“No, ma’am,” he responded, forcing me to shoot a quick look in his direction. He caught my glance and frowned, his brows knitting together for a brief moment.
“Well, then, I can only assume that Luna is attempting to tell us that she’s interested, and that I can fully understand. I will keep my hands to myself.”
“You’d better,” Adelaide purred, moving close to Elizabeth, her hands wandering over her shoulder and down the length of her bare arm. “You made certain promises to me tonight.”
“Of course, love.” Elizabeth seemed annoyed, but she forced a smile, her gaze falling on me again. “Congrats again, Luna. I hope it all works out for you.”
“Thank you.”
I watched them walk away, ignoring the fact that Brock was staring at me.
“Did you think—”
“I need to go talk to Michael’s people.”
I pulled away and moved deeper into the room on my own, my narrow skirt swishing around my thighs. As much as I wanted to look back and see if he was following me, I didn’t. I needed to hold on to my dignity for as long as I could. I felt like a stupid teenager with a crush, the kind of girl who thinks honesty is the only policy until the entire school learns she has a crush on the captain of the football team, the hottest guy in school who happens to be dating the hottest girl in school. And then she’s shunned, made fun of, and beaten black and blue by her crush’s girlfriend and all her friends.
I was that girl. I wasn’t going there again.
But he did follow me. His hand slipped smoothly over the small of my back, and his appearance garnered more comments from those I was trying to converse with. No one seemed to notice me when he was there. They were all more interested in looking at him, admiring his hot body under that tux and wondering about the leather gloves and the mask on his face. I even heard a few comments about it, comments I wasn’t supposed to hear. I wondered if he was hearing them, too, but Brock was about as loquacious in his dialogue tonight as he ever was.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d told Elizabeth. Didn’t he have a girlfriend back in Texas? I’d heard him on the phone. And he was hot. The mask aside, he was one of the best-looking men I’d ever met. And that was saying a lot, considering I spent a great amount of my time around models and people who designed clothing, jewels, and other products for the beautiful and therefore felt the need to be as beautiful themselves as they could be. But Brock, even with the mask over that one side of his face, had them all beat.
He should have had a woman in every port. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before, how I could have imagined he’d be single. I shouldn’t have gotten as upset as I did. It was common sense—the one thing that seemed to bite me in the ass more often than anything else these days.
We made our way around the room, talking to everyone who mattered and a few people who didn’t. When the circle was finished, I took his hand and drew him out onto the dance floor.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch today,” I said, not looking him in the eye but studying his hand as he rested it on my upper arm. “I just thought—”
“You heard me on the phone.”
I looked up at him then, surprised by his words, not just because they were more than he’d said all day, but because of the intuition that was there behind them. He smiled, the corner of that mask wrinkling and moving with his movement.
“I was talking to my niece. She’s going through something of a personal crisis at the moment and she needs my input.”
“How old is she?” I asked, trying to imagine him with family, let alone a niece. Why would I assume he didn’t have family? I mean, he gave off this aura of aloofness, but even lonely people have family.
“Fifteen, going on forty.”
I nodded, the tension slipping from my body as I moved into him a bit more, pressing a hand against his chest as the other rested on his stiff bicep. “I remember that age. It’s not an easy time.”
“No. And she just recently lost her mother.”
“I’m sorry.”
Brock rolled his shoulders, that gorgeous smile softening the line of his mask again. “Marnie was nothing but trouble for my family, God bless her soul. I’m not going to say her death is a good thing, but the circumstances were a mess of her own making.”
“Then she’s your brother’s daughter?”
He chuckled softly. “Yes. My twin brother.”
I sucked in a breath. “You mean there’s two of you out there?”
He touched the soft mask, a dark look coming into his gorgeous hazel eyes. “Well, he’s decidedly better-looking than me.”
“He doesn’t have the mystery that you have. And I doubt he’s got that big, strong, silent thing down as well as you.”
A light sparked in Brock’s eyes. He might have been about to say something else, but he didn’t get the chance because a scream rose from across the room. He turned, pulling me behind him as another scream sounded. And then another.
And then utter chaos broke out.
“Follow me,” he ordered, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the main entrance of the ballroom. However, everyone else had had the same idea and the entrance was clogged. Brock stopped, then turned, forcing his way through the wave of humanity that had built behind us. Hands grabbed and pulled, thumping and tugging, someone punching as panic set in. I held tight to the back of his jacket, hiding in the folds of the expensive material, letting his momentum pull me forward. Someone else screamed, someone cursed, feet slamming down on my toes, hands pushing at my body, tearing at my very expensive dress.
It brought back memories that I didn’t want to indulge.
I slapped at hands, tears suddenly falling from my eyes as my own panic began to seep through the walls I always had up around me. I was a strong, independent woman. No one could hurt me the way I’d been hurt in the past. I was not that same girl. Yet… hands on my skin, nails ripping my flesh, screams building in my chest…
I had to get out of there!
