“Do I know you?” I eventually asked, cursing my buzz.
He dipped his chin to the name tag pinned at the upper swell of my left breast. “Your name is right there.”
I released the breath I’d been holding in, laughed at my paranoia, and finally gave him some semblance of a grin. “How are you enjoying the party?”
A waiter snagged my empty water bottle as I observed Brandon. Shoulders pulled back. Easy smile on his face. Movie-star looks. He seemed at ease here, his well-fitted suit stretching across his broad frame like a knight’s armor as he worked the room as if he owned it.
The lack of designer threads was the sole indicator he didn’t belong here, which begged the question—why the hell did I recognize him?
Brandon shrugged and made a circular gesture with his pointer finger. “Not my thing.”
I should have been offended. After all, I had helped to plan the masquerade—and not in the sense that I’d dished out orders to Dad’s staff and an overworked, underpaid event planner.
No, I’d spent the past week running around Haling Cove; double-checking floral arrangements; sitting in on the orchestral practices; and taking the bus to a different mall after I’d spotted my ex-neighbor Matilda Astor at the boutique Chantilly had ordered me to buy eggshell-colored tablecloths from.
She made me return all one-hundred and eight of them, and I had the pleasure of purchasing the original brand after she berated me for my incompetence in front of everyone I worked with.
Then, she’d decided the new ones weren’t the right shade of eggshell and demanded me to return them and repurchase the ones I’d bought in the first place.
Whatever grunt work needed to be done had fallen on my bony, underfed shoulders.
And I was proud.
Truly.
If not exhausted and ready for it to end.
“Not my thing either.” I snagged a soup spoon of scallop ceviche bathed in coconut foam from a waiter, who shot me a polite smile.
He’d witnessed Chantilly yelling at me earlier for seating the design team too far from Nash’s table. As it was, I’d made it a point to avoid looking at him all night except to make sure I always stood on the opposite side of the room from him, far enough that I couldn’t even tell the color of his suit.
Aside from Brandon, Nash was the one man in the room who hadn’t bothered with a masquerade mask. Didn’t matter. With or without a mask, I would have recognized him.
He had that kind of presence. The type that had you turning around and looking over your shoulder to make sure he wasn’t behind you because, from across the room, I could feel him near me.
Even now, it took everything in me to push his presence out of my mind.
“Oh?” Brandon sipped his drink, something clear. Water, whereas everyone else had taken the open bar as an invitation to get plastered. The insight unsettled me. “You look like you fit in with this crowd.”
“I’ve been to more of these things than I’d like to count.” I shrugged, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”
I did, however, like keeping my job. Forgoing another night at the soup kitchen didn’t hurt either. I usually went during off-hours when it wasn’t busy, but lately, with how unpredictable the weather could be this time of year, people constantly filled it, seeking shelter from the harsh heat and sudden rains.
“Are you an investor?” He didn’t seem particularly interested in the answer.
I inspected his features again. Curiosity rooted my feet to the floor, even as instinct yelled at me to retreat. Assembling the mystery of Brandon reminded me of starting a book and being told not to finish. I’d never possessed the willpower.
“No. They’re wearing the gold name tags.” I didn’t elaborate, snagging a fruit tart off a passing tray. My mission tonight was to eat as much food as I could, so I wouldn’t have to stop by the soup kitchen in the morning.
“Not a date, then?” An amused grin lifted his lips. He watched me struggle to remove the wrapping from the tart.
Malaise.
A general feeling of discomfort or unease.
I couldn’t grasp where I knew him from, but I’d pinpointed the feeling his presence evoked from me. Despite my bravado, it gave me pause. The last time I’d felt that had been the night Angus Bedford committed suicide.
“I work here.” The catering and design teams shared sterling-colored tags, etched with our first names. I thumbed mine, the movement unintentional.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not as invested in this conversation as I am?” He didn’t look offended, but I had the decency to pretend that I felt bad.
I shoveled the tart into my mouth as gracefully as I could and sent him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I haven’t eaten all day.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” He snagged a chocolate strawberry and offered it to me. I considered returning it to the waiter before giving in to my hunger. “I actually approached you because you look so familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”
I knew it.
We did know each other.
I resisted the urge to adjust my mask. I’d stitched it myself with the sole intention of making it large enough to hide my identity. I no longer wore my hair blonde, my lashes didn’t boast eight-hundred-dollar extensions, and my hair fell down to my waist in a wild mixture of wavy, straight, and curled locks. I looked nothing like the Virginia Winthrop clone I’d once been.
The single identifying feature I still possessed were my eyes. One gray. One blue. But not noticeable enough that he’d realize it unless he searched for it or he’d been around me all of his life. And since he seemed familiar…
Déjà vu eased its way inside me. My stomach took the hit first, nausea replacing some of the hunger pains. It still ached from starvation and exhaustion, but I no longer possessed the self-destructive urge to stick around and find out how Brandon Vu recognized me.
I bit into the strawberry, buying time to consider my words carefully. “I think I have one of those recognizable faces.” My shoulders shrugged, and I pretended to wave at Chantilly, who frowned at me in response. She was still frowning at me. “My boss just waved me over. I’m so sorry, but it was nice meeting you.”
Trotting off before Brandon could say anything, I sidled up next to Chantilly at the open bar and discarded the strawberry stem into the nearby trash can. Chantilly had moved past glaring at me to gawking at Nash.
The woman was as transparent as a hologram. She wore a crimson faux fur-lined mask to cover her face, not sunglasses to cover her eyes. She could at least pretend she wasn’t staring.
Metanoia.
Tarantism.
Marcid.
