by R. R. Banks
I slid my eyes toward my sister.
“Thank you for that analysis,” I said. I let out a growl of frustration and whirled around, stalking in the other direction before turning around to pace back toward her. “This is just perfect. I finally get an opportunity that could start digging me out of this hole and now I’m not going to be able to do it because there’s nobody that I can trust to take care of Edmond.”
“Oh, no,” Molly said, shaking her head as she took a couple of steps toward me. “You can’t not go. I’ve already told them that we’re coming. I’ve already gotten our uniforms picked out. You can’t just leave me now.”
“Uniforms?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Molly said. “If we’re going to be a company, we have to wear uniforms. It looks more professional.”
“I thought that no one was going to see us.”
“It will make us feel more professional.”
“Great.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes, trying to relieve the pressure of the tension headache that was building there. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, but you’re going to have to figure it out. We need to be there in less than an hour.”
I heard Edmond roar from the other room and knew that he had pulled out his favorite dinosaur toys. He had only a four-year-old’s understanding of the creatures, so all of the different types made the same noise and tried to eat each other, but it made my heart swell with love every time I heard him so happily in his own little world. I knew that I had to take this opportunity. It offered too much for my son. I had to do whatever I could to make this happen. I looked at Molly.
“I’m just going to have to bring him with me. You said that it won’t take long. I’ll find the biggest open space in the apartment that I can and put him there with his toys. He’ll probably even take a nap. It’ll be fine.”
Molly didn’t look convinced, but there was no other choice. If I was going to go, Edmond was going to have to come with us. I headed into the bedroom that we shared to get him ready, all the while hoping that maybe this could be the start of something that would give us the life that I always wanted us to have.
I held Edmond on my hip, running down the sidewalk toward The Avalon. The doorman looked startled as we approached, but Molly told him who we were and he let us in, barely getting us inside in time for us to not be late. I lowered my son to the floor and followed Molly toward the concierge desk, trying not to make my absolute awe of my surroundings obvious. I had only ever seen the building from the outside, and now that I was inside, I could see just how truly magnificent it was. It was already difficult for me to fathom a lifestyle that justified having a concierge downstairs from my apartment, but as we crossed the glittering lobby I noticed that that was just the beginning of the opulence and service that defined the lives of the billionaires who lived in this building.
To one side I saw the welcoming entrance for the Avalon Café and a smaller coffee shop designed to perfectly blend in with the subtle elegance of the rest of the space. A brass plaque on the wall ahead of us gave directions to the various services available on this floor of the building, including the pool and the spa.
If I lived here, I would never leave.
Molly finished speaking with the concierge and turned toward me. She held a key in her hand and her face held the type of smile that meant that someone had made her angry but she was trying not to show it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Molly was already walking toward an elevator ahead of us and I fell into step beside her.
“Bitch took my driver’s license information,” she muttered.
I looked back over my shoulder at the concierge who had gone back to his computer, seemingly unfazed by the interaction with Molly.
“He gave you a key to this man’s apartment,” I said. “I’m sure that it’s just routine procedure. They want to make sure that they aren’t just letting people wander in and out because they say that they are professionals.”
We got into the elevator and started our ascent. I had never been the biggest fan of elevators and the thought of 57 stories was enough to make my stomach turn, even though it was moving at a far faster pace than any of the others that I had ridden in. Edmond, on the other hand, thought that the whole thing was one big adventure and was standing beside me with his little arms up in the air, cheering as we zoomed up toward the floor partly occupied by Mason Dupree’s apartment. When it finally arrived, the door glided open and we stepped out into a hallway that gave us two options. One direction led to the large front door of the apartment itself. The other followed what I could only assume to be the L-shape of one section of the apartment but had a sign on the wall that indicated that there was a library at the far end of this floor. As I had seen another such indication on the sign in the lobby I could only guess that this was a niche library, potentially something designed by Dupree himself though technically available to all those living in the building.
Molly walked up to the door to the apartment and inserted the key. There was a brief moment of anticipation before she turned the key and opened the door. Both of us gasped as we stepped inside the sprawling apartment. I would never have imagined that something like this would exist in the city.
“This is gorgeous,” I whispered, somehow inspired to keep my voice low within the environment much the same way that children do when they are somewhere they see as fancy.
Molly nodded, looking around.
“There’s a rumor,” she said as she lowered the armful of supplies that she had carried in with her to the floor, “that all of the apartments in the building are completely unique. Each one was renovated and personalized for the specific man who lives there to fit his tastes and needs. They say that there are 69 floors in this building, and that the entire top floor is taken up by a single apartment. The man who lives there is the wealthiest of all of the men, but is never seen. He never comes out and even when there are parties up there, the guests never see him.”
“Why?” I asked.
Molly shrugged.
“They don’t seem to know.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“You know…they. The they.”
I nodded.
“They know everything.”
