Her Billionaire, Her Wolf(6)

She looked away from him, suddenly feeling foolish over her idea that he was her rescuer. No knight would ever come to her aid. Not now, not ever.

"You will be late getting back to work, I think," he said, "Is your office far from here?"

Surprised, she replied, "No, it's just around the block."

"Fine. We'll go to mine first." It was not a question. It was a statement.

Together, they went back down the stairwell, but instead of turning back to make their way through the dining room and bar, he led her through the kitchen doors.

There were men shouting orders at young, harried people. The sounds of stainless steel utensils and knives rang in all directions and steam billowed as pots bubbled and reductions simmered.

No one seemed to notice them as they passed through the tumult and it came to Sara that she had never actually seen him come through the front door of the restaurant. Almost always, he was already seated in his booth when she arrived, or was coming back from the men's washroom. Or, at least, what she had always assumed was the men's room.

No, these people know him. He comes and goes through here every day, in fact.

At the back of the kitchen, they came to yet another door and this one opened to the exterior world, leaving the noise and odors of cooking behind them. It was a back alley and he turned quickly, marching along without looking to see if Sara was keeping up.

What am I doing? Trailing after him like a stray puppy?

As they drew to the alley's end, she saw a homeless man slumped against the brick wall of a building. His clothing was cleaner than most homeless people's, but the haggard eyes that met her own danced with the light of the unbalanced. He cocked his head, nodding to her, and she realized that the man was far younger than she had first taken him for. Her own age, maybe, and that beneath the grime of his hard life, a handsome, if overly thin, face framed steel grey eyes that were as cold as the white shirted man's were fiery.

She twisted her head as she struggled to keep up the pace the white shirted man had set, her curiosity forcing her to look back over her shoulder at the homeless man.

Except that he was no longer there. All she had was the afterimage in her mind's eye of his face and the strange look he gave her. A look that belied certain insanity, an air of crazed zeal.

As she hurried along, she smiled a small, secret smile. If she had thought him a dirty, homeless man, at least he did not have tomato juice splashed across what passed for his shirt.

That was when she saw it. The alley emptied out into the crowded streets that she had come to know so well these past two months. And, there before them both, loomed the building that towered over everything else, in more ways than one.

Abraxis Industries. A modern bastion of world finance and industry. Its glass plated walls reached to the sky and within countless men and women bent all their will to the task of keeping the enterprise among the lofty heights of the world's foremost companies.

It was where she worked each day crunching endless numbers in data entry, mind numbing work broken only by her midday break to descend to the restaurant's bar and tell herself foolish stories about the white shirted man she had found there.

Sara ran two steps forward to overtake the man, saying, "Wait. This is where I work."

He only shrugged without looking at her and said, "Me, too."

Seizing her once more by the arm, it felt almost as though he lifted her off her feet as he walked so resolutely to the building that would mean shame and embarrassment for Sara once she returned to her cubicle and the department manager saw the state of her attire. Impeccable dress was required and the draconian rules of Sara’s manager with her lined, humorless face would brook no insult.

Sara's temp position was more precarious than any other in the department. For the least infraction, she could be fired summarily for whatever reason the woman deemed contrary to office protocol.

She tried to pull back, about to explain that she would lose her job for going back in there in such a state.

Who are you kidding? You're probably already fired, coming in this late from lunch.

Suddenly, instead of mounting the stairs that constituted a grand terrace leading to revolving doors that would mean her doom, the white shirted man pulled her along to skirt the sides of the building, far from the front entranceway.

A simple, nondescript door at the end of a short sidewalk appeared to be his objective. Built into the wall was a digital ID card reader and from a back pocket, he retrieved a blank, white card that he slipped into the receptacle.

A faint click as he withdrew the card signaled that the door had been unlocked electronically and plunging headlong, the two of them entered the dark entrails of the building. For one of them it all appeared routine, for the other, it meant the terror of uncertainty as she was led from all that she had known until then.