The Dare Collection January 2020. Lauren Hawkeye

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       CHAPTER TWO

      Damian

      I SAT BACK on the couch with another glass of champagne and watched the sweet-faced little waitress who’d given me a pissy look disappear into the crowd with her now-empty tray.

      It wasn’t often that women looked at me as if they’d like to punch me in the face. Men, sure. Women, no.

      She’d been standing there staring at me, a watchful, still point in the chaos of the party around her, which should have made my eyes slide right over her. Yet the opposite had happened. Almost as if her stillness was the reason my attention had been drawn to her.

      Her eyes had been very dark and absolutely unreadable, like the surface of a deep lake I couldn’t see the bottom of, and I’d found that interesting. So I’d winked at her, purely to see the surface of that lake ripple a little, and ripple it did; her shock at my attention had been loud and clear.

      That she’d clearly not expected me to notice her was obvious, and I might have found that amusing if there hadn’t also been something else about her that had bothered me. Something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on. Something I should have been aware of...

      But the ladies around me were begging me to finish the bullshit story I’d been telling them, and I couldn’t be bothered figuring out what the issue with the waitress was. Not when my public was demanding a performance.

      I took a sip of my champagne and put it down—fucking hate the stuff—and leaned forward, continuing with my story. The ladies were thoroughly enjoying it, and I was thoroughly enjoying pleasing them, especially when they all erupted into laughter as I punctuated the end with a very off-colour joke.

      That laughter was music to my ears, making me smile. Because if there was one thing that made life on this shitty planet worth living it was making a woman laugh. It was almost as good as making a woman come, and since I was extremely skilled at doing both I indulged myself and them as often as humanly possible. Occasionally at the same time.

      I sat back on the couch, watching the ladies around me, satisfied that they were all having a good time. Then I scanned the crowd in general, making sure everyone else was as well, as I took my parties very seriously.

      They were a chance for guests to let their hair down without worrying about the press or whether their name would be plastered all over the Internet the next morning. A chance to cut loose and relax with no rules and no judgement.

      Correction. There were two rules: nothing illegal and no one took advantage of anyone.

      I policed those two things religiously, my security staff confiscating any illegal substances, not to mention phones or other recording devices, and kicking out any person stupid enough to think they could take advantage of anyone else.

      Only people with a verified invite could attend, plus I personally vetted all staff working during the event so that...

      Wait a second.

      I narrowed my gaze in the direction the waitress had gone, going over her face in my memory. It was eidetic, so it was impossible for me to forget—both a blessing and a goddamn curse.

      Small, with a sweet, heart-shaped face. Short, dark-brown hair in a straight glossy bob grazing a sharp, determined chin. Black almond-shaped eyes. Not pretty in the traditional sense but with a certain something.

      I mentally compared her features to the list of staff photos I’d requested from the Black and White Enterprises catering company handling the party tonight.

      No match.

      If she wasn’t on the staff list then that could only mean one thing: she was a fucking gate crasher.

      Shit. That was the last thing I wanted to deal with, especially as she’d probably end up being a reporter, because there were always reporters trying to gate crash my goddamn parties.

      Tonight was supposed to be about celebrating me finally getting my hands on the Red Queen, a necklace I’d been chasing down for the last three months and had managed to buy at a private auction a few days ago.

      I’d seen a picture of it in an article on famous jewels about two years back and had decided that, as rubies had been my mother’s favourite stone and I knew it was a piece she would have loved, I wanted to add it to my collection.

      It would be the perfect advertisement for the jewellery auction that was to be part of the launch of the Black and White Foundation, a new non-profit organisation that Ulysses, Everett and I were hoping to get off the ground. I was putting up some of my more famous pieces as a fundraiser, and hopefully some of the proceeds would be going towards the new cancer research facility I’d set up back in Australia.

      Yeah, jewellery might be a strange thing for a man like me to collect, but I liked a bit of glitter, especially against a woman’s skin.

      Call it a holdover from my childhood, watching my mother and her friends get ready for their performances at the burlesque club where they’d worked. I hadn’t been allowed to see the show, but I’d loved watching them get ready. My always happy, always laughing mother, gossiping as she painted her face and did her hair, making herself look beautiful. The smell of greasepaint and hairspray in the air, the sparkle of jewelled and feathered costumes glittering in the light.

      I had been a serious, quiet kid and she had taken her job of making the hand-to-mouth existence we led back then very seriously, trying to make it fun. Trying to get me to smile. It had mostly worked.

      Until she’d died of cancer, of course.

      But I didn’t think about those days. Instead, I buried them under glitter, good times and the joy of hunting down the perfect jewel. And the Red Queen had led me on quite a hunt. I’d loved every fucking second of stalking that piece down, but now it was safe in the vault in my office, I was going to have to find something else to turn on my hunter’s instincts...

       That waitress, perhaps?

      Ah, fuck. That’s right. The damn waitress.

      Pushing myself up and out of the couch, I excused myself to the ladies and made my way through the crowd towards Clarence, the head of my personal security team, checking on people as I went like the good host I was.

      Everett was here—he’d been in Hong Kong for one of his hush-hush meetings—and he gave me a look from where he was standing by the pool, lifting a blond brow. If Ulysses had been here, he would have scowled, but Ulysses wasn’t here. He was in London, where he always was, managing Black and White’s money from his bank of computers, boring bastard that he was.

      Not that Everett was any more exciting. He was a man of few words and fewer smiles, and took his role of being responsible for company-wide security far more seriously than he should have. The guy really needed to lighten up.

      I shook my head to indicate everything was fine and he gave a nod, turning his attention back to the action in the pool, where a famous actor and an equally famous musician had got rid of their clothing and were playing a game of naked tag.

      Looked like fun. Sadly, I had business to attend to before I could join in.

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