RUSH (City Lights, #3)(87)
I had been nervous about wearing a knee-length dress, thinking most of the women would be wearing floor-length ball gowns—the kind of dress that was too overwhelming to my short stature. But I was surprised to see most dresses were very tight, very short, and very strapless, embellished with beads or transparent swaths of material glittering with gemstones. The men wore tuxes or fashionable suits in flamboyant colors. I heard loud, raucous voices from a group of men and the answering laughs of the women, as our driver opened the door and handed me out.
I smoothed my dress down that now seemed a bit plain, and helped Noah from the car. He’d put on his sunglass and carried his white-stick, both of which only enhanced his beauty in my eyes. I had only known him as blind, and that blindness was a part of what made him the man I’d entrusted with my heart. The people inside the hotel had known a very different Noah Lake, and how they were going to reconcile the two set my nerves on edge.
“There are so many people,” I said to Noah as we waited with a crowd at the elevators. “I had no idea the magazine was this huge.”
“This is the Global Ball,” Noah answered. “People from all the offices, all over the world are here, in addition to the huge staff from HQ.”
I nodded, noting people from varied ethnicities, some in fancy versions of their local dress, and heard voices speaking in accents or in foreign tongues. The inclusiveness and diversity bolstered me somewhat. You let Deacon color your opinion of the entire magazine, I thought. This might not be so bad.
We crammed into an elevator with loud-talkers and a cloud of perfumes and colognes. No one recognized Noah so far, and we were tucked into the back corner anyway. He clutched my arm and I knew he felt boxed in, but then the elevator shot up and we were all cracking our jaws at the change in pressure.
The doors opened on an elegant hallway, carpeted in maroon and gold. We followed the crowds down a hallway to a set of double doors marked Grand Empire Ballroom.
I described the hall, the décor, the people for Noah. “Imagine a flock of birds with brightly colored plumage and sequins, all squawking and cooing their way to a champagne watering hole.”
He smiled gratefully. “I can see that.”
We stepped up to the ballroom entry, to a table littered with nametags and seating charts. Two women were taking invitations and checking them to binders full of names, and giving attendees their table numbers. One, a blonde in a shimmery silver dress, stared as Noah and I approached, her mouth agape. She elbowed her companion—a brunette in sapphire blue—and her mouth fell open in an identical expression.
“Noah Lake?” the blonde screeched. “Oh my god, honey, get over here right this instant!”
Noah cocked his head. “Barbara?”
“Yes, it’s Barbara. Oh shit, it’s true, you can’t see a thing, can you?” Barbara came around the table and threw her arms around Noah. “I can’t believe it. I saw your name on the list and thought someone was playing a trick on me. Didn’t I say that, Wendy?”
The brunette nodded and took her turn hugging Noah. They both stared and gabbled and cooed over him, taking possession of him as other old friends and coworkers came to the table. He clung to my arm as in a vise, or else I would have been shunted to the side.
“We’re all so happy you’re here,” Wendy said, wiping tears and moving back to the other side of the table. She consulted the guest list. “And you must be…Charlotte Conroy? His assistant?”
“Charlotte is my girlfriend,” Noah said, and it was the first sentence in the whole exchange that didn’t make me cringe.
“Oh damn, but that’s precious,” Barbara cooed, and handed me our nametags. “So sweet of you to take care of him like that.” She huffed a sigh, regarding Noah as if he were something beautiful, now ruined. “You’re at table forty-two, with Yuri, and I’ll tell you right now, he does think your name on his table is a practical joke.”
They laughed their tears away, and we were finally allowed to go in. Noah read my silence, as he so often did.
“Charlotte…”
“You’re not a joke.”
“They didn’t mean it literally.”
“Or something to be pitied.”
“You’ve only known me as blind,” Noah said, his voice low. “They knew what I was before.”
At the head of the ballroom was a small proscenium with a drop screen hanging over it. The word “Welcome” flashed in a dozen different languages. A third of the room was free of tables and people danced to pulsing music from a DJ table set up to left. I looked for the live music Noah said would be here but saw nothing, not even a stage where a band might set up later.
I wended us through beautifully set tables with gorgeous centerpieces of twinkling LED lights and crystals. We were stopped several times by old friends wanting to shake Noah’s hand and inquire about his health. I tensed every time but were relieved that most were polite and genuinely happy to see him. Of course they are, I scolded myself. We’re not surrounded by monsters.
Then we arrived at table forty-two and my heart sank.
I saw his coppery curls a split second before Deacon stood up from table, his booming voice carrying even in the crowded, high-ceiling ballroom.
“The man of the hour,” Deacon crowed. He hugged Noah and then took my hand and kissed it. “Sweet Charlotte. Always a pleasure. You look ravishing. Do you know how ravishing your sweet Charlotte is, Mr. Lake? You probably don’t, or you wouldn’t have brought her to this pit of vipers.”