AN: This story takes place where only a few years ago you had to go buy CDs at a physical store and you couldn't stream music. All this was unheard of until Christian Grey and GEH.
I do not own these characters. All rights go to E.L. James
"Falling For You"
Chapter 1 - I Found You
She was trapped.
He had her cornered between the ten foot high potted silk fig tree, which looked surprisingly real, she noticed, glancing to her left for a means of escape and the wall to her right. The only way out was through him and, considering he was at least six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier than her, that wasn't much of an option.
Defeated, Anastasia Steele pasted an interested look on her face and prepared to spend the evening listening to Paul Clayton pour out his version of "My Life Story." She supposed this was her curse for having a sister who was a famous singer. Every rock, country, jazz, or rap music star wanna be who couldn't get an audience with Kate Steele latched on to Ana instead.
"…and when I was ten, my dad took me on a vacation to Nashville. That's when I knew what my destiny was," Paul expounded with all the sincerity of a televangelist.
Ana felt her left foot beginning to cramp and wiggled her toes, silently cursing the inventor of high heeled shoes. Taking a sip of wine, she watched a drop of condensation roll down the stem and drip onto the hardwood floor. Someone had opened the French doors to the cool night air, but the room inside was warm from the crush of bodies. Ana wondered what the neighbors thought of the loud music blasting through the stillness of their exclusive Seattle suburb as she waited patiently for her chance to escape.
"…at twelve, I got my big break in the church talent contest," Paul continued on.
Tuning out his monologue, Ana studied the man in front of her. Paul Clayton could be considered handsome, with his tall, lanky frame, dirty blonde hair, and brown eyes. Tonight, he was wearing the standard all black uniform of the country music crowd, which was black jeans with a button down shirt, a belt with a silver belt buckle, and a fascinating pair of snakeskin cowboy boots. Ana was beginning to think those cowboy boots were, unfortunately, the most interesting thing about Paul Clayton. She should have known she'd spend the entire evening at music mogul Christian Grey's lakeside home fending off her sister's castoffs. If she hadn't had her own reason for attending the party, she would have begged off. As it was, she wasn't accomplishing much, trapped here in the corner by Paul Clayton as she searched the crowd for Kate's telltale platinum blond head.
"I got a letter from Willie Nelson when I was thirteen and that's when I really knew that music was my calling," Paul drawled, interrupting her perusal of the crowd.
Ana slid a glance at her watch. Mickey's big hand was on the nine and his little hand was on the twelve. She figured at this rate, Paul wouldn't get past puberty till long after midnight. Desperate measure would need to be taken. Surreptitiously, she slid her arm behind her back and watered the fake fig tree with her Chardonnay.
"Boy, I sure could use a drink. Would you mind getting me another while I freshen up?" Widening her eyes innocently, Ana held out her empty wine glass.
"Oh, yeah, sure," Paul glanced over his shoulder at the huge crowd at the bar. "I'll be right back," he promised.
"Great." Ana smiled, waiting until his back was turned to make her move. Her short skirt swirled around her legs as she bolted from her prison in the corner.
"I knew we should have taken separate cars," she muttered, once again searching the loud throng of people for her sister. Kate loved these overcrowded, raucous parties where she was usually at the center of attention. Ana herself didn't mind them as long as she had a reason to be there. She'd thought tonight's party would give her a chance to meet some new people, maybe even talk to Christian Grey about donating some money to her animal charity, the Emerald City Foundation. Unfortunately, the elusive Mr. Grey had disappeared shortly after she and Kate arrived, just as she was being cornered by Paul Clayton.
So, rather than spending the evening trying to solicit donations for a worthy cause, she was stuck listening to yet another aspiring musician's life story. It was her curse for being born into a family of entertainers, she supposed, but at times it got to be a bit tiring.
Taking her melancholy mood down a deserted hallway, Ana searched out the peace of a powder room. Trailing her fingers along the dark patterned wallpaper, she thought about the home's owner. Even before she'd moved to Seattle two months ago, she'd known about Christian Grey, founder and president of Grey Records. He was one of Fortune magazine's top forty; one of the nation's young, wealthy bachelors who had started his climb to success with a small, independent record company that he'd built into a multibillion-dollar entertainment empire known as Grey Enterprise Holdings by leveraging the power of the Internet.
