THE BILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS LIE

Chapter Four

Lucien’s POV

I stood at the edge of the Plaza Hotel ballroom with a glass of sparkling water I had no plan to drink. Three hundred of New York’s richest people were applauding a woman who had spent the last hour carrying empty plates back to the kitchen.

Zarah Cole. My fiancée. The woman who was, according to this morning’s papers, warming me up.

The Blackwood Foundation winter dinner was our second appearance in two days, and by every number I tracked, it was working. Stock was up six percent since the engagement came out. Pre-orders doubled. A senior editor at the Times had called my office to propose a profile titled “The Warmth of Lucien Blackwood.” The public wanted a story, and I had given them one.

I don’t leave things to chance. The car, the coat, the cameras, the questions the reporters would ask, I had planned all of it before she signed her name. Even the answers were mine. So I didn’t understand why I was watching her instead of the room.

She stood near the service door, half hidden behind a pillar, talking to a waiter who couldn’t have been older than nineteen. He was clearly apologizing for something. Zarah shook her head and said something that made him laugh. Then she took the tray out of his hands, set it down, and straightened his bow tie with two fingers.

Nobody else in the room had asked that boy his name. I knew it from the staff list. She knew it because she asked.

Across the ballroom, Marguerite Voss, wife of my biggest investor, had Zarah cornered with a champagne glass and a bracelet worth more than everything Zarah owned. I watched Zarah smile politely. I watched her left thumb slip under her fingers, the habit she believed no one noticed.

Marguerite seized her hand and gasped at the ring. “Isn’t it gorgeous? You must be terrified of losing it.”

“I am,” Zarah said. “I checked it twice in the elevator.”

Marguerite laughed. Zarah didn’t. She looked down at the diamond the way you would look at something you had mixed feelings about.

I crossed the room and put a hand on her waist. In the corner, photographers raised their cameras all at once.

“You’re staring,” she murmured, without turning her head.

“I’m supposed to be in love with you.”

“You look like you’re reading a bakery menu.”

“Then smile like it’s a good one.”

Her mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was real, and it was gone before I could get enough of it.

Damien Peters had never attended a Blackwood Foundation event in his life. He arrived at nine in a black suit, smiling like a man delighted to be there. He waited until Zarah had gone to speak with the shelter director and was out of earshot.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I mean it. You’ve done the impossible, Lucien. You’ve made people like you.”

“Is there something you want, Damien?”

“Information. For example, how a man who hasn’t stayed at a party past twenty minutes in six years has watched one woman for three hours.”

“She is my fiancée.”

“Of two days.” He took a sip of champagne. “I’d call it impulsive, but I know you. You don’t improvise.”

“Be careful,” I warned. I could already tell he was building to something.

“I had my people look into her.” His tone stayed friendly, which is how I knew he meant every word. “An orphan. Eight months at a bakery, mopping shifts every night. A girl like that doesn’t wander into the one event you hosted without an invitation.”

“She delivered a cake.”

“To a masked gala that already had a pastry chef. The order went in that same morning, I was told. Paid in full, tip included, by a third party nobody can name.” He tilted his head. “Who does that?”

My face gave away nothing. I had spent years learning how to control it, in public and in private.

“I see you’ve been busy with my affairs,” I said.

“So have you.” He looked across the ballroom to where Zarah stood laughing quietly with an older woman. Then his eyes came back to me. “What are you doing, Lucien?”

“My job.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.” I set my glass on a passing tray. “If you have proof of something, bring it to me. Until then, enjoy the party. The salmon is good.”

He smiled and walked away. I watched him until he disappeared into the crowd.

Later I went back up to the forty-eighth floor and stood at the window. The city lay spread beneath me. The numbers glowed on my screen. I was trending in eleven countries, my share price at a three-year high. Everything was going exactly as planned.

Except for the part I hadn’t planned.

She hadn’t asked me for anything. Two days, and not one favor, not one question about what my name could get her. The woman I had prepared for was not the woman I had got.

Which was why, at noon, I had instructed my office to call the clinic on Eighth Street and move her scan to Monday, billed to the foundation’s discretionary account with no name attached. She would never know. She had pushed that appointment back twice, and I knew exactly why.

My phone buzzed on the desk. A message from Elias, saved in my contacts only as E.

“I saw the coverage. This is not what we agreed.”

Then a second one.

“Does she know yet? Call me before you do something you can’t undo.”

I read both twice and didn’t reply.

Instead, I opened the photograph the press office had sent, the best shot from tonight. My hand on her back. Her head tilted toward mine, a small laugh, a few flakes of snow still melting in her hair from the walk to the car. I was looking at her. Not the camera. Her.

Anyone would have called us a couple. That was the point.

I put the phone face down.

Seven days. I had been working toward this for far longer than that. A photograph didn’t change the plan. Neither did a kind girl, or a warning, or a man like Damien with good instincts and no proof.

But in the dark glass of the window, the man looking back at me seemed less certain than I would have liked.

And for the first time since I started all of this, I wondered which one of us was really being led.