Party Girl

Chapter Twelve

For one wild second Hannah wondered where the hell they could possibly go, since there couldn't be any room between the tapestry and the wall on which it hung. But to her shock there was more than enough room, thanks to a recessed doorway hidden by the tapestry—a doorway through which she was dragged, and into another room shrouded in darkness.

Shit.

Shit!

Dalton was right. The party scene was just too damn dangerous.

That thought filled her with rage, along with a steely determination to be no one’s victim this time around. How dare anyone would even think they had the right to touch her, much less move her when she didn't want to be moved? She would frigging kill this bastard while screaming the building down.

With that in mind, she slammed her head back in the general direction where her attacker’s face should be, only to have her head glance against the rock-hard point of a chin.

Damn it.

Down but not out, she sucked in a lungful of air to scream.

“Hannah, it's me.” Dalton's voice grated in her ear a second before the steel-like bands of his arms holding her in place suddenly let go. Light bloomed a moment later, and she whirled around to find Dalton standing next to a Tiffany-style floor lamp. To her deepening shock, she discovered he was dressed in a tux, and his eyes glittered behind a black masquerade mask while he rubbed the place where she’d connected with his chin. “Welcome to the secret clubhouse of The Chosen Ones.”

“What?” Still stunned that he had somehow manifested from her thoughts and into reality—a reality where he wore a sexy black mask and looked good enough to eat—Hannah could only stare. “What?”

“The Chosen Ones. Or, to put it more accurately, the kids who made it into CATE on scholarship. This has always been their clubhouse,” he explained with a careless wave of his hand before he started toward her. “There are other clubhouses dotted around the property, but I always thought this one was the coolest, because it was the most secretive. Hidden in plain sight.”

“Clubhouse? The Chosen Ones.” Trying like hell to catch up, Hannah made herself take in their surroundings. Elegant wood-paneled walls with fancy gilded edgework, twin camelback sofas and overstuffed armchairs, a bank of what had to be custom-built, water-cooled PCs and monitors, and a marble fireplace with brass andirons that would have looked right at home in some French palace. “When I was a kid, I had a clubhouse, too. It was under a diseased sycamore tree at my mother’s place before she dumped me. And it didn't have any doors. Or windows. Or walls. This is way better. Is that an espresso machine?”

“I guess.”

“The wood paneling’s kind of heavy, though. Reminds me of those stuffy Victorian gentlemen’s clubs. Not the stripper kind of gentlemen’s club. The other kind. I’m pretty sure Victorians weren’t big on strip joints.” Oh God, when would she stop babbling? When?

The curl of his mouth deepened. “I don’t really give a damn about the espresso machine, or the wood paneling. The only thing I like about this room now is that since it’s located just off the ballroom, I was able to insist it had to be locked for the duration of the party, and I have the only key. It's just you and me in here.”

“Really?” The delicious possibilities of being locked away with Dalton from the rest of the world made all her girly parts tingle, to the point where she almost overlooked the magnitude of his statement. “Wait, really? I don’t understand. How could you possibly insist on how anything is run here at CATE? Unless the school is really weird about agreeing to whatever their alumni want.”

“You kidding? Think of the madness if everyone got a say in how the show was run. That's why I became a member of CATE’s Board of Trustees. It’s the only way to have any real say about what goes on at this school.”

What was it about this place that made her jaw drop every five minutes? “Excuse me?”

He nodded. “The people here at CATE gave me the best possible start in life. The least I could do is return the favor and give back to this school as much as I can. When I stumbled across your path and learned through your teen-era videos that you’d tried to get into CATE, it just seemed like fate to me. Better late than never, but I finally managed to get you here.”

“My invitation to the fete was your doing?” She put a hand to her brow in the hope that it would stop her brain from reeling. It didn't. “I thought—assumed, really—that my being here was due to the influence of the headmistress’s teenaged daughter.”

“She might have helped sway Charlotte’s final decision, but the one who brought you to the board's attention was me. You should have been here from the beginning,” he added, his expression so matter-of-fact she couldn’t help but believe he meant every word. “There was no way I could’ve given you that dream when you were a kid. But if I had known about your existence back then, I still would’ve tried my damnedest to get you here. I know I would have been a few years ahead of you, but I can guarantee you that I would have been your first love. I'm telling myself it's enough that I'm going to be your last.”

Still flabbergasted by how he had gone out of his way to give her the long-ago dream of CATE, her head snapped around at his last words. “What?” Wow, that really seemed to be her favorite word of the day.

“I know it's a lot.” He lifted his shoulder like it was a piddling problem he had no time to address. “I get it. But I believe in you, Hannah. Deep down, I know you’re strong enough to take whatever I throw at you.”

That depended on what he was throwing. “As long as you’re throwing the truth at me. Even if it’s an ugly truth, I’m all for it.”

“You don’t think there’s anything ugly about what’s between us.” He reached up to slide his mask off, all the while his gaze burning into hers. “Do you?”

“No.” It came out as a scandalized whisper, but it was all she could manage. What was between them was the purest source of joy she had in her life, as long as she didn’t screw it all up with self-protective crap. “I love what we have. I know it probably doesn’t seem that way, but I love who and what we are when we’re together.” She swallowed hard against the knot of remorse in her throat and unleashed the words he needed to hear. “I haven’t done a great job at being what you need, Dalton, and I hate knowing that. I hate it because you deserve better than a woman who sucks at accepting that this perfect man before her really isn’t too good to be true.”

That got her a hint of a smile. “Perfect, huh?”

“Perfect beyond imagining.” A rocky little laugh escaped her. “I didn’t lie when I told Bebe Zaiger that. I guess a part of me is worried that once we’ve known each other a while, you’re going to realize there’s probably a reason why my family couldn’t stand to be around me. So, yeah, I guess you were right about me being a coward who thinks it’s better to leave first, rather than be left behind.”

He took a step toward her. “It takes some spine to own up to that kind of shit, and you just did that. So, you know what that makes me think?”

She could only imagine. “That you should head for the hills?”

He shook his head and took another step. “It makes me think you hated letting fear get in your way, so you’re busting right through it and standing here for me to see the real you, in all your glory. And make no mistake, beautiful. You pushing aside a fear that was baked into your bones from birth just so you can show me who you really are is the most glorious sight I’ve ever seen.”