I do not own these characters. All rights go to E.L. James.
"Falling For You"
Chapter 25 – Hurricane…Ana!
Her fury came too late to be of much good against Christian's attack.
Ana drove through the pouring rain, her wipers angrily scraping dirty water off the car's windshield. She didn't know who deserved her anger more, Christian or herself.
In a moment of passion, he had said he loved her, and she had wanted it to be true so much that deep down she'd let herself believe it. But he couldn't love her. He couldn't even know her at all if he really believed the awful things he had accused her of doing. Even worse, she hadn't fought back, hadn't stood up for herself, out of some stupid sense of false pride. Now, she'd lost everything…her job, any hope of a relationship with Christian, and her self-respect.
This time, though, she wasn't going to take it lying down.
She glanced over at the cashier's check sitting on the passenger seat of her car. She didn't know how the money had ended up in her account, but she knew from past experience it wasn't particularly difficult for someone to make false deposits into a bank account. After all, how many people would complain at finding an extra ten million dollars to their name?
Her stomach grumbled reminding her she had missed lunch in her haste to get the stolen royalty money back to Grey Records.
Someone was obviously setting her up again, undoubtedly the same person who had broken into her house last night. The officer had been very helpful, but since nothing appeared to be missing, all he had done was advise her to get her locks changed and remind her to set her alarm whenever she left home.
But that wasn't enough for her.
She was not going to sit back and let this person, whoever it was, ruin her life. She had tried that with the Portland Inkwater disaster, had let Jack tar her with a guilt that wasn't hers. She'd lost a job she liked and friends she'd worked with because they were uncomfortable around her after she'd been fired. She had been willing to shoulder some of the blame for being too trusting. Perhaps it had been wrong to offer help so easily to someone she thought was a friend, but in retrospect, she wondered if she had given in to Inkwater's board of directors too easily. After all, they had trusted Jack, too. They'd hired him and put him in a position of responsibility, and she'd taken the blame when he abused their trust.
Ana pounded a fist on her steering wheel as she stopped behind a car at a red light. She was not going to just lie down and let them bury her alive this time. She was going to prove to Christian that she was not someone to be pitied. She was not the spineless crook he believed she was. She'd make him eat his words if it was the last thing she did.
Before she was through, Christian Grey was going to be begging for her forgiveness.
She'd make him walk through crushed glass. On his knees. Carrying her. Wearing a pink dress. Him, not her.
Oh, this was getting good.
Lost in her elaborate revenge fantasies, Ana automatically stepped on the accelerator as the light turned green. She sped down Queen Anne Avenue toward the Grey Records office, her car splashing through puddles of water as the rain continued to pour down.
~ ~ O ~ ~ O ~ ~
The sardine can of a car he was driving sputtered a gasping death rattle two blocks from his office.
It had been so long since he'd had car trouble that Christian simply sat in the driver's seat, staring at the dashboard without a clue what to do next. There were no red indicator lights flashing, no signs as to what might be the problem. The heavy noontime rain splattered on the windshield, blurring his view of the outside world as he sat unmoving in the creaky vinyl interior of the car.
The rude noise of a horn behind him snapped Christian out of his stupor. He hit the emergency lights and looked around for his cell phone to call for assistance.
Where was the damn phone?
Christian frowned; trying to recall the last place he'd seen it. He usually left it in his car. Yes, of course. He'd left it in his car, which was in the shop, which was why he was driving around in this piece of crap in the first place. Laying his head on the steering wheel, Christian ignored the irritated glares of the other drivers as they made their way past him.
After his run-in with Ana that morning, he'd wanted to get away from the office for a while. Knowing Welch would appreciate the company, he'd gone to the hospital to have lunch with his friend. The sadness in Welch's eyes almost made Christian glad he'd found out the truth about Ana. It reminded him that you left yourself open to pain and anguish when you started caring about someone else. In the end, it was better to depend only on yourself for happiness, he decided, raising his head. He'd learned early that you couldn't control the behavior of other people. All you could do was take charge of your own actions and make sure you protected yourself from hurt and humiliation. From what he knew of Ana, the word "control" wasn't even in her vocabulary. "Impetuous," "trouble," "disaster"…yes, those were words she'd know quite well, but not "restraint" or "control."
Shaking his head, Christian looked up and down the busy road; searching for a convenient place he could push the car so it would be out of the way of traffic. He spied a parking lot a few feet away. Grabbing the keys from the ignition, Christian pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain. His hair was immediately plastered to his head by the downpour and Christian cursed the uncommonly heavy shower. Why couldn't it just drizzle like it usually did? Day after day of dripping gray skies was the norm in Seattle, not this deluge. Some people said they could go a full year without moving their windshield wipers off the intermittent setting, but a day like this would ruin that claim.
