I SAT BACK on the couch with another glass of champagne and watched the sweet-faced little waitress who’d given me a pissy look disappear into the crowd with her now-empty tray.
It wasn’t often that women looked at me as if they’d like to punch me in the face. Men, sure. Women, no.
She’d been standing there staring at me, a watchful, still point in the chaos of the party around her, which should have made my eyes slide right over her. Yet the opposite had happened. Almost as if her stillness was the reason my attention had been drawn to her.
Her eyes had been very dark and absolutely unreadable, like the surface of a deep lake I couldn’t see the bottom of, and I’d found that interesting. So I’d winked at her, purely to see the surface of that lake ripple a little, and ripple it did; her shock at my attention had been loud and clear.
That she’d clearly not expected me to notice her was obvious, and I might have found that amusing if there hadn’t also been something else about her that had bothered me. Something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on. Something I should have been aware of...
But the ladies around me were begging me to finish the bullshit story I’d been telling them, and I couldn’t be bothered figuring out what the issue with the waitress was. Not when my public was demanding a performance.
I took a sip of my champagne and put it down—fucking hate the stuff—and leaned forward, continuing with my story. The ladies were thoroughly enjoying it, and I was thoroughly enjoying pleasing them, especially when they all erupted into laughter as I punctuated the end with a very off-colour joke.
That laughter was music to my ears, making me smile. Because if there was one thing that made life on this shitty planet worth living it was making a woman laugh. It was almost as good as making a woman come, and since I was extremely skilled at doing both I indulged myself and them as often as humanly possible. Occasionally at the same time.
I sat back on the couch, watching the ladies around me, satisfied that they were all having a good time. Then I scanned the crowd in general, making sure everyone else was as well, as I took my parties very seriously.
They were a chance for guests to let their hair down without worrying about the press or whether their name would be plastered all over the Internet the next morning. A chance to cut loose and relax with no rules and no judgement.
Correction. There were two rules: nothing illegal and no one took advantage of anyone.
I policed those two things religiously, my security staff confiscating any illegal substances, not to mention phones or other recording devices, and kicking out any person stupid enough to think they could take advantage of anyone else.
Only people with a verified invite could attend, plus I personally vetted all staff working during the event so that...
Wait a second.
I narrowed my gaze in the direction the waitress had gone, going over her face in my memory. It was eidetic, so it was impossible for me to forget—both a blessing and a goddamn curse.
Small, with a sweet, heart-shaped face. Short, dark-brown hair in a straight glossy bob grazing a sharp, determined chin. Black almond-shaped eyes. Not pretty in the traditional sense but with a certain something.
I mentally compared her features to the list of staff photos I’d requested from the Black and White Enterprises catering company handling the party tonight.
No match.
If she wasn’t on the staff list then that could only mean one thing: she was a fucking gate crasher.
Shit. That was the last thing I wanted to deal with, especially as she’d probably end up being a reporter, because there were always reporters trying to gate crash my goddamn parties.
Tonight was supposed to be about celebrating me finally getting my hands on the Red Queen, a necklace I’d been chasing down for the last three months and had managed to buy at a private auction a few days ago.
I’d seen a picture of it in an article on famous jewels about two years back and had decided that, as rubies had been my mother’s favourite stone and I knew it was a piece she would have loved, I wanted to add it to my collection.
It would be the perfect advertisement for the jewellery auction that was to be part of the launch of the Black and White Foundation, a new non-profit organisation that Ulysses, Everett and I were hoping to get off the ground. I was putting up some of my more famous pieces as a fundraiser, and hopefully some of the proceeds would be going towards the new cancer research facility I’d set up back in Australia.
Yeah, jewellery might be a strange thing for a man like me to collect, but I liked a bit of glitter, especially against a woman’s skin.
Call it a holdover from my childhood, watching my mother and her friends get ready for their performances at the burlesque club where they’d worked. I hadn’t been allowed to see the show, but I’d loved watching them get ready. My always happy, always laughing mother, gossiping as she painted her face and did her hair, making herself look beautiful. The smell of greasepaint and hairspray in the air, the sparkle of jewelled and feathered costumes glittering in the light.
