Behind the Mask: A Billionaire Romance novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Fifty-First Floor

Elliott sets his rules and asks Noelle to find the woman from the masquerade.

The fifty-first floor of Sorrell Tower had no receptionist.

It had an elevator that opened straight into a dim hallway, and a security guard in a gray suit who held out a plastic tray.

"Phone, please."

"I need my phone for work."

"Not up here," he said. "Mr. Sorrell's rule."

I put it in the tray.

He took a small wand from his belt and ran it down my sides, quick and polite.

"No photos," he said. "No recordings. Lights stay low."

"Is there anything I'm allowed to do?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Walk to the end."

The hallway was long and quiet, with a dark wood floor and no windows.

At the end was a door.

I knocked, and a dry voice said, "Come in."

The room was large and dim, lit by a few low lamps and the gray glow of the city through half-closed blinds.

He stood by the window with his back to me.

He wore a black suit and no gloves.

His left hand hung at his side, and I could see the skin on the back of it, shiny and ridged, pulled tight over the knuckles.

I looked away from it, and then I made myself look back, because looking away would be worse.

"You can look," he said, without turning. "Everyone else does, once I leave."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"That's rare."

He faced me.

In this light, I saw all of him for the first time.

He was even taller than I remembered, with a hard jaw, short black hair going gray at the temples, and gray eyes that held steady on mine.

On the left side, the scar ran from under his jaw up past his ear and down his neck into his collar, pale and rippled like water.

He watched my face while I looked.

He was waiting for it.

I knew what he was waiting for.

I had spent my whole career reading rooms, and I could not read this one, because I was too busy not crying.

I did not look away, and I did not flinch.

"It must hurt," I said. "In the cold."

His eyes changed.

For half a breath, I thought I saw something in them that I knew.

Then it was gone.

"Sometimes," he said. "Sit."

He gave me a chair across a long table and took the one at the far end.

"These are my rules," he said. "Nobody photographs me. Nobody posts about me. Everything about my appearance on the fourteenth goes through you and nobody else."

"Not Paulette?"

"Not Paulette. Not my cousin."

"Your cousin?"

"Channing Sorrell, president of the company," he said. "You'll meet him. He enjoys meeting people."

He said it so evenly that it took me a second to hear what was under it.

I filed it away.

"What do you want the gala to be?" I asked.

"Short."

"That's not a vision."

"It's all I have."

I smiled before I could stop myself, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"Sixty years of Sorrell hotels," he said. "A speech by Channing, because the board expects him. Then I come out, and everyone sees what they've been wondering about, and then I leave."

"They'll look."

"They always do."

"Then give them something to look at that isn't you," I said. "Let me build the room so your face is the last thing they notice."

"Is that possible?"

"It's the whole job."

He studied me.

The silence stretched until I wanted to fill it with anything.

I did not.

"One more thing," he said at last.

He took a thin folder off the table and slid it toward me.

Inside was a printed guest list for the Starlight Masquerade, nine hundred names, and a floor plan of the Merriam's sixth floor.

My stomach turned over.

"On Saturday night, a woman danced with me," he said.

I kept my hands flat on the folder.

"She wore a green dress, and she told me the Merriam from the loading dock to the roof. She said she was nobody's." He paused. "I'd like to find her."

Heat climbed my neck.

Green dress.

I had worn a green dress.

"Mr. Sorrell," I said, and my voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Why?"

"Because she talked to me for forty minutes and did not ask what I was."

He looked at the floor plan, not at me.

"She would know the building, and she would know my voice," he said. "You know the guest list and the staff. You are the only person who can find her."

"And if she doesn't want to be found?"

"Then I'll know that too."

I ought to have said it right then.

I ought to have said, It was me.

I opened my mouth.

And I thought about Paulette's face, and the word gold-digger, and a boardroom full of people who had watched me stand up.

I thought about my four people, and the cut list I had heard about and never seen.

"I'll do my best," I said.

He nodded once.

Under the table, my thumb pressed hard against my ring finger and would not stop.

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