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DOUBTFUL

12

DOUBTFUL

"I love it Thea!"

Victoria exclaimed the perfect words that made my monday morning even more beautiful. It already made the start of my entire week amazing. I am looking forward for more working days with Lure and with Victoria.

"I don't know how you've done it but you've surpassed my expectations of you. You did it."

I smile at her compliments as she goes on about praising me. Yes, go on praise me. None of your workers had ever had a one on one interview with Benedict Saintclare. You should be thankful thay I applied here. Yes Victoria keep those words coming. I love it too. Thank you, you're too kind.

"I will have this published on the next issue for sure. People will surely buy this." She adds.

"I just want to ask one thing?" I chimed.

"Anything for you." She smiles.

"I don't want anyone to change anything that I've written down on it. No add ons or cut outs. I really would want it to be published how I wrote it Mrs. Victoria. Mr. Saintclare trusted me to interview him and I would really want to keep it as is like what he really said to me when I interviewed him. I don't want to disappoint him." I said firmly.

Mrs. Victoria pauses for a while and then smiles at me again as she nods. "Anything for you dear. You ain't gotta worry about your lunch today, I will treat you out."

"No. You're too kind Mrs. Victoria. It's fine."

"No no. It's a token of appreciation. Schedule yourself for lunch with me okay? We have so much to talk about."

I smile at her and for a second I thought that she was actually a nice boss if you only get your job done rightly. For most employees, I've been told that she's terror but they only see that side because she's too hard on them. But just because she said that she's publishing my article and she's buying me free lunch today doesn't mean she'll love me for the rest on my days as an intern.

"I will see you later Thea. You can leave now." She says to me before picking up her telephone ringing.

I smiled at her before I headed out of her office and for that moment I felt good. I felt insanely great because my first article for Lure magazine is going to be pushed through. It's going to be published. I couldn't wait to tell the girls about my good news when I get home. I feel like celebrating after my shift is done. I'm sure they'll be so proud and so happy for me. By the time I reached my own desk, I quickly pulled out Benedict's calling card and just stared at it for a while. It was in sleek black with white writings on it. It looked really cool though, it tells how mysterious and cold he is on the outside.

I wanted to call him and tell him that my article was going to be published but then I realized that he's a very busy man. He might be in a meeting right now or talking to his business associates. He still looks great even when he's busy though. But then I thought to myself why I would want to call him, only then I realized that I just wanted to hear his voice over the phone.

"Get a hold of yourself Thea. You wouldn't want to want a man like Benedict Saintclare. Back to work now." I scolded myself.

Then I started getting myself busy.

By exactly 12 noon, Victoria and I had walked out of the building as we head to her car. We didn't talk while we were on our way to the restaurant because she was busy talking to someone over the phone. I didn't really paid attention to her conversation, instead I was busy looking at the huge billboard of Benedict Saintclare promoting his company. He looked really handsome on that black suite with a white tie. He looked like a classy man with his long blond hair down and his eyes striking like he was mad at the world.

We reached this exquisite restaurant at exactly 12:19 and had settled ourselves on a reserved table for two but Victoria was still on her phone.

"Order something for yourself dear. Anything you want." She tells me while she covers her phone with her hand.

She motioned her head to the waiter. "I'll be having the usual but no lemon. And Appetizer A would be lovely. Thanks."

Victoria gets back to talking to someone over her phone while I began to look for something good to eat. I looked through the menu and my eyes widened when I saw the price of each meal. It's already the sum of my weekly grocery. Damn. I would want to have the money paid for the meal I'll be having than to waste it by eating it here.

I sigh.

When I finished ordering, Victoria was still busy talking to her phone so I pulled my phone out too and got onto Twitter.

I tweeted: "Free lunch today thanks to the big boss! :)"

I skimmed through my homepage and decided to check on Benedict's account.

His recent tweet was yesterday at 12:03PM

@BenSaintclare: Sick weekend! #TheWhiteHall

You sure did have fun at the club party boy. I thought to myself.

For a while, I stalked on his media and realized that he had only three photos up. The first was a photo of him and siblings with #throwback. Benedict looked a lot younger on the photo, Bethany and him were carrying each of their twim sibling. The second was a photo of his best friends and him in tuxedos, darn all of them looked really really handsome. Sebastian killed the tuxedo looks, he's hot with that smouldering look. Lastly he had posted a photo of him together with his parents, Mr. Hugo Saintclare and Mrs. Miranda Rose Saintclare. It was on a beach and they were all smiling. His parents have aged but they were still a lovely couple. His father sure is handsome, no wonder Benedict is godlike handsome too and his mom is really attractive.

I began to stalk Sebastian's twitter and soon found out that his twitter name is @SebastianH. He also had a lot of followers too and I expected that because he's rich and famous. He had a few tweets too but unlike Benedict's whose tweets are either about his company or partying or how his weekend went, Sebastian's was more into meaningful quotes. But one thing was for sure, they don't like to tweet much.

"Sorry Thea." Victoria's voice startled me that instead of clicking exit, I clicked follow.

I gaped. s**t!

"It was just an important call." She adds.

I had no choice but to shove my phone back inside my bag and ignored what I just did. I wouldn't want her to think that I am being disrespectful to her. I mean, this is her treat and she's still my boss. She doesn't like people who are on their phones when they're with her but she just did that to me a while ago. Nasty.

