Offer To The CEO

5 The first meeting

After knocking someone off their feet, Anna Jones realised that she had simply stumbled into another disaster coming close on the heels of the disaster created by Lu Jinhu, that is her life.She had no idea how she was going to manage dealing with this.

Anna looked at the man, who just spoke, dazed and confused with tears still running down her face.The man picked himself up off the ground and looked at the woman who had just knocked him down.He realised that there were tears rolling down this brunette's face from her hazel eyes.He realised something had just happened.He glanced at his watch and realised that he had 20 minutes before he needed to be outside the Civil Administration Bureau to meet his fiancée Yang Lin to get their marriage certificate.He thought that he could spend a few minutes just to make sure this westerner was OK before going.He put his hand down and helped her up to her feet.On realising her height would be about 5 foot 5 inches (165 centimetres), he felt somewhat protective given his own height of over 6 feet (180 centimetres) and wanted to see what he could do to help her.

"Are you OK?" came the words in a calming voice, not wanting to make the situation worse for the woman who had knocked him down.She seemed not to hear him, still in her daze and unfocused, so again he said "Are you OK?".It was then he realised that there was something familiar about the woman he bumped into and thought that she looked exactly like the female Australian Lawyer that he met in passing in Melbourne about six months ago and fell for on sight.He immediately dismissed that as why would an Australian Lawyer be here.

She still did not respond, and he looked and saw half sticking out of her handbag, what appeared to be a airline ticket and a small amount of cash, most likely just enough to get her to the airport, and no further.He wondered what had happened to her to be like this.He looked around and realised that just a few paces the way he had come was a public bench that he could sit her down on and try to fund our what was happening.He urged her towards the bench and then helped her to sit down.Rather than looming over her, to speak to her he bent down in front of her to look her in the eye, and said "Stay there, I will be back in a few minutes."

The first thing that he did was walk to the corner this woman had come around to looked into the Plaza in front of the Civil Administration Bureau.He wanted to see if Yang Lin was there.He noticed on the opposite side of the Plaza were two older couples following behind a younger couple.One of the older couples looked like Mr & Mrs Yang, and the woman in the younger couple looked like his Lin, but he immediately dismissed this has they were not due to arrive for at least 15 minutes, and even if they were early, they would be walking towards the Civil Administration Bureau, rather than away from it.

The other older couple he immediately recognised as Mr & Mrs Lu, and he guessed that it was likely that the man in the young couple was likely to be there son Lu Jinhu.He knew the Lu's by sight, given that their company Lu Corporation was a competitor to Hou Enterprises.Given his reluctance to marry, his father and grandfather had demanded that he had to be married by today, or they would give Hou Enterprises to the Lu's.Both knew that he would do anything to prevent this, given how the Lu family had treated his mother before she and his father met instantly fell in love and married, being the daughter of their live-in housekeeper.According to his mother and her mother, the Lu's bullied and abused his mother badly, believing her status as the housekeeper's daughter the right to do so.Their story had accorded with his observations of his mother's when forced to interact with the Lu's at functions.His father, despite his love for his mother, was oblivious to how his mother still felt, and agreed to his grandfather's plan.He wanted to find a woman and fall in love with her like his parents has but had only seen her in passing six months ago in Australia but knew that she had someone else.He was, however, willing to do everything he could to prevent the Lu Corporation from becoming the owner of the larger Hou Enterprises and protect its employees.The one strange thing for him was that the woman next to Lu Jinhu that he had observed was not a Western, as he knew he was marrying an Australian today.

Given he could not see his Lin, he walked back towards the Western woman who was staring away not seeing anything, and into the nearby convenience store to buy a bottle of water so she could have a drink, to help her settle down and tell him what happened so he could see what he could do to help her.When the store clerk served him, he queried where there was a nearby public toilet so that he could direct the woman to this is needed.On handing the clerk his Black Credit card, the clerk saw realised that he was someone of importance and said that he could help out by allowing the use of the store's staff toilet.At least that was something as the woman outside could tidy herself up before she left.

After slipping the card back into his wallet and putting it away, he thanked the clerk for his assistance and walked out opening the bottle of water as he went.He went back to the woman who still had not moved and handed the bottle to her telling her "Take a drink", while sitting down beside her.

With that Anna realised that there was someone there and he was trying to help her.She looked at the man sitting beside her and said "Who are you?"