He walked into the pool side house, menacingly, his magnetic blue eyes ablaze. Cara went to lift her head but she couldn’t. She was paralyzed.
“What are you doing here?” Lamoreaux hissed. Cara tried to get up from the futon but she was physically unable to move. She opened her mouth to answer but her lips were glued together. He drew closer and panic overwhelmed her. She was screaming in her head and he pulled out a long knife from behind his back. He rushed toward her, plunging it into her stomach –
She bolted up, drenched in sweat. The movie had ended and the blank blue screen from the television illuminated the otherwise dark house. The storm had stopped and the first thing she noticed was the incredible silence. It was too quiet but for the blood rushing in her ears from her hammering heart rate. Cara waited for the pounding to stop and then swung her legs over the side of the sofa. She rose to her bare feet and slid open the sliding glass doors to look outside. The night had an autumn bite but Cara relished the cleansing air and welcomed the coolness against her sweating brow. She tentatively walked outside and wandered over to the poolside, straining her ears for any sign of life. She heard an owl hoot in the distance and immediately felt grounded again, grateful for the woodland creature’s cry. The pool was scheduled to be closed the following weekend so there was still water glistening light blue under the stars but its lights were off. Cara leaned forward and splashed some on her face to clear the nightmare from her head. Her pulse was still slightly erratic. She couldn’t shake the horrible feeling the dream had been some sort of urgent omen, like someone was trying to warn her of something. Warn me about Connor Lamoreaux? Or are you just looking for an out again? Sometimes a bad dream is just a bad dream, she reasoned but even as she thought it, Cara felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle and she rubbed the goosebumps off her arms almost angrily. What is wrong with me? You need to stop with this foolishness. But no matter how much she tried to be logical, she could not rid herself of the feeling that something was amiss. As if she were possessed, Cara slowly turned to face the moon at her back. It was a shining half-moon and the stars were all brightly vivid, unfettered by clouds as if the earlier storm had been an illusion. The mansion seemed three times as big against the night and it loomed creepy and uninviting. Cara didn’t notice anything about the cosmos because as she turned to face the forbidding house, a set of steel blue-grey eyes were boring down on her from a window on the second floor. Cara’s emerald irises widened as the familiar glowing orbs retreated into the blackness but even without seeing the face, she knew that Connor Lamoreaux had been watching her.
Chapter Four
Cara didn’t immediately recognize where she was when the vehicle pulled up to the building. Wedged between Andrew and Van in the rear of the car, she craned her neck to stare at the bewitching structure before her, trying to ignore Andrew’s hand resting suggestively on her knee. She was feeling exactly like the first day she had arrived at the Lamoreaux house in a cab, simultaneously uneasy and excited. The pink glow of autumn twilight was rippling through the trees in the paved parking lot, casting a surreal glow on the glass dome before them. Suddenly, however, she recognized the ballroom but it looked like a mythical lost underwater kingdom instead of an ancient, crumbling ruin from Aztec times. There were soft white decorative lights twined somehow through the slender beams of the building and solar lanterns led the pathway leading up an actual red carpet to the wide double doors which were open and welcoming.
As the staff slipped out of the car single file, another van drew up beside them and Tabitha and Maurice filtered out, barking orders at one another. Cara noted with some amusement that neither seemed to be either hearing or heeding the instructions of the other.
“Cara, take this,” Tabitha commanded as she saw her standing there, thrusting a huge platter into her arms. Cara almost buckled under its weight.
“If you drop that, you’ll owe Mr. Lamoreaux forty thousand dollars! Even your vagina won’t pay your way out of that debt, Clara!” Maurice yelled at her but Cara ignored him and started up the path to catch up with her co-workers. As she drew nearer to the ballroom, she could see that only candle-lit lanterns illuminated the stunning crystal room, casting impish shadows on the reflections. Everywhere she looked, Cara felt like it was an optical illusion, as if she were in some surreal magic show. She paused in the doorway and looked around, trying to orient herself. Ten tables of sixteen had been set up to the side as to not deter attention from the glass bottom floor. The lake below had also been light with soft, underwater lighting and if Cara stared long enough, she would see a small minnow slip by in the murky green water under her feet. A bartender was stocking up a stationary bar against one of the solid walls and a live band was doing a sound check on a makeshift platform near where she had first entered the ballroom, over two weeks before. Since the day of that wild storm, Cara had kept a very low profile, trying her best not to be seen by Connor Lamoreaux. She had stayed in her room reading and watching television after hours and when she was working, she hid in the shadows and begged Tabitha for obscure chores away from the main areas of the house. On her days off, she took off for Sag Harbor and did not return until well after the sun had set. She had not seen Lamoreaux again but she wanted to ensure that contact with him was minimal at best. There was really no cause for having to see him, she reasoned. Tabitha was technically her boss. This was only a job. She just needed to save some money for a couple of years and then she could go to college and become a veterinarian, just as she had always dreamed. She wasn’t sure what to make of the night he had watched her in the guest house by the pool. A part of her wanted to be disgusted, think of the act as perversion but secretly, she was turned on by his voyeurism.
“Are you going to finish with your wet day dream soon? Some of us need to get to work.” Cara turned and scowled at Maurice, blushing as if he had read her thoughts.
“I was just trying to figure out where to put this,” she snapped defensively. Maurice pointed toward the bar and gave her a playful push in its direction. To the backside of the structure, there was a glistening ice sculpture of a polar bear beside a champagne fountain which had not yet been started. Dozens of champagne glasses were engineered into a huge pyramid at its side.
“Hors d’ouerve table,” he said dismissively, brushing past her. Cara gently placed the dish down as to not disturb the expensive crystal goblets and turned to hurry after Maurice.
