Chapter 594: Meeting the Woman Again

Jim Thorne and Patrick Thorne were used to seeing the plain women from their mountain village. Even women in the city were, at most, a little tidier, always dressing very simply. This was the first time they had ever seen a woman so gaudily and seductively dressed. They froze, staring straight at her.

The woman noticed the young men’s gazes. She turned her head to meet the brothers’ eyes and smiled faintly, a very smug smile. Tang Xiaonan frowned slightly. For some reason, she didn’t have a good impression of this woman; she seemed a bit frivolous.

The two brothers immediately blushed and lowered their heads to focus on their ice, not daring to look again.

"That woman’s definitely not a decent lady."

Jim muttered under his breath. A decent lady would never dress like that. Her lips were smeared so red it looked like she’d coughed up blood, and her face was caked with at least an inch of powder. And that overpowering perfume... she must have doused herself with half a bottle.

’Definitely not a decent person,’ Jim thought. ’Even his mother’s sweat smelled better than that.’

"Don’t gossip about people behind their backs. It’s not polite," Ellie Ashton reminded him in a low voice, even though she didn’t particularly like the woman either.

Jim’s face flushed, and he looked a bit embarrassed.

After they finished their ice, they felt much cooler. The sun outside wasn’t as scorching anymore. Ellie Ashton wanted to go to the post office to make a phone call, and since Tang Xiaonan and the others needed to call as well, they all went together.

They called Frederick Thorne again. Having already heard from them once, he wasn’t too worried this time. He gave them a few instructions and hung up. Ellie was still on her call, and it looked like she wouldn’t be finished anytime soon. Clayton Xavier and Jim decided to look around the neighborhood, but Tang Xiaonan didn’t feel like moving, so she waited at the post office.

Another gust of perfume rushed in. It was the woman from the ice cream shop. She walked in hurriedly, not noticing Tang Xiaonan, and went straight to make a call in the booth next to Ellie’s. Tang Xiaonan vaguely heard her give the operator the area code for Tristone. Back then, you couldn’t dial long-distance directly. You had to have an operator connect the call, which was a huge hassle.

The woman waited impatiently, tapping her fingers lightly on the counter. Her bright red fingernails were even redder than her lips. Tang Xiaonan was standing very close to her, and the overpowering scent of perfume made her want to sneeze.

Tang Xiaonan covered her nose. Bored, she listened to Ellie asking her cousin about fun places in Capria. Her eyes drifted involuntarily to the woman’s hands, and she noticed they weren’t slender at all. The knuckles were large and the skin was rough, clearly the result of too much manual labor. These were the hands of a working woman.

Normally, there would be nothing unusual about that. But on a woman who dressed so gaudily and carried herself with such elegant, seductive charm, hands like those seemed jarring.

Tang Xiaonan’s gaze moved up, and she got a clear look at the woman’s face. Her features were actually only pleasant-looking at best, but she had a great figure. On top of that, the woman was skilled at dressing well and applying makeup, which was why she stood out so much in a crowd.

After looking for only a moment, Tang Xiaonan averted her gaze. It was rude to stare, and she was afraid the woman would notice.

The woman’s call finally connected. She was speaking the Tristone dialect, though not with a native accent. Like the Vessaria dialect, it was part of the Wu language family, but the Vessaria dialect was faster and harsher, lacking the soft, lilting quality of the Tristone tongue. Still, Tang Xiaonan could understand it; in her past life, she had often dealt with clients from Tristone.

Besides, although the woman’s Tristone dialect was fluent, one could still hear a difference. Some of her subtle pronunciations were clearly stiff; she wasn’t a native of Tristone.

Tang Xiaonan didn’t actually want to eavesdrop on someone else’s call, but she was standing right there. It was hard not to overhear.

The woman made one call first, apparently about sourcing goods. It seemed she would have to wait a few days for stock to arrive. Her tone was crisp and efficient, giving her the air of a powerful businesswoman. After hanging up, she made another call. This time, her tone became impatient and even a little imperious.

"You’ve been searching this long and still haven’t found anything? If you don’t get results soon, I’m replacing you!"