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“You decent?” I asked Noah as I stepped inside his room.
“I have no idea,” he replied, coming out of the walk-in closet.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Oh, wow…”
He wore a stylish black tuxedo with a narrow tie and a vest beneath his jacket that was somehow the sexiest article of clothing I’d ever seen on a man. He’d slicked his hair back with gel to give it a wet look, making his angular features more prominent. An emerald-green kerchief in his jacket pocket set off the green in his eyes, turning them into gemstones.
“You look…devastating.”
He smiled crookedly. “I was shooting for ‘presentable.’”
“Then you overshot it by, like, a lot.” I straightened his tie and smoothed the corner of his kerchief, then ran my hands down the silky lapels of his jacket, and somehow, he felt my mood though I hadn’t said a word.
“What’s wrong, babe?”
“Nothing,” I said, forcing a laugh. “It’s just…you look so handsome and sharp, and I know there’re bound to be women there who are a million times more put together than me. Not to mention…taller.” I gave myself a shake. “Stupid. I’m just being vain and stupid.”
Noah laid his hands gently on either side of my cheeks, then carefully moved them up to feel my hair, to feel the tendrils I’d let loose and the small silver drop earrings I wore. He slipped his hands down to my bare shoulders. “Strapless,” he said approvingly, a smile ghosting over his lips. He trailed his hands down my back, then around to my waist, feeling the material and letting it slide through his fingers.
“Color?”
“Black,” I managed, as his hands had left little trails of heat all over my body.
“Are you wearing lipstick?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to have to redo it,” he said huskily and kissed me deeply, his tongue sliding against mine, his hands around my waist, pulling me to him.
I moaned softly into his kiss and when he pulled away, he was breathing hard. He pressed his forehead to mine. “You’re more than beautiful.” He caressed my cheek. “You’re the dawn, Charlotte, and no woman can hold a candle to you.”
“Oh, jeez,” I breathed. “I was shooting for ‘pretty.’”
“You know I can’t do this without you,” Noah said, his eyes searching for mine in his endless dark. “And you know I need this. For us, not just me.”
“If it’s the right thing, Noah, then I support you.”
“It will be,” he said and turned away, so that I only barely caught his last words. “I have nothing else.”
The hired sedan took us through the New York night where city lights glittered all around us and above us, stretching upward so high I couldn’t see their end. The Empire State Building was lit up with flashing blues and greens, painting the night sky above. Noah told me thatPlanet Xhad paid for the light show and had rented out the entire 86thfloor outdoor observatory for the duration of the party. The ball itself was in the Grand Empire Ballroom on the 85thfloor, newly constructed after a hedge firm moved out.
Midtown was a cacophony of honking cabs and pedestrians crowding the street. Our car pulled in front of the Empire State Building, a place I’d only stepped foot in once, when I first moved to the city five years ago. Elegant people in formal wear exited limos and sedans, stepping under the front awning and through the doors amid art deco columns and glass.
I had been nervous about wearing a knee-length dress, thinking most of the women would be wearing floor-length ball gowns—the kind of dress that was too overwhelming to my short stature. But I was surprised to see most dresses were very tight, very short, and very strapless, embellished with beads or transparent swaths of material glittering with gemstones. The men wore tuxes or fashionable suits in flamboyant colors. I heard loud, raucous voices from a group of men and the answering laughs of the women as our driver opened the door and handed me out.
I smoothed my dress down that now seemed a bit plain and helped Noah from the car. He’d put on his sunglasses and carried his white cane, both of which only enhanced his beauty in my eyes. I had only known him as blind, and that blindness was a part of what made him the man I’d entrusted with my heart. The people inside the hotel had known a very different Noah Lake, and how they were going to reconcile the two set my nerves on edge.
“There are so many people,” I said to Noah as we waited with a crowd at the elevators. “I had no idea the magazine was this huge.”
“This is the Global Ball,” Noah answered. “People from all the offices all over the world are here, in addition to the huge staff from headquarters.”
I nodded, noting people from varied ethnicities, some in fancy versions of their local dress, and heard voices speaking in accents or in foreign tongues. The inclusiveness and diversity bolstered me somewhat.
You let Deacon color your opinion of the entire magazine. This might not be so bad.
We crammed into an elevator with loud-talkers and a cloud of perfumes and colognes. No one recognized Noah so far, and we were tucked into the back corner anyway. He clutched my arm, and I knew he felt boxed in, but then the elevator shot up and we were all cracking our jaws at the change in pressure.
The doors opened on an elegant entry room, carpeted in maroon and gold. We followed the crowd down a hallway to a set of double doors marked Grand Empire Ballroom.
