Rory strode through the halls of The Voice Monday morning, her head buried in a stack of papers. There was a week's worth of articles in her hands, all of which had been written Friday night after getting home from the club. She had been so riddled with guilt that she had been unable to sleep and instead she stayed up, typing furiously until well past sunrise. When slumber finally found her, her dreams had been plagued by thoughts of her infidelity. What had she been thinking? She never should have accepted Logan's offer to dance, or even his offer to buy her another drink. She never should have let Paris convince her to go to that club in the first place; then none of this would have ever happened and she wouldn't have had to avoid her boyfriend's calls all weekend. What was she going to say to Mitchum when she saw him? Could she act like nothing had happened? What other choice did she have? She certainly couldn't tell him the truth.

"Just a warning, there's a new ficus about twelve steps ahead of you."

Rory pulled her head out of the articles she was attempting to re-read and looked up, startled. "What?" she asked, looking down the stretch of hallway that lay before her. "There's no new ficus," she observed as she scanned the area for the aforementioned plant.

"I know, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention." Rory turned to the brunet man who was talking to her—dropping her arms, along with her work, to her side. She took a small step into his cubicle to talk without blocking traffic.

"I was just trying to rework this paragraph." She shook the pages in her hands. "I've been on one of my writing streaks, churning articles out left and right all weekend; the only problem is, they all suck." She sighed in frustration, crossing her arms over her chest the best she could without wrinkling the papers she held. Rory had a tendency to bury herself in work as a distraction from real life, but real life always managed to wind up distracting her from her work.

"Please,," Chase, the brunet, replied, "everything you write is fabulous. I wish I could write half as well as you; then I might actually get paid to do it." Chase was a year younger than Rory and had been hired a few months earlier as a fact-checker. It was actually a great job for a new graduate and Rory knew that if it hadn't been for the prestigious fellowship she had received straight out of school, she would probably still be working an entry level position like him and most other twenty-something-aspiring-journalists. She was so thankful that Mitchum had given her such a wonderful opportunity.

"You'll get there eventually," Rory assured him. "You've got to start somewhere. I was super lucky to get that fellowship; otherwise I'd probably still be fact-checking, too." She leaned back, resting herself against his desk, and making herself comfortable.

"I know," Chase said cheerfully, giving her a dismissive wave of his hand. "I'm pretty fabulous, too, but I still gotta pay my dues, right? Besides, this job isn't so bad and…oooh, hottie alert at eleven o'clock," he veered off topic, clearly distracted by something he could see over the top of his cubicle.

Rory chuckled at her friend's short attention span. "Don't you have a boyfriend?" she asked.

"That doesn't mean I can't look. Besides, this one's completely straight—shame. Although, he'd be perfect for you. You so need to go out more. I don't think I've seen you have a single date since I started working here."

"I date," Rory countered, "I just don't flaunt my personal life around the office." Of course, that was mostly because her personal life involved scandalous activities with the boss, but she obviously left that part out.

Chase scoffed. "If he's not flaunt-able, he's totally not worth it. Now Mr. Hottie-Mc Hot-stuff over there is completely flaunt-worthy." Chase cast his gaze dreamily back over Rory's shoulder in the direction he'd been looking before.

Rory rolled her eyes in amusement and sent a quick glance over her shoulder to check out the man that had her friend drooling like a St. Bernard. When her eyes landed on the head of messy, blonde hair and the crooked grin, she snatched her head back so quickly she almost gave herself whiplash. The momentum of the sudden movement knocked her off balance and she grabbed the edge of the desk to steady herself—knocking over the cup full of pencils sitting next to her.

"Shit!" The expletive left her mouth at the exact moment the pencils scattered to the floor below her, but it wasn't in response to the accident. In all actuality, she was thankful for the opportunity to hide her head under the desk. She quickly fell to her knees and started to gather up the writing utensils that were rolling all around her.

She attempted to take a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down. Maybe she was just hallucinating. She could deal with being crazy—after all, she had grown up in Stars Hollow, a town her father had dubbed an 'out-patient mental facility.' Crazy was normal to her. Besides, crazy was definitely better than the alternative...facing up to the fact that the strange man she had kissed in the bar the other night was actually her boyfriend's son. Suddenly, there was no doubt in her mind who 'Logan' was. How could she not have seen it? He had his father's eyes and that damned smirk that made her heart flip-flop in her chest. He had felt so familiar to her and now it was painfully obvious why—he was the reincarnation of Mitchum Huntzberger thirty-one years ago.

