A/N: My dear readers, finally the next chapter. Sorry for the delay :)

Busard and Supesfan18, thank you very much for reviewing the last chapter!

A huge thanks goes to my betas Dragon166, and Astha22 as well as a special thanks to Supesfan18 for the creative input in this story!

3.

Clark was standing in front of the big doors separating Tess Mercer from him. Slowly, he lifted his hand to touch the handle, when all of the sudden the doors opened magically by themselves.

Walking into the big room, he felt a shiver running down his spine. Being in the wolf's cave was a very surreal feeling for him. He knew that it was very risky to conduct this interview so close to Lex Luthor, but Perry White had assigned him to talk to the new acting CEO of Luthorcorp and unfortunately for him, there was no way to back out of this job.

"Mr. Kent?" a very smooth voice asked.

Looking up, he saw the red-haired woman sitting behind the huge desk.

He sat down opposite of her and adjusted his glasses. "Yes. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to conduct this interview with you Miss Mercer," he replied as he whipped his notepad and a pen out of his briefcase.

"My pleasure," she answered with a cheeky smile. "I just realized that moving to Metropolis has its benefits."

Glancing up into her eyes, the reporter asked puzzled, "What do you mean?"

Standing up to get two glasses from the mini bar, she poured some Single Malt in each of them, walked up to Clark and sat on the edge of the desk just in front of him, shameless displaying her breathtaking legs under her very short skirt.

"I've been here for less than a week, but have already had the honor to meet two of the most handsome guys in this town," she explained, glancing deep into his blue eyes as she handed him the whiskey.

Clearing his throat, he shifted a bit on his chair and put the glass on the table. "So, is this your first job as an acting CEO?" he tried to guide her back to the interview.

Tess slipped slowly out of her high heels and put her left foot on his right thigh. "Yes," she whispered, smiling cheekily at him.

Jumping out of his chair, Clark glanced at her with his eyes wide open blinking in disbelieve.

Licking her lips, she slid a bit closer to him, putting both her hands on his chest. "I've been working for Lex Luthor for many years," she explained very amused about his nervousness in her presence.

"And what happened that he made the decision to give you the authority over his company?" Clark came straight to the point, trying to escape her unequivocal attempts to seduce him.

Now the woman in front of him got really tense. He could hear her heartbeat accelerating rapidly, confirming that he had hit a nerve.

"Well, as you may know, he is very busy with his space project Prometheus," she said with a shaky voice as she slipped back into her shoes and walked around the desk to sit down.

Relieved that she had put some distance between them, Clark sat back on his chair and wrote some notes in his pad. Opening his mouth, he wanted to ask a more specific question about Lex Luthor's new project, when the phone on the desk rang.

Tess looked at the caller's ID and glanced calmly back into his eyes. "I think you took enough of my time Mr. Kent. The interview is over," she decided and waited until he had left the room.

Grumbling silently, before picking up the phone, she said very nervously "Yes," into the speaker.

"We have to talk," the person on the other end of the line simply said and hung up.

Outside the office, Clark had eavesdropped the conversation. I didn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that it had been Lex.

Concerned, he jumped into the elevator and grabbed his mobile phone out of his coat pocket. Waiting for a couple of minutes, he rolled his eyes. It was a real nightmare to get Oliver Queen on the phone. Pushing the red button, he waited until he was out of the Luthorcorp building, before he tried again to contact the boy billionaire. When Oliver finally picked up, Clark sighed. "Tess Mercer is quite the Femme Fatale," he realized out loud as he heard is friend laughing out loud on the other end of the line. "You were right," he confirmed more seriously after Oliver had recovered from his giggles, "There is something big going on at Luthorcorp!"

Her cell phone rang. Celeste pressed the bottom of the hands-free speaking system in her car.

"Celeste?" The voice on the other end of the line asked.

"Clark," Celeste realized, starting to smile. "Where are you?"

