"I don't have cats," I pointed out in a lame attempt to defuse the situation with humor.
Champagne shook her head, sending waves of golden hair cascading down her shoulders. Add a little slow motion, and she'd make a perfect shampoo ad – and indeed, she'd starred in a couple television commercials before she "got bored of acting". I didn't know how Tarquin, her husband, put up with her.
"Not the point," she insisted. "The point is that, as your best friend, I'm putting my foot down." She squirmed forward to the edge of the bed so that she could do literally that, slamming her bare foot down onto my bedroom carpet. "You need to get out of here, and this is a great opportunity. You don't even need to spend money, since you've got a whole closet full of old clothes already!"
"Thanks," I winced, but she kept talking.
"And who knows?" she kept going, blithely running over my words. "Maybe you'll meet someone new at this party!"
Even Champagne, who normally went through conversational subtleties like a wrecking ball through rotted drywall, realized that she'd made a blunder with that last comment. She froze, grimacing. "Er, sorry," she said a moment later, her voice more subdued. "Not that you should go for that reason. You're not ready yet."
That had been my go-to excuse whenever she tried to drag me out to social events. It wasn't wrong; I still clung to my love for Marcone, my husband, even after all this time. That wound still throbbed inside my chest, a dull ache that I knew would never really heal. I'd had him, and then he'd been torn away from me, far too soon.
And my happiness left me on the same day that he died.
Champagne took a deep breath, apparently not noticing how it made even the stretchy fabric of her sports bra creak with the effort of containing her bountiful assets, and turned back to me. "You need to get out of the house, Helen," she insisted, a little more softly. "I can't stand watching you barely get out of bed, just lay here and waste away. You're so thin, so pale. You need this."
I closed for my eyes for a moment. I knew that, even with her ham-fisted delivery, Champagne had the right idea. If I continued to stay inside, I'd probably die one of these days, my life just sort of drifting away in the wind like dust. Not that I really would mind if it happened. At least I'd get to see Marcone again.
But I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone out. I didn't really need to leave the house for much of anything. Julius took care of the errands and shopping and cooking. I didn't do anything. There really didn't seem to be much reason for me to even exist.
I doubted that going out to a party would help change that situation, but I found it strangely hard to say no to Champagne.
"Fine," I gave in.
From the way that Champagne reacted, I could have just agreed to marry her in a lesbian ceremony. "Oh, hooray!" She lunged for me, and before I could react, she'd tackled me down onto the bed in a tight hug. "Oh, Helen, I'm so happy! This is going to be great! I'll help you pick out a super cute outfit, and we can go together!"
Already, I felt myself regretting the decision to attend the Poverty Ball. I'd gone to events with Champagne before. Despite all her promises beforehand to stick by my side, she always vanished into the crowd just seconds after we entered. She seemed to know everyone, was friends with everyone, and flitted about the party like a butterfly as she exchanged overly enthusiastic greetings with all of high society's movers and shakers.
I, on the other hand, inevitably ended up shrinking towards the back wall, seeking a retreat. I was the lonely nerd at the high school prom, the scared kitten dropped into a kennel filled with enthusiastic mastiffs. Seconds after arriving at a party, I wanted nothing but to escape, to flee back to the shelter of my quiet bedroom.
I couldn't say any of this to Champagne, however. I struggled to get free of her vice-like embrace. "Okay, okay!" I said, fighting my way free so that I could resume breathing. "What do I need to say to get you to let me go!"
She thought about that, biting her lip and making a face that could make a movie star spontaneously propose marriage. "Agree to let me pick your outfit."
"Done."
Another mistake. She lunged for me again, once more tackling me down onto the bed. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun!" she squealed in my ear.
I nodded, as I hoped fervently in my head that this wouldn't turn out to be a huge, embarrassing, soul-crushing mistake.
Little did I know...
Chapter Four
HELEN
*
A month later, I stood awkwardly in front of a full-length mirror, turning back and forth as I tried to find an angle that didn't make me hate my appearance. "Really?" I asked skeptically. "You think that this looks good on me?"
Behind me, Champagne let out an explosive sigh, blasting air out of her cheeks. She tossed her blonde curls, now with copper streaks cutting expertly through them, back behind her. "Yes," she insisted, grabbing my shoulders and turning me to face my reflection once again. "Trust me, Helen, you look great!"
I wanted to believe her, in part simply because Champagne never really bothered to lie about anything. She'd happily tell a painful truth without even thinking of the possibility of lying. But examining myself in the mirror didn't do much to raise my rock-bottom confidence for tonight.
Champagne had picked out a relatively simple black dress, which I actually found rather fitting. The Black Widow would show up at the party in a mourner's dress. (God, even I used the nickname for myself, now – a clear sign I'd internalized it.)
If the outfit stopped there, I'd be okay. But Champagne had taken a pair of scissors to the hem, cutting it in a rather ragged trim that tickled against my knees. She'd added a beat-up, scratched leather jacket that barely fit around me, and had carefully fussed with the collar until it hung at what she declared to be a "perfectly askew" angle. Despite the ridiculousness of "shabby" jewelry, she'd insisted that I complete the ensemble with a necklace of chunky black stones that sat low across my disappointingly flat chest.
