A/N: Sorry to everybody who reads this story for the long wait. I have tons of excuses on why its late if anyone wants to hear them, but since I don't think so... I would just like to say that I plan to update more regularly from now one, hopefully. Also many thanks to the people who reviewed!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Chapter One

Two years ago…

The sun was shining brightly on the Konoha business district. The view of the lovely fluffy white clouds in the deep blue sky was literally breath taking. The soft musical chirps of birds that danced in the air provided beautiful background music to a truly beautiful day. Good mother earth was overwhelmingly generous with her natural gifts today and absolutely no one noticed. Well, no one except for the petite young Japanese woman who stood timidly in the middle of the sidewalk with her pale eyes gazing upward instead of before her.

The young woman was actually quite pretty herself, her looks portraying the traditional image of Japanese beauty. Her blue black hair was extremely long, falling nearly to her thin waist. Only the two front locks of hair were short with the ends of them curving slightly to rest on her rather large bosom. Her face was structured delicately. Her eyes were big, but not disturbingly so, and almond shaped with bright, startlingly really, white-ish lavender orbs. Her eyes were heavily covered by dark thick lashes so much so that whenever she blinked it took a moment for those observing her to get over the suddenness of white changing to black. Plump pink lips were arranged underneath a small doll like nose.

It was perhaps this simplistic image of a pretty young woman gazing up at the sky that drew his attention. Shikamaru Nara had, from the very beginning of his existence, a surprisingly intense love of all things simple. He might have spoken to her then, under that bright morning sun, but before he could manage to raise himself from the park bench he'd been resting on she was on the move. He watched as she reluctantly pushed her way through the rude uncaring crowd. His brown eyes taking note of her mouth moving slowly as she murmured apologies that fell on deaf ears and of the way that her shoulders slumped in relief right before she entered the sleek gray building of the Hyuuga Medical Center.

Once she was gone and his mini episode of voyeurism for the day was over Shikamaru stretched his arms back over his brown spiky head and didn't even bother to try to stifle his yawn. A passing sharp looking businesswoman gave him an irritated look to which Shikamaru gave her a lazy eye roll. She huffed and stormed off much to the amusement of the man. The sudden ringing of his phone quickly rid him of all of his amusement and he groaned as he expertly flicked open the sleek black Razor with the thumb of his right hand.

"Nara speaking."

"Nara?! I thought I told that woman to dial…." Shikamaru sighed as the barking voice of his chief trailed off in confusion. If the old man didn't mean to get in touch with him then he'd rather hang up now. There was absolutely no telling what the chief might decide to stick him with just because he was available at the moment.

"Oh, right, Nara!" The voice barked suddenly with a renewed sense of order and direction. Shikamaru slumped his back against the wooden park bench. He couldn't help but think that he should have hung up the phone sooner as the chief continued talking. "You've been watching the news. The story about that drug ring bust a couple of days ago, did you see it?"

Shikamaru blinked and scratched his head as he thought about exactly what he had seen on the news lately. He vaguely recalled something about drugs and grunted affirmatively to his boss.

"Good. The news didn't exactly portray the situation correctly though. Local police somehow mucked up the whole damn operation and the major ringleader managed to get away. Of course we weren't about to let the media know that relations between us and the locals were so bad that we made a general fucked up mess of each others jobs," the chief growled.

"So why are you telling me this?" Shikamaru asked. As far as he could see the whole thing, while not peachy perfect, seemed to have been handled fairly well and most importantly without his assistance.

"The reason why I'm telling you this is because the bastard is still out there pumping stupid teens and old geezers full of crack and dope. In short the higher ups are tired of being bad mouthed by mothers that can't keep track of their kids and adult children of the elderly who really don't give a shit about their parents. My fucking job is on the line! The top hats want this guy found quick and I'm telling you to do it."

Shikamaru groaned and dragged his hand down his face. He was barely resisting the urge to tell his boss just how close he was to quitting the troublesome job. "I thought I had the month off." He muttered.

"A month off?! Who the hell told you that?"

"You."

"Oh. Right, yes…I remember now. Hmph, well I lied, okay? Get over it, pull your pants up, and then head over here so that I can dump the paper work for the task on you."

