Chapter Two — The Introduction
389 Words
The after-party occupied the top three floors of the Meridian Hotel all glass and low gold light and the particular electricity of a room full of people who were all, in various ways, performing.
Raymond materialized at her elbow the way he always did. Smooth. Paternal. Smelling faintly of expensive cedar.
"Celeste." His hand at her elbow light, guiding. "Come. There's someone."
She went.
Damien Hale stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city sprawling forty stories below him like something he owned
which, in several material senses, he did.
The Hale Media Empire covered three broadcast networks, four record labels, a film studio, and enough real estate to constitute a small municipality.
He held a glass he hadn't drunk from and looked at the room with the stillness of a man who had decided long ago that stillness was more powerful than movement.
He was, Celeste thought with the objective eye she had trained over four years, extraordinary looking. Not in the curated way of the celebrities she dressed not polished or performed. Something rawer.
A face that had been lived in. Jaw sharp enough to cut.
Dark eyes that moved through the room like searchlights.
Objective, she reminded herself. Professional.
"Damien," Raymond said warmly.
"You know Lumière, of course. But have you met Celeste Voss? The genius behind every look on that stage tonight."
Damien turned.
The searchlight landed on her.
She felt it differently up close — that quality of his attention. It wasn't the attention of a man looking at an attractive woman. It was the attention of a man who looked at everything like it was a problem worth solving.
"I haven't." He extended a hand. "Damien Hale."
"I know who you are." She shook it. Firm. Exactly two seconds. "Celeste Voss."
"Raymond tells me you're the best in the city."
"Raymond is generous." The corner of her mouth. Calibrated. "I'm the best on the continent."
Something shifted in his face.
The architecture of amusement, almost a smile, restrained.
"I'll verify that independently," he said.
"Please do," she said.
Later, in the car, alone, she pressed her fingers to her lips and thought about the way his hand had felt warm, dry, deliberate and told herself it was simply data.
She was very good at lying to herself.
She had been practicing for four years.
- Writer