Admittedly, black was my color. The darkness of the outfit seemed to blend into my black hair, which I left loose. I hadn't gotten it cut in a while, and it tumbled down my back, hitting just below my shoulder blades. Champagne had added only the lightest touches of rouge to brighten up my pale skin, just a single swipe of mascara under my dark eyes. "Don't want to make you look bruised," she explained, and I nodded as if I had any idea what she might be talking about.
Now, she stepped forward and grabbed my hand. "Come on, the car is here!" she said, tugging me away from my worried looking reflection. "Let's go have some fun, girl!"
"Woo," I echoed, failing to make the noise sound fun.
"That's the spirit!" she cooed, totally missing my lackluster tone. "This is gonna be fun!"
My apprehension about attending the Poverty Ball wasn't helped by the circumstances of our arrival. Champagne's chartered Town Car dropped us off at the grand front entrance to the Stone mansion, and I felt a wave of déjà vu hit me when I stepped out and looked up at the big house. I'd last been here on Marcone's arm, back when I could still remember what happiness felt like.
Hefty bouncers stood at the entrance, checking invitations against a guest list. It was clear that, despite the Poverty Ball's charity goals, no one was getting in here if they weren't rich, famous, or both. No commoners allowed, even at an event designed to raise money for them.
Which meant there'd be no buffer between the other rich scions, masters of gossip, and myself. Perfect.
"Oh, and there's Tarquin!" Champagne shouted out, literally two seconds later. She tugged at my arm, as if I needed to see her pointing out the huge figure of her husband. "Let me go say hello!"
I opened my mouth to interject and ask her not to leave me alone, not already, but she was gone. She bobbed and weaved through the other arriving guests over to her hulking bear of a husband, somehow managing to jump in her three-inch high heels so that she could throw herself into Lord Tarquin Phillips' arms.
Another group of guest
s moved between Champagne and myself – and just like that, I was in the position I'd feared. I was alone at this party, surrounded by people who probably knew every rumor about me, believed them all to be true.
I closed my eyes for a moment, wishing desperately that Marcone was here. Even if I could only feel his comforting presence for an instant, could only hear his voice, it would be enough to lend me strength, get me through this.
I felt nothing but loneliness.
Still, the Town Car had already pulled away, leaving me without a ride back home. I could go approach the valet, ask him to call me a ride – but that would attract attention from the other guests, probably add yet another ugly rumor about me to the growing pile. If I wanted to escape, I'd need to spend at least a short bit of time here before fleeing.
Hating everything about this, I turned and headed through the grand entrance, into the Stone mansion.
My intuition about the party turned out to be totally correct.
I circulated around the interior of the mansion, trying to keep my face expressionless and not show my inner pain. I recognized most of the other guests, even in their "shabby" getups, but none of them met my eyes or signaled that they wished to talk to me. They just silently watched me as I passed, and then began whispering as soon as I'd turned away. I felt the skin at the back of my neck burning, and knew that they were talking about me.
I didn't need to stand close enough to eavesdrop to guess what they might be saying. "There she is, the Black Widow! Rumor is that she killed her husband, even though the police could never find anything. She's been locking herself up in her house ever since. Think that it's guilt over what she did?"
My brain filled in the words for me, and I paused for a moment to squeeze my eyes shut and fight back tears. Of course I hadn't killed Marcone! He'd been the love of my life, and then cruel fate stole him away from me. Could anyone blame me for not wanting to go out and face all the dull little trivialities of my world, a world that felt forlorn and gray after the loss of the one person who gave it color? How could I go out and face such a despairingly bleak world after I'd lost what I had?
I pulled my eyes open again, cast about for something to distract myself. Whoever Richard had hired to handle the interior decorations and party planning for this event certainly earned their money, I thought to myself. Last time I'd been inside the Stone mansion, it had looked like a typical house owned by Old Money, with uncomfortably elegant furniture, huge draperies on the walls, and oil paintings of ancestors glaring down at visitors with disapproving and mildly constipated expressions.
I barely recognized the mansion as the same place. At some point, someone got rid of the elegant but uncomfortable furniture, replacing it with battered but comfortable couches and overstuffed armchairs. The decorator for this party hadn't removed that furniture, but added tattered throw rugs and blankets over them, giving them the appearance of discarded furniture out in someone's back alley. Black plastic garbage bags were piled in the corners, although they felt strangely light when I prodded one with a foot. Likely, the planner just filled them with Styrofoam peanuts, or some other packing material. Instead of small tables, the planner had rolled out the same big, gray garbage bins that homeowners pushed out onto the streets for garbage collection day. There was something quite strange about watching titans of industry, each with a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, rest their flutes of champagne on top of rubbish bins.
Even the clever decorations, however, weren't enough to distract me from the sideways glances that came from the other guests. I recognized a few of the guests – I caught sight of the tall, broad-shouldered frame of Richard Stone, the host, who looked much as I remembered him. He had two brothers, didn't he? They'd be around here, somewhere. The middle brother, Teddy, had always been quiet, but the youngest one never missed a party. What was his name?