According to one of the articles she'd read, had been one of the first successful e-tailers. They'd started off as nothing more than an Internet record store, allowing Grey Records to become their own distributor rather than having to rely on the national chains, who took so much of a small record label's profits. Their success would have probably ended there, making Christian and his employees moderately wealthy, but in a move cited as nothing short of prophetic, he had pushed technology even further.
In a television interview Ana had seen recently, Christian Grey had asked, "Why should consumers have to wait four days, or even one day, for music to be delivered to their homes when the technology exists for them to download it right off the Internet today? And why should you have to buy an entire CD if all you want are two or three of your favorite songs? Just think," he'd said, looking into the camera with his intense, steel gray eyes, "no longer will you be at the mercy of record company executives forcing you to buy music you don't want. This technology is good for consumers, and it's also good for the artists, who will receive a larger cut of the profits for the songs they record."
Of course, it had also been good for Christian Grey, Ana thought as she pushed open the door to a large bathroom. He'd become an overnight billionaire with an Internet site that was now a household name.
There was no doubt in her mind that he could afford this mansion in one of the best neighborhoods in the state of Washington, but Ana shuddered as she looked around the oversize room. It was done in stark contrasts, all black except for the glaring white fixtures. The floor was tiled in black marble and the walls were papered with some kind of textured material. Ana rubbed a hand across the surface and decided it felt like bamboo. Unable to stop herself, she peered around a glass wall into the shower area. As she had suspected, it was spotlessly clean, not even a half used bar of soap to damage the perfection of the place. She resisted the urge to open the cupboard under the sink, feeling she'd already pushed the line between innocent curiosity and outright snooping too far.
"It's so impersonal," she said, looking around the room again, trying to imagine Christian Grey here. She had yet to meet him in person, but had seen him in interviews so often; she had no trouble visualizing his image. Unfortunately, her active imagination saw him stepping out of the shower, droplets of warm water falling from his naked, tanned body onto the cold marble as he reached for a towel. All at once, the room didn't appear quite so impersonal, and the temperature seemed to have increased a few degrees.
Ana glanced in the mirror above the sink. Almost involuntarily, she raised a hand, touching her cheek. Instead of feeling the smoothness of her own skin under her fingertips, she imagined that she would feel the roughness of Christian's face just before he shaved, the crisp stubble gently abrading as her fingers moved toward his firm chin. As her fingers reached the end of her own, softer skin, she dropped her hand and laughed guiltily.
Kate was right. She needed to get out more if just being in Christian Grey's bathroom was enough to set her pulse racing.
Ana exhaled a deep breath and pulled a bright red lipstick out of the tiny purse draped across her shoulder. She smoothed a fresh line of color across her lips and ran her tongue across her teeth to make sure none of her lipstick had ended up there. Shaking off the last of her images of the elusive Mr. Grey, Ana flipped her head upside down, fluffing her waist length brown hair. Feeling her skirt ride up in the back, she moved her hands to the bottom of the gauzy material only to find that she was about two inches from showing off more than she ever wanted revealed in public.
"Note to self…never do that outside of closed doors," she said with a smile into the empty room.
Flipping her head back up, she figured she'd given Paul enough time to get tired of waiting for her. Blowing an errant curl out of her eyes, she opened the door and headed down the hall, the clicking of her heels silenced by the richly colored rug running down the center of the hardwood floor.
"I'll just find Kate and tell her I'm ready to go," Ana murmured, inching closer to the high ceilinged, cream and brown toned living room and peering cautiously inside. She spotted her sister across the room, holding court with two of Grey Records' top artists and several of the city's most popular deejays. Although she hadn't thought it possible, the immense living room seemed more crammed with partygoers than when she'd left. The music had been turned up to a rattling level and people raised their voices to be heard. By all counts this party was a huge success.
