AN: I do not own these characters. All rights go to E.L. James

Chapter 2

"I am such an idiot!" Ana said, looking at herself in the mirror and seeing the tears coming out of the corner of her eyes. Tearing off a paper towel from the dispenser, she dabbed at the tears, and then saw that her eyes were really red. Which of course made sense since she's now been crying for most of 24 hours?

"Everyone cries at the birth of a baby," she muttered to herself. "People cry at all happy occasions, such as weddings, engagement announcements and at the birth of babies."

She looked in the mirror and knew that she was lying to herself. Last night she'd held Kate's daughter in her arms and she'd wanted that child so much that she's nearly walked out the door with her. Frowning, Kate had taken her baby from her. "You can't have mine," she said. "Get your own."

To cover her embarrassment, Ana had tried to make jokes about her feelings, but they had fallen flat, and in the end, she'd left Kate's hospital room feeling the worst she had since Jose' death.

So now Ana was at the office and she was nearly overpowered with a sense of longing for a home and family. Making another attempt to mop up her face, she heard voices at the door and without thinking she hurried into an open stall and locked the door behind her. She didn't want anyone to see her. Today was the office Christmas party and everyone was in high spirits. Between the promise of free food and drink this afternoon and a generous bonus received from GEH this morning, the whole office was a cauldron of merriment.

If Ana hadn't already been in a bad mood, she would have been when she realized that one of the two women who entered was Gia Matteo, a woman who considered herself the resident authority on Christian Trevelyan-Grey. Ana knew she was trapped inside the stall, for if she tried to leave the restroom, Gia would catch her and badger her into hearing more about the wonders of the saintly Christian Grey.

"Have you seen him yet?" Gia gushed in a way that some people reserved for the Sistine Chapel. "He's the most beautiful creature on earth – tall, handsome, kind, understanding."

"But what about that woman this morning?" the second woman asked. If she hadn't heard all about Mr. Grey, then she had to be the new assistant Oliva, and Gia was breaking her in. "She didn't seem to think he was so wonderful."

At that, Ana smiled. Her sentiments exactly.

"But you, my dear, have no idea what that darling man has been through," Gia said as though talking about a Greek God.

Standing against the wall, Ana put her head back and wanted to cry out in frustration. Did Gia never talk about anything but the Great Tragedy of Christian Grey? Wasn't there anything else in her life?

"Three years ago Mr. Grey was madly, insanely in love with a young woman named Leila Williams." Gia said the name as though it were something vile and disgusting. "More than anything in life he wanted to marry her and raise a family. He wanted his own home, his own place of security. He wanted…"

Ana rolled her eyes; for Gia was adding more to the tale each time she told it: fewer facts, more melodrama. Now Gia was on to the magnificence of the wedding that Mr. Grey had alone planned and paid for. According to Gia, his fiancée had spent all her time having her nails done.

"And she left him?" the new assistant asked, her voice properly awed.

"She left that dear man standing at the front of the church before seven hundred guests who had flown in from all over the world."

"How awful," the assistant said. "He must have been humiliated. What was her reason? And if she did have a good reason, couldn't she have done it in a more caring manner?"

Ana tightened her jaw. It was her belief that Mr. Grey waited until the night before or the day of the wedding to present his bride with one of his prenuptial agreements, letting her know just what he thought of her. Of course Ana could never say that, as she was not supposed to be typing Mr. Grey's private work. That was the job of his personal secretary. But beautiful Miss Andrea Parker was much too important to actually enter letters into her computer, so she gave the work to one of the older administrative assistants, Miss Jameson. But then Miss Jameson was past seventy and too rickety to do a lot of typing. Knowing she'd lose her job if she admitted this and since she had a rather startling number of cats to feed, Miss Jameson secretly gave all of Mr. Grey's private work to Ana.

"So that's why all the women since then have left him?" the assistant asked. "I mean, there was that woman this morning."

Ana didn't have to hear Gia's recapping of the events of this morning, as it was all the office staff could talk about. What with the Christmas party and the bonus, yet another of Mr. Grey's women dumping him was almost more excitement than they could bear. Ana was genuinely concerned for Miss Jameson's heart.