“No!” Tabitha said sharply. “You stay with me. You don’t go near the kitchen staff tonight. I need you and they are going to be ready to kill anything in their wake so stay close to me. Trust me, it’s as much for your sake as it is theirs.” Cara nodded and slowed to stand with Tabitha. She had no idea what to do at an event like this. In the Carlyle home, she was generally given the night off when they had parties and left to contend with the aftermath of the destruction the following day. Aside from Damien and Yvette’s wedding, she had never actually worked a party of this magnitude.
“What would you like me to do?” Slowly, the amazon grinned at Cara and for the first time, she noticed the woman actually had incredibly kind eyes which lightened to a clear, fluid brown. She idly wished Tabitha would smile more. The older woman almost looked beautiful in the soft light at that moment.
“Believe it or not, Mr. Lamoreaux’s parties are a huge break for us. Our job, as senior staff, is to keep an eye on the hired assistance brought in for these occasions. Lucky for us, this serving company has been with us for years so I know the staff they send quite well and they don’t require a lot of supervision. Just ensure that no one is drinking or frolicking or getting too comfortable with Mr. Lamoreaux’s guests but really, this is just as much for your enjoyment as the party guests.” Cara blinked, surprised at Tabitha’s words but not entirely believing that to be the entire truth.
“I can handle that,” she agreed, smiling back at Tabitha. As quickly as it had appeared, Cara’s beam faded as Connor Lamoreaux strolled confidently into the romantical
ly cast dome. He was dressed in a simple black tuxedo with a white ruffled shirt but he had yet to put on a tie or cufflinks and his button down was opened, showing off the chiseled lines in his neck. His jacket was linked over his finger, resting casually on his shoulder as he covered the space in mere strides with his long legs.
“Ah, fantastic!” he commented to a woman who was rushing up from the coat room to meet him. She wore a black head set and was clutching a clipboard in white knuckles. Her face was taut with stress and while she looked like she was in her fifties, a well-honed sixth sense in Cara knew she was likely closer to thirty.
“Mr. Lamoreaux!” she squeaked in a nasal, unattractive voice. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon!” Connor waved his hand, unperturbed by her nervousness and began walking around the room, the mouse hot on his heels.
“It looks good, Dana. Did you have enough time to prepare?” he asked casually. The mouse nodded with conviction.
“Did you have any questions?” he pressed. Again, Dana shook her head, unspeaking.
“Good! Maybe you can walk me through then. I particularly like the ice sculpture but I have to ask, why a polar bear?”
Dana, who Cara now figured to be the event planner, wiped sweaty palms on her tailored black pants and stammered.
“Uh…you said…well, charity…and I thought…”
“You understand that this event is raising money for impoverished African villages, right?” Lamoreaux questioned. Cara did not have a good feeling about where this was going but like a terrible car accident, she could not tear her eyes away.
“Yes, Mr. Lamoreaux but I thought it would be in poor taste to do a sculpture of a starving African boy,” Dana tried to joke cattily. Cara almost closed her eyes, immediately detecting the danger in the planner’s words.
“You thought that I could raise money for an impoverished African village by reminding a crowd of staunch Republicans about global warming?” Cara watched with sick fascination as Dana’s complexion turned translucent.
“In your mind, your options were borderline racist ice sculpture or global warming ice sculpture and you couldn’t come up with anything else, huh? You really don’t understand the flaw with this, do you?” he continued, smirking cruelly at the meek, terrified girl who was stammering apologies. What an asshole! Cara thought, surprising herself with the intensity of her anger. Dana was clearly nervous and Cara guessed this was probably her first experience working for Lamoreaux. He doesn’t need to be such a prick to her! Cara watched Lamoreaux berate the girl a moment longer and almost opened her mouth to put an end the condescending diatribe when she felt a vice like grip on her arm.
“Don’t even think about it,” Tabitha breathed into her ear, steering her away from the scene. “You’re here to work, not be a martyr. Don’t assume anything. Things are not always as they appear.”
It took Cara almost an hour to cool down from the what she had witnessed but when she finally forced herself to interact with the other staff, she began to forget about her boss’ arrogance. In spite of herself, she found herself easing and sat back to enjoy the spectacle which was the “charity” event she was working. The dinner had been seven thousand dollars a plate, all proceeds going to Connor Lamoreaux’s Sunstain campaign. Cara had taken Tabitha’s advice and done an extensive internet search on the business tycoon. The charity purportedly raised money to build villages in Kenya, Ethiopia and Libya running strictly on solar power. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest otherwise despite Cara’s almost pathological attempt to uncover some fraud or laundering. She desperately wanted to out Lamoreaux as a snake but there was no proof that the foundation was anything but a legitimate organization. Still, the way Cara saw it, the rack of lamb, shark fin soup and lobster tails smothered in risotto and escargot, drowning in champagne and vintage French wine could have easily bought and sustained entire African countries if not for a bunch of pompous, surgically enhanced people in expensive clothing vying for each other’s attention. Cara swallowed the bile of her thoughts and willed herself to watch the crowd superficially. The dazzling array of diamonds and platinum glittered mercilessly against the starlight glow of the grand ballroom. High heels clicked rhythmically against the thick glass partition between the structure and the illuminated lake below and amidst the phony air of importance which seemed to radiate within, Cara couldn’t help but be impressed by the extravagance of the furs and silks and leathers paraded around the dance floor in an almost perversely unpracticed ceremony.
At ten thirty precisely, Connor Lamoreaux rose onto the stage to make a speech. Cara rolled her eyes and looked for somewhere to escape but instead caught Tabitha’s watchful, meaningful stare. Like a reprimanded child, she shrunk back up against the wall between the kitchen and the coat room and stared at the floor.
Romance: The Bad Boy Affair: A Second Chance Romance Page 32