"I'm sorry," he apologized, "I'm running a bit late. Could you please pick up the children without me?"

Celeste sighed. "No worries, I'm already on my way to Lois."

"Thank you," he said. "I love you," Clark added hastily and was gone.

Smiling Celeste replied "I love you, too," in the already silent system. He was obviously caught in the middle of something.

While she was turning at the next corner, Celeste's cell rang again. Picking it up, she asked cheekily "Forgot something?"

"Mrs. Kent?"

"Yes. Who am I speaking to?" she asked surprised.

"My name is Chung Hong," a man on the other end of the line with a strong Chinese accent said. "Do you have a minute?"

"Sure. How can I help you?"

"I want to make you an offer," he stated. "I'm a Hollywood movie producer."

Hollywood? Celeste thought. "And what do you exactly want from me?" she asked, puzzled.

"Please let me explain the reason why I'm calling. I have followed your career for the past two years, and I have to admit, I especially liked the two performances you gave at the Daily Planet fundraiser event. My sponsors and I are planning to make a blockbuster about a dancer from the Middle West of America moving to Metropolis to find her fortune in the world's biggest metropole for dancers. There she will meet the man of her dreams, also a dancer, and they both will make their way up to success," he outlined his proposal.

"Oh!" Celeste said, finally realizing what he wanted from her. "And you want me to play a part in this movie?" she asked, very surprised.

"Yes. I want you to play the female lead," Chung Hong got excited. "What do you think about this offer?"

Stopping in front of Lois and Richard's house, the young ballet dancer picked up the phone, and put it to her left ear.

"Wow. Well... This is a bit… unexpected. I don't know. I have a really good contract here at the Metropolis Dancing Theatre. Mr. Hong I don't want to be rude, but I'm kind of busy at the moment. Can we talk about your offer at another time?" she tried to get rid of the man, at the same time knocking at the door in front of her.

"Please think about it. I will try to contact you in a couple of days for more specific details," Chung Hong said. Somehow he sounded very disappointed.

"Okay. Thanks for your call, but I have to go," Celeste apologized and closed the phone the moment the door opened.

Jason stood in front of her and jumped directly into her arms.

"Celeste!" he yelled out excited.

"Hi Jason. Are you ready? Have you got all of your stuff?"

The eight-year-old boy smiled and pointed to the stairs where approximately 5 bags were dumped in front of the stairs.

"But this is not all yours?" Celeste asked surprised and a bit worried as all this stuff and two children wouldn't fit into her car at all.

"No," Lois stated, and walked up to the other woman to give her a firm hug. "One is Jasmine's, and the other three are ours. Thank you so much for taking care of the children for the next couple of days."

"My pleasure," Celeste said sincerely as she walked with Lois into the kitchen, where Richard was just about to give his 18-month-old daughter something to eat. The ballet dancer placed a kiss on his cheek and grabbed Jasmine to also give her a kiss. The little girl started to giggle when she saw her godmother.

"Are you ready, too?" She asked her, as Richard stood up.

"Yes," he said. "We just finished."

"Good. Then let's go. Your parents deserve a weekend all alone," Celeste said as she smiled cheekily at Richard, carrying Jasmine to her car.

When Celeste had finally managed to get Jason, Jasmine, and all their stuff into her car and had wished Richard and Lois a very relaxing weekend with a cheeky smile, she jumped into the driver's seat, and turned around to face the children.

"Where's dad?" Jason asked.

"He called me an hour ago. Apparently he is very busy at the moment."

The little boy just nodded.

Before Celeste could drive back to her and Clark's apartment, she needed to do some grocery shopping.

Embracing the challenge to do the weekly shopping with two children in her wake, she walked through the aisles and picked up the items from the shelves as Jason read out the shopping list when all of the sudden, an oriental man approached her.

"Mrs. Kent?" he asked.

Celeste nodded slowly, a bit annoyed to why this stranger had approached her. He even knew her name.