I never thought it would be possible, but finally it was. Cool air hit my skin. No more hands on me, no more curses cried near my ears. No more pain, no more panic. Just the cool night air and Brock’s strong, reassuring presence beside me.
“You okay? Are you hurt?”
Another flash of memory and I almost uttered my own curses, almost said something I knew I would regret. But then I nodded, glancing down at myself, expecting my dress to be in tatters, but surprised to find it in one piece. A small tear made itself known on the skirt, but that was about it. It looked nothing like the red dress I’d been wearing that night so long ago, nothing like the tears that that dress, a dress I’d saved for months to buy, had suffered; none of the dirt that had been smashed into its folds; none of the blood that had melted into the dye that colored the cloth.
It was surreal. It should have been red, not white.
My head was light, my body swayed. I didn’t understand what was happening.
“We need to get you back to the hotel.”
I felt myself lifted into the air. Panic again screamed through me, but there was something about the hands on my body, the feel of those gentle hands that weren’t hurting, but helping, that calmed the fear inside of me. Something inside understood this man was here to help me.
He wasn’t that fool in school who thought he could do whatever he wanted to me. And he wasn’t my father, afraid to upset the wrong people by reporting what had happened to me.
I was safe.
We were in the car and it was moving and I was far from all those hands that had been touching me, all those voices screaming around me, the curses that had come with the hands, with the tugs at my clothes. I buried my face in my hands, shaking all over.
“It’s okay,” a warm voice said. “Some protestors got into the party, but we’re out now. We’ll be back at the hotel in a minute.”
I moved my hands, looked over at the man beside me. He had his phone to his ear, his head tur
ned slightly away from me. I felt like I should know whom he was talking to, but I didn’t. Not right away.
“Be waiting when we arrive. The press will be on this in a snap.”
“Who is it?”
A glove-covered hand touched my knee lightly. “Angela. She’s going to meet us at the hotel with security.”
Angela. The name snapped me back to reality. I was Luna Walsh and this was Paris, not San Antonio. My father was nowhere near here, but back home in the house I’d bought for him two years ago.
I nodded, forcing myself to sit up. I straightened my skirt, tucking it around my thighs. I was okay. This was okay.
And then Brock turned to me, his phone sliding back into his pocket. I gasped, unprepared for the sight that welcomed me.
My handsome bodyguard had lost his mask at some point. His face… those scars… I just wasn’t prepared.
Chapter 10
Brock
I think it was disappointment that hit the hardest.
She gasped, her eyes widening in horror. I didn’t have to ask why. Someone had grabbed at my face as we escaped the ballroom—why the face, I would never understand, but maybe it was just fate, maybe just the way it was supposed to go—and peeled the top edge of my mask away. I’d grabbed it, shoving it into my pocket as we continued to make our way through the crowd, not worried about exposing my ugliness, the terrifying mess that was my face, as much as I was worried about getting Luna out of there. People were panicking, trampling one another as they fought to get to the exit. I wasn’t even sure they knew what it was they were running from.
A little spilled blood and the rich and powerful crumble.
I should have pulled my hair down, should have protected her from the sight somehow. No one should have to see that sort of thing without warning. But I didn’t think about it, didn’t think Luna would react that way. But what a stupid thought that was! She was a designer, for Christ’s sake! We were in Paris, for Fashion Week, along with the most beautiful people in the world. Of course she cared.
I released my hair from the ponytail she’d asked me to wear and shook that safety curtain over my face, hiding behind it like I’d hidden since it had happened. Luna continued to stare, her hand over her mouth.
“Brock, I—”
“We’re here.”
I pushed her toward the door, leaning over to open it myself rather than wait for the driver to come around. She climbed out and I backed away, diving out the other side.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to check on something. Angela will get you upstairs.”
I rushed off like the devil himself was on my tail, running down the street like a child running from a man with a pocketful of candy. I wanted to be as far from that look of horror as I could possibly get.
I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.
I ran, and then I walked, and then I jogged a little. These leather shoes weren’t really made for this kind of exercise, but I made do. I finally stopped at a bar not far from the luxury hotel where the party had taken place, the hotel now blocked off by the cops and press that had descended on the place in the aftermath.
“Some protestors with animal blood and rats,” was the consensus. Someone had gotten into the ballroom and splattered the wife of Christophe Decarnin with animal blood, then thrown a couple of dead rats at the crowd that quickly gathered around her. It all went to hell after that.
“Damn fashion people,” some guy near me at the bar muttered. “Can’t do anything without causing some big disturbance.”
I sipped at the beer the bartender had brought me after some measure of hesitation—I guess the French don’t think highly of American beers, at least this Frenchman—and continued to watch the reports on the television. I was careful to keep my face covered, moving my hair around from time to time, my fingers brushing against the scars that had grown thick and lumpy on my jaw and cheek.
