BXBX NOVEL Chapter 176 - Distractions
Lena didn't get to sleep long before Ryan was the one who had decided to come out and talk with her. She mildly wished that she had bothered to lock the door once she had heard it open, but less so when he announced his presence.
"What are you doing out here sulking when you should be focusing on other stuff?" He asked a he took a seat in one of the chairs that wasn't that far away where she was laying down.
"Sulking? I think you must be mistaken because I was actually sleeping." She replied in a somewhat tired voice as she didn't bother opening her eyes.
"Oh? I'm sorry, Leo had said that you came out here to sulk since Sam was gone so I thought that I should check on you after the conversation that we had this morning. Lena scoffed when she had heard this. She had already expected that it would've been Leo who said something to him. First to Samuel and now to Ryan. Of course she wasn't in the best of moods at that moment in time but that didn't mean that she needed someone to fuss about her.
"No point in leaving now.. I'm already awake and won't likely be sleeping anymore tonight anyways." The princess informed him as she heard movement that might've been him getting ready to leave her so that she could sleep more.
"Don't you need sleep with everything that's going on and soon to be happening? You don't want to be looking bad on the day of your engagement party." Ryan pointed out.
"Sleep won't affect that. That's why people are hired to make sure that the important people involved look the best regardless of what situation they are dealing with." She replied with a roll of her eyes. The outside light wasn't as bright as the ones indoors which meant that her head didn't hurt as much as he had expected it to when she opened her eyes.
"Still though, some people will notice. So I think it's better for you to get sleep. Also if you want to have coffee in the future, you need to sleeping well first so your father doesn't insist that you don't have it because it makes your insomnia worse." Ryan argued.
"My insomnia and coffee have nothing to do with each other." Lena retorted.
"Such threats won't stop me from getting it from other sources anyways."
"Only when you are actually allowed to leave here which might not be until after the engagement party." Ryan laughed as he stood up. Lena turned her head to give him a glare when he said this.
"Don't even joke about that. I refuse to be stuck here for that long. I expect that by the time that Samuel comes back for most everything to be ready to return to normal." She informed him, an edge of annoyance to her voice. She didn't think that she could handle being away from work for another week and change with everything that she needed to take care of.
"I think that's something you'll have to figure out with your father because he's just as stubborn as you and won't change his mind unless her completely certain that it'll be safe for you to do that." The chef pointed out.
"Off that conversation, why don't you come and join me for a while? I figure that you're not in much of a mood to be eating dinner, but I still need some help with getting things together with the dessert and some of the other food options for the engagement party. He was going to leave picking the desserts to you anyways since he didn't have a preference."
"What's the bribe behind this?" She asked not trusting that he was going to so willing let her to do with without expecting her to do something in return first most likely in regards to her heath.
"Come now, I'm not always thinking of ways to get you to agree to take care of your something or do something in return for these type of things." Ryan replied with mock hurt in his voice.
"Honestly, you'd be doing me a huge favor by agreeing to do this right now because the longer it gets put off, the less time that I have to make sure that everything on the actual day of the event." He told her. It seemed like a reasonable thing since there was a lot of things that they were on a time crunch for still with the unexpected turn of events.
"Fine, but if it turns into something else once I'm actually in the kitchen with you, I'm not going to trust you again after this." The little queen warned as she got off of the futon. Her stomach was hurting much less now when she shifted from sitting or laying down to standing up. She knew that it would still be a bit though before the bruise disappeared.
Somehow Leo ended up joining them in the kitchen as well which annoyed Ryan more than it did Lena as the other wanted to assist with the actual cooking process rather than being company and assisting with the test tasting process.
For Ryan this was a big no in his book as he was very particular about he kept everything in the kitchen and didn't want someone coming along and messing with the organization that he had put together. Leo wasn't purposely disorganized, he just had a bad habit of forgetting where the things he grabbed were placed or not putting them back in the most organized order.
The princess let the two work this issue out among themselves as she stood towards the back and watched them bicker. She knew better than to request to be a part of the cooking process but wouldn't let Leo to let it be because she knew that her brother could be stubborn about such things. This was made slightly worse by the fact that the kitchen also happened to be rather full due to the other kitchen staff preparing dinner as it was almost time for that.
Ryan eventually ended up kicking him out when he did comply with the few things that he asked him to not do. He knew the other was used to being independent and doing his own thing after so many years of living on his own in England. That didn't translate well to the chef though when it meant that he was trying to impede on his workspace and take over recipes that he didn't actually seem like he knew what to do with them.
By the time that was all sorted out, it had taken more than two hours and a lot of waiting before Ryan had anything ready for the princess to test. Since she knew what or rather who the problem was, he didn't bother apologizing to her for the extended wait.
"I'm not sure which ones you might like better. I went through a lot of different options since I know the theme is emerald and rose gold." Ryan explained as he set the desserts in front of her. He gave her three options to start with. One was a red velvet cupcake with rose gold frosting and rose gold white chocolate pears on top, the second was a pistachio cupcake with green butter cream frosting and the third was a key lime cupcake with a rose gold butter cream frosting.
Ryan had decided on cupcakes because they took less time to put together than actual cakes did but also were easy to convert into a cake if Lena decided that she liked any of the choices. He would make more of course as he didn't think the decision would be that easy plus they would want to have a variety of options at the table to choose from.
The princess was quiet at first as she began to try each one of them, starting with the pistachio which thought would be her least favorite and ending with the red velvet which she knew was good. Ryan had tried them too as a test in order to make sure that everything was measured correctly and it was the perfect level of sweetness.
"If I had to pick only two I would go with the red velvet and the pistachio. There's nothing wrong the key lime, it just happens to be my least favorite out of the three options." The princess replied as she carefully considered once she was done eating one of each.
"I can do all of them if you want and other options are still to come. You need to decide what the cake will be. If I had the guest list it would be easier to know how much I need to make, but I don't think that's finalized yet." Ryan told her.
"I can ask my father about it tomorrow. I probably need to check with him about the few missing pieces with that anyways. I expect more people will be invited to come as there's another Mafia group who will need to be present for this event." The princess told him as she picked up another one of the pistachio cupcakes to eat.