"I didn't know you have children," he said as he ruffled through Jason's hair. The boy just looked at the man—rolling very bothered his eyes about the fact that the stranger had had the nerve to touch him.

"Well, there are so many things you don't know about me. What do you want?" the ballet dancer asked, crossing her arms over her chest and looking demandingly at him.

The man got a bit nervous. "I'm really sorry to bother you Mrs. Kent, but I'm the man who called you an hour ago."

"What?" was all Celeste could ask.

"Yes. And I'm really sorry that I'm literally hanging around your heels, but I'm not leaving before I have an answer."

Celeste sighed deeply. "You are Mr. Chung Hong?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"Yes that's me," he confirmed.

Now Celeste got really angry. Who was this man to follow her, when she was just about to do the shopping for the week with two children on top of it?

"Mr. Chung Hong, I don't want to be rude, but who do you think you are? If you want to offer me a job then do it like all the others: through my agent. Have a nice day," she snapped, turned around, and walked away with Jasmine and Jason, leaving the man standing alone in the nappy section.

When Celeste was about to check out at the cashiers, another man approached her.

Great, she thought, blowing a blond corkscrew curl out of her face, what is it today? Annoying Celeste Day? However, when the man grabbed her arm and rammed his gun into her ribs, her eyes widened in shock.

"Mrs. Kent?" he asked sweetly.

Celeste just blinked and nodded, looking at Jason and Jasmine. The boy had already noticed that something was quite off. When Celeste realized that he was starting to look sick, she got very concerned.

"What do you want from me?" she tried to get the man's attention away from Jason who had also noticed the change in the boy.

"A fan of yours sent me. I assume you know whom I mean. The one who likes big ships and islands."

The young woman tried to escape his vice-like grip. "Wow. I thought he was smart. But sending you to do the job is the dumbest thing I've ever seen him doing," she shouted at him to attract attention.

The man looked around and realized that some of the people nearby were staring at them. He grabbed Celeste more firmly than before and shoveled her and the kids into another row, where nobody was shopping at the moment.

"Shut up bitch!" he spat at her. "Or I will kill you and the little girl."

All Celeste could do was keep her mouth shut. She didn't want the man to hurt the kids. But she also knew that she needed to take some action. When the man was just about to grab Jason, she got a hold of his hand.

"If you touch this boy you will get to know me!" she yelled.

The man looked at her and grabbed her by the throat to choke her. His expression was a mixture out of annoyance and triumph as Jason let out a scream. When the man looked at the little boy, he just stopped screaming, terrified.

"Listen to me. This is my last warning. One more word and you and the toddler here are dead. Got that?" the man threatened impatiently.

Celeste nodded as he slowly loosened the grip.

"Honey, what did you mean by eggplant casserole?" a man suddenly asked, coming out of one of the shelves, adjusting his glasses, and glancing questioning at Celeste, but stopping a few feet away from them.

Within a split second the man, who still had the young woman on her throat, let go of the ballet dancer and looked at her. "Next time you won't be so lucky bitch," he whispered into her ear and walked away.

Celeste just collapsed into her husband's arms, who had walked up to embrace her, the second the invader had been out of sight.

As she tried to get some air into her lungs, she realized out loud, "Talk about perfect timing," looking up at him and putting a hand on her throat.

Clark brushed his fingers over her cheeks. "Are you okay?" he asked, concerned.

"Yes. How did you know that we needed you?" she asked him puzzled.

"Your heartbeat," he explained. "And Jason's."

Celeste slapped her forehead. "Of course. Sorry I'm a bit shaken up. The man not only wanted to threaten me, but also kidnap Jason," she told him.

Clark looked at his son. "I know. Are you okay buddy?" he asked. The boy just nodded and jumped into his father's arms. He felt much better now.

The young woman was surprised. "How did you know?"

"Kryptonite," Clark answered as he grabbed the trolley to get them out of the shopping center.