Molly nodded back.
“Alright, we need to get everything we have with us up here, so we can get started. The rest of the supplies should be delivered soon. The housekeeper and kitchen staff are out doing their errands for the day, but they’ll be back later in the afternoon. I would like to be gone before they get here.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“I’ve heard that while Mason likes his staff and has kept them for all of the years that he’s lived here, and some even before he moved in here, they aren’t the most people-friendly bunch. They have their routines and they like them kept that way.”
“Are you sure that that’s not just you?”
Molly shrugged.
“You are more than welcome to stick around and try to find out.”
I took another glance around the apartment. It was meticulously clean, everything so perfectly in its right place that a magazine could have shot it right then for the cover. I thought about the bubbles in the kitchen sink that morning and the relief that I felt when the dishes were all cleaned and draining.
“We should probably get going,” I said.
Anyone who could keep this place like this may not be someone I want to encounter.
Chapter Five
Mason
I was expecting to see a large crew scurrying around the apartment handling the final preparations, but when I stepped out of the elevator I noticed that it was extraordinarily quiet. I was accustomed to the chaos of these events and Aidan standing in the middle of it, looking as though he were right on the brink. It was that very chaos, and the mayhem that I discovered in the aftermath, that had led me to firing the last event company that I had used and taking the advice of one of the other men
who lived in The Avalon to hire the woman who had been acting as his personal assistant in recent weeks. I had been surprised to hear that this apparent renaissance woman was able to not only take on the list of errands and responsibilities that Devon gave her each day, but was also an event coordinator, but this party had been a last-minute decision and had to come together too quickly to justify me spending a lot of time looking for another company. So, Molly it was.
Now, though, I was wondering if maybe I should have taken a little bit more time to try to figure out who was going to handle the preparations. I hesitated to go inside the apartment. As long as I stayed out here in the hallway I didn’t have to face the very real possibility that the preparations for the party were a disaster and there was nothing that I was going to be able to do to rectify it in the few hours that I had before the guests started to arrive. On the other hand, maybe I should embrace whatever travesty had occurred in the apartment. Perhaps if the guests showed up to an apartment with crepe paper streamers and latex balloons they wouldn’t be so fast to try to convince me to have another party anytime soon.
Deciding that either way it was going to turn out was going to have to work, I opened the door and stepped into my apartment. I was immediately stunned by what I saw around me. The company might not have been as large as I was anticipating, but the results of their work was truly beautiful. Delicate lights, cut glass bowls of glittering amber-colored stones, and candles were scattered around the room. The effect was subtle, but even without the candles alight, I could envision the impact that the details would make when the sun went down and the full effect of the decorations would appear.
I was accustomed to the apartment being fairly quiet at this time of day. Though I didn’t often come home from the office early, when I did I usually found myself alone for an hour or two as the staff did their errands for the day. The quiet of the apartment today, however, seemed somewhat unnerving. The door had been unlocked, which meant, hopefully, that the event coordinators were still there, yet I didn’t hear anything. I wandered through the rooms of the apartment, taking on the subtle, gradual changes to the decorations that flowed from space to space to ensure that each was distinct in of itself but that the entirety of the apartment was uniting into one effect. It was masterful, and I was truly impressed, something that I didn’t encounter often.
As I made my way into the ballroom to the back of the apartment I heard a soft sound like someone humming. I followed it into the miniaturized version of the elaborate ballrooms I had admired in magnificent homes when I was younger and insisted upon including when I designed my apartment before moving into The Avalon. A woman was inside, her back to me as she arranged tall peacock feathers in a vase. She turned and looked at me when I walked in and I felt my stomach tighten. Dark, glossy hair tumbled down along the side of her face where it had escaped from the knot on the back of her head. Wide, almond eyes stared back at me and a lush mouth opened slightly in surprise.
“Oh,” she said, brushing her hair back. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to be back before I was finished.”
“It’s alright,” I said, trying to reassure her. “It’s fine. I came back early.” She nodded, but still looked mortified that I had caught her. “I guess you’re Molly?”
The beautiful woman looked at me quizzically for a moment as if she couldn’t quite process what I had just said, and then shook her head rapidly.
“No,” she said. “Molly is my sister. I’m Ella.”
“Hello,” I said, walking toward her with my hand out. “I’m…”
“I know,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Dupree.”
She reached her hand out toward me and then realized that there were pieces of feather sticking to it. She yanked it back, trying to brush away the feather as her face flushed.
“Please. Call me Mason.”
“Mason,” she said.
She looked embarrassed, but the effect only made her more appealing. I looked around at the ballroom and the decorations that enhanced the space.
“It looks incredible in here,” I said, hoping to reassure her with the compliment.
“Thank you,” she said, looking around at her progress. “Molly is determined to add something else, but I’m hoping if I can have it done before she gets back and that I’ll be able to convince her not to do anything else to it.”
