Chapter Seven Holly
Chapter Seven
HOLLY
I follow Mark in, through the high Art Deco doors of the New York Plaza, my feet sinking into the deep carpeted steps as we ascend. He swings his strange little briefcase as we walk.
Since Simone isn’t here in the lobby, she must already be at the scene, I realize.
She’ll be immaculately dressed, in her subtle take on the latest New York fashions, short hair blown out perfectly, ten thousand dollars of bling at her throat, fitting into the luxurious hotel like a hand in a glove.
She has a confidence so blazing you could heat your dinner off it.
‘Listen,’ I tell Mark, ‘if you want me and Simone to work together … That could be a little awkward.’
‘When did you last speak with Simone?’
‘Um. A few weeks maybe. I’m not really taking her calls right now,’ I admit. ‘She left for a trip to Elysium with Leopold Kensington right after a fight we had last week. Sent me a couple of messages the day before yesterday.’
We’ve reached a doorman uniformed in jet-black with gold accent braiding standing behind a red rope. When he sees Mark, he draws it back with a smile. Mark nods his thanks and stands back to let me through the door first, passing the doorman a bill that looks suspiciously like a twenty.
‘Did you just tip the doorman twenty bucks?’ I whisper as we move through the grand doors.
‘I didn’t have any fifties,’ says Mark.
I’m distracted from a reply by the sheer scale of the lobby interior. Long windows, framed by velvet curtains in a subtle burnt-orange shade, cast portals of morning sun across the marble floor.
My eyes can barely take in all the gold filigree. ‘It’s like someone detonated a stack of bullion,’ I tell Mark.
‘I favor this hotel for meetings and lunch appointments,’ he says, striding along. ‘That was why Adrianna and I—’ He stops, suddenly. Grief? Or something else? I can’t tell.
‘It was why we chose it for the demo,’ he says, collecting himself.
Maybe he does care. He just doesn’t show it. Or can’t, maybe. I’m still trying to figure him out.
We pass a gold-legged glass table set with magazines.
Swedish supermodel-turned-photographer Petra Morka lounges on a leopard-print chaise longue, with high-heeled ankle boots, baggy-cropped jeans, and a loose fishnet vest. Her jaw-length white-blonde hair is undercut on one side, and her sea-green eyes hold the camera’s gaze.
She dangles a camera casually from her long fingers.
‘She’s one of our bridesmaids,’ says Mark, distractedly as we pass.
‘Wait. You’re going ahead with the wedding?’
His step slows fractionally, and he frowns.
‘We decided we should. There’s a dress-fitting booked here for later today, and it’s all going ahead.
You’ll understand when you see what happened.
’ He unexpectedly swerves off down an arterial corridor.
‘The manager is a friend of mine,’ says Mark.
‘He’s agreed to take you into the ballroom through the kitchen entrance. ’