“Right, yes!” Emmy smiled brightly at Dion. “Are you Zane’s partner? Welcome to Virtue!”
Dion cast Zane an extremelyI-told-you-so lookabout the word ‘partner,’ and shuddered delicately. “Dear God, no. He’s my boss. Separate rooms. Very separate rooms. Please.”
“Oh.” Emmy blinked again before her smile returned full force. “Well, welcome to Virtue anyway, and yes, I see you’ve booked separate rooms. But I mean, who knows, Zane could have been a snorer.”
Dion didn’t even try to hide his laugh. “He’s not, but I only know that because I’ve caught him sleeping on the couch in his office so often I don’t know why he bothers to keep an apartment.”
“Fabric storage,” Zane said, only half kidding. All he wanted was to get upstairs to the room and not face people who had known him when he was seventeen. Dion looked like he’d behappy to gossip with Emmy forever, but he put on a professional face and got Zane checked in first, at least.
As if he couldn’t do that himself, although honestly sometimes he wasn’t sure if he could do anything without Dion. God knew his PA was always right there, murmuring names to him so he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of the clients who wanted to be remembered, and he’d arranged the entire Starlight Ball contest, and?—
Come to think of it, maybe he’d be better off without him, after all. Zane wouldn’t have ended up back in Virtue, if Dion hadn’t gotten him involved with the international arts foundation and a contest to design a gown for a woman—a person—off the street.
Zane snickered, genuinely amused at himself. The truth was he lived in dread of the day Dion found something better to do with his time than keep Zane’s life in order. Personal assistants of his caliber were rare, expensive, and worth it. He left Dion to gossip with Emmy after putting in a plea that she not reveal anything too embarrassing about his youth, and went up to his room to eye the bed.
Sleeping through as much of his visit to Virtue as he could was the best possible way to spend his time there, as far as he was concerned. He lay down, closed his eyes, and what felt like thirty seconds later, woke to Dion knocking on his door and telling him to get ready to go. Zane yelled, “Where are we going?” through the door, and swore he heard Dion cackle.
“The high school gym. Apparently it’s the only place in town big enough to announce a local boy’s triumphant return.”
Zane said, “Oh my God,” to his reflection in the room’s mirror, and made an effort to dress well. He always did, but at the moment it seemed more important than usual. It took long enough that Dion was outside the door again, tapping his toe impatiently, when Zane finally emerged.
His assistant—whose own suit was deep burnt umber with a flashily brilliant orange silk shirt beneath it—gave him a critical once-over, proclaimed, “Not bad,” and hurried him out of the B&B.
To Dion’s horror, they walked to the high school. Zane muttered, “Driving three of Los Angeles’s long blocks is one thing, Dion. Believe me, driving three blocks in Virtue is not a winning strategy.”
“But I’llsweat.”
“You’ll perspire delicately,” Zane corrected, still in a mutter. “My PA would never do anything as crass as sweating.”
That at least got a snort of amusement out of said PA, and a couple of minutes later they were at the high school. It was bigger than Zane remembered on the outside, and smaller inside, and it looked like Virtue’s entire population had decided to come jam itself into the gym. Worse, there seemed to be as many reporters as there were people there.
Which implied reporters weren’t people, but with cameras already going off, microphones being pushed at him as he walked into his old stomping grounds, and his name being shouted by faces he would never be able to put a name to, Zane wasn’t feeling very charitable. He gave a few brief smiles, waved when he was supposed to, and then was suddenly up on a stage, shaking hands, pretending he knew who he was talking to, and then, very, very briefly, being introduced to Victoria Hawthorne, the winner of the Starlight Ball couture costume contest.
He only had a glimpse of her in all the chaos. Long enough to shake her hand, and then she was at his side, smiling shyly at the crowds as their pictures were taken. At hisside, where he couldn’t gaze down at her in desperate, stunned adoration, because a glimpse was all it took.
She had blue eyes. He’d seen that, in the heartbeat their gazes met. She was tall and blonde. Willowy, even. She worea fashionably blocky spring coat, taupe in color, nipped at the waist, falling just past her knees in length. He scrambled frantically for details, things to remember her by, in the few seconds they had to smile and shake hands. Her fingernails were strange colors, and her grip was confident.
She had a lovely rich warm laugh that spilled out easily when somebody asked her a question about what kind of dress she wanted. “It doesn’t matter,” she told them, and glanced up at Zane briefly. She didn’t wear much makeup, no distinct style that would help him remember her, but her smile was flawless, pink lips curved upward in apparent real joy. “If Zane Bellamy designs it, it’ll be perfect.”
He said, “I expect anything would be, on you,” which he thought was rather good, and which got a charmedawwwof amusement and laughter from the audience. Victoria Hawthorne’s blue eyes sparkled, and then somehow, dreadfully, the gathering on the stage was pulled apart. Victoria went one way, down into the crowd, and Zane went the other, guided away under Dion’s direction.
For the first time he could remember, Zane shook his assistant off and turned a despairing gaze across a gym filled with unrecognizable faces, milling with bodies pressed too close together to pick out a silhouette, scattered with blondes who suddenly all seemed to be of a height. His shoulders slumped, hopelessness filling his chest.
One of the women in this room was Victoria Hawthorne, his fated mate.
And Zane had no idea which one.
CHAPTER 3
Vicki had not been prepared for Zane Bellamy.
Truth be told, Vicki hadn’t been prepared for any of it. She had actually just stared in confusion at the email saying she’d won a couture dress, then laughed and sent it to the spam folder. She hadn’t thought about it again for two days, until her phone rang with an unknown California number. She’d picked up because sometimes her brother called from places unknown, but a man who definitely wasn’t her brother said, “Victoria Hawthorne? This is Zane Bellamy’s assistant, Dion Newman. Would you be available on Thursday evening for a press conference about your win?”
Somehow she’d agreed, and Thursday evening found herself being ushered up onto the stage in the high school gym to shake the hand of the most incredibly attractive man she had ever laid eyes on.
Vicki had seen pictures of Zane Bellamy before, of course. He was in the entertainment magazines from time to time, and sometimes on the red carpet with one of the actors or actresses he’d dressed. She’d always wondered if he was dating one ofthem, because they usually all looked so casually comfortable together, regardless of whether it was a man or a woman. Anyway, he wasobviouslyhandsome, from what she’d seen on film and in photos, including one in the high school lobby from when the drama club had won a state competition the year he’d been costumer for them.
She had not been prepared for hismagnetism, though. Or his cheekbones. Or the glitter of early silver in his dark hair where it swept back from a widow’s peak. Or the cool shining grey of his eyes, or the warmth of his big, strong, lightly calloused hand as it gripped hers.