This morning, minutes after the bonuses had been handed out; a tall, gorgeous redhead had stormed into the offices with a ring box in her trembling hand. The outside receptionist hadn't needed to ask who she was for angry women with ring boxes in their hands were a common sight in the offices of Mr. Christian Grey. One by one, all doors had been opened to her, until she was inside the inner sanctum of Mr. Grey's office.

Fifteen minutes later, the redhead had emerged, crying, ring box gone, but clutching a jeweler's box that was about the right size to hold a bracelet.

"How could they do this to him?" the women in the office had whispered, all their anger descending onto the head of the woman. "He's such a lovely man, so kind, so considerate," they said.

"His only problem is that he falls in love with the wrong women. If he could just find a good woman, she'd love him forever" was the conclusion that was always drawn. "He just needs a woman who understands what pain he has been through."

After this pronouncement, every woman in the office under thirty-five would head for the restroom, where she'd spend her lunch hour trying to make herself as alluring as possible.

Except for Ana, she would remain at her desk, forcing herself to keep her opinions to herself.

Now Gia gave a sigh that made the stall door rattle against its lock. Since Gia had told every female in the office all about the divine Mr. Grey, she wasn't worried about anyone overhearing.

"So now he's free again," Gia said, her voice heavy with the sadness…and hope…at such a state. "He's still looking for his true love, and someday some very lucky woman is going to become Mrs. Christian Trevelyan-Grey."

At that the assistant murmured in agreement. "The way that woman treated him was tragic. Even if she hated him, she should have thought of the wedding guests."

At those words, Ana could have groaned, for she knew that Gia had recruited yet another soldier for her little army that constantly played worship-the-boss.

"What are you doing?" Ana heard Gia ask.

"Filling in the correct name," the assistant answered.

A moment later, Gia gave a sigh that had to have come straight from her heart. "Oh, yes, I like that. Yes, I like that very much. Now we must go. We wouldn't want to miss even a second of the Christmas party." She paused, and then said suggestively, "There's no telling what can happen under the mistletoe."

Ana waited for a minute after the women were gone, then, allowing her breath to escape, she left the stall. Looking in the mirror, she saw that the time she'd spent hiding had allowed her eyes to clear. After washing her hands, she went to the towel holder and there she saw what the women had just been talking about. Long ago some woman (probably Gia) had stolen a photograph of Mr. Grey and hung it on the wall of the women's restroom. Then she'd glued a nameplate (also probably stolen) under it. But now, on the wall above the plate was written "Crestfallen" before the C. Grey.

Looking at it for a moment, Ana shook her head in disgust, and then with a smirk she withdrew a permanent black marker from her handbag, crossed out the handwritten word, and replaced it with, "Charismatic."

For the first time that day, she smiled, and then she left the restroom feeling much better. So much better, in fact, that she allowed herself to be pulled into the elevator by fellow employees to go upstairs to the huge GEH Christmas party.

One whole floor of the building owned by GEH had been set aside for conferences and meetings. Instead of being divided into offices of more or less equal space, the floor had been arranged as though it were a sumptuously, if rather oddly, decorated house. There was a room with tatami mats, shoji screens, and jade objects that was used for Japanese clients. Colefax and Fowler had made an English room that looked like something from Chatsworth. For clients with a scholarly bent there was a library with several thousand books in handsome pecan wood cases. There was a kitchen for the resident chef and a kitchen for clients who liked to rustle up their own grub. A Santa Fe room dripped beaded moccasins and leather shirts with horsehair tassels.

And there was a big, empty room that could be filled with whatever was needed for the moment, such as an enormous Christmas tree bearing what looked to be half a ton of white and silver ornaments. All the employees looked forward to seeing that tree, each year "done" by some up-and-coming young designer, each year different, each year perfect. This tree would be a source of discussion for weeks to come.

Personally, Ana liked the tree in the day-care center better. It was never more than four feet tall so the children could reach most of it, and it was covered with things the children of the employees had made, such as paper chains and popcorn strings.

Now, making her way toward the day-care center, she was stopped by three men from accounting that had obviously had too much to drink and were wearing silly paper hats. For a moment they tried to get Ana to go with them, but when they realized who she was, they backed off. Long ago she'd taught the men of the office that she was off limits, whether it was during regular work hours or in a more informal situation like this one.

