The dance floor was filled with hundreds of scantily clad lithe and gyrating bodies. Everyone looked like a supermodel. The local nightclub near where she’d grown up, on Bliss Street, Queens, could never have prepared Rose for this sophisticated spectacle.
She was mesmerised for long seconds, and then she felt a prickling sensation across her skin and looked to see Zac leaning with one arm on the railing, staring at her with a small smile. He was holding two delicate flutes filled with sparkling wine and he handed her one.
She accepted it, hoping she didn’t look like a total wide-eyed hick, and he clinked his glass to hers.
‘Here’s to...new friends.’
‘New friends...’ she echoed, and took a sip of the golden wine, delighting in the way it fizzed as it slid down her throat. She’d been too nervous to contemplate drinking any of the champagne at the function earlier.
He took her hand with an ease that set her pulse on fire and led her over to the seat—a semi-circular shape around the table. She felt unaccountably self-conscious and nervous now that it was just the two of them in this dimly lit intimate space.
She gestured to the heaving dance floor below and asked a little shakily, ‘Is this where you come to survey your kingdom?’
Somewhere along the way Zac’s bow tie had come rakishly undone and the top button of his shirt was open. As was his waistcoat. There was space between them, but with his snowy white shirt pulled across his flat belly and one arm spread out along the back of the seat, with a hand resting near Rose’s head, she felt as hot as if they were touching. The darkness of his skin was visible through his shirt.
He shrugged minutely, dragging Rose’s attention north again. Something crossed his face...some indecipherable expression. Almost distaste. But it was gone before she could analyse it.
‘It’s a prettier view than the floor of the stock exchange.’
His words were flippant, but Rose detected something sharp. He gave off a blasé air, but she didn’t think he was for a second. She could tell that he was supremely aware of absolutely everything going on, and she would guess that there wasn’t the smallest thing left to chance.
‘I wouldn’t know what that looks like,’ she replied. ‘I’ve never been there.’
Zac’s gaze narrowed on her and her skin felt tight all over.
‘So tell me about you. I haven’t seen you around before...’
She curbed a semi-hysterical giggle. ‘That’s because I’m not really from around here.’
Zac frowned. ‘But you’re a New Yorker?’
Rose took another fortifying sip of champagne. Mrs Lyndon-Holt’s cut-glass tones came back to her. ‘Don’t lie—he’ll see through you in an instant. Be honest. He won’t connect you to here. He was gone before you started working for us.’
Her guts were tangled into a knot. She couldn’t believe it had really come to this. She felt as if at any moment she’d wake up back in that toilet cubicle. Maybe she’d knocked her head as well as her shoulder—
‘Rose...?’
She looked at Zac Valenti. This was no dream. He was as real as she was.
Illicit excitement vied with fear and guilt. She swallowed. ‘Yes, I’m a New Yorker. From Queens. The truth is...’ She faltered for a moment, tempted to blurt the whole thing out, but then the reminder of her signature on the bottom of that non-disclosure agreement told her that she couldn’t. No matter what happened.
It was like a slap on the face.
She couldn’t tell him the full truth but she could tell him this. ‘The fact is that I’m just a maid... I really shouldn’t have been at that function earlier, but my boss gave me a ticket. This isn’t my world. I’m no one special, really.’
Rose almost hoped that this would be enough to have Zac Valenti recoiling in horror, hastening back to his own kind. But his expression only hardened in a way that she could see wasn’t directed at her.
‘It’s as much your world as anyone else’s, believe me.’
Her insides lurched. She hadn’t expected him to express solidarity, and she was surprised at the vehemence in his voice.
Then he took her glass out of her hand and put it down on the table alongside his own. He stood up from the seat, pulling Rose with him. ‘I want to show you something.’
She balked. She wasn’t meant to be prolonging this, but there was something intense in his expression.
Weakly, she said, ‘But we just got here.’
He looked at her. ‘Do you really want to stay?’