I had been a serious, quiet kid and she had taken her job of making the hand-to-mouth existence we led back then very seriously, trying to make it fun. Trying to get me to smile. It had mostly worked.
Until she’d died of cancer, of course.
But I didn’t think about those days. Instead, I buried them under glitter, good times and the joy of hunting down the perfect jewel. And the Red Queen had led me on quite a hunt. I’d loved every fucking second of stalking that piece down, but now it was safe in the vault in my office, I was going to have to find something else to turn on my hunter’s instincts...
That waitress, perhaps?
Ah, fuck. That’s right. The damn waitress.
Pushing myself up and out of the couch, I excused myself to the ladies and made my way through the crowd towards Clarence, the head of my personal security team, checking on people as I went like the good host I was.
Everett was here—he’d been in Hong Kong for one of his hush-hush meetings—and he gave me a look from where he was standing by the pool, lifting a blond brow. If Ulysses had been here, he would have scowled, but Ulysses wasn’t here. He was in London, where he always was, managing Black and White’s money from his bank of computers, boring bastard that he was.
Not that Everett was any more exciting. He was a man of few words and fewer smiles, and took his role of being responsible for company-wide security far more seriously than he should have. The guy really needed to lighten up.
I shook my head to indicate everything was fine and he gave a nod, turning his attention back to the action in the pool, where a famous actor and an equally famous musician had got rid of their clothing and were playing a game of naked tag.
Looked like fun. Sadly, I had business to attend to before I could join in.
I spoke to Clarence, gave him a description of the waitress and he assured me it would be dealt with. Then I stepped inside the penthouse—one of many I had around the world, though this one was my favourite—moving through the sleek, open-plan spaces full of people to my private office. I unlocked it and stepped inside, closing the door for some quiet, and took out my phone to give the catering company director a fucking piece of my mind.
I couldn’t have people I didn’t know and hadn’t invited wandering around my party, not given the whole reason the parties worked was because of my stringent privacy rules. Not to mention the security concerns involved.
Still, Everett only hired the best, so it probably wouldn’t take Clarence and his boys long to locate my little waitress and show her the door.
I hadn’t bothered getting my office redone after I’d bought the apartment, and consequently it was all pale wood and pale carpet, a Swedish furniture designer’s fucking wet dream. Not to my taste. Good thing I didn’t spend much time in here—I didn’t like to sit still, and preferred to dictate while I was doing something else rather than being tied to a desk.
Wandering over to the window, I paused beside it as I reached to grab my phone out of my pocket.
The room was sound-proofed, but I could still feel the heavy beat of the music through the thick, pale carpet on the floor. Neon-stained light from the city outside shone through the office’s windows and over the pale wood of my desk.
Not quite hiding the tip of someone’s foot sticking out from under it.
I went very, very still, the muscles in my shoulders tightening.
It had been years since I’d had to deal with a physical threat, not since money had taken me away from the clubs and the security jobs I’d once worked to pay for my sister’s schooling. But, even if I hadn’t had an eidetic memory, I’d still have remembered how to deal with said threat. It usually involved me picking up the person involved by the scruff of their neck and throwing them bodily out of the door. And making sure they didn’t bother me or mine again.
Slowly, I got my phone out, making it look as if I was staring down at the screen and not at the tip of the foot sticking out from under my desk.
It was small and encased in plain black leather. So, not a guy, then.
I tilted my head, also spotting an edge of black fabric. It was as plain as the leather of the shoe and it looked cheap.
Who’d be wearing plain shoes and cheap fabric to one of my parties?
It wasn’t hard to figure out, not when there were at least five or more people wearing exactly that combination, all of them circulating with trays of food and drink.
The catering staff.
‘If you’re looking for more Cristal,’ I said calmly to my little waitress, because of course it was her, ‘You won’t find any under my desk.’
She didn’t move.
Was she trying to pretend I hadn’t seen her?
Irritation sat in my gut. Fucking security should have picked up on anyone reckless or stupid enough to try and get into one of my parties, but clearly they hadn’t. And now it was my problem to deal with.
Everett was going to have some explaining to do, that was for sure, because not only had she somehow crashed my party, she’d also managed to get into my private goddamn office. My private locked goddamn office.
Which changed things. That lock should have kept out even the most professional criminal and yet some random waitress had managed to unlock it and slip inside.
