Bought For A Baby, Kept For A Lifetime-Chapter 231: Another Woman?

As Anne returned home, she went directly upstairs, her steps somewhat slow and sluggish evident that she had a heavy weight in her mind. Some of the staff approached her, asking what she wanted for dinner but she informed them that she had already eaten in a low dispirited voice as she proceeded into her room.

After freshening up, she felt the urge to wait for Andrew to return again, actually she had been looking forward to seeing him at home because she thought he would be disheartened to suddenly lose the position he’d been working hard for, her heart had wanted to offer him comfort, but did he truly need her comfort or had he already gotten it from someone else.

The woman she had seen next to him flashed in her mind once again and Anne sighed then laid in bed drawing the blankets up to her nose and closed her eyes after releasing a deep calming breath.

But her heart continued to ache making her turn here and there as if feeling uncomfortable on the bed.

Anne was awake for a few hours, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to sleep but she tried really hard and it felt like she had completely forgotten how to conjure up sleep. Even after closing her eyes and relaxing her body, shutting down her thoughts and counting several numbers in her head, sleep still refused to lull her away.

She groaned in frustration kicking her feet in annoyance at how desperately she wanted to fall asleep but couldn’t, in the end she got out of bed but she didn’t allow herself pace or constantly look out her window for Andrew’s car like her mind had made her do the previous night, instead she went downstairs, stopped for a moment to think of what to do before deciding to go inside the kitchen. Many of the household staff had retired at this time so there was no one around.

She walked into the sleek kitchen where she had rarely been since she started living in the Manor, it was a modern space balanced with warmth. With a spacious open layout and two large islands each toped with polished stone countertops that gleamed under the ceiling lights. The mixture of light and dark in the kitchen’s design gave it a contemporary yet inviting feel. Anne suddenly felt a burst of craving for several homemade meals assault her in this moment.

She wanted to have hot and spicy noodles with an abundance of chicken and tofu sauce, at the same time she wanted crisply fried chicken thighs crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. But then again she wanted a sweet treat, like an ice cream or chocolates or even a blend of both, chocolate ice cream. At the thought of this her craving suddenly shifted, no longer finding something sweet that appealing, instead her senses leaned more towards salty snacks, chips, popcorn or even pretzels. Or maybe just a nice grilled cheese sandwich and she would call it a night.

Wracked with indecisiveness Anne plopped onto the nearest stool, leaning on the kitchen island with a sigh.

She couldn’t tell if she was just stress craving food or if this was her pregnancy cravings acting up.

She was leaning more towards spicy food though, and the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to just see it appear right in front of her, so Anne stood up and got to work.

She had read somewhere that increase in stress for a pregnant woman meant an increase in hormones fluctuating which would further lead to an increase in impulse urges like craving several things at a time which could explain why she was feeling like this and cooking something would very well do her good right now and keep her mind away from overthinking and running on speed, she was very good at shutting out her own thoughts if something hurt or felt bothersome to think about. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Standing in the middle of the vast kitchen with a thoughtful look on her face not knowing where to start, Anne chewed her lips for several seconds.

There was glass everywhere, in the front drawers and the open display of what Anne looked to see was labelled unique spices from all over the world, she searched for the fridge for a long time until she found what looked like a door which she had assumed was a storage room but was actually an inbuilt walk in refrigerator where there was an abundance of fresh food that left Anne stunned.

They barely ate at home, wouldn’t all this food items go bad?

But Anne didn’t know that the staff were authorized to constantly change all the stock in the fridge weekly leaving them to either toss the items in the fridge or take them home, they mostly chose to do the latter, even if their wealthy masters wouldn’t care to waste food, they wouldn’t be able to bear seeing it go to waste.

Anne grabbed a load of ingredients, chicken, a hot sauce whose brand she had never seen before but came in an exaggeratedly stylized bottle whose label was written in french, butter, honey, garlic, paprika and several other ingredients. She even explored by smelling and tasting some of the foreign spices she found in glass shelves and decided to leave out anything she didn’t know just to be safe.

She smelled the strange hot sauce before using it, it had a rich pungent aromatic smell that made her mouth water, she even got a whiff of some fruity notes that made the aroma somewhat complex and hard to decipher what were the ingredients so she lightly tasted a drop on her tongue, it’s taste perfectly balanced a nice kicking heat and sweetness with a small bit of acidity that made Anne nod in approval.

And she quickly began to work on the chicken.

Her mood seemed to have visibly improved as she moved to a fro, from figuring out how to work the unnecessarily complicated oven to later having a nice aroma of chicken filling the whole kitchen.

Ah, she had missed this. It had been quite a long time since she last cooked something and she had almost forgotten how therapeutic it was to do.

About an hour later, she had a flaming hot bowl of spicy chicken drumsticks in front of her, oozing out delicious steam that she breathed in with delight and almost squealed happily.

She knew eating spicy food at night was an absolutely terribly idea, especially this late, but her cravings had numbed that part of her rationality and she just wanted to devour the flavorful rich delicacy she just made herself.

Anne poured herself a nice glass of fruit juice since she wanted something sweet and sat herself on the stool by the kitchen island not caring to go out to the dining room to eat.

Anne had almost forgotten what had kept her up, about to dig in and start eating when she heard a sound that made her halt.

The front door opened, and the familiar footsteps were heading in another direction but they suddenly stopped and after two beats the footsteps resumed again and they were headed to the kitchen where she was.

She could tell from the footsteps that it was Andrew.

So he was back.

Anne felt the sadness she had pushed away suddenly resume again as an ache in her chest and she almost let out a curse, her appetite suddenly waning.

She found herself looking to the screen of her phone for the time and it was exactly past one AM again.

Had he really stayed with that woman this long, this late...?

Her eyes dimmed and lost the light of anticipation they had just a while ago.