Chapter Nine

Mason

“What do you mean one of the guests has already arrived?”

The man I had hired for the night to act as greeter at the door stared back at me blankly as though he wasn’t entirely processing what I was asking of him.

“A woman has arrived,” he said. “She is dressed for the party. I can only assume that she is one of your guests.”

“She came alone?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t think of any women who had been invited to the party who were unattached and would come without a date. That just wasn’t their style. I looked in the mirror a final time, smoothed my hair, and started out of the room to greet whoever it was who had come a good half hour before I expected anyone. If the fact that she was alone wasn’t strange enough, the idea that she had already arrived was even stranger. The start point of an event was never actually adhered to by the guests. It was more a suggestion, a guideline that they could follow as to when things would be ready, but most wouldn’t show up for half an hour or more after that point, and some would show up even later than that. This unpredictability in when they arrived often led into unpredictability in when they would leave, meaning that I was surrounded by people I barely knew and often disliked without a clear end-point in sight, compounding the reasons why I dreaded these events.

I walked to the front entryway of the apartment and found it empty. Roaming through the rooms, I finally realized that the door to the drawing room was partially closed. I walked to the doorway and pressed the door open, stopping still when I saw the woman inside. She was wearing a bright red dress that hugged every curve of her lush body and her dark hair was swept up to accentuate her graceful bare back where it was exposed by the low dip of the dress that just grazed her hips. She turned to look over her shoulder at me and my breath caught in my throat.

I hadn’t realized it when I first saw her, but now I could see that this wasn’t a guest. This was the beautiful woman who I had found decorating my ballroom earlier. She looked stunning now, but it wasn’t her sexy appearance and the intense heat that it caused to surge in my belly that made me pause. One of her hands was rested on the silver picture frame sitting on the bookshelf.

So, I accused the wrong sister. It wasn’t Molly. It was Ella.

I felt a flash of anger, but I could see the look of fear in her eyes and the enticing flush of color across her cheeks and knew that there was more to this than someone stealing from my apartment when they had the opportunity. My eyes roved across her dress again and I got a flicker of recognition.

“You know,” I said. “Crashing a party in a dress that you stole from a guest who’s going to be there is truly bad form.”

Ella’s face flushed even deeper and I saw tears forming in her eyes as she started to stammer as if trying to find the right words to respond to me. She looked up at the frame and then back to me, holding out her hands imploringly.

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I didn’t mean for you to see me. I thought that I was going to be able to get in and out without you ever noticing that I was here.”

“I wasn’t going to notice that the picture frame that has been sitting on the front table for five years is suddenly in my drawing room?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice starting to shake. “I really didn’t mean to take it. When I was here earlier my son was playing with it and I didn’t want him to hurt it, so I took it away from him. I didn’t even realize that I had put it into my bag until I got back to Molly’s house.” She looked down at the dress and let out an exasperated sigh. “And it’s her fault that I’m even wearing this dress. She’s the one who stole it, not me. Well, not stole it. She picked up…”

She was babbling now, and I held up a hand to quiet her, not wanting her emotions to spiral even further out of control.

“It’s alright,” I said.

She looked at me with a stunned, somewhat confused, expression in her eyes.

“What?”

“It’s alright,” I repeated. “Things happen.” An idea suddenly occurred to me and I felt a mischievous smile curve my lips. “I tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I won’t even think about this again if you agree to be my date to the party tonight.”

Ella’s sweet, full lips, even more luscious now that they were slicked with red lipstick that shimmered in the light as though she had licked them, parted in silent surprise. Her eyes slid to the side briefly as though she were thinking about it, and then met mine again. She nodded.

“Alright,” she said.

She sounded reluctant, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. She had managed to dissolve away the anger that I had felt and given me a spark of hope about the evening, and I was going to ride that feeling as long as I could. I crossed the room to her and reached out for her hands, holding them out by her sides.

“Good,” I said. “But you’re going to have to change.”

“I know,” she said, sounding embarrassed again. “I told Molly that this dress was too much.”

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head and looking down to get another full view of her. “It’s not too much. You look incredible. But like I said, Bankston is going to be here tonight and he’s going to recognize if the mysterious woman on my arm is wearing his girlfriend’s custom-designed dress.”

“Oh,” she said, looking down at the dress and then back up at me, her head shaking slightly. “I don’t have anything else to wear.”

I lowered her hands back to her sides.

“That’s fine. Just give me a minute.”

I took out my phone and walked to the other side of the room as I made a quick call, looking back at Ella occasionally. She stayed in place, seeming unable, or unwilling, to move even a step. For some reason, this made me laugh and I felt some of the tension that I had been carrying in my shoulders all day slip away.

When the call was over, I tucked my phone back inside my jacket and walked back over to Ella.

“My actual guests should be arriving any minute, so I have to be ready for them, but come with me.”

Her face lightened slightly as she noticed the teasing in my voice and she fell into step beside me as I guided her out of the drawing room and toward the guest room.

“The table is gone, you know,” she said as we went.

“What?”

“The table. The little table in the foyer. It’s gone. If it had been there I would have been able to slip the frame back onto it and be gone and you never would have noticed.”

I gave a short laugh.

“I already noticed,” I told her. “I knew it was gone long before you even got here. I actually tried to accuse your sister of stealing it.”

I opened the door to the guest room and stepped back to allow Ella to go inside first.

“You did?” she asked, turning to me.

I nodded.

“When I realized that it was missing and my staff told me that they didn’t move it, I figured that she was the only other option. I went down to the concierge desk to get her information and called her to confront her. You should really let her know that there’s something wrong with her phone. It rang for a bit and then made this horrible screaming sound.”

Ella muffled a laugh and looked down as if to compose herself before looking back at me.

“There’s nothing wrong with her phone,” she said. “That’s the fake number that she gives to guys she isn’t interested in. I can’t believe that she gave it to the concierge, but she was pretty offended that he asked for her details before giving her the key, so maybe I’m not so surprised.”

“Fake number?” I asked. I gave a slightly exasperated sigh. “Why is it that women do shit like that? If she’s not interested in the guys, why doesn’t she just buck up and tell them that she’s not interested? Why does she feel the need to string them along just so that they can call a number later and be embarrassed?”

The laughter drained from Ella’s eyes and she shook her head.

“I guess she never thought of it that way. The men just annoy her.”

“Yeah, well, she should think about it. Being a liar is worse than being annoying.” She looked upset and I let out a breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I would just rather people be upfront, even when it’s uncomfortable.”

She nodded.

“No, you’re right.” Then her eyes narrowed, and her head tilted slightly. “Not that I actually believe that has ever happened to you.”

I laughed.

“I guess you’re right about that.”

I heard the doorbell and glanced back toward the door, feeling disappointment in my chest that I was going to have to walk away from Ella even for a moment. I looked back at her.

“Wait here,” I told her. “Sylvie should be with you in just a few minutes.”

I walked out of the room and closed the door, starting toward the front of the apartment and the party I was dreading a little less now.