"Oh man, isn't there a secretary for that kind of stuff?"

Shikamaru winced when the chief laughed. "You wish! This is the FBI not…"

The chief's voice trailed off again as he began to laugh hysterically. Annoyed and more than a little depressed at the thought of his vacation being cut short Shikamaru snapped his phone shut. He grunted as he stood up from the park bench. With his hands stuffed in his pockets and his brown eyes on the cloud filled sky he began to walk down towards the bureau and the end of his short period of relaxation. He had a feeling that from now on his life was going to be even more troublesome.

While the young FBI agent was walking down the street the young Japanese woman that he had been observing earlier was having problems at the Hyuuga Medical Center employee check in desk.

The pretty woman wrung her ivory hands nervously in front of her as the icy blond receptionist continued to shake her head at the image on the computer screen. "Are you quite sure that you work here, Hyuuga-san?" The receptionist asked dryly.

Hinata Hyuuga, age twenty-three, wanted to run out of the building and cry. How could the woman even ask her that? Wasn't it obvious that she worked here or at least had the right to be here? After all her family name was Hyuuga the same as the company…

Taking a shaky breath she nodded to the receptionist. "H-Hai, I'm…sure. Um, q-quite sure."

The receptionist nodded absently as if she hadn't really expected Hinata to suddenly realize that she didn't actually work there. Instead she, while smiling mechanically at Hinata, silently reached under her desk and jabbed the button for security. Not only did she not have time to deal with some deranged woman she did not get paid well enough to even bother to try. After pressing the bright apple red button two more times, just to make sure the lazy guards knew it was serious, she focused entirely upon the young woman standing nervously before her desk.

"Well, Hyuuga-san. There seems to be a slight error in the system. If you would be kind enough to wait for a moment while I go speak with my supervisor about the problem I'm sure together he and I'll be able to correct the issue as quickly as possible." The woman waited politely until the dark haired beauty gave her a timid smile after which she then turned smartly and in a fluid motion opened the 'employee only' door and walked through it.

Hinata shifted nervously from one foot to the other as she waited for the receptionist to return. After a disapproving image of her father popped into her head she quickly ceased the action. Instead her pale eyes began to roll around the gigantic lobby of the medical center, her father's medical center. She couldn't help but feel insignificant and well unworthy to even stand inside the building. For once her feeling had nothing to do with the fact that the relationship between her father and her was cold at best or nonexistent at worse. The intimidation she felt by simply being inside the building had everything to do with how her own medical center, the one that she had left at the insistence of her father, could never have begun to measure up her father's own center.

She was pretty much near tears at the thought when she was scared out of her mind by a heavy hand landing somewhat painfully on her shoulder. She yelped in surprise as she whirled around and couldn't seem to stop her body from trembling as her watery eyes took in the male security officer before her.

She would have liked to say that the man was ugly, but that would have not only been unfair to him it also would have been a terrible lie. In addition to being able to say that the man was hideous Hinata would also have liked to be able to say that she didn't know the man and that his presence, his the contact of his hand on her shoulder didn't affect her at all. Unfortunately she could say none of the above. Actually, at the moment she couldn't say anything. Instead she whimpered.

Naruto Uzumaki raised one amazingly slender blond eyebrow. This action didn't just fascinate Hinata but also caused her to be unintentionally pulled into gazing deeply into his bright blue eyes. After that her eyes were unable to deter from his eyes even as her mind went over the other gorgeous features that she knew he had. Underneath those exotically foreign eyes were a straight aristocratic nose and a lovely supple mouth that was often stretched into a blindly intense smile. He had a strong chin and spiky blond hair that made Hinata want to run her fingers through it just so that she could see if the strands would still defy gravity afterward. His skin was a sun kissed tan that was arranged over a tall muscular body. Just being in front of Naruto made Hinata feel lightheaded.

"Hinata, are you all right?"

The smooth voice snapped Hinata out of her thoughts and moving quickly out from underneath his hand made her head feel less like a rapidly deflating balloon. "Uh, yes…N-Naruto-kun. Um…ah...I," she stuttered terribly while Naruto nodded gently pressing her on. Gulping she forced herself to let it out in the next breath, "What are you doing here?"

