His Secret Luna

Chapter5

The first event was a charity dinner on Thursday.

Diana sent the details by email with the subject line: Thursday Evening, Dress Code Enclosed. Attached was a PDF with the venue, the time, a list of names I was expected to recognize and a short note about each of them, and a single line at the bottom that said: A stylist will come to you at four. Please be ready.

I read the names list three times. Then I read it again while eating breakfast. I had a reasonable memory and I used it because I was not going to stand next to Sebastian Hale in a room full of people who had known him for twenty years and blank on someone's name. That felt like the kind of mistake you only get to make once.

The stylist arrived at four with two rolling racks and the energy of someone who had been given a task and intended to complete it excellently. Her name was Priya and she looked at me for approximately four seconds before she started pulling things off the first rack with the certainty of someone who has been doing this for years.

'Sit,' she said. 'I need to see you move before I commit to anything.'

I sat. Then I stood. Then I walked across the room because she asked me to.

'You hold yourself like you're waiting for something to go wrong,' she said.

'I usually am,' I said.

She looked at me for a moment. Then something in her face softened just slightly. 'Not tonight,' she said. 'Tonight you belong in the room. Hold yourself like that.'

I thought about that for the rest of the time she was working on my hair.

* * *

Sebastian was in the living room when I came out.

He was already dressed, dark suit, no tie again, the kind of effortless put together that took money and bone structure and absolutely nothing else. He was looking at something on his phone and did not hear me come in, which gave me two full seconds to look at him before he looked up.

When he did look up he went very still.

Not for long. A breath, maybe two. Then his expression settled back into its usual even surface and he slid his phone into his pocket.

'Ready,' he said.

'That's all you're going to say.'

'What else would you like me to say.'

'Most people say you look nice.'

He looked at me for a moment. Something moved in his eyes that I was starting to recognize as him choosing his words.

'You look more than nice,' he said. 'You look like you belong next to me.'

It was the most practical compliment I had ever received in my life. It was also, for reasons I chose not to examine, the one that sat with me longest on the drive over.

The venue was the kind of place that had chandeliers and a dress code and waiters who materialized at your elbow with champagne before you had consciously decided you wanted any.

Sebastian's hand came to the small of my back the moment we walked through the door.

I had known it was coming. It was in the contract. Public affection maintained to a convincing degree, that was how they had worded it. I had read it four times. I had been prepared.

I was not prepared.

His hand was warm and steady and it sat at the base of my spine with the confidence of someone who had done this a thousand times, which he had not, not with me, and yet it felt like something that had existed long before tonight. I kept my face still and my chin up and told myself it was just a hand and it meant nothing.

His thumb moved. Just slightly. Against the fabric of my dress, just once, and then it was still again.

I took a glass of champagne from a passing tray.

The evening moved the way those kinds of evenings do, conversations and names and careful smiles and the particular performance of people who are very comfortable with being watched. Sebastian was extraordinary at it. He moved through the room with the ease of someone who had been in rooms like this since before I was born, saying the exact right thing to each person, remembering every name, never looking like he was performing even though he clearly was.

And every time we moved from one group to the next, his hand came back to my back. Like a home base. Like something he was not even fully aware he was doing.

I was aware. I was very aware.

* * *

It was near the end of the evening when a man named Reeves cornered me near the window while Sebastian was across the room.

He was the kind of man who stood too close and smiled too wide and asked questions that sounded like conversation but felt like something else underneath. He had been watching me all evening. I had noticed because I had learned early in life to notice that kind of watching.

'So you're the one who finally caught Sebastian Hale,' he said. Smiling. Easy. Like we were old friends.

'I don't think anyone catches Sebastian,' I said. 'I think he just decides.'

Reeves laughed. 'Sharp. He always did have taste.' He leaned slightly closer. 'How long have you two actually known each other? Because I have to say, none of us saw this coming. Not even a little.'

'Long enough,' I said pleasantly.

'Funny. He's never mentioned you.'

'He's a private person.'

'He is.' Reeves tilted his head. 'You're very good at this.'

Something about the way he said it made my skin tingle.

Then Sebastian was there. I had not heard him cross the room. He simply appeared at my side, suddenly and with total authority, and his hand came to my waist this time, not my back, my waist, and he pulled me just slightly closer than the contract required.

'Reeves,' he said. Calm. Perfectly pleasant. The smile did not reach his eyes even a little.

'Sebastian.' Reeves straightened. Something in him had shifted, like a man who had been leaning on a fence and suddenly remembered it was electric. 'Lovely evening.'

'It is,' Sebastian said. 'Excuse us.'

He steered me away smoothly, his hand still at my waist, and we walked toward the far side of the room before he slowed and leaned down slightly so his voice reached only me.

'Are you alright,' he said quietly.

I looked up at him. His face was still composed. But there was something in his eyes that was paying very close attention.

'I'm fine,' I said. 'I handled it.'

'I know you did.' A pause. 'I was watching.'

Something about that landed differently than I expected it to. Not threatening. Something closer to the opposite of threatening. Like he had been paying attention all evening and I had not even known and I was not sure how I felt about that.

'He knows something is off,' I said quietly. 'He's suspicious.'

'Let him be,' Sebastian said. 'He is always suspicious. It is his most consistent quality.'

I almost laughed. I pressed my lips together.

Sebastian looked at me for a moment. His hand was still at my waist and neither of us had moved to change that.

'You did well tonight,' he said.

'Don't sound so surprised.'

'I'm not surprised,' he said. And something in the way he said it, quiet and certain, made me think he actually meant it.