Offer To The CEO

Tuesday, continued …

With that everyone started to compile the guest list, to resolve the other issues. It was quickly determined that the guest list would be over fifty, so Rosemary, using Anna's phone started making calls to sort out a church.

Ten minutes later she was off the phone "You have some luck Anna. This Saturday coming in nine weeks, the church is free. That is the first weekend of the next school holiday period. I told the minister that we would take it. He is emailing me details as technically we have to pay a booking fee, and he does want to talk to you. He asked me, once I had spoken to you to call him back, so you can speak to him."

"OK let me do that, while I let you all get on with working out some of the other things, and making bookings."

Anna took the phone and re-dialed the minister. Immediately on his answering she felt like a little child being called before the school principal, because he asked what the rush was.

Anna knew that she could not say, the exact reason so indicated "There is no rush, it is just that my husband is a businessman and there was a window of a couple of weekends that we could do this ceremony, otherwise we would most likely be a year or more before we could have a formal church ceremony, as legally we have married in another country."

Anna then paused before continuing continued "I know that you mentioned there is a booking fee, that is not a problem, I will arrange, within 48 hours for the money to be transferred. As it is an international transfer, could you please ask whichever bank you use to supply the SWIFT code so that it can be facilitated. Otherwise it might take a week to occur. By the way, would, in addition to the booking fee accept a donation for use for building repairs, say twenty thousand Australian dollars?"

"Mrs Hou …"

"That is not enough, will fifty thousand then do?"

"You are kidding, right?"

"No, actually give me ten minutes and I will call you back if you can take a credit card for that payment today."

"We can." stuttered out the minister

Anna ended the call, and asked "Can someone get my handbag from my room please"

"What is going on Anna?"

"The minister wanted to talk about our reasons for rushing into marriage as he sees it. So, I distracted him. I remembered when I was home at Christmas, they were starting the building repaid fund, to do some major repair, so I just offered to donate fifty thousand in addition to paying the booking fee."

Du AnLing, looked as her daughter-in-law, and smiled. She was already learning the Hou family way to deal with uncomfortable questions, distract and draw attention to something else. "Anna, you are really becoming a Hou, that was smart."

Leng Xi piped in "And how often do we use that?" the two then laughed.

With her handbag, Anna pulled out her wallet, and withdrew one of the black credit cards Hou YI had issued in her name, and rang back the Minister, and finalised the booking, telling him that her sisters-in-law and sister would work with him as to the order of service.

Rebecca responded "You witch. You know I hate church stuff."

"Well, what do you expect, you are there, and I am here so I trust you."

Du Anling, saw the credit card Anna used, and moved over to see that Hou Yi had one issued in her daughter-in-law's name, not a companion card. As Anna slipped it back in, there was a second black credit card.

"That damn son of mine, he limits my spending ability, and gives you five credit cards, two of which will have extremely high daily limits, if any. When you are back on your two feet, we are going to Paris for shopping."

"Mother, forget it, I know about you two and shopping. I do not need to spend for the sake of spending. I have a few current season pieces, but I am slowly building up a wardrobe of specially designed one-off pieces from the tailors store we stumbled on in M Mall. Tourist Market shopping is a definite though. But we are getting distracted from our task. Wedding planning"

Ten minutes later Rosemary reminded Anna that she needed to complete another repeat of the exercises that James worked through with her. While she was doing this, a light lunch was brought in.

The balance of the afternoon passed quickly with everything other than the photographer, hairdresser and makeup artist being sorted. Rebecca grabbed Anna's phone and dialled Susan, to put her on the task, given the still stubbornness of Anna's mother about Anna and Hou Yi. Rosemary worked through the set of exercises with Anna.

Just after Anna finished the final set exercises Hou Yi arrived home and walked into the bedroom.