Ana was texting Kate for most of breakfast, using her connections to check that nowhere had managed to get a shot of her face. She was anxious enough to have her lip between her teeth for most of breakfast which was a detail that Christian noticed for two unrelated reasons. One was that while she was doing it she was clearly not eating which forced him to resist the urge to lecture her – he did make a mental note to call her out for being a hypocrite the next time she scolded him for skipping lunch because he was too busy. The other reason, the one he was trying not to allow to be a conscious thought in his mind, was that she looked incredibly pretty when she did it, and watching her was killing him.

"Everything seems okay." Ana announced after a while, setting her phone on the table, the movement causing the shoulder of her top to slip down her arm. "Kate said they just might get a little more vicious now." She sounded so nervous at that it immediately ignited an Alpha male desire in him to protect her which he was sure she wouldn't appreciate.

"I won't let that happen." He assured her. She looked dubious but he was already thinking of what he could do to stop them going near her again. He'd devote the entire morning to it if he had to. "Now will you please eat something?" he asked her. She rolled her eyes and looked reluctantly at the croissant on the plate in front of her. She tore the smallest piece off possible and swallowed it slowly like she was worried it was poisoned. "Really, Ana?"

"Sorry, I just hate eating the second I get up, and I still have residual nerves that my Dad did see something and he's just worried about asking about it. Besides, croissants are too buttery and the taste of butter makes me feel nauseous."

"Are you always this picky when it comes to what you eat? Should I call my mother and warn her that you eat like a child?" Part of him was teasing her, part of him was genuinely concerned. She pulled a face at him.

Ana had mentioned to him once that her morning routine was to drink a cup of tea before she went to work and that usually instead of making something to eat for breakfast she listened to soft music and tried not to fall asleep at the kitchen counter. He had voiced at the time that music was not a suitable substitute for actual food but she'd just laughed at him instead of taking the advice seriously as he had intended for her to.

"I'll eat whatever you Mom makes obviously – well, I will unless it has raisins in it."

"You need to look after yourself."

"I do. I'm an adult, remember, I've kept myself alive so far." She didn't sound as annoyed as he thought she would that he was worrying about her. "I know why you're being like this, it's because the pictures bothered you and you don't want to let on that you're worried." She was incredibly accurate with her deduction. She knew him too well. "And because it comes out of genuine concern for me I will not only not get annoyed at you for lecturing me but also I'll eat this." She grabbed a pomegranate out of the fruit bowl on the centre of the counter and sliced it in half. "On the condition that you never lecture me about food again. You're the opposite of my mother, at home whenever I used to go into the kitchen – literally it could be the first time I'd eaten all day – and she'd just smile and ask 'are you sure you need to eat that Ana'? Just one of the many ways she liked to torment me." She pressed her lips together in a way that he'd learnt over the years was her indication that she'd said too much, like she was physically shutting her mouth so nothing else could escape. It was also how he knew not to say anything after; she wanted no more conversation on the subject. "We might need to make it a take-out breakfast anyway, I don't want to be too late into the office in case people see us coming in together."

"Are you ashamed of me?" he asked in a mock-offended tone. She laughed.

"I think if either of us was going to be ashamed of the other, it would be you being ashamed of me being as I fall over something most days and sometimes accidentally lie about having children. Which, speaking of, remember you're meeting Melissa today at ten."

"Melissa's the one who thinks you have children?" Christian asked in disbelief. Melissa was the head of his accounts department who he regularly met with to discuss new businesses he wanted to buy or how well those he had bought were doing financially. "I assumed this was just someone who you saw every few months, not someone who comes in once a week?"

"I don't want to talk about it!" Ana exclaimed, shaking her head. "I have to think enough about it when I get into work, I'll spend most of the morning worrying about it." He was trying very hard not to laugh at her and refrained from reminding her that it was her own fault and any normal person would have just said they misspoke rather than creating an entire alternative life. "Still, I suppose this lie takes away from me stressing out about meeting your parents tomorrow." He was glad she could take her mind off that even if it involved revising tales of her other lie so she didn't get caught out.

