In His Arms

Chapter 1

A young woman with long, dark brown hair, deep hazel eyes and skin as pale as winter snow sits by the fogged windows in the restaurant, dressed in a checkered white shirt the front tucked into a pair of well-worn black jeans, a pair of brown rectangular glasses perched on her nose.

Polly Nichols, a Whitechapel whore, was profoundly grateful to gin. ~Gin helped her. It cured her. It took away her hunger and chased the chill from her joints. It stilled the aching in her rotten teeth and numbed the slicing pains she got every time she took a piss. It made her feel better than any man ever had. It calmed her. It soothed her.

Picking up the ceramic mug from the table in front of her, the young woman's eyes move along the page burying herself in the thick papers on her lap, totally entranced, she minorly burns the tip of her tongue when she subconsciously draws in a particularly large gulp of the steaming hot liquid from the mug.

Swaying drunkenly in the darkness of an alley, she raised a bottle to her lips and drained it. The alcohol burned like fire. She coughed, lost her grip on the bottle, and swore as it smashed.

In the distance, the clock at Christ Church struck two, its resonant chime muffled in the thickening fog. Polly dipped her hand into her coat pocket and felt for the coins there.

Jumping from the sudden ringing from her blackberry on the table in front of her, her gentle fingers their grip on her papers, the cold air from the air-conditioner above her disperse the papers everywhere, mumbling something about holy cows, the young woman gets on her knees and begins to gather her papers, not giving any of the coffee house's patrons a chance to step on the pristine white papers.

This clumsy wrapped up in her own world person is me.

My name is Janetta Summers and I am the main editor at Blueburg Publishing House, a publishing company that I had interned at during university. During the beginning of my job, I was merely an assistant editor amongst many of course but our main senior commission editor had decided to put my name in the bowl when the main editor at the time had decided to resign, and through some luck and three bestselling authors later, here I am now at the tender age of twenty-two as the main editor.

A job at which till today despite my achievements, I still feel incompetent doing.

Scrambling to get collect the well-scattered manuscript from the tiled floor, I barely manage to locate most of the manuscript five minutes into seaching for them but a large remainder of thirty or so pages remain at large.

Getting up, I push my long hair behind my ear, frantically looking around the coffee house in case I'm not the only one picking up papers. Sweeping the slightly busy lunchtime crowd with my eyes, my heart sinks when I see I'm the only one who's not buying food that's standing around holding a slightly thick stack of papers.

"Excuse me," a deep manly voice asks, a long slender finger taps me lightly on my shoulder."I believe these are yours?"

Whirling around in surprise that someone would approach me, I realise that a man with rich chocolate brown tousled hair, strong arched brows and deep and catastrophic, stormy grey eyes in a crisp white shirt with dark blue business pants, the jacket of the suit gracefully draped over one of his arms, the missing papers of my manuscript are grasped firmly in his jacket free hand.

Looking down at my feet, I avoid eye contact with the stranger, blushing as I take the paper out of his hand, mumbling a quick thank you, quickly walking back to my table, gathering my stuff, I hastily leave the coffee house to avoid any further embarrassment, recalling the number that startled me.

"Hello?" I mumble into the phone, dodging the people on their lunch break. "I had a miscall from this number..."

"Hey, Etta," My boss, the aforementioned main senior editor, Lucifer King, sings from the other line. "What's my favourite editor doing?"