Hourglass (Hourglass 1)

I tried for about a half a second to keep my opinion to myself.

“I can’t stop thinking about his mouth.” Time to get my edit button repaired. I hadn’t meant to be that honest. I felt my eyes get huge and my face go hot, and I hoped frantically that Dru hadn’t heard me clearly.

She had.

“What? Emerson Cole, I have never heard you say anything like that in your entire life!”

I bit my lip, but the giggles escaped anyway. It felt completely normal, unlike me. Dru joined in.

“Well”—she wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve—“your brother might not be, but I’m glad to hear it. You’ve dealt with a lot in the past few years,” she said, her voice growing serious. “More than most people deal with in a lifetime.”

As much as I didn’t want to talk about the past, it kept coming up today. Time to work in some more avoidance. I kicked off my shoes and pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs. “Michael and I are going to have dinner later.”

“It’s not a date, is it?”

I rolled my eyes. “I wish. He was careful to make the point that the Hourglass doesn’t allow employee/client privileges.”

It was Dru’s turn for an eye roll. “I know all about that. Thomas clarified it with Michael several times before he hired him. But still … I saw Michael looking at you last night.”

“I dropped a glass and almost hyperventilated in the middle of your party. Everyone was looking at me.”

“No, before that.”

I’d seen it, too.

Maybe he was just happy to find someone else like him, or maybe the whole opposites-attract thing was baloney. I wouldn’t know. I’d been so busy hiding out the past few years I’d never been out on a normal date. Group dates, sure, which were their own particular brand of hell if I didn’t know everyone, but never a regular date and certainly never a blind date. Yeesh. Anyway, whether I wanted it to be or not, tonight wasn’t a date.

“Tonight isn’t a date.” I said it out loud, reminding myself. “It’s a business dinner—he’s getting paid to take me out. Thomas hired him. It’s not like Michael turned up and asked for an introduction.”

Dru didn’t meet my eyes. “What are you going to wear?”

I could practically see her fingers twitching, desperate to help me clothe myself. “How about I leave it up to you?”

Two minutes later she handed me another pair of killer heels and a dress in a shimmery copper color. “This. It’ll make the green in your eyes stand out. I’m going to make a call. I want to make sure you two get the perfect table. And we got a wine shipment, so I’ll be there tonight. But I swear I’ll act like I don’t know you. Now scoot!”

It was a testament to how much I loved her that I let her boss me around that way.

When I was at boarding school I would have killed for a bathroom like the one I had now. Heaven. All the times I crammed myself into one of the tiny shower stalls with their dinky plastic curtains or waited for an empty sink so I could brush my teeth simply floated away, completely forgotten. I luxuriated in the spray of the shower heads—three of them, and all adjustable. They felt amazing once I’d figured out how to aim them so that I wouldn’t drown. I resisted the urge to linger. As seductive as the shower was, it couldn’t compete with the evening I was anticipating.

Or rather, the company I was going to keep.

I walked into my bedroom in my towel and submitted before she asked, sitting down in front of Dru. She was armed with her makeup bag and various hair-styling instruments. It was all art to her, from applying makeup to dressing people to decorating buildings. She had the aesthetic thing nailed. I knew firsthand that she excelled at taking care of people.

When she finished, I put on the dress and looked in the mirror. My eyes did look greener than usual. My hair felt like silk flowing over my bare shoulders. Dru dusted my collarbone and upper chest with some sort of luminous-looking powder that smelled like spun sugar, and between it and the metallic dress I felt really shiny. She had done my makeup in soft iridescent colors that also made me feel very … shiny. Like one of those reflective Christmas globes.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked.

“Trust me.” She apparently never heard the trust-me rule either. At my doubtful look Dru said, “No, I’m serious. The lighting in the Phone Company is very soft, lots of candlelight. You’ll glow.”

“Aliens glow.”

“Not like that. Here.” She turned on the small lamp on my dresser and turned off the overhead light, pulling my now straight curtain of blonde hair back from my face. I looked in the mirror again. An exotic stranger stared back at me.

“He’s going to think I tried too hard.”

“He’s going to be too busy looking at you to think much of anything.”

And that didn’t make me nervous at all.