Mouthing the words, I filled my fist with oyster cracker packets from a bowl laid out, shoved them into my clutch for later, and twisted to Chantilly. “Can I leave?”
She finally turned to me and toyed with the ends of her auburn hair. Her olive-colored eyes popped beneath her mask, and I’d classify her as gorgeous if she wasn’t such a horrid bitch to me.
A flawlessly threaded brow arched. “After you screwed up with our seating arrangements and the tablecloths, you want to leave early?”
Fuck this.
“You’re right. You know what?” I lifted my chin in Nash’s direction, defocusing my eyes because if I saw him, I’d stare like Chantilly. Or worse, perhaps, since I knew what he looked like beneath his clothes and liked it. “I should introduce myself to our boss,” I bluffed. “I’ve never met Nash Prescott before. He’s gorgeous… I’ve heard he’s even more gorgeous up close.”
It was like a game of two truths and a lie.
Truth: Nash Prescott was gorgeous.
Truth: He was even more gorgeous up close.
Lie: I had met Nash Prescott. I’d met more nooks and crannies of Nash Prescott’s body than I wanted to admit, least of all to Chantilly.
Her brows furrowed, and she looked like she was trying to work out if I was serious or not. I kept my face neutral until she cracked.
“Fine. You can leave. But don’t think I’ll be paying you overtime for tonight. The design budget is tight enough as it is.”
She’d made room in the budget for her Versace gown, but she didn’t have room to pay me four hours in overtime. Got it.
Whatever.
It was either stay and relinquish myself to Brandon’s scrutiny or leave and be free of Brandon and Nash. I chose the easy choice. The right choice.
Snatching two shots of top-shelf liquor from the bartender, I downed them both in front of Chantilly, arched a brow, then left. I kept close to the walls as I snaked my way out of the ballroom, cursing when someone spilled an entire glass of vodka on my dress.
I dabbed at it with a cocktail napkin before giving up and continuing my path to the elevators. I’d nearly reached the lobby when Ida Marie cut me off.
“Ugh.” Matching my stride, she groaned with each step. “My feet are killing me. I need a break.”
Precisely why I wore Chucks over heels. That, and I no longer owned heels. Mother would disown me if she knew.
Ida Marie flicked lint off her frilly dress and asked, “You going up?”
Out of the four others on the design team, I liked Ida Marie most. The only one who didn’t view our coworkers as competition in the quest for a promotion. Everyone wanted to be the person assigned to the following hotel so much, they lost sight of the fact that we were supposed to be focusing on this hotel.
This job.
Not some fancy upcoming Singapore location Nash’s company had sent a memo about.
“I’m headed to the fifth floor. I have to grab my work bag from the office,” I lied. “But Chantilly said I can leave after that.”
The design team had made a makeshift office out of the fifth floor. It consisted of an oversized couch, a TV, some company-owned laptops, and two desks that went to Chantilly and Cayden.
Ida Marie’s white-blonde curls bounced as she walked. “You mean she was actually nice to you?”
“I threatened to introduce myself to Nash Prescott.”
She laugh-snorted.
I stalled near the archway where the ballroom met the lobby, not quite wanting her to follow me to the elevators and realize I wasn’t headed to the fifth floor.
“Chantilly has been salivating over Mr. Prescott since she heard he would be here tonight.” Ida Marie lowered her voice after a few heads turned our way at the mention of Nash. “Last year, she managed to get someone to take her as a date to the annual company party so she could meet Mr. Prescott. Hannah told me she got so wasted, security had to escort her out. The lone reason she wasn’t fired was because the company parties are always masquerades. They didn’t know it was her.”
The alarm on her phone beeped out before she muted it with a curse. “Shit. I have to be back. I’m on drunk assholes duty. Chantilly has me bringing them water and begging them to return to their rooms before they make her look bad in front of Mr. Prescott.”
She paused for a second as the lights flickered, courtesy of the wicked storm gathering force outside the hotel. “You don’t think…” Alarm dilated her pupils. She shook her head, dismissing the idea of a power outage, as if rich people and their parties were untouchable. “Nah. You guys don’t get, like, power outages down here, right? There are fail-safes and stuff.”
Ida Marie had grown up in the SoCal high desert. The storm last week had been her first in decades. First storm. First lightning. Being around her reminded me of witnessing a child experiencing the world for the first time.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I offered, hoping she’d leave already because the last thing I wanted was to share an elevator with a guest. The longer we stalled her, the more likely it got.
“Knowing my luck, the power will shut off, and we’ll be stuck here all night.” She leaned forward for a hug. “Better get out while you can. See you in the morning?”
“Wait…” My fingers latched onto her upper arm before she slipped away. “The morning?”
As far as I knew, we worked Mondays through Fridays.
“Yeah.” She nodded her head.
I released her. The wilting flowers on a nearby table caught her attention, and I repeated my question before I lost her to the melaleucas completely.
“Eight in the morning. Sharp,” she said. I followed her to the table and watched her fingers flutter around the flower stems. “Some last-minute meeting. Didn’t you get the memo?”
“Must have missed it,” I lied.
Chantilly also hadn’t told me about the dress fittings the company had set up for us, which meant I’d ended up pulling this outfit together with minutes to spare while Chantilly had strutted into the ballroom wearing in-season Versace.
Pushing past servers, partygoers, and a holier-than-thou Chantilly talking up an investment banker who’d once had an affair with a classmate’s mother, I made my way to the exit.
I left, my eyes holding Brandon’s the entire time.
I backed away slowly before a flash of something green peeking from his pocket snagged my attention.
I recognized it.
The same mask worn by the man I’d caught staring at me all night.