She nearly died from excessive blood loss when he smiled at her. "Your father hired me to be the head of security here after…well, you know." He muttered, his smile gradually fading as he talked.

Right. Hinata knew. A couple of weeks ago her younger sister, Hanabi, had been killed here. The girl had been shadowing her father while he performed his duties around the center partly because their relationship, unlike the one Hinata had with her father, had been very warm and also partly because Hanabi was the heir to the center, had been ever since Hinata had been dismissed. While she had been shadowing their father a disgruntled mental patient had somehow stolen a gun from one of the guards and had begun to fire the thing wildly around before shooting himself. Hanabi had been killed instantly by one of the stray bullets plowing through her skull.

Hinata had been saddened at the news and had cried throughout the days leading up to and after her sister's funeral. She couldn't say that the tears had been out of love, they hadn't been, but she could honestly say that she'd cried for the sister that she'd never have the opportunity to truly know. She'd been surprised though that she wasn't the only one to cry. Her father had also, maybe not publicly but she had seen his red rimmed eyes. Naruto'd cried at the funeral also and it was only yesterday that her father told her the reason why. He'd been engaged to Hanabi.

She didn't even want to begin to think about how much that revelation had hurt her. Both her father and her sister had known about her love for the blond male. Shaking her head sadly she murmured, "Oh, yes I see."

"So, what are you doing here?"

Hinata winced at the statement. Why was it all ways so obvious to everyone that she didn't belong in any building that her father own? That she didn't even belong in the same room, let alone the same family, as him? She offered up a timid smile as she forced her body to relax. "Hai-…F-father told me to come back to Konoha and work here, uh...for him."

She didn't need to say that he was only having her take back her position as heir now because her sister was dead.

"Oh." Naruto muttered. He looked like he was in deep thought for a moment before his head shot up. The new expression on his face made Hinata's heart skip a couple thousand beats. "So you were the one that receptionist beeped us for!"

"Um, nani?"

Naruto laughed at the puzzled look on her face. "The woman working the counter pressed the panic button. She must have done it because of you."

"Oh…. Um, yes…uh, maybe? S-she didn't, um, seem to think that I worked…here." Hinata stuttered nervously. At this point she was desperate to leave, since she obviously was not going to get any work done today even if she was suddenly permitted to enter the actual building. Her thoughts were so muddled now…

"Hinata?"

She jumped slightly. For a moment she had forgotten that Naruto was even there, that she had even been talking to him. It was odd. Especially since the thoughts that had kept her so occupied had been of him. "Ah, y-yes, Naruto-kun?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Uh, do you want me to see what's wrong with the computer? The system really should have you in the employee section by now."

"Um, no. A-actually, I-I'm…uh, not feeling well…suddenly. I'm leaving, bye!" The last of her words turned high pitched and embarrassingly squeaky as she hurriedly forced them out of her mouth. She didn't even bother to wait for Naruto's reply before she was bustling past him and out of the center.

Once out of the center and walking down the no longer busy streets Hinata could feel her heart beat slowly relaxing. Even as it did, though, she could feel her face grow warm and then hot as tears ran down her cheeks. She was such a disappointment, not only to her father, but to herself also. Hanabi would never have made such a fool of herself in front of any guy that she liked and yet it seemed that making a fool out of herself was all that Hinata was able to do in front of the only guy that she had ever liked. She couldn't even have one conversation with him without having an anxiety attack! Ugh, and for them to be reunited on such embarrassing circumstances… Why did the receptionist have to call security on her? Why had her father made Naruto head of the building's security and then not told her? Why, oh, why was she so unlucky?

Sighing Hinata forced the thoughts from her mind. If she allowed herself to drown in the dismal thoughts there was no telling just how bad of a funk she could throw herself into. A loud grumble gave her just the opportunity to escape her thoughts for a while; the sound alerting her to the fact that she hadn't eaten at all yet today. Nodding to herself she quickly looked around for somewhere quiet that she could eat a light lunch. It didn't take her long to find a place, which was to be expected in the business district. Her pale colored eyes had actually glanced over quite a few restaurants and cafes before she'd decided on the small traditional styled tea shop next to the building of the local federal bureau investigation branch.