So This Is...
A Lizzie Bennet Diaries fanfic by Aisling Yinyr Ngaio
Pairing: William x Lizzie
Chapter 3: Shock
Courtesy of his being CEO, he was always informed of anything going on in all Pemberley offices. He therefore knew even before watching Lizzie's 76th video that she would be coming to Pemberley. Internal emails to the CEO's office had assured him of the arrangement.
It had been a shock at first, that Lizzie Bennet's name would appear anywhere near Pemberley, but then he recalled that she was under the tutelage of the best connected professor of Mass Comm this side of the coast. Hadn't he himself just received Gardiner's latest peer-reviewed article on hyper mediation, as forwarded by Reynolds to all executives?
He longed to see her, meet her, hear how she was doing. But for the first time in their short acquaintance, he forced himself to stop before he did something drastic, and tried looking at things from her point of view, instead of just his.
Would this make things awkward for her? Did she want to see him again? Beyond expressing regret at her misunderstanding on his actions towards... him... it was as if she was trying her best not to think or talk about him.
So he put another above himself, and resolved not to change his schedule no matter how much he wanted to plant himself at his San Francisco office and stay there for the duration of her shadowing. Besides, the Los Angeles office was in dire need of attention anyway (or so he was trying to convince himself), so surely he can survive the occasional board meeting in San Francisco without running into her once.
He reckoned without taking meddling, well-meaning sisters into the account.
Looking back, he should have been alerted by Gigi's uncharacteristic mysterious urgency, but he'd just been through a grueling and only partway productive board meeting, and just wanted a nice dinner and hopefully a catnap before he tried untangling the real, though not really catastrophic emergency necessitating his presence at the San Francisco office. He had hoped to resolve the affair before succumbing to his weakness of accidentally bumping into Lizzie.
Curse crazy baby sisters.
But having only seen her in the past weeks through the computer screen, he was overwhelmed by the sight of her standing in front of him. The beauty of her face, the fragrance that was uniquely hers, and - dear God - her voice speaking to him, saying his name in her panicky, one-octave-higher-than-usual voice. He was in raptures and agony. Nothing could have prepared him for this.
With effort did he calm himself down from the predicament Gigi put him in and endeavour to converse with her in a manner unlike his former presumption, and was gratified to see that she was at least as embarrassed as he. Still, he had to rein in his disappointment when she politely refused his offer of a ride. Perhaps it was too much too soon.
And then she touched his arm.
- To Be Continued -