Another chapter up tonight =] Whoooooooo!
So there is only about Four more chapters until this story is at it's end and that makes me extremely sad. But good news is I have another story in mind but I don't know if I should make it a Ana and Christian story or a twilight story.
If you guys have any idea what one I should pick let me know in the reviews. So until next time, enjoy and don't forget to let me know what you think.
Chapter Twenty One:
Christian strode into Ana's bedroom. She was standing very still, a slim, wary figure in a gold embroidered dress that fit her like a glove. Tiny sparks of green shot from her earlobes and wrist.
"Sorry I'm late, are you ready?" He said abruptly.
He looked formidably elegant in his tux, yet untamed as the panther Ana had once compared him to. Neither had he, in her opinion, sounded overly sorry. She said with formal exactitude.
"Thank you for the emeralds."
"No worry, You're not wearing the pendent." he said, his touch of sarcasm grating on her nerves.
"I couldn't do up the clasp."
Christian looked at her in silence. Damage control, he thought. Keep your distance.
She hadn't taken a single step toward him so his strategy was working. Now all he had to do was maintain it. Easy enough when he was in Manhattan and she was alone.
Not so easy face to face with her, when she looked delicious enough to eat and was stationed scarcely two feet away from a very wide bed.
Clumsily for him, Christian lifted the pendant from it's velvet bed, he had beds on the brain, he thought savagely and looped it around her neck. As she bent her nape, his fingers brushed her skin. A shiver rippled through her. His jaw tightened. Fumbling with the small gold clasp, he fastened it and stepped back.
"I'm ready." she said.
Her spine was ramrod straight. Knowing her better than to touch her, for if he did he'd be lost.
"We should go. It's a ten mile drive." Christian said, "You're not a horse going to the glue factory, Ana you're a beautiful women going to a high society shindig that lots of people would give their eyeteeth to attend." He added.
"I'm not lots of people," she said crisply, and draped her gold shawl around her shoulders.
Yet another Maserati, a black one this time, she noticed was parked outside waiting for them. Christian turned on the radio, effectively drowning out conversation, and Taylor drove fast along the dark, winding highway. Fast enough that she didn't want to look out the window.
As the shadowed fields and black silhouettes of trees flashed by, the pride that had sustained Ana through years of unfulfilled jobs and mean lodgings came to her rescue. Be damned if she'd beg for Christians attention, or fall all over him because he'd given her a few pretty green baubles. Let his other women do that. She wasn't going to.
But her nerves, she knew were stretched to the breaking point and as Taylor drive along an alley of live oaks toward a mansion whose every window gleamed with light, they tightened another notch.
If she could sleep wrapped in cardboard, she could face a roomful of strangers. Taylor pulled up by the wide arch of steps and turned off that ignition.
Christian turned to her and drank her in.
"I'll stick with you and if they play the rumba, I'll make sure no one else asks you to dance." he said.
"Too bad I have such a limited repertoire," she said, her green eyes flashing she was spoiling for a fight. "I can always find a powder room, I'm sure you will find someone else to dance with you."
"I'm sure I could," He grated, got out of the car and opened her door.
They climbed the steps side by side, between an array of antique pots full of scented camellias, and were ushered in the massive oak door by a uniformed butler. A middle aged couple bustled toward them, the women plump in yellow cummerbund.
"Christian darling," the women exclaimed. "And this must me Carrick's grand daughter. You have his eyes, honey. Wasted on a man. I always said. I'm Mia Alden, and this is my husband, Chuck," she leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
As they passed out of ear shot, Christian said softly, "Mia wears a different satin every year with her hair to match, and she'd got the kindest heart in the south. Ah...now this couple, they'll give you the third degree."
A couple as disapproving as the ancestral portraits at Grey Acres was walking towards them, the women's thin lips coated with what was no doubt Dior lipstick. Ana tensed, then soon discovered she'd scarcely needed to. With a skill she had to admire, Christian fielded questions that were more than pointed and observations that verged on bitchy. Then he whisked her away to meet a white maned senator who'd gone to college with Carrick.
One by one, the expensively dressed guests paraded past her.
She waltzed with Christian, and with the senator and gradually she relaxed. She couldn't fault Christian behavior, he was taking every measure he could to make sure that she enjoyed herself, and his physical closeness as they danced together set her heart singing. As they filled their plates at a buffet so colorful, so enticing that she forgot everything in pure delight, she heard herself laughing and chatting as though she'd been attending society functions all her life.
Her past was another world.
Where had that thought come from? Ana shoved it away as she helped herself to tiny rolls of puff pastry stuffed with shrimp and avocado.
The contrast between this world and her past was too cruel.
She took another drink of champagne, bubbles tickled her nostrils. After they had eaten, Christian led her onto the dance floor again, his steel hard muscles under his formal jacket brought a flush to her cheeks, a liquid grace to her movements. Eyes shining, lips parted, she abandoned herself to the sheer pleasure of being in his arms.
But then the band struck up a Latin rhythm, catchy and sensual.
"The powder room, I'll be back in a minute." she said smiling up at him.
"I'll keep an eye out for you." he said
It wasn't the moment to remember how, at dawn two mornings ago, those same eyes had roamed from the rosy tips of her breasts to her writhing hips, his big body hovering over her.
"Won't be long." she mumbled blushing.
The powder room wouldn't have been out of place in a Grey hotel, for it boasted gold framed mirrors, fragrant bouquets of freesias, and a luxurious array of creams, soaps and linen hand towels. Trying not to gape, Ana discovered a small sitting room off the bathroom, wallpapered in the same heavy brocade, and tucked herself in one corner. Easing off her sandals, she decided to repair her lipstick and take some breathing space before she went back to the ballroom.
The outside door opened.
"Carrick's grand daughter is a pretty little thing." a well bred voice said languidly.
Ana froze in her seat.
"The gal's a raving beauty. Head over heels in love with Christian, of course." a younger voice replied.
"Naive of her to be so obvious about it, someone should warn her. Won't be any wedding bells in that direction." the languid voice replied.
"If I was twenty years younger and forty pound lighter, I'd be in love with him too." the younger one sighed.
"Wont get you anywhere, darling. Christian isn't the marrying. Pity all those lovely girls he has had."
"You remember Elena, the bitch? She's here with her latest man. She had an affair with him a year or so ago and he called all the shots."
"Guess that is how you end up with a billionaire...shall we go back? What do you think of Mia's hair?"
"Waiting for the year she chooses blue satin." one girl laughed.
"Darling really..."
The door closed behind them. Ana let out her pent up breath, deeply thankful they hadn't checked out the sitting room. With some difficulty, because he fingers were trembling, she did up her gold shoes.
"I'm in love with Christian, Head over heels in love with him." she thought to herself.
What was she going to do?