"What's going on? What's wrong?" Frowning, Matthew stood up once again and walked out of the meeting room.
On the other hand, Erica had no idea what her husband was doing at the moment. According to her, he would always be sitting alone at his desk, reading files or signing papers. Never had she imagined or expected him to be having an urgent meeting with some executives in the conference room.
"Listen to this!" she replied, moving her phone closer towards the kitchen.
More than ten seconds later, BANG! "What are you doing?" Matthew asked in surprise as he heard the loud noise.
"Umm... I am boiling eggs..."
Matthew felt a dull pain in his temples. "How can boiling eggs cause such a powerful explosion?"
Erica was embarrassed at this question. "Well, I don't know. Maybe I left them on the flame for too long. I mean, I even gave Ethan a bath while they were getting boiled."
"Turn off the stove first!" Matthew told her.
"O-Okay," Erica answered, flustered.
She put Ethan in the baby stroller, wrapped him in a bath towel, and made sure that he was safe before she rushed into the kitchen to turn off the stove.
'Nothing could explode anymore, right?' she was thinking. That was logical! She had only put three eggs in the pot, and three bangs had already reached her ears. What more could go wrong!
However, Erica could do nothing but watch as the pot was burnt into smoke; she was too scared to approach the stove and turn it off. Very soon, the kitchen was filled with black smoke.
The smoke alarm in the kitchen began to scream loudly the next moment.
Startled, Erica stepped back immediately. 'What's happening!'
Matthew was just about to call the property management company when they called him first. "Mr. Huo, the smoke detector in your kitchen is ringing," someone from the property management company reported.
"Send someone there at once!"
"Yes, sir!"
After that short conversation, Matthew hung up the phone, and walked towards the elevator at a rapid pace. Meanwhile, he called Owen. "The meeting is adjourned. Ask the operations department to hand over a solution, and postpone the meeting with Mr. Li," he ordered.
"Yes! Mr. Huo."
By the time Matthew rushed back to his villa, the kitchen had already returned to its usual quiet. Even the burnt pot was about to be taken away by the property management company.
Erica was nowhere to be found. Apart from the company officials, Matthew saw only the maid who had just returned from buying groceries cleaning the kitchen.
Seeing the owner of the house, the manager came towards him and said, "Mr. Huo, nothing serious. The pot was ruined from burning for too long and that caused smoke."
However, that didn't provide much relief for Matthew. "Where is Mrs. Huo?" he asked the maid.
"She is upstairs taking care of the young master, sir."
"Is she okay?"
"Yes, sir! Everything's fine!"
Only then did the deep frown disappear from Matthew's forehead and his usual impassive look came back. He looked at the manager and said, "Thank you."
"You're welcome, Mr. Huo. If there's nothing else, we'll be leaving now."
"Okay."
Matthew nodded and after they had left, went upstairs, climbing the stairs in a few big strides.
Inside the bathroom on the third floor, with her back towards the door, Erica was busy bathing Ethan. "I think you are just like me as a child. My father told me I used a lot of diapers as well. Every time he changed it, I would go ahead and make it dirty again. To make it worse, I never pooed or peed until after he'd changed it! You're just like me in this aspect. I wrapped you with a bath towel for just a little while, and you pooped on it within just a few minutes. You're as naughty as I am!"
Matthew noticed that the previously clean white sheets were now a dirty colored mess. And those stains smelled funny, like a baby's poo.
Getting a bit closer, he became sure that they were.
Erica couldn't even clean the baby properly, let alone clean the bathroom, which was looking more and more like a disaster-zone.
As a germaphobe, Matthew just wanted to tear apart the entire bathroom and rebuild it from scratch right now. If he could, he would have thrown the woman and the baby in the bathroom far far away!
Rubbing his eyebrows, he opened his eyes again and saw a pair of smiling eyes. From inside the bathtub, Ethan was looking up at him, making unintelligible noises.
Erica didn't sense Matthew's presence until she noticed Ethan's gaze.
Fortunately she was not startled by his sudden appearance this time. Maybe she was used to his silent approach. "Why did you come back all of a sudden?" she asked.
Matthew looked at her dirty face. It was black from the stain she had gotten from touching the burnt pot. She had forgotten to wash her hands after that.
This dirty face reminded Matthew of a younger Erica, whose face had been dirtied by mud.
At 13 years old, she had loved playing with mud with other children. That day, she had come home with her face covered in mud and met Matthew, who was visiting her parents.
And to make it worse, when she had passed by him, she had slipped and accidentally pressed her muddy hands onto his white shirt.
And then Blair had asked her to buy a new shirt for him.
Matthew recollected himself from his musings and answered indifferently, "I was worried that you would blow up the villa."
Erica murmured, "Well I can't possibly do that."
"I am sure you can do it! You almost burned down the entire kitchen by just boiling eggs. I'm sure you have the ability to blow up the villa if you try and cook a meal." Saying that, Matthew suddenly remembered that several years ago, Wesley had remarked about Erica's cooking skills in the Huo family's villa. If he recalled correctly, Wesley had mentioned that Erica had tried to make French fries and nearly blew up the kitchen.
He hadn't believed it at first. He couldn't believe that there would be a person as stupid as that in the world at all. Now it seemed that such people really existed.
Erica felt Matthew sounded unfair, but she didn't dare to fire back. After all, she had just destroyed a very expensive pot, and she had heard from the maid that the pot had been mounted with more than ten diamonds.
Even the Resident Welfare Association for their community had been alarmed. The manager was about to call 119 before rushing into the villa.
And the whole fiasco had started with the fact that she wanted to boil a few eggs.
Matthew took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Then he took a very naked and still dirty Ethan from her arms, and demanded, "Get out of the way!"
"I am not proficient in cooking, but I can still bathe him!"
Matthew cast her a sideways glance. "You need to clean yourself first."
"What?" Erica asked in confusion.
With a deep sigh, Matthew told her, "Your face!" He was annoyed now. 'Carlos is so annoying. Why did he go ahead and find me a wife who's as silly as a donkey? Did he want to test my patience?' he thought.
Erica gave Ethan to Matthew, ran towards the mirror, and finally discovered the black stains on her face. Maybe it was because she had touched the black pot and forgotten to wash her hands.
The funny thing was if Matthew didn't say anything, she wasn't even going to know what he had missed to come back to clean up the mess she had made. Matthew had missed a meeting to clean baby poop!
After taking care of Ethan and making sure things were back to normal, Matthew went back to the company.
In his office, just as Paige was about to leave, he called her back all of a sudden. "Paige."
"Yes, Mr. Huo?"
"Let me ask you a question. What does 'Xitala' mean? I mean besides being a surname?"
"Mr. Huo, can you tell me the exact words. I think I'll need a bit of context," Paige asked in surprise.
An awkward look flashed across the man's face, but he finally said, "Matthew Xitala..."