"Umm, is everything okay over here?" The voice was only vaguely familiar, but she knew without a shadow of doubt to whom it belonged. She stopped all of her movements, not even bothering to breathe. Maybe if she concentrated really, really hard, she could make herself invisible.

"Don't mind my friend here—she's just a little klutzy." Or maybe Chase could make her even more noticeable. She felt a dainty tug on the material of her skirt and her cheeks flamed red as she realized that her skirt must have ridden up in all the commotion and Chase was fixing it for her while she hid. She prayed for the earth to open up and swallow her whole. "I'm Chase," she heard him introduce.

There was a momentary pause and Rory had the distinct impression that Logan had been staring at her embarrassingly exposed rear-end. What underwear had she put on that morning? "Logan, Logan Huntzberger," he finally uttered.

"Nice to meet you." She imagined Chase and Logan shaking hands.

"Ahem," Chase cleared his throat after another moment, "Rory." She sheepishly turned her head around to face the entrance of the cubicle. There stood Logan, looking down at her with wide eyes. Apparently he hadn't recognized her butt—even if he did admire it—but the name and the face were undeniable. She took a deep breath, trying to search for some courage as she pushed herself back to a standing position, pencils in hand. She dropped the pencils back into their designated container and brushed her skirt down, partially as a nervous reaction—partially to make sure there would be no more peep shows.

"Rory Gilmore," she held her hand out in introduction, praying that he would at least play along and pretend they had never met before. Logan seemed to take another moment to compose himself before reciprocating her actions.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Gilmore."

"And you," she replied. They locked gazes for a moment, neither able to look away. Rory chewed nervously on her bottom lip. She could feel Chase's gleeful eyes bouncing back and forth between her and Logan, noticing the tension in the air and mistaking it for sexual tension—though it obviously wasn't. She had clearly only been attracted to him at the bar because of the resemblance to his father, and he surely must have gotten over any attraction he had to her after she ran away from him the other night. He probably thought she was certifiably insane.

"Well," Logan finally managed to break the silence, "as long as everything is under control over here," he motioned to the reassembled pencils, "I'm going to explore a bit more before the meeting. It was nice meeting both of you." Logan nodded his head—a semblance of formality—before backing away from the cubicle, and disappearing down the aisle.

Rory sunk back against Chase's desk as she had been before the arrival of her worst nightmare. Only this time, her posture was much more defeated. Chase stared back at her, his smile stretching across his face so wide that his enviously white teeth practically glinted under the glare of the fluorescent lights.

"So..." Rory threw him a withering stare. He ignored it. "He really seemed to like your cherries."

"What?" Rory's eyes popped open wide, nearly falling out of their sockets.

"Those adorable, little, cherry-themed panties you had on," he clarified. "The boy couldn't keep his eyes off of them." Chase grinned wickedly.

"Oh god," Rory buried her face in her hands, and tried to hold back the tears. This was officially the worst morning of her life.

"Will you stop that?" Mitchum snapped at his son. Logan placed his free hand on his knee to try and still the uncontrollable bouncing; his other hand gripped the pen that he was currently chewing to shreds.

"Sorry," he replied sheepishly—the half of his brain that could actually focus feeling like an inadequate child under his father's judgmental gaze. At least it was only half his brain—the other half was far too distracted to pay any attention to Mitchum Huntzberger. The staff members would be arriving for the meeting any minute. The staff which, miraculously, happened to include the one girl he had been unable to stop thinking about since he met her at the club last Friday.

He had to admit, this morning his attention had been pleasantly diverted to the cute, shapely, cherry-decorated behind that stuck out from beneath the desk in that cubicle—he was a man, after all—but nothing compared to his reaction when that guy called out the name 'Rory' and the face he'd been dreaming about turned to greet him. His stomach churned, his heart sped up, his blood rushed to places it shouldn't go during working hours. On the inside, everything was moving in fast forward, but on the outside, his body was set to pause. He had wanted to see her again, but he never imagined it would be so soon, in the one place he was destined to spend over half of his waking life. It was like fate. Logan Huntzberger never really believed much in fate, but there was no other way to explain his insanely good fortune. She was here. Rory was here, in this building, soon to be in that very room. He glanced towards the entrance for the twelfth time in the last two minutes, just in time to see the door swing open and a line of people file in.

Rory walked with her eyes permanently fixed to the floor. His gaze followed her around until she took a seat on the other side of the room facing perpendicular to him. She situated herself, shifting nervously in the seat before finally chancing a covert glance in his direction. He caught it easily since he had barely stopped looking at her long enough to blink. He took the opportunity to send her his most charming smile and she quickly looked away again.

