8. Alex #2
Ten minutes later, several pages have turned, her book is still open in her lap, and half the patties I brought have disappeared.
A private entrance takes us beneath the hotel, away from the photographers gathered near the front doors. My security team clears the service elevator before Belle steps out of the car.
Frank walks beside me while Steven stays behind her.
“No photographs,” I tell him. “If anyone gets one inside or outside the gala, I want it deleted before it leaves the device.”
“If anything gets leaked, I will have it scrubbed.” Frank says.
The suite takes up the top two floors of the hotel, with Central Park stretching beneath the windows and Manhattan rising around it in glass and steel.
Belle steps inside and stops.
Four garment racks fill the living room. Dark green silk, velvet, satin and crepe hang in rows, organized by length and cut. Shoes line one wall. Jewelry cases cover the dining table beneath portable lights, each piece tagged and logged by an armed courier.
Two stylists wait near the staircase with their assistants.
Belle turns slowly toward me.
“What is this?”
“You need something to wear.”
“I need one dress.”
“Choose one.”
She looks at the racks again. “Did you order an entire department store?”
“I wanted you to have options.”
“So you ordered every size?”
“It seemed easier.”
Her gaze travels over the dresses, then back to me. “And apparently New York ran out of every color except green.”
“Camille chose them.”
“At your instruction.”
“She handles the details.” I keep my answer casual, even if my face gives away everything I am trying not to say.
Belle gives me a look that says she does not believe a word of it. Then she turns back to the rack and lets her fingers trail over a dark green sleeve.
“Green.”
My hand stills on the button of my jacket.
“You always picked green when you wanted to take me somewhere nice.” She says it softly, almost to herself.
I unbutton my jacket. I look at the dress beneath her hand instead of at her. When I finally meet her eyes, she is already watching me.
“Green is difficult to get wrong.”
Her eyes meet mine.
We both know that is not why.
A stylist approaches with a tablet. “Ms. Clarke, we can begin whenever you’re ready.”
Belle’s fingers rise to her locket.
She hesitates before unclasping it.
The chain slides from her neck, leaving the skin beneath it bare for the first time since I found her.
She crosses the room and holds it out to me.
“Keep this safe.”
I look down at the small piece of metal in her palm.
“You don’t want to wear it?”
“Not tonight.”
“Why?”
Her fingers close around it before opening again.
“I don’t want anything from my past showing.”
The locket is warm when I take it.
For a moment, neither of us releases the chain. Then her hand falls away.
I slip it into the inner pocket of my jacket.
“It will be safe.”
Her shoulders ease, just a little.
She believes me.
The satisfaction that gives me is ridiculous. Childish, almost. Like I have been handed something I have no right to want and am far too pleased to have.
It irritates the hell out of me.
After everything between us, she has trusted me with the one thing from her old life she refused to surrender.
Her trust should mean nothing.
This is a woman I am supposed to hate. Directly or indirectly, my father is dead because of her. Danny lost everything. I have ten years of reasons to remember exactly what she did to us.
So why is it getting harder to hold on to any of them when she looks at me like that?
“I’ll need it back,” she says.
“I know.”
Belle follows the stylists upstairs.
The hand I used to take the locket remains closed long after she is gone.
The suite becomes a staging area over the next few hours. Dresses move upstairs and return on racks. Shoes are carried back and exchanged. Makeup cases open across every available surface.
When I pass Belle’s room on my way downstairs, the door is partly open.
“I don’t care if it makes me beautiful,” she says.
A brush taps against glass.
“What would you prefer?” the makeup artist asks.
“Make me look like someone I don’t recognize.”
The brush stops.
“That is not the usual request.”
“I don’t want to be myself tonight.” Belle’s voice drops. “I need a few hours where she isn’t in the mirror.”
I continue walking before either woman realizes I am there.
At the staircase, my hand closes around the banister.
For ten years, I trained myself to recognize Belle beneath any name, haircut, or disguise. I found her from a painting because some part of her remained unmistakable even when she tried to bury it.
Now she is upstairs asking a stranger to erase her from the mirror.
What are you hiding Belle? Who are you running from?
The locket presses against my chest as I descend.
Heels sound on the landing.
I look up.