He only noticed once they were in his car that she wasn't really dressed for work – she'd pulled together the red skirt from her fake Halloween outfit and a tank top and hardly looked dressed for the office. He voiced this concern to her which she brushed off easily enough.

"I'll just change when I get there." she said nonchalantly. Christian frowned.

"You keep clothes at the office?" he asked, genuinely curious. Ana's face paled a little and she pressed her lips together. He looked at her scrutinising, wondering what she was trying not to tell him this time. She fidgeted in her seat uncomfortably.

"Oh you know, in case I spill something. I spill things on myself all the time." Christian didn't doubt that but he did question it as to the reason. He said nothing more, determined to find out what she was hiding when they got to the office.

When they got up to their floor Ana made a beeline to sit at her desk, obviously waiting for him to go into his office which he didn't. He looked at her expectantly.

"I thought you were changing?"

"Fine!" she exclaimed, clearly irritated he'd remembered though he had no idea for the life of him why she was acting so oddly, he was determined to find out. She took a key out of her desk and used it to unlock the door behind the desk. Ana opened the door the smallest amount she could which instantly aroused his suspicion even more before he caught a glimpse of what was inside when she switched the light on and pushed the door open to see for himself what she was hiding.

"Ana, what the fuck is this?" he asked with a furrowed brow. At least she had the decency to look embarrassed by it, nibbling on her thumbnail awkwardly as he gawped at the sight in front of him. The room had stored a huge photocopier and rows of filing cabinets when he'd bought the building and been empty for year after they'd switched to smaller models. He'd assumed Ana used it for filing like his last personal assistant had. Instead the room was stuffed full of a ridiculous amount of objects including rails of clothes and a variety of handbags as well as other objects he was sure she could have no purpose for. "Is that a cello?"

"A few months after I started working here Kate and I started running out of space in the apartment and I happened to mention this room existed and she asked if I could store some stuff here. The filing cabinets had just been taken out so I knew no-one would need it. It just sort of spiralled from there."

"Why do you have a cello?"

"Well it's Kate's actually, not mine, she used to play it when she lived at home with her parents but there's not really room for it now, she took up the violin instead but she didn't want to give it away."

"There's more stuff in here than your actual apartment." She looked at him with innocently wide bright blue eyes.

"I'm sorry, I know you're angry with me, I promise I'll move it all, it just got a bit out of hand. I didn't realise how much stuff there was until now, I just sort of kept bringing it when Kate asked and we were always going to move somewhere bigger and we never did and so it all just stayed here. Please don't be annoyed."

"I'm not angry… I just can't believe you never told me."

He wasn't angry. He had been in the first few seconds but after that he was just surprised and truthfully more than a little amused. Who cared about the repurposing of one room in a building with hundreds? There must have been more than a few empty and he expected Ana wasn't the only one of his employees who had taken advantage of one, although he doubted very many of them used it as storage for a cello and other large things. No, he was more surprised because he'd just realised how at odds him being friends with her and him being her boss were. If Ana was purely a friend he expected she would have told him a long time ago – but he was her boss and so certain things had to be kept secret from him.

The thought of working every day without Ana was a bleak one but he valued her a lot more as a genuine friend than just someone who would make the workday more bearable. He just had to work out what to do about it. He couldn't fire her; even if she burnt the building down he'd have a hard time looking into her eyes and telling her to leave. He just needed to find her a better option…

"I promise I'll move it all." Ana said, snapping him out of his train of thought.

"And put it where?" he queried. She looked thoughtful for a minute and then slightly defeated when she obviously came up blank. "You can keep it here, you are after all owed eternal favours from me. Just don't tell anyone else."

"Really?" she smiled brightly. Jesus, why was that affecting him so much at the moment? Today and yesterday all the times she'd smiled at him had just about melted him, leaving him wondering what to do so she'd do it again. He was getting a bit overinvested in making her happy.

"Yes, really. Now get changed and start revising your fake children."

When he got into his office Christian ran his hands back through his hair before he sat his head in his hands, trying to muffle the audible groan he emitted with them. Two weeks ago if he'd found out about that, even from Ana, he would have been furious that she hadn't at least asked if it was okay. Now it was just another quirky thing Ana was doing that he found endearing. He blamed her eyes – they were hypnotic and betrayed every emotion she was feeling instantly. He just couldn't look at her being sad anymore, he felt in like he was being punched in the chest when she was.

