Chapter 1 - The Dance He Couldn't Ignore
Damian Moretti had stared down federal agents, rival families, corrupt senators, and men who had come into his office carrying guns beneath their coats.
None of them had ever made him forget how to speak.
Camille Rhodes did it in a plum dress.
For three long seconds, the silence between them stretched until even the soft hum of the ventilation system seemed too loud.
Camille kept one hand on the office door and looked back at him, her eyebrows raised.
“Are you planning to ask me first?” she repeated.
Damian’s mouth tightened.
He knew exactly what he wanted to say.
He wanted to tell her that the thought of another man’s hand at the small of her back made something primitive and unreasonable move beneath his ribs. He wanted to tell her that he had noticed every insignificant detail about her for twenty-two months—the way she tucked her hair behind her right ear when she was irritated, the way she drank coffee only after it had gone lukewarm, the way she pretended not to be afraid when armed men entered his office.
He wanted to tell her the truth.
Instead he said, “We’re late.”
Camille’s smile changed.
It did not disappear.
That would have been easier.
It simply became professional again.
“Of course, Mr. Moretti.”
She opened the door.
Damian hated himself immediately.
Ten minutes later they were in the back of his black sedan moving through downtown Baltimore beneath a sky the color of wet slate. Camille sat across from him, ankles crossed, scrolling through last-minute messages on her tablet as if she had not just rearranged the internal structure of his entire evening.
Damian watched the city lights slide across the window behind her.
“The foundation chairwoman moved the receiving line forward by ten minutes,” Camille said. “The governor’s office confirmed two additional guests. Mr. Fisk wants seven minutes with you before dinner, although I told him he gets three unless he suddenly becomes interesting.”
Damian almost smiled.
“And your schedule?” he asked.
She looked up.
“My schedule?”
“At the gala.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re attending.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
“Who are you sitting with?”
Camille stared at him for a beat.
Then her mouth curved.
“Is this an interrogation?”
“No.”
“It has the emotional warmth of one.”
Damian glanced out the window.
“Table fourteen.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“I know.”
She lowered her tablet slowly.
“How do you know where I’m sitting?”
“I approved the seating chart.”
“You approved the donor tables.”
“I approved all of it.”
“That sounds like an excellent use of a man with three companies, six legal disputes, and a shipping strike.”
Damian ignored the sarcasm.
“Who’s at table fourteen?”
“Several people.”
“Names.”
Camille leaned back and studied him openly now.
“Mr. Moretti, if you want to know whether there are single men at my table, you could simply ask.”
His eyes went to hers.
“There are.”
Her smile widened.
The car stopped beneath the black-and-gold awning of the Blackstone Grand Hotel before he could recover.
Photographers crowded the entrance. Flashbulbs burst across the rain-dark sidewalk. Security men in black coats opened Damian’s door first.
He stepped out.
Then he turned back and offered Camille his hand.
She looked at it.
Damian did not usually help people out of cars.
Damian barely helped people out of burning buildings unless they had already signed the correct paperwork.
Camille placed her fingers in his.
The contact lasted less than four seconds.
It was enough to ruin the rest of his evening.
Inside, the ballroom glittered beneath enormous crystal chandeliers. White orchids climbed the columns. A string quartet played near the stage, and nearly four hundred of Baltimore’s wealthiest citizens moved through the room holding champagne and pretending not to notice how quickly conversations changed when Damian Moretti entered.
Camille slipped back into work mode immediately.
She greeted donors, redirected a reporter, intercepted a councilman Damian disliked, and somehow appeared at his elbow with exactly the file he needed before he asked for it.
She was brilliant at disappearing when necessary.
Tonight she failed completely.
Every man in the room seemed to notice her.
Damian noticed them noticing.
By seven thirty, his mood had deteriorated enough that Nico Varella, his head of security and oldest friend, leaned beside him near the bar.
“You look like you’re considering murder.”
“I’m considering the shrimp.”
Nico glanced toward the center of the room.
Camille was laughing with a tall man in a midnight-blue tuxedo.
The man had one hand in his pocket and the easy smile of someone who had never been warned away from anything dangerous.
“Shrimp have gotten taller,” Nico said.
Damian’s gaze hardened.
“Who is he?”
Nico looked delighted.
“I thought you approved the seating chart.”
“Who is he?”
“Julian Cross. Corporate attorney. Johns Hopkins graduate. Clean record. Annoyingly symmetrical face.”
Damian turned his head.
“You checked him?”
“Three minutes ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I enjoy living.”
Across the ballroom, Julian said something that made Camille laugh again.
Not the polite laugh she gave donors.
A real one.
Damian had heard it perhaps six times in two years.
His hand tightened around his untouched glass of bourbon.
Then the band changed songs.
Julian extended his hand.
Camille looked down at it.
Damian moved before he had decided to.
Nico muttered, “There he goes.”
By the time Julian led Camille onto the dance floor, Damian was already crossing the room.
Camille saw him coming over Julian’s shoulder.
Her eyes widened slightly.
Julian followed her gaze.
“Mr. Moretti,” he said when Damian stopped beside them. “Enjoying the gala?”
“No.”
Julian laughed uncertainly.
Damian looked at Camille.
“Dance with me.”
Her lips parted.
He realized too late that he had phrased it as an order.
