Page 10 of My Fallen Saint

Chapter Five

The lobby of the Devlin Saint Foundation is essentially nothing more than a well-designed box, austere but impressive. The glass wall on my right faces the ocean and provides a ton of natural light that helps to accent the various pieces of artwork that line the brushed concrete walls.

A hallway snakes off from the left, but turns so quickly that I can’t see where it goes. Presumably offices. There’s an unobtrusive elevator that exists in sharp irony to the massive floating staircase that leads up to the landings for the floors above us.

I pause inside the doorway and glance up at the fourth floor. That’s where Devlin Saint’s private office is, and I see the glass windows, currently opaque. I remember reading that the foundation’s interior windows didn’t have blinds for privacy, but instead utilized some kind of technology that allows the glass to shift between opaque and transparent.

I assume the tech is expensive, and I can’t help but wonder why an organization that is dedicated to providing financial help to needy institutions around the globe would choose to spend funds on magic glass instead of buying blinds at Walmart.

Even though I’d researched the foundation, part of me still expected it to be a shoestring operation, with battered government resale desks and cheap paper calendars tacked on the walls. Where every dime scraped together was sent out into the wild to do good deeds.

This ultra-modern, somewhat intimidating set up is more than a little off-putting.

I wonder if that’s the point and make another mental addition to my list of questions for Saint.

I march across the lobby to the large reception desk that sits under the arch of the cascading stairway. Nearby, two upholstered benches form an L, presumably offering respite for those like me who haven’t yet been offered passage into the heart of this operation. Two rectangular tables sit, one in front of each bench, both covered with a colorful array of hardback books and a few flimsier pamphlets.

“May I help you?” A man about my age smiles at me, showing the kind of perfect teeth that any actor would envy.

“Elsa Holmes,” I say, showing him my equally bright and shiny press credentials. “Actually, just Ellie. I have an appointment with Mr. Saint.”

“Of course.” He taps at a hidden keyboard while looking down, presumably at a computer screen embedded in the desk’s glass surface. His brow furrows. “I’m sorry, it looks as if Mr. Saint is unavailable.”

“Oh.” I check my phone, but that’s just out of habit. I know what time it is—four on the nose. And I know what time my appointment is scheduled for—four fifteen. “I’m sorry, I called to confirm the appointment this morning. Did something come up?”

Red starts to creep up his neck, and I have the feeling that things are expected to—and usually do—go much more smoothly at the DSF. “If you’d like to take a seat, someone will be right with you.”

I nod. I’m not sure if they double-booked an appointment or if Saint had a whim and skipped out on his staff, but something is definitely not going on an even keel here.

“I apologize again for the delay. Would you like anything while you wait? Coffee? Water?”

I want coffee, but in light of my white shirt, I opt for water. As I sip the bottled seltzer, I sit on one of the benches and flip through the books. Each is about the foundation and represents a year of work. They’re oversized coffee table books, filled mostly with images of the various projects with just a bit of text describing the goal of the grant and how the project is progressing.

I page slowly through the one for the last year, searching for a picture of Saint himself, but there aren’t many. The man clearly likes his privacy.

Still, I’ve seen enough to recognize the man if I bumped into him at the grocery store. And to know that he’s ridiculously good-looking with a mane of wavy dark hair that’s long enough to brush his jawline, emerald green eyes he hides behind dark-rimmed glasses that accentuate his angular face, and golden brown skin with a thin scar that bisects his eyebrow and mars his cheekbone, then cuts a line through his close-trimmed mustache.

Bottom line, he’s not only hot, he’s totally my type. And there’s something about him that reminds me of Alex, though I can’t put my finger on it. They have the same coloring, but Alex was blond and clean-shaven. His face was rounder, his nose a bit wider, and while he had beautiful eyes, they were a sandy, golden brown, not a vivid green.

Even so, Saint’s picture conjures Alex’s memory, and I can’t decide if that will be a help or a hindrance during our interview.

The truth is, I know very little about Saint. But then again, who does? He’s hardly a shut-in, but when he holds interviews, he keeps the focus on the foundation and its mission, carefully steering any personal questions back to the work, so deftly that most of the time the reporter asking the question doesn’t even notice the shift. I’ve noticed, though. I spent much of the last week watching replays of foundation press conferences, and the man is an expert at manipulating the press.

I smile to myself, certain he’ll try the same tactics on me. Too bad for him that I’ll not only see him coming, but I desperately love a challenge.

At the same time, I’m no fool. It won’t be easy to tease out personal details for my article. My research has turned up next to nothing about Saint’s personal and professional life before he founded the DSF. Or any aspect of his life, actually, other than the most basic of facts. Birthplace. Parents’ names. Education. Military service.

His parents are dead, the few professors I was able to reach over the last few days remembered him as quiet but studious, and the Army’s press liaison confirmed that his military record is bright and shiny. No red flags at all. But there was no meat to the facts. No embellishments. I know that his personal net worth is over a billion dollars, but other than that, Devlin Saint came off impressive, but bland.

Odd description for a man who built a charitable foundation that now boasts an endowment in excess of thirty billion dollars.

I’d told Roger that he seemed like Oz’s wizard. And I can’t wait to get a peek at the real man behind the curtain.

“Ellie!”

I look up at both the sound of my name and the hauntingly familiar voice. A dark-haired woman with a single streak of gray framing one side of her face is striding toward me, her smile so wide it’s almost blinding.

She looks to be in her early fifties, with high cheekbones, and the kind of facial structure that magazines classify as elegant. She’s impeccably dressed, about four inches taller than me, and walks with total confidence on the titanium heels of a pair of pink Stuart Weitzman Nudist sandals that I totally covet.