A storm was coming, I thought for the nth time the next day, and oh, how my heart trembled in fear, knowing that it was true. The sun was high, the sky was a dazzling shade of blue, but it didn’t matter.

A storm was coming, and there was no stopping it.

The stately high-rise residential building where Nathan’s luxurious penthouse apartment was located rose before me, as architecturally beautiful and complex as its most famous resident. Life was made up of parallels, I thought, and it was silly that I only saw this now.

Nathan Callis used to be just a model to me. Someone too young for me, someone too handsome for his own good, someone too rich for my taste.

If only I had dug deeper. If only I had gone past the surface, I would have saved myself from a lot of heartbreak.

I came inside the lobby, the key that Nathan gave me burning inside my pocket. It would be my first time to use his key, but it could also be my last. I wished I was just being paranoid, but I knew I wasn’t.

My instincts – everything that made me a woman, everything that enabled me to love – they all told me the same thing.

A storm was coming, and I was powerless to stop it.

Before I could talk to the receptionist, I heard someone call my name.

“Alyx Marshall? It’s you, isn’t it?”

I whirled around to see Rima Callis coming out of the elevator, her heels snapping rhythmically over the marbled tiles as she approached me. She was even more beautiful up close and in person, the old modeling photos I found of her on the Internet not doing Nathan’s stepmother any justice at all.

A tall, leggy blonde with the most wonderfully blue eyes, Rima smiled way, way down at me. It couldn’t be helped; I was wearing flats, and her heels had added five inches to her already statuesque frame.

“Mrs. Callis.” It wasn’t like me to stammer, but I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious and out of my element, knowing that this woman might be one of the reasons why Nathan had been acting so strangely.

Her smile faltered before regaining its shine. “Just Rima, please.” If a butterfly could talk, I imagined it would sound just like Nathan’s stepmother. Soft, gentle, fleeting, like the wind could carry her words away any moment.

“Are you looking for Nathan?” she queried.

“Umm.” I wasn’t certain on how to answer. If Nathan’s parents were the traditional sort, wouldn’t it look bad to admit that I was visiting their unmarried son – alone?

“If you are,” Rima continued, “he’s not in.”

“Oh.”

She smiled again. “I left a message with his staff, telling him to drop by my hotel.” She suddenly linked arms with me and started walking towards the doors, leaving me no choice but to go along with her. “You can wait for him at my suite.”

“Oh.” It was lame, but it was the only thing I could utter, taken aback as I was. I’d never have pegged Rima Callis as the pushy type. When we made it out of the lobby, Rima asked sweetly if she could hitch a ride with me since she had only taken a cab to Nathan’s place.

I said yes right away, but when we got to my car, I slid behind the wheel and Rima slid into the backseat.

Our eyes met through the rearview mirror. “I hope you don’t mind,” Nathan’s stepmother said in the same sweet voice. “I get horribly carsick when I’m in front.”

I gave her a smile. “I don’t mind at all.” It wasn’t like I could say anything else.

Throughout the ride, Rima quizzed me about my relationship with Nathan, and I tried to be as honest as I can without sounding as pathetic as I currently felt. I also made no mention about my ill-fated feelings for Nik Alexandropoulos. That was my sin to bear, and no one else’s.

“I hope you haven’t any plans for marriage yet,” she murmured out of the blue.

“Umm.” Was there any right way to answer that?

I had thought about this a lot last night, and eventually I had come to conclude that Nathan’s father might have decided it would be ideal if his son married a nice Greek girl. He might’ve asked his second wife to deliver his command, might have even used the family card as leverage.

Do what I order and we’ll be one big happy family.

I knew it sounded more like a plot for the next big thing in soap operas, but one thought what one could when there were so few facts to work with.

“He’s still so young, you know,” Rima was saying.

“He’s already twenty-six,” I blurted out. But then I saw her lips tighten through the rearview mirror, and I added hastily, “But you’re right. There’s no rush at all.”

Nathan’s stepmother flashed me a smile. “Exactly.”

And at that moment I knew – I just knew – I had been warned.

She didn’t just disapprove of me for her stepson. She didn’t like me, period.

My stomach turned queasy for a second.

A storm was coming, I thought again. Would it come down to forcing Nathan to choose between his family and me?

I hoped not.

I prayed not.

But in the end, I realized that would have been better than the truth.

Rima Callis’ suite was the most expensive that the hotel offered, the bill of which her stepson footed since his father was rather tight-fisted.

“I see.” I still had the same question in my mind. Was there any right way to answer that?

“Anyway.” She flashed me another smile.

Back in my journalist days, I had worked on a piece about butterflies once, and the most trivial facts about those enchanting winged insects started flooding my mind as I stared at Rima.

Butterflies were cold-blooded.

Some were poisonous.

Some liked to suck blood, usually on open wounds of a larger animal.

“Follow me, please.”

Said the spider to the fly, I mused.

Maybe I got it all wrong from the start.

Another piece I had once worked on had to do with arachnids, and few people knew that not all spiders were ugly, hairy, eight-legged creatures. Well, okay, all of them still had eight legs, but a few were quite beautiful.

There was the sequin spider, for instance. They were also called mirror spiders because their abdomens consisted of reflective spots that made their bodies shimmer like a jewel.

Beautiful…

But still a spider, I thought.

I had assumed that Rima would have me installed at the living room and promptly forget all about me, but instead she led me to one of the inner rooms, which turned out to be an en-suite library decorated in mahogany panels and came complete with a granite fireplace and a comfy-looking armchair.

“Wow.” I couldn’t help marveling at my surroundings even though a fireplace in Miami didn’t exactly make sense. Functionality was overrated, anyway. If it looked really good, then it was meant to be.

The library was stocked with what looked like first-edition classics, and for just a few moments I was able to set aside my heartbreak in the presence of such beauties. Already my mind was running over the possibilities – what could be a nice catchy headline if I wrote about this suite?

By the time I realized Rima had indeed left me to my own devices, I already had the blog post half complete in my mind and about fifty photos stored in my iPhone.

This, I learned later on, was the calm before the storm.

Rima had left the door slightly ajar upon leaving, and familiar voices came drifting inside the library about half an hour later.

Nathan, I thought, having immediately recognized the person Rima was talking to.

“Why the hell would you go to such lengths?”

I knew it, I thought. Rima was acting as Nathan’s father’s henchman, and she had been sent to kick me out of his son’s life.

“Because I knew of no other way to get you to talk to me,” she cried out. “And it worked.” Her voice became bitter. “Didn’t it?”

Spider, I couldn’t help thinking.

She was definitely a spider, but so damn pretty she could fool most people into thinking she was this harmless, ephemeral butterfly who could never leave lasting damage.

“You have to stop this.”

You go, Nathan, I thought. Tell it to her straight. Let her know you’re going to fight for me.

“I can’t.” Rima’s tone shook. “Because after all these years, I realized I was wrong.”

The storm was coming.

“Your last night in Hong Kong, when I drove you to the airport, you were so furious when I told you I missed you.”

The storm was coming.

“There’s no point in rehashing the past,” Nathan grated out harshly.

“There is every point,” Rima said passionately, “because I know you’ve loved me all these years.”

The storm was coming.

“Now I know,” she whispered. “I should have chosen you, Nates, but I didn’t, and---” Her voice broke. “Please tell me I’m not too late.”

But he didn’t answer.

He didn’t answer.

And I knew then that the storm had come.

Nathan Callis was my personal storm, and there was no stopping him from breaking my heart.