I remembered the first time someone had looked at me with the same disgust I’d seen on Luna’s face. A nurse at the hospital. She’d tried hard to keep her expression neutral, but the horror was evident in her eyes. And then there was the little candy stripper that someone forgot to warn.
It happened regularly after that. There was never a time after the fire that I don’t remember someone looking at me in disgust and horror. I couldn’t really blame them. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for the first few months after the burns healed. And I still refused to have mirrors in my living space.
The doctors tried. Everyone tried.
I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. If I hadn’t left the apartment in the first place, maybe I could have stopped it. Or I’d be in a grave beside my friends.
Right now, that seemed like a better place to be.
“Were you there?”
“Excuse me?”
The man beside me was watching me closely, with something like curiosity. He asked again, in slurred French, “Vous étiez là?”
“Where?”
“The party with all those fashion people.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Not a lot of people come in here wearing tuxes.”
I glanced down at myself, almost forgetting what it was I was wearing. I nodded, carefully tugging my hair over the right side of my face. “I was there.”
“Then what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with whatever beautiful woman you were with? Fucking fashion people can’t do anything quietly, but they sure have a lot of gorgeous girls that we all enjoy looking at. Why do you think I’m here tonight?”
“Hoping to catch a sight?”
“You got it! Been a long time since my wife had curves like some of those models. Doesn’t hurt the marriage to catch a look once in a while, you know?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t have a wife—thin, fat, or anything in between. And I likely never would.
“You should be home with the woman you went with. It’s got to be warmer there than here.”
“Not really.”
“Some of those women… ditzy as anything! My wife, smartest woman you’d ever meet. I wouldn’t have a problem spending a whole day just talking to her about anything that crossed her lovely mind. Talking to one of those fashion broads… I’m sure it can be a nightmare.”
“Not really. A lot of the designers are smart.”
“Then why are you here? If I had a gorgeous woman who had half a brain, I’d never leave her side!” The man laughed as he pushed himself off his stool. “I should take my own damn advice and go home. See you later, buddy.”
I watched him go, shaking my head at his logic. What he’d said, his line of thought, was so much like what Ian might say to me in this situation that it was almost eerie.
Ian was… Akker and I were the type of twins that were so close we never really saw the people around us. I mean, we had our clique of friends, but it was always just about the two of us. After he got Marnie pregnant and made the decision to be with her, I was alone, lost, like someone had ripped my arms and legs from my body and expected me to continue on just like nothing had happened. I was lost, a ship unmoored from its anchor.
Ian was always one of those on the outside of our little nucleus. With Akker gone, he stepped up and became my anchor, became the one I depended on more than anyone else. He was my best friend. If he were here, he’d be telling me the same thing that man had said. Go back to the hotel. Do my job. Fuck her reaction; fuck her opinions. It was a job—she was a client. That was all that mattered.
He would be right.
I finished the beer and stood, drawing a deep breath as I did.
“Going home, friend?”
The bartender came to stand near me, suddenly interested in me. I kept my head lowered as I dug some cash out of my pocket and set it on the bar. “Thanks, fellow.”
“Stay out of trouble.”
I walked out of the bar and made my way at a more leisurely pace back toward the hotel. The police presence at the other
hotel had settled, so just the reporters were still hanging around. Guests were no longer standing outside trying to make their way inside. In fact, there were few guests hanging around at all, most likely trying to stay away from the cameras. Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that it was late, nearly 01:00 in the morning.
1:00 a.m. here; it was 8:00 p.m. back home. I tugged my phone out and dialed Ox. Skylar, his colorful assistant, answered.
“Hey, Brock, how you doing?”
“Did you get the package I had sent overnight?”
“Let me check.” She was quiet a moment, then made a little sound. “Here it is. A fish head? That’s gross!”
“Someone sent it to our client.”
“Luna Walsh? Poor dear. What a cruel thing to do! She must have been terribly upset, especially since they put fish in her car that time…”
“In her car?”
“I went to high school with her. She got on the wrong side of a group of the more popular kids. They tortured her, threw stuff in her car all the time. It was an old clunker, one of those rust-bucket sort of things, and the windows didn’t roll up. She’d go out there after school and there’d be fish heads and dog poop and other nastiness in the car. I saw her scream at the kids who did it once, then just collapse to the ground.”
I stopped dead in the street, the silence of the night folding in around me.
“She stopped coming to school after prom our senior year. I guess it all became too much for her. But she graduated because she was that good a student. She missed the finals, but her grades were good enough to get her out. I heard after that she started selling her jewelry on the streets—and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Did they ever put a pig’s head in her car?”
“A pig’s head? Not that I know of. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“The whole school knew about this?”
“Sure. Anyone who paid attention. I mean, it wasn’t that big of a school. We went to Ryan out in Spring Branch. It’s a smaller school out there.”
Caballo Security Box Set Page 37