Gwendolyn’s POV

One thing about Gwendolyn, she liked knowing what was going on.

Information made the world go round. It could sink empires or change fortunes and the blink of an eye. She had no concrete information on what was going on with Ryan and that was driving her insane.

What in the world was happening?

With the way that Ryan had been resisting her attempts to get him to like her again, Gwendolyn had been almost a hundred percent certain that some hussy was trying to worm her way into his heart.

To prove her suspicions so that she knew exactly who to go after, Gwendolyn had gone as far as to hire some people to take pictures of Ryan out and about, ( having him stalked was a tad bit uncouth, but she had chosen to see it as a necessary evil).

But having to lower herself to do something that ugly- desperate people often resorted to had not helped her at all. Having people follow Ryan and report back to her should have made it easy to find out which low life was trying to attach herself to him, and quickly dispose of the woman before she could become a nuisance. But instead of that helping Gwendolyn, it had instead left her feeling even more stumped.

***

Her eyes moving from picture to picture.

Gwendolyn frowned briefly before she smoothed the expression out. Just because she was worried that did not give her the right to mess up her beautiful face. She would not be giving herself premature wrinkles. Now staring at the photos with a blank face, Gwendolyn tapped her chin lightly.

What was she missing?

Where was the little whore that was trying to steal Ryan from her?

In every single picture that she had, Ryan might as well have been alone. She had ordered her people to keep most of their focus around the building that Ryan lived in, but that was not giving her any results. She had at least expected there to be different women coming in and out, but instead there were none.

Well, that was not completely true. There was one woman who kept popping up. But one look at her and Gwendolyn had immediately dismissed her. There was no way that she could be the one that Ryan was sleeping with.

Ryan Terrell was a man of class. He went after the most beautiful women on the planet, actresses, supermodels, heiresses such as Gwendolyn herself, and fellow business women who were at the top of their game.

There was no way that he would take a second look at the woman that Gwendolyn was currently staring at. Sure, she was pretty-ish, with dark hair, a sizable cleavage, and eyes that Gwendolyn would have been jealous of were she not secure in her own beauty. But that was where it ended. The woman looked good, but she was garden variety pretty.

Nothing about her fit the criteria of women that Ryan preferred.

She was far too flabby to be his mistress, and upon zooming in, Gwendolyn had even seen a faint stretch mark on one of her breasts, a major ick in the heiress’ books. She also did not have a single bone showing. No ribs, no collarbones. Even when she was wearing jeans, her pelvic bones were not pronounced.

The dark-haired woman just could not be Ryan’s mistress. She was far too soft in a way that said that she was fully capable of eating an entire banana as a snack and not as a meal for the day. A real gluttonous pig, and that was not all of it.

In most of the pictures, she had no makeup on, which was scandalous. What sort of woman just went out in the world naked like that? Clearly, she had no respect for herself. She probably laughed and smiled on a regular basis too. Just welcoming laugh lines and wrinkles with open arms. Just thinking about such a blatant lack of self-care had Gwendolyn feeling sick. But it added a point in one of the many reasons why she could not be the person Gwendolyn was searching for.

Ryan did not like women who thought so little of their appearance. Another sign of how she did not put care into how she looked was the state of her nails. They literally looked like she cut them herself with a nail clipper. Short and blunt, Ryan liked women with claws. Even looking at her hair, Gwendolyn could tell that the grey-eyed woman probably only saw a hairstylist once a year, and even then she did not do much.

Clicking at yet another photo, Gwendolyn saw a picture of the woman walking behind Ryan at what seemed to be one of the top restaurants in the city. The woman wearing a casual outfit in a restaurant that was for fine dining. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

A true abomination!

Again, it solidified Gwendolyn’s view that there was nothing going on between the two of them.

If there had been something, the woman would have been walking side by side with Ryan having and arm around her, and she would have been dressed way better.

Scoffing, Gwendolyn settled in her chair and huffed a soft laugh.

She might have been away from him for four years, but her Ryan was still himself. There was no way that he would settle for a woman like the one in the pictures. She had a bad body.

She wore cheap clothes, no designer labels at all. Did the bare minimum when it came to skin care.

She did not even bleach her teeth for crying out loud! Laughing in earnest. Gwendolyn cheered herself up by finding more faults with the random woman. By the end of it she was in a good mood, and she believed that she had finally figured out why the woman was always around Ryan. She was probably his housekeeper. That was the only use for someone who looked like her.

***

As a reward for her successful digging, Gwendolyn was in her mirror room. Dressed in a lacy bra and panties, she took herself in and smiled. But even with her happiness at finding that there was no one to compete with, Gwendolyn was confused. Ryan was not seen any other woman. So why was he being so difficult? Why would he not just take her back and let them be the power couple that they had always been meant to be?

He was available, she was available.

In fact, not only was she available, she was as gorgeous as always and willing too. They shared a deep past that had all the twists and turns of a telenovela. So why did he not want to be with her?