The meeting seemed to pass in a blur as his father carefully laid out Logan's professional life over the next several months. He discussed which department he would be working in when and whom he would be shadowing in each. Shadowing—as though Logan had never worked in a newsroom before—it was like he was some lowly intern who should just be happy to not be fetching coffee. Then again, his father never did have very high expectations of him. Mitchum's only real hope for his son was that he didn't screw-up too badly. All of his achievements meant nothing if he so much as made a single mistake. As happy as Logan was to be back in The States, with all of his friends, a part of him wished Mitchum had just let him be over in London where he could work without his father's looming shadow always overhead.

Of course, one glance to Logan's right at the petite brunette scribbling furiously, pausing only on occasion to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and all ill thoughts of working here were quickly banished from his head. It was fate—right? When did Mitchum say Logan would be working in Features?

"Are there any questions?" Logan's head snapped up. The meeting was ending. He silently cheered, and then took a moment to compose himself as he looked around the silent room. Not a single hand was in the air. He ached to get out of his seat. He had plans—plans to get Rory alone. As Mitchum officially dismissed the staff, Logan pretended to pack up while sending continual glances towards Rory, trying to catch her eyes and silently ask her to stay behind—even though he knew she was probably going to avoid him at all costs. Unfortunately, it seemed, someone else did have the power to make her stay.

"Miss Gilmore, do you mind staying behind for a moment? I need to have a word with you," the authoritative voice of his father commanded. Logan's eyes snatched up to his father angrily. He had to be kidding. Of all the people he could possibly 'need a word' with, he had to choose her? She was a nothing on his father's radar; a peon. When had Mitchum Huntzberger started giving a crap about his staff writers?

Logan suppressed the frustrated groan he felt rising at the knowledge that he would have to wait even longer before getting to speak with Rory. It was like his father knew—he must be a frickin' mind reader. He had never let Logan get what he wanted and it seemed that Mitchum Huntzberger wasn't about to start now.

Mitchum let his eyes roam over the writing on the page before him, even though he knew every word of the memo by heart—thanks to his photographic memory. Still, he needed to focus his eyes somewhere, or else he was sure they would focus themselves on a certain blue-eyed vixen and his other employees were bound to notice him leering at the young, sexy reporter he had requested alone time with. Besides, he needed to feign some indifference for Rory's sake, too. After all, relationships—just like everything in life—were all about power and as always, he was the one in charge.

He found it much more difficult with Rory than it ever had been with any other woman. Normally, he could get whatever he wanted from a woman with nothing more than a quick dip into his wallet. He could ignore a girl for weeks and then simply show up with a pretty necklace or a designer purse he didn't even pick out himself, and she would be putty in his hands. A benefit of dating younger women—in addition to their tight asses and pert breasts—they were so easily won over.

But Rory wasn't like that. She wasn't impressed by his money or status, although she did seem interested in his talents and accomplishment, but that wasn't really the same at all. That only meant that she actually respected him.

Rory had been a challenge from the very beginning. She didn't fall for any of his usual charm, and Mitchum had had to find new, more subtle ways of wooing her. It had taken months for him to convince her to go out on a date with him. If winning her interest had been hard, keeping it was certainly no easier. He couldn't just use her as he pleased, disappearing for weeks, flying away on business without telling her, and then showing back up when ever he wanted. She expected phone calls and regular dates—if that's what you could even call the nights-in which she preferred over going to some romantic, expensive restaurant. She expected him, and not just his money. It was difficult for Mitchum to make sense of any of it. How was it possible—when she had so many demands on his time and affections—to give into them and still be in control of the relationship? How did he keep her happy and still keep the power? Rory Gilmore was a challenge, but Mitchum Huntzberger never let a challenge stand in the way of what he wanted.

The room had emptied out, and the last person had closed the door. Mitchum took another moment to finish his pretend reading—he had been waiting for her call all weekend, it was her turn to wait. Finally, Mitchum looked up, leaning back in his chair, and fixing his eyes on his girlfriend. "I called you Saturday," he said simply.

"I know," she looked down at her shoes and bit her lip, clearly conveying that she felt ashamed for not calling him back.

"It's not like you to not return my calls." He didn't make any accusations. The last thing he wanted was for her to get defensive; then she would never admit her wrong doing. This way she just wound up feeling guilty, keeping the power with him.