Rose ripped her gaze away from his and looked down over the club—it was spectacular and sinfully seductive, but ultimately it left her cold. Like a beautiful picture with no depth.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
A small smile touched his mouth and then he was leading her back the way they’d come—except instead of going back out to the entrance of the club Zac was going through a secret door that led them into a massive and hushed lobby.
A man in uniform jumped to attention from behind a security desk as soon as he saw Zac. ‘Mr Valenti, I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.’
Zac lifted a hand. ‘Relax, George, I’m good.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Valenti.’ He nodded at Rose. ‘Ma’am.’
They were stepping into a lift now, and flutters of trepidation mocked Rose’s inability to do what she knew she should: leave. Angry with her own weakness, she pulled her hand free and tried not to be so aware of Zac in the small space, but it was hard when he dominated it.
‘Where are we going, exactly?’
He looked down at her, his blue eyes bright enough to hurt. ‘Trust me.’
He’d said that twice now. This man was a complete stranger to her, and yet she was allowing him to lead her astray as easily as if she was a lemming going over a cliff.
Irritation with herself made her say testily, ‘I barely know you.’
He leant back against the wall of the elevator, hands in his pockets, exuding louche arrogance, and arched an amused brow. ‘Do you really think I’d have alerted a witness to the fact that I’m with you if I was intent on some wicked deed?’
Heat bloomed deep inside Rose at the look in his eyes that told her his head was indeed filled with all sorts of delicious wickedness. But she was the one who was really being wicked here.
The bell pinged then, and Zac straightened up and said, ‘I promise to deliver you straight back to George if you don’t want to stay...’
She was just thinking Stay where? when the doors slid open and she gasped.
Rose stepped out and blinked hard. It was like stepping through the back of a wardrobe into Narnia. If Narnia was under a star-filled Manhattan sky.
It was a garden, with some parts like a wild meadow and others like a very ordered English garden. Rose didn’t even realise she’d walked so far until she saw she was standing right in the middle of a huge green space on a central paved walkway.
The dark smudge of Central Park was visible in the distance and lights twinkled from the buildings around them, giving the illusion of being suspended in mid-air, amongst the tall structures.
‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ she breathed in awe, thinking poignantly of her mother, who had loved gardens.
‘It took some time to perfect.’
She looked at Zac as understanding dawned. ‘You built this...? How long did it take?’
* * *
Five years, to be precise. But Zac didn’t say that. He led Rose over to an elevated terrace that looked in the opposite direction.
When they were at the railing he guided her in front of him and placed his arms around hers, his hands resting on either side of her on the rail. Trapping her against him.
He gritted his jaw but his body reacted helplessly, rising to the temptation of the provocation of her buttocks against him.
She was tense. Again, not a reaction he was used to with women, who were generally all too eager to capitalise on his exclusive interest.
In a bid to slow the blood rushing to his crotch, he leant forward slightly and pointed. ‘See over there? That’s the Rockefeller Center.’
Her head moved to the left, away from Zac, and he struggled not to press his mouth to her bared neck. The urge to bite that pale skin was almost overwhelming. With some dark humour he figured that he knew how vampires felt. Her scent was light and floral. Sweet. Sexy. Intoxicating.
Curbing his desire, he pointed again to the right. ‘That’s Carnegie Hall. Times Square is just beyond.’
Rose’s face was close to Zac’s now, turning to follow the direction of his finger. She was trembling very lightly, her hands in a white-knuckled grip on the railing.
Her voice was husky. ‘Is this what you do to impress women?’ She huffed a little laugh. ‘I have to admit, it’s working.’
Zac stood up straight, surprised at the immediate indignation he felt. He was no angel, but he resented the insinuation that this was a well-worn routine.
He turned Rose to face him. Her green eyes were huge. Luminous. ‘I don’t bring any women up here. You’re the first.’
* * *
Rose looked up at one of Manhattan’s most desirable men, standing against the backdrop of a glittering city that he could command to do his will with a mere click of his fingers. It was the kind of view most New Yorkers were only lucky enough to see if they queued up to climb the Empire State building or similar tourist attractions. And it was in his backyard.