I smiled. "It's fine Mrs. Victoria. I think it was really an urgent call."

She smiles. "Well Thea, I have thought about this a while ago since you left the office."

I stare at her and waited for ber to say it. She's making me nervous all of a sudden.

"I think that we should set a photo shoot for Mr. Benedict Saintclare now that we have a personal intervirw with him. Could you get him to do that?" She asks.

I gulped.

Getting that interview wasn't that easy but will he allow to do it? He's known for declining interviews and rarely does photo shoots.

"I mean we can't just steal photos of him online or from other magazines. It's a lot better if we have photos of him that are ours. Your story is centerfold." She says.

I gaped. "C-centerfold? You mean to say it's that big?"

"Of course dear! It's all about Benedict Saintclare, it has to be big." She snaps happily.

"Can't we just give credit to people or to the magazine we took the photo from? Because it's kind of hard to let Mr. Saintclare to that." I answer.

She frowns with a sigh. "That's why I need you to talk to him again. Persuade him to do it."

"But he won't listen to me Mrs. Victoria. He was just forced to do the interview because he had to and I was lucky to get through it. But I'm not sure if he would have that photo shoot with us."

Victoria holds my hand. "You won't know if you won't try asking for his permision."

"But if I did I'd be written down on his waitlist again. Will that even reach the due date for the next issue? because I think it won't."

She sighs and lets go of my hand. "Ask him personally. Hit his email or message him on Twitter, f*******: and i********: or whatever social media accounts that he has."

She sets her eyes at me. "Please Thea."

I sigh inwardly. "I will try Mrs. Victoria but I can't promise you anything. We all know how strict he is whenever it comes to that."

She smiles at the same time the foods were served on our table so we began to eat. But I was bothered about asking Benedict to participate for our photo shoot. Why couldn't they just credit whoever owns a photo of Benedict? Why do I have to do it? I'm not on the photography field.

When my shift was over, Kylie and Jonah had surprised me and went over the office after getting my text that my article was going to be centerfold for the next Lure issue next month. We drove to the nearest restaurant and had dinner together, of course we all had to pay for it. I didn't have the money yet to treat them out.

Kylie raised her glass of champagne in midair. "To our friend, Thea, who's finally chasing her dreams. Cheers!"

The three of us smiled while Jonah and I raised our glass of champagne then clink our glasses together to make a toast as we chimed cheers.

"We're already proud friends Thea. I mean this was so important to you and this is already happening." Kylie gushed.

"Yeah. It's something really huge to be causing for a celebration. Centerfold baby!" Jonah exclaims making us laugh.

"And I'm sure Benedict Saintclare would be thrilled to see a centerfold article full story about him. This is something to look forward to." Kylie says.

I groans. "But Victoria still wanted more from what I have done for her."

Kylie's brows furrows. "What do you mean?"

"She took me to this really expensive restaurant and treated me out for lunch. But eventually she spilled the real reason why she did that by asking me if I could ask Benedict Saintclare to do a photoshoot for us." I answer grumpily.

They took a pause.

"I don't see the problem to it. Call him." Jonah says to me.

"Yeah. He gave you his calling card and didn't he tell you that you can freely call him if you have questions regarding the article?" Kylie states.

I sigh. "But that isn't my field. I know I'm an intern writer but I can't just call him up and ask him hey you wanna do photo shoot because my boss would really love for you to have that with us." I stammer and breathe.

"It's not that easy. He's Benedict Saintclare. He's super way over there." I place my hand above my head. "No, more like on top of the world and I can't just easily ask him for a photo shoot. He's super busy and it took me too long to set that interview. I had a hard time achieving that. If we ask him for the photoshoot we won't be able to reach the due date for the next issue because we'll be going to be on his never-ending waitlist."

"Then tell Victoria to have Benedict's article published two months from now. Either way, you'll have enough time for the article and the photoshoot." Says Jonah.

"But why me? They have a highly professional photographer who could ask Benedict to do the photo shoot. That's not my job anymore." I said.

Kylie sighs and rubs my back. "Maybe you're just upset and worried and stressed out way too much about this that you won't be able to achieve Victoria's high expectations of you."

I groan. "And there's that too. That stupid expectations. I hate that. I swear to God."

Kylie leans her head against my shoulder and said to me, "Look, try to contact Benedict. Talk to him about the photo shoot. Convince him but if he really declines then tell Victoria you did your best to set it up but he was just too busy."

Jonah nods and said she agreed too.

"I mean we all know his schedule must be always packed for one day. Victoria will understand that. He's a very busy man. And ignore those high hopes she has for you, we sometimes can't achieve some y'know." Kylie adds and smiles.

I half smiled. "Thanks guys. You always make me feel better on anything I'm going through."

"Hell yeah we are." Kylie giggles.

Jonah smiled and added, "And don't stress yourself out too much on this. Come on, you did all you can for that interview. They're already too lucky to be having an intern interview the wealthiest and most famous man of England."

Kylie nods. "Her well trusted publicists haven't even had a single interview of him before you came to Lure."

"I just don't wanna disappoint her because she's my boss." I speak softly.

"Well sometimes there are things in this world that we really can't have." Jonah answers.

"But let's not be too negative on this okay? What if he'll eventually accept it?" Kylie chimes.

He won't. I just know he won't. And I already fell like I'm disturbing him way too much.