulled by nobodies like the Grays."
"Given what she’s like, who else would want someone like her?"
When Justin walked in with Cherry and saw the flowers and the red carpet on the ground, his lip corners couldn’t help but spasm.
Then, he overheard the service staff members walking by him say, "... I heard that it’s a Ms. Smith who prepared all these. She’s intending to propose to someone..."
Justin suddenly froze when he heard this.
A Ms. Smith had prepared all these?
There shouldn’t be that many people with the last name Smith here today, right? Was she intending to propose to him?
His heart suddenly started to race, and he even straightened his back and neatened his clothes. Surely Ms. Smith won’t say something like ’Since we already have children, let’s just marry and give them a complete home’ later, right?
Suddenly, the red carpet and flowers didn’t seem so tacky anymore. They looked pretty nice.
With that in mind, he quickened his pace.