*I do not own the characters, all rights to the characters belong to E.L James*
AN: Thank you all for your reviews and sticking with me through this. I am going to try and keep giving you all chapters frequently. If you all have any questions, please PM or review and I will try to get back to you. I love getting reviews and learning about what you all think. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW! I am re uploading this because the site keeps cutting words out of my story after I post it. Its not letting me say Grey
Chapter 7: Check Mate
She continues to walk towards our table as is still frozen in watching her come in our direction. Is he ok? " Grey?"
" Grey?" he reverts his eyes back to me briefly. His jaw is still very tight and the tension is rolling off of him in waves. Who is this woman?
"Christian?" When I call him by his first name he looks at me for a second time and his gaze softens and his shoulders relax.
"Are you ok?" he clears his throat and nods at me before saying "Yes I am fine thank you Anastasia." After he says this, whatever personal progress that we were able to achieve is now thrown out of the window because his hard and ridged demeanor is back and gone is slightly playful Christian.
"Christian darling, I called your office to see if we could meet up for lunch today and Andrea told me that you would be her" she purrs at him without even acknowledging my presence RUDE!
"Hello Elena." He says to her shortly "I am here on business with Anastasia" he says while gesturing towards me for her to actually acknowledge me. "Ana this is a close friend of mine, and Elena this is Anastasia. She is one of my new interns from a project that I am doing." He says while looking at me from what I can detect is pride? Are you proud of ? Well I am proud of me too and we can celebrate that later because this woman is rude and that needs addressing.
She finally removes her gaze from him to actually look me in the eye. Finally bitch
"Well hello Anastasia, it's interesting to meet you." She says very flatly. Interesting?! Seriously? That's the nicest thing that you could possibly come up with?
"Yes, yes it is" I say while glaring at her over the rim up my mug. GAME ON LADY!
"Do you mind if I join you both?" She says while returning her attention back to him. I don't know why… but it feels like she is looking at him as if he was what is on the menu for dinner… if you know what I mean. Christian speaks up before I do by same
"I am not sure about that Elena" he says while pronouncing her name harshly. YES! Please leave
"Well certainly it's nothing that I probably would not find out about anyway. We do spend a lot of time together Christian" She says as she puts her hands on his shoulders. As soon as her hands make contact with his shoulder his eyes pop out and reach to mine with a pained and panicked expression. That's it the gloves are coming off. He clearly does not want her hear and she's making him uncomfortable.
"I understand that Ms. Lincoln, seeing how Christian and I will be spending lots of time together" I replied in a snappy tone, and with much emphasis on the "lots" and "much". Clearly I struck a nerve due the shocked and slightly offended look that is plastered all over her artificially sculpted face.
Check mate bitch
"Christian huh? Seems like you two are pretty close aren't you Anastasia" did she intended for my name to sound like an explosive?
Christian lets out a sigh before interrupting our verbal cat fight by saying "Elena." I stop him right before the next word comes of his mouth to answer the she-things question by saying "Oh, Ms. Lincoln Christian and I might not be yet, but we will be" Cut the shit lady, you don't want to go there with me
"Well it seems like Anastasia here does not like me being here. I won't stay where I not wanted." Yep. My name definitely sounded like an explosive she says before giving his shoulders one last squeeze and attempts to sashay her nasty and saggy ass out of the café. That woman is utterly repulsive! She made him look so uncomfortable! For some reason that I myself cannot even explain; I am protective of him. It's very strange to see sides to him other than the control freak master of the universe that is Christian Grey. To see him look slightly afraid or uncomfortable bothered me. I am honestly seething.
"You are your smart mouth Anastasia" he says while smirking and reaching for his coffee. Welp, the master of the universe has re-entered the building everyone!
"That woman is a 'friend' and I am using the term woman loosely. She is like 40 to 50 years old or something. How did you meet her?" I feel kind of bad for the guy because I can only imagine what my facial expression looks like.
He takes a sip of his coffee before replying "She's a friend of my mothers. She's known me since I was young and she actually helped me start my business." He says with a somewhat sad expression. Why is he looking at me like that?
"Interesting"
"I'm surprised that you are not talking about the fact that you gotten the internship for my company. You were rather eager before" he says while unwrapping the blueberry muffin that he purchased earlier and then takes a bite. How is it possible that even the way that he chews is sexy?!
"Well it was rather difficult to get excited about it when the She-Thing came over here and start shooting daggers at me."
"As always, that's an interesting observation Anastasia"
"Why do you call me Anastasia? Why don't you just call me Ana? No one actually calls me by my full name."