“I hope you can,” I said. “It looks perfect.”
Our eyes met, and I felt a flicker of heat pass between us, but before I could say anything else, I heard a high-pitched whimpering sound coming from somewhere behind me. At first, I thought it was a puppy and could only imagine Bettie’s reaction if she saw dog hair on any of the furniture. When I saw Ella rush out of the room toward the sound, however, I realized that that wasn’t likely the origin of the sound.
“It’s alright,” I heard her murmuring as I followed her out of the ballroom and toward the drawing room. “I’m here. It’s alright.”
I stepped into the room and found Ella kneeling on the floor, gently brushing her hand over the forehead of a small boy lying on the couch. His whimpering had stopped, but he had reached out and was grasping Ella’s shirt tightly as if terrified that she was going to disappear.
“Hello there,” I said.
Ella looked up at me and her cheeks were brightly flushed again. She reached out and scooped the little boy into her arms, straightening to her feet in one smooth movement.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is my son, Edmond. I didn’t have a babysitter for him, so I had to bring him with me. He needed a nap, so I laid him down in here while I did the ballroom.”
Before I could say anything, I heard the door to the apartment open and a loud voice echoing through.
“Ella! I’m back. I couldn’t find the rhinestone curtains. Oh.”
I turned and saw another woman who looked like an older, less delicate version of Ella standing in the doorway to the drawing room.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re Molly.”
“Yes, I am,” Molly said, a smile coming to her lips as her eyes scanned over me with a hungry look that made me briefly wonder if this was one of the women I had brought home recently.
Hopefully not one of the ones behind the flowers this morning.
Ella took the distraction as an opportunity to gather up the blanket and soft dinosaur toy that the little boy had been holding on the sofa with him and rush out of the room.
“I’m going to take Edmond home, Molly,” she called back. “Everything is under control here.”
“Alright,” Molly called back.
It was obvious that she wasn’t bothered that her sister was leaving, but I found myself wishing that the situation could be reversed and Ella would have stayed behind to finish the decorations. I would have liked to spend a bit more time looking at her, even if the thought of the child on her hip did throw me off a bit. Mothers were something I tended to steer away from. No need to make things complicated. I looked at Molly.
“I’m going to go to the gym and then to the spa for a massage. Please make sure that you lock the door when you’re finished if the housekeeper hasn’t gotten back by then.”
Molly’s smile faded, but I wasn’t interested in appeasing her. I still needed to get my brain into a space where I could host guests that night and that was going to require a massage. Before that, though, I felt the need to hit the gym and work out the adrenaline looking at Ella had sent surging through me.
Chapter Six
Ella
If that could have been just a little bit less awkward and embarrassing, that would have been awesome.
I rushed into the house, dropping my bag and the empty decoration boxes as fast as I could, as if getting away from it would somehow shake some of the discomfort of the interaction with Mason. I had been taken completely by surprise when he showed up at the apartment. When Molly left to find the supplies for the inspiration that the ballroom suddenly gave her, she reassured me
I would be alone in the apartment. Mason was at work, Molly told me. The housekeeper and the cook were running errands, Molly told me. The rest of the staff was out, Molly told me.
Fail, Molly.
If Mason had arrived back at the apartment ten minutes later. Just ten minutes and the decorations would be finished, Edmond would be awake, and I probably would have left. He wouldn’t have walked in on me totally unprepared, looking like a mess, and heard the baby crying from where I had taken it upon myself to stretch him across a piece of furniture that was probably more expensive than the down payment on Molly’s house.
Because that’s how I roll, apparently.
Edmond ran into the kitchen and reached his chubby little hands toward me.
“Mama,” he said. “I can’t find dinosaur.”
“I’ll get it for you, Baby,” I said, heading back into the living room to get his beloved toy out of my bag where I had shoved it as we escaped from the apartment building.
I grabbed my bag and pulled it across the couch toward me. As I reached into the bag, I turned to glance over my shoulder at Edmond where he stood in the kitchen, staring up at the cabinet that held the cookie jar as though contemplating how he was going to get into it.
“I’ll get you one,” I told him. “Just wai—”
My words trailed off as my fingers hit something in my bag. It wasn’t the soft plush dinosaur that I was searching for. Instead, it was hard and heavy, the surface cold with raised designs that I traced with my fingers to make sure that I was really feeling what I thought that I was. My eyes closed, and I grimaced.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit.
I gingerly pulled the object out of the bag and turned toward it, opening my eyes just a slit to confirm my suspicions. Yep. There is was. The fucking silver picture frame that had been sitting on the table in Mason’s apartment. Just as I was contemplating the end of my very brief career in event coordination, the front door opened, and Molly came in. She looked frustrated and I knew that she was about to start a tirade about Mason’s lack of interest in her, but she saw my face and her expression turned concerned.