No. That wasn’t happening. And this woman wasn’t a waitress. I’d bet my billions on it.
If she’d been a guy I’d have reached down, hauled him out and dragged that sorry motherfucker to Clarence myself. But she wasn’t a guy. She was a woman; I’d never touched a woman in anger and never would.
Still, there were other methods.
‘Don’t bother hiding,’ I said coolly. ‘I can see your foot. You’ve also got approximately five seconds to get the fuck out from under there before I call security.’
There was another moment of silence.
Then the little foot shifted, there was a rustling sound and a figure moved out from under the shelter of the desk, straightening up as she got to her feet.
Sure enough, it was the waitress.
The waitress who wasn’t on the catering company’s staff list.
I took another long look at her.
She was small, the top of her head just about equal to my shoulders, her figure in the catering company uniform lush and curvy. She smoothed the plain black dress nervously, the neon from the city outside shining directly on her face.
Her eyes were the colour of dark, bittersweet chocolate, tilted up slightly at the ends like a cat’s. She also had a strong jaw, a determined chin and an adorably upturned nose. Her mouth was wide and generous, her skin smooth as old ivory, and her hair was the glossy brown of chestnuts.
Unconventional, that was for sure. Which from my point of view was far more intriguing than beautiful. When it came to jewels, flawless stones were supposed to be the finest and most expensive, but I preferred my gems to have irregularities. It made them much more interesting.
‘Uh...hi,’ she said, her voice low with a pleasant husk to it, her accent very definitely English. ‘Guess you didn’t expect me to be in here, right?’
I lifted a brow. ‘What gave it away?’
A nervous-looking smile turned her full mouth. ‘I’m so sorry. The door was open and I thought it was the kitchen and I—’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
She blinked. ‘Excuse me?’
‘The door.’ I kept my voice calm. ‘It wasn’t open.’
Something flickered in her eyes, something that didn’t fit with that uncertain smile or the way she was nervously smoothing her uniform. It was gone the next second, but I was good at reading people and I knew what it was. I’d seen it in her gaze out on the terrace.
She wasn’t nervous. She was angry. And no doubt it was because she’d been discovered.
If she’d genuinely been a waitress, I’d have ushered her out, called her supervisor and had a few words.
Except she wasn’t a waitress.
I didn’t know what she was. But I sure as shit was going to find out.
Calling Clarence immediately and having him deal with it was the next logical step, but I didn’t want to involve him. I didn’t know what this woman was here for. She wasn’t likely to be a reporter; I revised my earlier suspicion, because if she had been she would have been out there surreptitiously taking pictures of the famous naked people having fun around the pool; she wouldn’t be in here, hiding under my desk. And, apart from anything else, reporters generally didn’t have the skills required to get through the lock on my office door.
No, I wanted to deal with this personally.
‘Oh, it really was,’ she said, her forehead creasing. ‘You must have forgotten to shut it or something.’
Which might have worked if I hadn’t been the one person in a million who never forgot a single fucking thing.
Slowly, I shook my head. ‘The door was shut. And secured with an extremely sophisticated electronic lock.’
Another flicker in her eyes—more anger, and this time the tiniest touch of what I thought was uncertainty. It was gone as quickly as it had come, to be replaced with something that looked calculating. Almost as if she was watching me and gauging my reaction.
Fuck, who was this woman?
There was a quality to her that held me like the light catching a particularly fine diamond. Except she didn’t glitter like a diamond, not the way the women waiting for me on the terrace did, sparkly, showy and completely transparent. No, this woman didn’t catch the light at all. Unlike them, she was opaque, like a black pearl. Just as beautiful and just as fine, but a whole shitload more mysterious.
Diamonds were showy stones, and there was a time and a place for showy. Right now, though, I was more interested in mysterious.
Especially the mysterious way she’d managed to get into my fucking office.
There was a time for charm and then there was a time for seriousness.
‘Sugar,’ I said gently. ‘That five seconds? You’ve now got two to explain just what the fuck you’re doing here.’
Her hands twisted in front of her. ‘You really don’t believe I was trying to find the kitchen?’
I smiled and this time I didn’t bother making it pleasant. ‘Try again.’