Her expression cooled.
“That sounded familiar.”
Damian lowered his voice.
“Please.”
That got her.
Camille stared at him.
Julian looked between them, suddenly fascinated by the ceiling.
Then Camille placed her hand in Damian’s.
“Excuse us,” she told Julian.
Damian led her toward the center of the floor.
The moment his palm settled against her waist, every prepared sentence in his head vanished.
The plum silk was warm beneath his fingers.
Camille rested one hand on his shoulder.
“You know,” she said softly, “most men ask before interrupting another man’s dance.”
“I did ask.”
“You asked me after you interrupted.”
“Technical distinction.”
“Important distinction.”
They moved slowly beneath the chandeliers.
Damian was acutely aware of the space between them.
“Is the dress for him?” he asked.
Camille looked up.
There it was again.
That question.
“Julian?”
“Yes.”
“I met Julian twenty minutes ago.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
Damian’s jaw flexed.
Camille’s eyes softened with unmistakable amusement.
“You’re jealous.”
“No.”
“Damian.”
It was the first time she had used his first name that night.
The first time in weeks, perhaps.
His hand tightened fractionally at her waist.
“What?”
“You are.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then, because the music was loud and the ballroom was crowded and her face was inches from his, he did something reckless.
He told the truth.
“Yes.”
Her smile vanished.
Not from displeasure.
From surprise.
Damian continued before courage deserted him.
“I don’t like watching other men look at you.”
“Other men have always looked at me.”
“I know.”
Her brows lifted.
“You know?”
“I notice more than you think.”
For one suspended moment, the ballroom disappeared.
No donors.
No security.
No politics.
Just Camille in plum silk and Damian holding her like he had wanted to for a year and had never allowed himself to imagine doing.
The song carried them through another slow turn.
Camille was painfully aware that people were watching. A hedge-fund manager near the bar had stopped mid-sentence. Two women from the hospital board were pretending not to stare. Nico looked as though Christmas had arrived early.
“Everyone is looking at us,” she murmured.
“Let them.”
“That is easy for you to say. People expect you to do strange, intimidating things.”
“Dancing is strange and intimidating?”
“With your secretary? Apparently.”
“Formerly invisible secretary,” he corrected.
Her gaze sharpened.
“You heard that.”
“I hear most things you say.”
“Even when you’re pretending to read?”
“Especially then.”
Camille looked down because suddenly the space between them felt too exposed.
“What else do you hear?”
Damian hesitated.
Too long.
She looked back up.
He could have retreated behind one of his familiar silences. Instead, perhaps because jealousy had already stripped away half his defenses, he said, “I hear you humming when you think no one is in the outer office. I hear you swear under your breath when the printer jams. I hear you call your mother every Wednesday at lunch.”
Camille forgot the rhythm of the dance.
Damian adjusted without comment.
“You notice all of that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His eyes held hers.
“That is a more dangerous question.”
Her pulse quickened.
“Dangerous for whom?”
“For me.”
A waiter passed with champagne. Neither of them looked away.
Camille’s voice softened. “You know what I notice?”
Damian’s brow lifted.
“You never drink more than half a glass at public events because you hate not being in control. You loosen your left cuff when you’re angry. You keep peppermint tea in the office even though you claim to hate it because I drink it when I work late.”
His expression shifted.
“And,” she added, “when you are worried about someone, you become bossier, not nicer.”
“That last one sounds like criticism.”
“It is.”
“Noted.”
She smiled.
The band reached the bridge of the song. Damian’s thumb moved once against the side of her waist, an unconscious gesture so gentle it frightened her more than possessiveness would have.
For the first time, Camille allowed herself to wonder whether the feelings she had hidden for more than a year had ever truly been one-sided.
Then a woman’s voice cut through the music behind them.
“Arthur Rhodes had the same eyes.”
Camille froze.
Damian did too.
They turned.
Vivian Blackstone, seventy years old and still sharp enough to terrify half the city’s boardrooms, stood three feet away in a silver gown.
She was staring at Camille.
Not at her dress.
At her face.
Camille’s hand slowly fell from Damian’s shoulder.
“You knew my father?” she asked.
Vivian’s expression changed.
Too late.
Damian saw it.
Fear.
Vivian Blackstone was afraid.
Before she could answer, a man in a white dinner jacket appeared at her side and touched her elbow.
Lucien Ferraro.
A shipping magnate with old ties to Damian’s father and a smile Damian had distrusted since childhood.
“Vivian,” Lucien said quietly. “Perhaps not here.”
Camille looked from one to the other.
“My father died eleven years ago in a warehouse fire,” she said. “What does that have to do with either of you?”
No one answered.
Damian felt a coldness spread through him.
Because he knew Arthur Rhodes’s name.
He had seen it once before.
In a file hidden in his father’s private safe.
A file marked with two words.
PIER NINE.
Vivian stepped back.
“We should speak another time.”
Camille’s voice sharpened.
“No. We should speak now.”
Across the ballroom, a waiter dropped a tray.
The crash made half the room jump.
Damian did not.
He was watching Lucien.
And Lucien was watching Camille’s silver earrings.
Not her face.
Her earrings.
May you like
Damian’s instincts went cold.
He moved Camille behind him just as the first gunshot shattered the chandelier above the dance floor.
