When she talked to Xiao Yanzhi, there was always a sense of politeness and estrangement, as if every word had been carefully weighed in her mind before being spoken.
Then she would utter them extremely politely, as if they had just met.
Hearing the estrangement in her words, Xiao Yanzhi let out a laugh. "My tolerance for you is quite high, but it doesn't mean it's limitless."
His tone was unhurried, like a warning. "Jiang Li, once or twice is okay, but don't drag this on. I'll get weary."
After saying that, he tossed the script in his hand onto the sofa.
"I have some official business to attend to. You stay here for a while."
This sentence seemed like an arrangement and also like a reminder.
A reminder that she should wait for what was about to happen.
Without waiting for Jiang Li's response, Xiao Yanzhi undid the buttons of his casual outfit and hung it on the hanger. Underneath was a thin shirt.
He walked into the room by himself, leaving Jiang Li alone in the living room, truly ignoring her.
This was different from what Jiang Li had expected.
She picked up the script on the sofa, glanced at the just-closed bedroom door, and after thinking for a while, she still couldn't figure out what his intention was.
If it had been in the past, she would have thought that he cared about her and couldn't bear to let her wait outside, so he would let her go into the room to rest.
But now, she only thought he was boring.
He ignored Qin Yaoyao, who was about to bear his children, and didn't even plan to make up for the engagement banquet. Instead, he came to her and pestered her. Why?
She first thought like this, and suddenly her mind boomed.
A pregnant woman couldn't do that kind of thing.
Jiang Li wasn't pregnant, so Jiang Li could.
After figuring all this out and associating it with Xiao Yanzhi's recent patience towards her, she couldn't help laughing out loud.
No wonder he pestered her.
She almost, almost softened her heart again, thinking that he still had some affection for her and was willing to lower his noble head to make her smile.
This wasn't the first time she had such an experience.
Because she had never experienced true love, she once mistook Xiao Yanzhi's little kindness as love and responded to it. As a result, she walked every step on thin ice, being extremely cautious.
Even so, she still couldn't always gain his favor. Everything depended on his mood, and his emotions were always hard to fathom.
She thought that was just the way he, as a high - ranking person, had to interact with others. There should be something special for her in his heart.
But it was not until she saw with her own eyes how he doted on Qin Yaoyao and favored her without a bottom line that she realized how absurd her previous thoughts were.
It was like holding a handful of golden sand tightly, thinking that there should be at least a little left in the palm, but when she opened it, her palm was completely clean.
While another person passed by with a full jar of gold and would even ask her in surprise, "Is this also considered gold?"
She always habitually deceived herself, picking up some fragments and hugging them in her arms, regarding them as rare glimpses of the wonderful, pretending they were treasures.
But in fact, they were just pieces of glass that reflected light in the sun.
Just like just now, she almost thought he was showing kindness, but in fact, he just couldn't touch the person he should and could only come to her to relieve his desires.
This sugar - daddy game was becoming more and more sordid. She had changed from a beautiful canary carefully nurtured to a tool for relieving desires because the main wife was pregnant.
Her status was really getting lower and lower.
After thinking this through, Jiang Li let out a laugh, cleared these thoughts from her mind, sat on the sofa, and opened the script.
Wasting even a single minute or second on Xiao Yanzhi was a waste. She had more lines to memorize tomorrow than today, so she had to get familiar with them in advance to avoid delaying the shooting progress.
...
When Xiao Yanzhi came out of the room, the woman was already so sleepy that she had fallen asleep on the sofa. The opened script covered her face, only revealing one side of her jaw.
It was clean.
She had used up too much energy during the day's shooting. She didn't feel tired when her cerebral cortex was excited, but after quietly reading a few pages of the script, her eyelids became too heavy to lift.
Before she knew it, she had fallen asleep.
Xiao Yanzhi walked over, gently picked up the script on her face with his hand, and placed it on the table beside. His movements were extremely gentle and cautious, for fear of waking her up.
Her sleeping posture wasn't very comfortable. Her long hair was scattered on her neck, and her lips were slightly parted because of her tilted head, unconsciously breathing with each breath.
No one had ever told Jiang Li that her sleeping appearance was very different from when she was awake.
Her jawbone was very thin and delicate, the bone structure of a top - level beauty. Even though half of her face was pressed against the sofa at this moment, she looked like a child who had played tired and just slumped down anywhere.
Without that shrewd charm, she was sleeping defenselessly at the moment, completely unaware that a pair of eyes were staring at her intently.
Just watching her sleep, Xiao Yanzhi also felt relaxed.
In fact, he hadn't been idle recently either.
Although Xiao Yuanfeng said he had removed all of Xiao Yanzhi's positions related to the Xiao family, Xiao Yanzhi had been in charge of various affairs of the Xiao family before, and many of the cooperation projects were negotiated by him alone.
The Xiao family was no longer in a situation where Xiao Yuanfeng could completely bypass Xiao Yanzhi with just a roar.
Arguments were arguments, scolding was scolding, but the Xiao family only had one heir.
So it was okay to just put on a show for outsiders. He really couldn't be a hands - off manager if he wanted to.
Even when he came here to avoid the limelight, he wasn't any more relaxed than before.
The jewelry and mineral resources under the Xiao family needed him to make decisions on the new mining plan, and on the other hand, the factory was also waiting for him to approve the plan.
At most, he wasn't showing off in public, but he still suffered just as much in private.
Now he also had to suffer from Jiang Li.
It was really a sin.
Xiao Ye found a suitable hotel and quickly called Jiang Li. Unfortunately, Jiang Li's phone was in the hotel corridor, and no one answered after calling for a long time. So she had to call Xiao Yanzhi instead.
"Mr. Xiao, is Sister Jiang Li there? A new hotel has been found. The location is..."
"You stay there by yourself." He was concise. "Report the hotel expenses to Xue An. Have a good sleep outside tonight."
Xiao Ye wasn't stupid and immediately understood what he meant. "Okay, Mr. Xiao. Please remember to wake her up at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. The crew will start shooting at nine o'clock."
"Got it."
After hanging up the phone, he slowly walked back. But the girl on the sofa had already woken up, looking around in a daze.
"Has Xiao Ye come back?" Because she had just woken up, her voice was charmingly hoarse. "I should go."
Saying that, she stood up.
But she wasn't steady on her feet and stumbled back into the sofa clumsily.
Xiao Yanzhi witnessed the whole process and thought she was so cute and naive. So he said, "Had enough sleep?"