"I know," she admitted again, "I just got bit by the writing bug and you know how I am when my muse hits—I barely slept or ate all weekend. I'm running on about eight cups of coffee this morning alone." She was rambling—a sure fire sign she was nervous. Rory hadn't been nervous around him since she had finally given in to his advances and agreed to go out with him. Of course, it could have also been the eight cups of coffee.

"You seemed distracted during the meeting, is everything okay?"

"Yeah," she insisted with a nervous chuckle, "fine, why wouldn't it be?"

He appraised her carefully, trying to determine what she was hiding from him. He was sure it wasn't anything to really worry about—after all, Rory was freakishly moral. She had never done well with keeping their relationship under wraps. The only reason she put up with it was because her conscience felt that it was the better alternative over coming out in the open and letting the word think she hadn't honestly earned her job. She was far too proud of her accomplishments to let them be tarnished that way. After a few moments, Mitchum merely shrugged, deciding to let it drop. He had other things to discuss with her. "No reason," he responded.

"Okay, then," she squeaked, "is there anything else?"

"Yes, actually," he admitted. She looked slightly worried for a moment. "I wanted to ask a favor of you." This actually seemed to make her relax.

"Of course." There was nothing but sincerity in her voice. He never ceased to be amazed by Rory's willingness to lend a helping hand.

"It's about Logan."

"Oh." He sensed her reluctance to get involved in his strained family affairs by the way she quickly tensed up again. He would need to be careful about this request. She would be hesitant to agree, but he knew she was eager to patch things up between him and his estranged son. He knew her grandparents and was well aware of the falling out between them and her mother shortly after Rory's birth. Just as she frequently played peace maker for her own flesh and blood, her nature would force her to attempt the same for him and his family. She always wanted everyone to get along.

"I don't like putting you in the middle of our problems, but I could really use your help," he began. If there was one thing Rory loved to do, it was help. She was a butt-in-sky by nature, always wanting to meddle for the greater good.

"Well," she said hesitantly.

"It's just, Logan has got so much potential, but I'm worried about him." Yes, Mitchum was worried; worried that Logan would squander that potential away just as he had for the past twenty-six years of his life. The truth was, his son was a lazy, self-absorbed, useless son-of-a-bitch—not that there was any need to bring Shira into this.

"I'm sure there's nothing to be worried about," she placated. "He did great in London." Sure, things had gone okay over in London, but Mitchum had insured that his best men had been sent there as well to given Logan all the direction he needed. Logan had really been nothing more than the omnipresent face of the company that the employees needed to get their acts together. Not to mention that he had been away from those idiotic friends, Colin and Finn. Now that Logan was back in The States, he was sure those two would be making their bad influences known. And then there was Logan's innate need to rebel against everything Mitchum said. That desire would be much stronger here while they were in the same office. So, Mitchum would need someone to baby-sit Logan—make sure he didn't mess up too badly. He could give the job to one of his usual lackeys, but it would be too obvious. If Logan felt like he was being watched, he would only rebel more.

"I just need someone to give him a little push," Mitchum continued, "someone he'll listen to."

"What makes you think he'll listen to me?" she asked. Mitchum thought he detected a faint edge of defensiveness to her voice. Perhaps she would fight getting involved in their father-son issues more than he had anticipated.

"You're around his age," Mitchum defended his choice. "And you've accomplished more than most have so shortly out of college. Young, successful, talented—you're exactly the kind of influence he needs."

She blushed under his compliments, but she apparently wasn't completely swayed, yet. "I don't know," she hesitated, "I don't want to lie to him."

"You don't have to lie," he assured her.

"I can't tell him about us," she reminded him.

"Well, no," Mitchum agreed. That was the last thing he needed his son to know. Knowing Logan, he'd use an affair like this to destroy his father's reputation just out of spite.

"It would just be too weird keeping that from him under the circumstances. I mean, you're kind of asking me to become friends with him. What happens eventually when...if…" she quickly amended, most likely to appease him. She still seemed to be under the impression that one day their affair would be public knowledge. "…He finds out the truth?"

"You don't need to become best pals," Mitchum amended. Logan didn't really have friends of the female persuasion, anyhow. He didn't want Rory getting too close; his son might get the wrong idea. Mitchum shuddered at the thought. At lease he knew he could trust Rory on that front. "Please, Rory," it was rare that Mitchum would resort to pleading, but desperate times called for desperate measures. "It would just make me feel so much better knowing there was someone in this office looking out for his best interests."

Rory sighed and he knew she was caving. She could never hold out long against his persuasions. She gnawed on her lip anxiously before shrugging in defeat. "I'll see what I can do."