Leaning against the wall, Ana wondered where Christian was. She had spotted him briefly when they'd arrived two hours ago, but he'd disappeared with a beautiful brunette before she could extricate herself from the corner with Paul Clayton. Ana wondered if he were having a party of a more intimate nature with Leila Williams, Grey Records' newest star and rumored to be Christian Grey's most recent conquest.
"Lucky girl." Ana sighed, gazing over the crowd for a glimpse of her host's dark copper-colored hair and intense, steel gray eyes. Chatting up their handsome host would sure beat hiding out in the hallway, hoping to escape further conversation with Paul.
A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was Paul, and he hadn't yet latched on to some other poor unsuspecting victim. Anastasia looked from Paul to her sister. She couldn't get Kate's attention without attracting Paul's too. He turned toward the hallway just as Ana stepped back into the shadows.
Ana did what any desperate woman would do in the situation…she ran, weight balanced on her tiptoes to silence the tread of her heels on the hardwood floor as she hugged the wall. The closest means of escape was a closed door on the left side of the hallway. She opened the door just enough to slip through, quietly pushing it shut behind her.
Standing behind the closed door, Ana listened to the heavy tread of Paul's cowboy boots as he walked past the room and down the hall to the bathroom. Looking around, she realized she was in an office. It was small in comparison to the other rooms she had seen in the house. From the moonlight shining in from a large, high window opposite the door, Ana could see the built in bookshelves that flanked the wall to her right. One bookshelf was almost completely filled with a complicated sound system.
Just the sort of thing one would expect to find in the office of the president of a record company, Ana thought with some amusement.
The other bookshelf was filled to overflowing with books. It wasn't light enough to read the titles but Ana figured, considering the occupant of the house, they were probably books about how to run a more efficient business, with a biography or two thrown in just for fun. Her own bookshelves were stocked with all her favorite romances and mysteries. She'd be hard pressed to find a nonfiction book among the bunch.
The only furniture in the room was a comfy looking overstuffed leather chair and ottoman in the corner to her right, a massive desk facing a wall of black and white pictures, and a swivel chair behind the desk that was turned toward the window. On top of the desk were some neat piles of paper, a pen and pencil set, and a laptop computer.
"Ana?" The loud whisper jolted her out of her observation of the room.
Paul was still out in the hall. Ana contemplated giving herself up, but the idea of two more hours stuck listening to yet another musician's boring life story helped make her desperate decision.
She'd have to go out the window. Right outside that window was her car, and freedom. She could hide in the backseat and wait until Kate finally decided she was partied out. Paul would never think to look for her out there.
Resolutely, Ana marched over to the large ottoman in the corner and dragged it across the carpeted floor. Pulling off her shoes, she hopped up onto the dark leather, opened the window, and pushed out the screen.
The air was chilly, even for an early autumn night in Seattle. The wind raised tiny goose bumps on her arms as she peered out the window to the ground below. It was farther down than she had hoped. On top of that, she would have to clear the row of bushes surrounding the front of the house.
"Here goes nothing," she whispered, tossing her shoes out the window and positioning both hands on the ledge for leverage. She flung her right leg over the windowsill. Teetering halfway between in and out, Ana grimaced as the cold metal of the windowsill made contact with her warm inner thigh.
From his seat in the swivel chair behind his desk, Christian Grey watched as one of the woman's shapely legs disappeared out the window. Her skirt settled itself high up on her remaining thigh. The filmy, almost transparent material caressed her skin and Christian felt his body respond instinctively. He took a deep, controlling breath, searching his memory for the identity of his midnight intruder. He was very good with names and faces, and he was sure he would have remembered if they'd been introduced. It was obvious that the woman was trying to escape, but he wasn't going to let her go without knowing who she was and what in the world she was doing leaving through his office window.
"May I help you with something?" he asked politely.
Started, the woman jerked her head in the direction of his voice.
The sudden movement threw her off balance. Before she could steady herself, she lost her hold on the windowsill. Her left leg flew up in the air and she tumbled out the window into the shrubbery below.