"Sorry," they murmured and moved past her.

The day-care center was overflowing with children, for the families of the Grey's who owned the building were there.

"If you say nothing else about the Grey's, they are fertile," Miss Jameson had once said, making everyone except Ana laugh.

And they were a nice group, Ana admitted to herself. Just because she didn't like Christian Grey was no reason to dislike the entire family. They were always polite to everyone, but they kept to themselves; but then with a family the size of theirs, they probably didn't have time for outsiders. Now, looking into the chaos of the children's playroom, Ana seemed to see doubles of everyone, for twins ran in the Grey family to an extraordinary degree. There were adult twins and toddler twins and babies that looked so much alike they could have been clones.

And no one, including Ana, could tell them apart. Christian had twin brothers who had offices in the same building, and whenever either of them arrived, the question "Which are you?" was always asked.

Someone shoved a drink into Ana's hand saying, "Loosen up, baby," but she didn't so much as take a sip. What with spending most of the night in the hospital to be near Kate, she'd not eaten since yesterday evening and she knew that whatever she drank would go straight to her head.

As she stood in the corridor looking in at the playroom, it seemed to her that she'd never seen so many children in her life: nursing babies, crawling, taking first steps, two with books in their hands, one eating a crayon, an adorable little girl with pigtails down her back, two beautiful identical twin boys playing with identical fire trucks.

"Ana, you are a masochist," she whispered to herself, then turned on her heel and walked briskly down the corridor to the elevator. The elevator going down was empty, and once she was inside, loneliness swept over her. She had been planning to spend Christmas with Kate and Treavor, but now that they had the new baby, they wouldn't want to be bothered with her.

Stopping in the office she shared with the other administrative assistants, Ana started to gather her things so she could go home, but on second thought she decided to finish two letters and get them out. There was nothing urgent, but why wait?

Two hours later Ana had finished all that she'd left on her desk and all that three of the others had left on their desks.

Stretching, gathering up the personal letters she'd typed for Mr. Grey, one about some land he was buying in Tokyo and the other a letter to his brother, she walked down the corridor to Mr. Grey's private suite. Knocking first as she always did, and then realizing that she was alone on the floor, she opened the door. It was odd to see this inner sanctum without the formidable Miss Andrea Parker in it. Like a lion guarding a temple, the woman hovered over Mr. Grey possessively, never allowing anyone who didn't have necessary business to see him.

So now Ana couldn't help herself as she walked softly about the room, which she's been told had been decorated to Miss Parker's exquisite taste. The room was all white and silver, just like the tree…and just as cold, Ana thought.

Carefully, she put the letters on Miss Parker's desk and started to leave, and then on second thought, she looked toward the double doors that led into his office. As far as she knew none of the women in her department had seen inside that office, and Ana, as much as anyone else, was very curious to see inside those doors.

Ana well knew that the security guard would be by soon, but she'd just heard him walking in the hall, keys jangling, and if she was caught, she could tell him that she had been told to put the papers in Mr. Grey's office.

Silently, as though she were a thief, she opened the door to the office and looked inside. "Hello? Anyone here?" Of course, she knew that she'd probably drop dead of a heart attack if anyone answered, but still she was cautious.

While looking around, she put the letters on his desk. She had to admit that he had the ability to hire a good decorator; certainly no mere businessman could have chosen the furnishings of his office, because there wasn't one piece of black leather or chrome in sight. Instead, the office looked as though it had been taken intact from a French chateau, complete with carved paneling, worn flagstones on the floor, and a big fireplace dominating one wall. The tapestry-upholstered furniture looked well-worn and fabulously comfortable.

Against a wall was a bookshelf filled with books, one shelf covered with framed photographs, and Ana was drawn to them. Inspecting them, she figured that it would take a calculator to add up all the children in the photos. At the end was a silver-framed photo of a young man holding up a string of fish. He was obviously a Grey, but not one Anastasia had seen before. Curious, she picked up the picture and looked at the man.

"Seen all you want?" came a rich baritone that made Ana jump so high she dropped the photo onto the flagstones, where the glass promptly shattered.