Belle appears at the top of the staircase in dark green silk.
For several seconds, I forget where I am.
The dress follows her body’s natural shape, fitted across her breasts and waist before falling in a clean line over her hips. The back is open, revealing pale skin from her shoulders to the base of her spine.
Her hair is pinned up, exposing the neck I spent too much of the flight trying not to remember. Smoke darkens her eyes, turning the hazel almost gold beneath the lights.
She asked to become someone she would not recognize.
The woman descending the stairs is still Belle.
I would know her anywhere.
Blood rushes low and hard, tightening my trousers as my attention follows the line of her throat, the silk over her breasts and the slow movement of her hips.
The locket is gone, replace by a row of diamonds, but I can feel it against my chest.
For one wild moment, I imagine taking the dress off her and putting the chain back around her neck while she is naked beneath my hands.
Belle reaches the final step and stops.
“Well?”
My mouth is dry.
I remember the last time I kissed her. Her legs around my hips. Her fingers in my hair. The sound she made when I put my mouth against her neck.
“You’re late.”
Her expression changes.
Only slightly, but enough to make me regret the words.
She glances toward the clock.
“By less than a minute.”
“The car is waiting.”
“Then let’s not offend it by my tardiness.”
She takes her wrap from the chair and passes close enough for vanilla to reach me beneath the stylist’s perfume.
My cock hardens further.
I press my thumb against the scar through my eyebrow until the pain clears some of the heat from my head.
Belle looks at the movement.
“You could try saying I look nice.”
“You know what you look like.”
“Do I?”
There is something vulnerable beneath the question.
I lower my hand.
“You look like every man in that ballroom is going to spend the evening wishing you came with him.”
Her lips part.
I should stop.
Instead, I step closer and let my gaze move over her once more.
“And I’m going to spend the evening reminding them you did not.”
Color rises along her throat.
The elevator doors slide open before I can embarrass myself any further.
Danny’s gala occupies the Regent hotel’s largest ballroom.
The foundation funds art programme in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and long-term care facilities. Danny has never explained why he chose art instead of medical research or surgical access, but I have my suspicions.
Before everything burned, I had converted the old barn on the property into a studio for Belle.
She left half her work behind when she disappeared. Finished canvases stacked against the walls. Others abandoned midway through, the paint still waiting for a hand that never came back.
I could not make myself to go inside after she left.
Danny could.
During his surgeries and the long months of rehab, he spent hours alone in that barn. No one questioned it. We assumed he wanted somewhere quiet, somewhere I would never follow him, and our mother knew better than to intrude.
Maybe solitude was only part of it.
Maybe sitting among Belle’s paintings made him feel closer to her. Maybe they gave him something to look at besides hospital walls, scars, and everything the explosion had taken from him.
He never told me.
I never asked.
Belle slows when she sees the foundation display near the ballroom entrance. Photographs show children painting beside hospital beds and recovering patients working with clay.
Her fingers tighten around her wrap.
“Danny did all this?”
“For several years.”
She studies the photographs a little longer. “Wow.” She understands the significance of this.
I watch her face as we walk in, and for one ugly second, I am jealous of my brother.
I want her to look at something I built with that same awe. I want to show her what I made of myself after she left and have it matter to her.
Instead, all I have shown her is how thoroughly I can dismantle her life.
The ballroom swallows us in music, perfume, and hundreds of people pretending not to stare.
They are used to seeing me arrive with blondes whose faces have already been on magazine covers, red carpets, or society pages. Belle is different. She is unknown, and in this room, that makes her far more interesting.
By breakfast, half of New York will be speculating about her.
I already told my team that no photographs of her are to leave this building, but I send the order again anyway.
Guests surrendered their phones at the entrance. Belle and I came in through the private entrance, so ours are still with us. The only other cameras belong to the event photographers, and they have strict instructions that no photograph of Belle leaves this room.
Belle does not know that.
Each time a flash goes off, she turns her face away or lowers her head, trying to disappear before the lens can find her. She has no idea that none of those photographs will show her clearly. Frank will inspect every image before it is released and remove anything that identifies her.
The women watch her with open curiosity, studying the newcomer on my arm and trying to decide where she belongs.
The men are less subtle.