I couldn't think clearly, couldn't focus on remembering the web of social connections I'd almost completely neglected over the last few years. There were too many strangers, too many people looking sideways at me when they they thought I didn't see. I felt my throat tighten, my eyes starting to tear up again. I couldn't keep standing here, scrutinized by everyone like a parrot in a cage at the zoo. The lights overhead felt too bright, too warm on my exposed skin in the tattered black dress.
Looking around, my desperate gaze spotted a door standing ajar. My memory supplied that the opening led outside, to a balcony that overlooked the lower back yard behind the mansion. I cut a beeline towards that door, not caring what the others thought of my sudden fleeing from the social scene.
Slipping through the doorway, cooler, fresher air immediately brushed against my skin and washed over my face. I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm my racing heart in my chest. Moving a little more slowly, now, I stepped over to the balcony, letting my fingers run along the cool stone railing.
The cooler air flowed into my lungs and made me feel ever so slightly more under control. I leaned more heavily on the railing, resting both hands against the stone as I looked out at the dark grounds below my location. The Stone brothers owned quite a large plot of land, along with their mansion, I remembered. Marcone had once remarked with a touch of envy that they could probably fit a golf course out there, if they ever decided to develop the land.
"Needed to get away from all the craziness in there?"
I jumped nearly a foot in the air, my heart shooting up into my throat in surprise at the unexpected voice speaking up. I spun around, searching for its source.
In that sudden burst of movement, however, I forgot briefly how close I stood to the edge of the balcony. I'd been leaning slightly over it to look out into the darkness, and as I turned, I felt my center of gravity shift slightly but unstoppably towards empty air, on the far side of the railing...
A hand shot forward, latching onto my own and tugging me back to safety before I could topple over the balcony's railing. "Whoa!" called out the voice, apparently belonging to the owner of the hand that pulled me back. "Careful, it's a long way down!"
As I settled back on my feet, no longer in imminent danger of toppling over the balcony and cracking my head open, I took an unsteady breath. "Thank you," I managed, blinking and trying to spot my rescuer in the darkness. I saw an outline of a man, but the light streaming out from the interior of the mansion hid all features except for his silhouette.
The man still lightly held my hand. "Here, why don't you stand over here, just to be safe," he suggested, moving me another couple of feet away from the edge. As he moved me, he shifted around so that I could better see him, the light from the interior of the house catching his face and torso.
He looked... honest, was my first impression. He wore a costume of mud-smeared military fatigues, with appropriately messy hair and a beard that, surprisingly, didn't look fake. The outfit looked like it had been intended to hang on his frame and appear baggy, but he filled it out well. Broad shoulders pushed against the inside of the camouflage-patterned jacket, and he stood a couple of inches taller than me. Blue eyes caught the light shining out from inside the mansion and sparkled at me, open and free of guile or judgment.
"Hi," he said, his lips spreading to reveal white but ever so slightly crooked teeth.
I think it was those teeth that calmed me enough to respond. Champagne once explained to me the idea of "jerk nails" on a man. Flopping on my bed, she'd tried to tell me that some men had nails that just seemed to be a little too perfect, as if they went in for a daily manicure.
"Jerk hands," she'd repeated, waving her own exquisitely manicured fingernails at me as if this offered some sort of explanation. "Like, they've never done any hard work in their life, never even gotten a paper cut! All you have to do is look at those hands and you know that the guy's going to be a spoiled brat who won't ever roll up his sleeves and kill a spider in the bathroom for you. In other words, a total jerk."
At the time, I'd just rolled my eyes inside my head as I nodded along.
Champagne came up with a new theory for judging men practically each week, and they all seemed to revolve around some tiny and insignificant detail. I never put much stock in them, or even bothered to remember them – especially when she forgot the theory by her next visit.
But now, looking at this man on the balcony, those ever so slightly less than perfect teeth seemed strangely reassuring. If he wasn't so vain as to insist on fixing such a minor imperfection, perhaps he wouldn't be judgmental of others.
He was still looking at me, waiting for me to say something. I opened my mouth, without the slightest idea of what might come out.
"Hi," I replied. I was still holding his hand, and I gave it a shake.
His smile widened, and he let me shake hands with him, gave my fingers a quick little squeeze before releasing them. I glanced down at his fingers and saw that they looked big but a little dirty, the nails not quite even.
Not jerk teeth. No jerk nails.
A good sign.
Chapter Five
TANNER
*
For an instant, when the woman stepped outside onto the balcony, I nearly panicked. One of the Stone women was coming out to chastise me for taking a few minutes to myself!
That brief little moment of panic quickly passed, however, even as I caught sight of the woman's face in profile. I didn't recognize her.
Then again, even if one of the hostesses found me out here, there really wasn't much that they still needed me to handle. I'd been running around like a chicken with its head cut off all day, getting the mansion set up and decorated for this charity ball, but now that the guests were here, there wasn't much more work that I could handle. The catering staff had arrived, descending on the kitchen in a flurry of activity, booting me out in no uncertain terms. I'd been informed, rather rudely, by the head chef that my services were no longer required and that they'd handle things from that point forward.
For Love of Passion (Stone Brothers Book 4) Page 3