"Pull yourself together." he whispered to himself, shaking his head trying to snap himself out of it. It didn't work. He was consumed by thoughts of dancing with her last night, the covertly flirtatious tone he wondered if she even picked up that he was using sometimes that he only caught himself using in the middle of a sentence, that fucking kiss she'd given him yesterday that he was supposed to pretend didn't matter… Ana certainly hadn't given any indication that it had the same effect on her that it had on him, she just looked mortified it happened and presumably pushed it out of her mind. The worst part was that they only person he couldn't speak about it to was the one person he wanted to.

He must have spent an hour just sitting there telling himself he didn't have feelings for her because she rang to tell him Melissa was there and she'd brought her kids again. He could hear the strain in her voice and tried not to laugh at her predicament. He gave her a smile when he went out to greet Melissa, she already looked frazzled and he decided that instead of the usual half an hour meeting he had with her he'd pad it out with questions both professional and personal – Melissa was good at her job but if talking was an Olympic sport she'd be a gold medallist. He'd forgiven Ana for the storage room mostly but she deserved a little reminder not to do it again, he thought. They'd overrun by about forty-five minutes when she eventually remembered Ana and her children and hurried out.

"Hope they didn't give you too much trouble!" Melissa said half-sympathetically. "But you know what it's like! At least you've only got two!" Ana nodded, seemingly too exhausted by their presence to answer with a real sentence.

"Was that payback for the closest?" Ana asked, nodding behind her. He wasn't sure it could quite be called a closet given how much stuff was in there but he let it go. He grinned at her and shrugged his shoulders.

"We just had a lot to talk about." he lied. Ana glared at him, reading straight away that he wasn't telling the truth.

He didn't allow himself to spend the rest of the day moping about her – he was probably just reading thing that weren't there because they'd spent a lot of time together recently, that would be what this was. He didn't even think about it that evening when his apartment felt so much emptier than it had when she'd been there that morning, and the next day he was too busy worrying about her meeting his mother to think about anything else which was for the best. The only moment he remembered what he was trying hard to forget was when he exited his office at one point and saw her cradling her face with one hand, reading something thoughtfully, tapping the finger wearing the engagement ring against her cheek and he forgot for a second that she was only wearing it to play a part.

The evening rolled around quickly; they'd agreed to go straight from work.

"Ana?" Christian called out as he exited his office, not seeing her at the desk or around anywhere. He was sure he'd heard her out here talking just a few minutes ago and she couldn't possibly have forgotten that she was meant to be leaving with him, right? God, had she been scared being so close to actually doing it that she'd taken off and gone home? He had his phone in his hand so he found her number quickly and rang it, surprised when the muffled sound of her ringtone (Teenage Kicks by The Undertones, not what he'd expected at all) came from inside her 'closet'. He pushed the door open and found her sitting on the floor with tears rolling down her cheeks. Instantly without even asking what was wrong he sat next to her and put an arm around her.

"Tell me what's wrong?" he asked her softly.

"It's my mom. As always, playing the victim, this time because I won't go to her wedding." Ana sighed and he pulled her a little closer like he was trying to protect her from an invisible force. "She called me a 'fucking robot with no emotions' which is what she used to say when I lived with her and it just all came back and I needed a minute." She'd stopped crying now but she looked on the verge of breaking again.

"What can I do?"

"I think I need to let it out… There's something I didn't think I'd ever say. If I just tell you everything can it not leave this room? I don't mean like, in terms of you never mentioning it again, just don't tell anyone else."

"Of course I wouldn't." Christian was a little horrified that she even needed to ask, although it was likely just for peace of mind rather than because she actually believed he was going to gossip about it, at least he hoped so. Ana took a deep breath before she launched into her tale.

"My Mom married my step-dad when I was only a year old. He was always like my real dad, always my favourite parent over her. When I was nearly six, she left him for this other guy she'd been seeing. We all lived in Maine at the time and she was moving with him to Arizona. She wanted me to go with her but I kicked up a big fuss about being taken away from my dad and in the end she let me stay because this new guy she was marrying didn't like kids that much anyway.