It only took a moment to push the tiny car into the parking lot and out of traffic. He vowed to have it towed before the day was out, then started toward the office. He tried to ignore the cold trickle of water down his spine. Seeing the office ahead, he picked up his pace. After his…what would he call it? Discussion? Episode? Debacle?...well, whatever it was, he'd needed to clear his mind of the sight and scent of Ana Steele. It was probably only his imagination, but his office had seemed to reek with the smell of hot sex, even after Ana had left.
That smell, coupled with an alien feeling he couldn't define, had driven him out into the rain and across town to visit Welch. But now, he needed to get back, needed to develop a strategy for how to deal with the Ana situation. He should probably call Emaron Kavanagh at KMS just to let him know what was going on. Christian didn't need any surprises getting in the way of the satellite deal he'd worked so hard on over the past year.
He stopped at the final intersection before the office, waiting for the "Don't Walk" sign to change. Idly, he wondered why the walk signs flashed white instead of green like the traffic signals.
The light changed, and Christian took a step toward the crosswalk.
Lost in thought, his head snapped up as a wave of cold water splashed waist-high, splattering mud halfway up his chest.
"Damn it, look where you're…" He broke off mid yell as he watched the taillights of a blue Chevy Chavelle speed off and turn into the parking lot of Grey Records.
"Ana!" he shouted after the disappearing vehicle.
~ ~ O ~ ~ O ~ ~
Ana thought she heard someone calling her name as she turned off her wipers and pulled into one of the coveted visitor spots near the front entrance of Grey Records. Then she figured no one would be walking around out in this mess. She had to be imagining things.
"You fired me, so I guess I'm a visitor now," she muttered, as she gathered her purse and the cashier's check from the passenger seat.
She slammed her car door a little harder than was necessary and sprinted to the heavy glass doors of the office building and up the stairs to the fourth floor. The elevator would probably have been faster, but the pounding of her heels made a satisfactory clomping sound on the stairs. She imagined she was stomping on Christian's head instead of the solid concrete stairs. The thought made her feel better.
She arrived to the outer door to Christian's lobby area and easily swung it open.
"Where is he?" she asked a startled Andrea, who looked to be enjoying a cup of soup at her desk.
"Hi, Ana. He's not here right now. Can I give him a message?"
"Sure, how's your right hook?"
"Pardon me?"
"Never mind," Ana said. "I need to give him this check. Can I borrow a piece of paper? I'd like to leave a note."
"Sure." Andrea ripped a yellow sheet off the pad in front of her. Ana bent over and started to write a note to Christian as Andrea continued, "Listen Ana, I was really sorry to hear about…" Her voice floundered, then finished, "Well, about everything."
"Thanks, Andrea. I'm going to…"Ana began, then squealed when the door swung open, smacking her rear end and sending her sprawling over Andrea's desk. Chicken noodle soup went flying, ending up all over the front of Andrea's dress.
Andrea leaped to her feet. "Oh, no. This is my favorite dress!"
"I'm so sorry," Ana sputtered, pushing herself up from her ignominious sprawl on top of the desk. She turned to see who had pushed open the door forcefully enough to send her flying, then glared at the culprit.
"Christian, this is your entire fault. You can't just go around shoving doors open in other people's, err, faces," she scolded, her hands on her hips. "Look what you made me do. Don't worry, Andrea, Christian will pick up the dry cleaning tab."
Christian stood in the doorway, dripping rain and mud onto the clean carpet. He tried to summon up the righteous anger he'd felt only moments before, before he'd opened the door to see Ana's firm, bare legs topped by her curvy, tight bottom bent over his PA's desk. He'd wanted her all over again, wanted to run his hands up the outside of her thighs, pull her panties aside and slip inside her, right there, right then, and to hell with the audience.
What was happening to him? Where was the control that he worked so hard to maintain? He knew Ana was a walking disaster, but still, he wanted her. What was wrong with him?
Ana glared at him, her powder blue eyes bright with anger as she stood there, her hands on her hips like an outraged sex goddess. At that moment, he didn't care what she had or hadn't done to him or Kate or anyone else.
He wanted to bury his hands in her hair and kiss her until the rest of the world just melted away.
She said something and held out a piece of paper. He grasped it and looked at it dumbly, trying to rein in his errant thoughts and get the blood that was pooling around his groin back to his brain where it belonged.
Watching her leave, Christian wondered why the room seemed darker after she was gone. The wind pelted rain against the windows, as if trying to penetrate the glass and finish up the job Ana had begun. He shook his head, sprinkling water across the papers on Andrea's desk. He obviously needed a vacation, sometime in the sun to relax and forget all about Ana Steele.
"What happened to you?" Andrea asked, mopping at her dress with some paper napkins and eyeing him curiously as he continued to stand in the doorway, dripping onto the floor.
Christian looked down at himself, at his mud spattered clothes and sopping leather shoes, then looked back at Andrea as she stood dripping noodles and chucks of chicken onto the carpet.
"Same thing that happened to you."
Andrea grinned. "Hurricane Ana?"
"Hurricane Ana," he confirmed with resignation.
AN: Chapter Title Song – "Hurricane" by Fleurie