The CEO's Runaway Mistress

The rain came down like God had forgotten how to turn off the shower. Cold needles stabbing through my thin jacket, plastering my cheap jeans to my skin. November in New York felt like drowning on land. My arms burned under the weight of two overflowing plastic bags – cheap pasta, bruised bananas, the kind of groceries that screamed broke immigrant. The sidewalk outside the Gateway Hotel shimmered like a black mirror, slick with rain and city grime. My right sneaker hit a patch of something slippery – oil? Wet leaves? Didn't matter. Suddenly, my feet flew out from under me. A choked gasp ripped from my throat as I hit the concrete hard. Pain exploded in my hip. Groceries exploded everywhere. Apples, like little red planets, rolled across the wet pavement. One bumped smartly against the polished toe of a black Oxford shoe. "Lo siento! Lo siento mucho!" The apology tumbled out in frantic Spanish before my brain caught up. Tears mixed with rainwater on my cheeks. I scrambled, knees scraped raw, trying to gather the rolling fruit, the soggy cardboard pasta box. Shame burned hotter than the cold. Then, the rain stopped hitting me. I looked up. Blinked water from my eyes. A man stood over me, holding a huge black umbrella that blocked out the angry grey sky. Tall, lean, dressed in a charcoal grey coat that probably cost more than my rent. His hair was short, the colour of pale honey, plastered neatly despite the downpour. His eyes… blue like glacial ice, sharp and assessing. He looked like he stepped off a billboard for expensive cologne. "Are you alright?" His voice was deep, calm, cutting through the drumming rain. English. Smooth. I wiped furiously at my tears with a wet sleeve. "Sí, sí, okay… I… lo siento… sorry…" My English felt thick and clumsy in my mouth. I pointed weakly at the apple resting against his perfect shoe. He didn’t look at the apple. His gaze stayed on my face, tracing the tear tracks, the scraped cheekbone. A flicker of something unreadable in those ice-blue eyes. Then, without a word, he bent slightly. Not to pick up the apple. He held the umbrella handle out towards me. "Take this," he said. Simple. Commanding. I stared at it, dumbfounded. The carved ebony handle gleamed. Rainwater dripped from its wide canopy onto his immaculate coat sleeve. He didn’t move. Slowly, numbly, I reached out and took it. My wet fingers brushed his dry, warm ones. A jolt ran up my arm. He straightened. "Get out of the rain," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. Then he turned. A sleek black car, engine purring low, pulled smoothly to the curb beside him. A uniformed driver leapt out, holding another umbrella open. The man – Jonathan Cresswell, though I didn’t know his name then – ducked into the backseat without a backward glance. The car slid away into the grey curtain of rain. Silence rushed back in, filled only by the drumming on the umbrella above me. I stayed kneeling on the cold, wet sidewalk, clutching the impossibly expensive umbrella, smelling faintly of sandalwood and power, watching the taillights vanish. The apple lay forgotten by his shoe. The first apple. The one that rolled towards destiny. Or damnation. I didn't know which yet. But kneeling there, soaked and shivering and holding a stranger's umbrella, I felt the first terrifying, exhilarating tremor of something unnameable. Something that tasted like papaya and smelled like rain and expensive wool. Something that would break me.