"Really? I think that Anastasia is a beautiful name." Ahhh! My subconscious is doing he happy dance. Go Ana! It's your birthday!
"Well thank you Christian, that is nice of you to say but you can still just call me Ana." I say to him as I lower my gaze to the fingers twirling around on my lap because I know that my face must be on fire right now.
"You do realize that now that I am your boss you can no longer call me Christian right?" Oh C'mon
"And why is that?"
"Simple, professionalism."
"I can still be professional and respect you and still call you Christian"
"Yes but like I told you; only my close friends and family call me Christian."
"Well now I am a part of the GEH family, and I would think it's safe to say that we are friends" I reply in a sassy tone while sipping more of my tea.
"Really?" he says while raising his eyebrow at me.
"Yep" I reply giving him a curt nod.
"I don't have many friends Anastasia"
"Well, not you have one more" I say while smiling brightly at him.
"I guess I do, but let's get back to GEH so that we get you started with your contract." He says while looking at me with this strange expression that makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. He gets both our trash and sets them on the tray to then walk over to a nearby trashcan and dispose of everything. I look over to the seat that he previously occupied and realized that he has left his suit jacket and I get a whiff of his intoxicating smell of fresh linen, cologne, and Christian; and walk over to him and reluctantly give him back the top piece of his suit. Our hands graze each other's briefly and the well-known electricity between us is back. We comfortably continue to look at each other hoping to find what the other is thinking when my phones ringtone disturbs our steady gaze. I break my eye contact with him and I hear him sigh. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him rake his fingers through his short copper locks. When I get my cellphone out of the confines of my purse and look at the screen I see that it's Logan calling me. Here we go
I answer the phone saying "Hey babe, what's up?" I see Christians eyes snap up to mine when he realizes who is on the other line and immediately his facial expression hardens.
"Where are you? I was going to try and take you out for lunch." At least he is trying to make up for his behavior recently. We've both been kind of distant lately. After that night I've been very skeptical about our relationship and what had been going on."
"Oh, babe I wish you would have told me earlier. I just went to the café with Christian."
"Christian? Who's that?" he says in questioning kind of tone
"Oh yeah, umm, that's Mister Grey. His first name is Christian"
"Oh." He says in a shocked tone "How was the café?" I am still making eye contact with Christian and mouths "We should get going Ms. Steele." Oh boy. Now we are back to the whole "Ms. Steele" thing again. I nod my head ant him and follow him out of the café while responding back to Logan "It was pretty good actually. You are now speaking to one of the six interns for Grey Enterprises and Holdings" I say enthusiastically.
"Ana! That's great! When do you start working?"
"I don't know yet, we haven't gone over the logistics yet."
"Oh, Ok well it's a Friday. Maybe we should go out and socialize and celebrate tonight?"
"Yeah that would be great! We need more time together… you've been so busy lately"
"Well, I will let you go and get everything taken care of. I will call you later and let you know what time we are going to go out. I love you and I'm proud of you baby"
"Thank you, and I'm looking forward to tonight. I love you too"
"Bye baby."
"Bye." I hang up the phone and finally look back at Christian and his eyes are glued completely forwards in the direction of GEH.
"That was your boyfriend I am assuming." He says sharply
"Seeing how I said I love you and called the person babe. I would assume so because I don't cheat."
Even though you have dirty thoughts about Christian while you have a boyfriend, my subconscious points out. Yeah I know, but I don't act on them! He's just attractive and I just point out the fact openly and frequently that he is indeed attractive. But you probably would jump his bones if you could, she snaps back at me. Well who the hell wouldn't? But it doesn't matter because I can control myself and the moment that I feel like I cannot; then I will remove myself from the situation. If you say so yourself she replies. My internal debated is interrupted by him saying "Well, I did not mean to offend you but I thought that friends could ask private questions?" he says sarcastically before entering the doors of GEH and heading straight towards the elevators on the left and side. I don't even bother to reply to his statement in the middle of the GEH lobby. There are people in business suits all throughout the lobby rushing through their days work. When we are finally in the elevator, I attempt to answer his question by saying.
"Well, there is no much that you give away so I did not think that asking personal questions were on the table yet"
"Well that's why I told you that I don't have many friends. I am not the kind of friend that you are looking for Anastasia." Why does he always do that? He just switches the circumstances so that the odds are always in his favor.
"Don't I get any say in that?" I snap back at him. Before he can even respond to me, the ding that alerts us of our arrival sounds and puts a pause on our conversation.