"I spent a couple of weeks every summer with her. She didn't like having me particularly and I didn't like being there. I remember commenting once when I was eleven maybe that I didn't like that she had a different husband every time I went and her slapping me and making me lie to my dad that I'd fallen over and caused this magically handprint shaped mark to appear on my face. So when I was fourteen she demanded I spent a month with her and she'd just got married another time so I said to my dad I wasn't going anymore. He said it was my decision because he knew how much I hated being there and called her up that night. He said that maybe she should get to know me a bit more before expecting me to spend so much time with her and invited her to come and see us which she did but so she could take him to court and demand that I come and live with her.

"She's good at manipulation. She had this jury eating out of her palm, the new husband was rich so he'd paid for a good lawyer, dad never stood a chance. The day she cried on the stand I started packing because I knew she was going to win – and she did. I was carted off to Florida about a week later.

"I didn't even complain, I just shut off completely. The only time I showed any emotion was when ray called and even then I held it together because I didn't want him to feel guilty that I had to be there. She hated that; I think she wanted me to kick and scream so she could kid herself I was a terrible child and she had a real reason to hate me. After I'd been there about a year and a half she banned me from calling Ray, trying to incite some rage I think. I managed a few months only speaking to him when he rang but this one time he said 'you never call anymore, Annie, do you not like speaking to me' and it just killed me, all these emotions I'd shut out just came in like a dam burst and suddenly before I knew what I was doing I was in the bathroom swallowing pills. I didn't want to die, nothing so dramatic, I just needed to shut off for a few minutes and get back to a place where I could deal with things.

"I was only unconscious a couple of minutes before she found me. She didn't even go to the hospital with me, just sent me off in the ambulance and gave Ray a message I was to go back and live with him again because she didn't want a 'problem child'. I was happier pretty much instantly but I never forgot that she'd done that to me. She just uses it like a weapon now, like she was the victim somehow. It just gets a bit overwhelming to remember how unhappy I was, that she's the one who made me feel like that. She's my mother, she was supposed to look after me."

"I'm so sorry you went through that." Christian said genuinely, at a loss for anything else to say. He took her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "We have shitty, abusive mothers in common." She was opening her mouth to argue her mother wasn't abusive, he could feel it and shook his head to silence her before she'd begun. "I know you don't see it as abuse, but Ana, anyone who treats their child that was is emotionally abusive. She still is, clearly, since she rings you up and tries to make you feel guilty about her not being a part of your life."

"I know." She looked up at him and forced a smile for a second before her face turned to one of confusion. "You said we have it in common?"

"Not Grace, if that's what you're thinking. I probably should have mentioned it to you before, I don't really think of it as something to tell people – I'm adopted. I'll tell you about my birth mother at some point." He actually meant it. The only reason he wasn't telling her that second was because he didn't want her worrying about him when she should be concentrating on forgetting her awful mother and feeling better.

"Speaking of, we're going to be late if we keep sitting here." Ana said as she got up. Christian noticed she'd changed into a purple dress. "Let me just run to the bathroom and fix my makeup." He didn't know how she managed to go from heartbreakingly upset one second to fine by all appearances the next. She'd probably had a lot of practice over the years if that was what her mother was like.

"Take your time, I'll text and say we hit traffic, she's so excited to meet you that I don't think she'd mind if we arrived tomorrow, let alone a few minutes late."

"I don't care, it's not polite!"

She only spent about five minutes fixing her appearance, during which time he was imagining all the ways he could force Ana's mother to leave her alone forever so she was never upset by her again.

"I'm quite looking forward to this, actually." Ana admitted as they exited the building together. "After all that, it feels like a nice thing to be doing. I hope I can get your mother to show me your childhood pictures." He knew she was teasing but also that there was a significant chance that Grace would break out the family photo albums and coo proudly over him as a child while he tried not to die of embarrassment. "Also music shotgun."

"What's music shotgun?"

"Just means I get to pick all the music."

"You definitely just made that up." Ana huffed indignantly but didn't argue. Still, he wanted her to be cheered up and if that meant listening to Lua by Bright Eyes on repeat for the entire journey then he was willing to be accommodating.