his fingers drumming on his leg under the glass table. “Explain yourself.”
Caro twirled her pen around her thumb, a trick she’d learned in journalism school that helped to focus her mind. Pull it together, woman. She regretted not getting a glass of water when she first came in. With these shoes it would be impossible for her to get one now without a good deal of ridiculously over-the-top ass wriggling. Not the professional vibe she wanted.
Putting the pen down, she said, “The others aren’t much of a problem but as you’ve pointed out, there’s no way a disappearance by Alex, your most public masque, will go unnoticed.”
“And?” Eric prodded.
She beamed at him. “If we can’t go small, we go big.”
Julien stared at her with growing understanding, though his lips were still thin. “Go big,” he echoed. “Mettre le paquet. Yes. Yes, I see.”
“Then maybe you could share the details with us?” Stephan suggested. “We’re a little busy today.”
“He doesn’t just die.” Caro sat up straight, getting interested in the possibilities. “He dies spectacularly.”
Now Julien turned to Caro. “By car?” he asked.
“Too pedestrian.” She waved her hand as though dismissing the idea. “Plane. No, ship. A yacht. Exotic locale. A party.”
Julien nodded grudgingly. “Less chance of body recovery. We can have the mers plant something good, though.”
* * * *
Eric listened with astonishment as Caro and Julien gleefully plotted his murder. A ruthless brain lay behind Caro’s big innocent eyes and full lips. His respect grew as she countered Julien’s suggestions with her own, planning out the details of the entire strategy on the fly.
Intelligent women captivated him; strong, witty women with their own minds who didn’t have trouble speaking them. Boredom had always come fast on the heels of a mindless high-pitched giggle or childish pout. He’d tried—not the first man to think with something other than his head—but in the end he’d had to give it up. Silly women didn’t have enough meat for him. They weren’t a challenge.
Caro, on the other hand…. He regarded her surreptitiously, noticing her eyes gleam as she shot down another one of Julien’s ideas and suggested something infinitely better. Caro would be perilous for him if she had masquerada blood. He tried to ignore the pang that shot through him, but he simply couldn’t get involved with a woman who couldn’t take on a masque. As Hierarch, there was no way his people would accept a non-masquerada as his consort—the perceived taint to the bloodline would be considered outrageous and it would undo even the small amount of progress he’d made with his people. Yet he would fight for an outsider mate were there not the greater problem of intimacy: there would always be an impossible space between them, a lack of closeness where the masques, and all the freedom they represented, lived. He couldn’t endure that.
Then she laughed. The sweet sound hit him like a punch.
Slow down, brother. Take yourself in hand. He’d seen the woman for a total of seventeen minutes. No need to worry about wedding bells yet. He glanced at her again, noticing how her long lashes cast a shadow on her high cheekbones.
“Do you agree?” Julien asked.
Eric looked at the golden skin on Caro’s long throat and didn’t even answer.
“I said, do you—”
“That sounds good,” Stephan said hastily. “We’ll hear from you by tomorrow at noon, then? We’d like to keep this quiet, obviously. Can you come by the house?”
“Oui, pas de problème.” Julien made a note on his tablet, refusing to look at Eric. “Let me walk you out.”
They stood to leave and Eric took on the Alex masque that he had arrived in. Stephan nodded politely, but Eric wasn’t going to miss a chance to touch Caro, even if it was nothing more than a formal, professional hand shake. She stepped back as he approached her and Eric frowned.
“Something the matter?” he growled.
“It’s, ahh…” She turned to Stephan as though appealing for help.
“You shifted out of your Alex masque,” Stephan accused, his blue eyes narrow. “Did that happen without you noticing?”
Shit. That shouldn’t happen. He glanced down, wondering who he was. The clothes still fit, but with convergence, it was possible to take on physical traits from multiple masques. Stephan’s comment about ending up with four heads was based on a very possible outcome. Dread swept through him.
“Eric,” Caro said softly. “You’re Eric Kelton.” Again he admired how perceptive she was.
“Then I have to apologize,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “Most people would much prefer to shake hands with Alex. I made him to be quite charming.”
She held out her hand and gave him a long look that made his heart pound. “Is that so? A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kelton.”
Her handshake was firm, the skin soft. He gave it a quick shake and dropped it almost before it was polite. A strand of her hair had fallen out of her tightly tamed hair and he had to fight a ridiculous impulse to tuck it behind her ear.
Remember, he told himself as he turned around to become Alex again. You’re not interested. You can’t be interested.
It still took every ounce of his self-control not to check to see if she was watching him leave.
Chapter 5
Caro and Julien spent the rest of the day hammering out the plan for Eric Kelton. Julien was so pleased at landing Eric as a client that he forgave Caro the cardinal sin of lateness, compounded by the secondary sin of coming up with the winning idea in front of the client. He much preferred his staff to get ideas and convey them in private, allowing him to “refine” them before presenting the concepts as his own.
It was good to be working because creating the actual scheme distracted Caro from the topic that was uppermost in her mind. Namely, the exceedingly gorgeous Eric Kelton. He wasn’t what she’d expected from a masquerada. Had she flirted with him? Maybe. It didn’t matter. Not only was he a masquerada, but he was clearly not interested in her. Remembering how he’d dropped her hand as if she was on fire made her want to bang her head against the desk in embarrassment. She must have been clutching at the poor guy’s fingers like some sort of obsessive fan girl.
It wasn’t that he was influential. She’d met more than one celebrity at both the Post and JDPR and had realized they were regular people. People with entourages and fancy cars, but still mere individuals with no more right to deference or obsequious kowtowing than anybody else.
Yet Eric fascinated her, and she told herself firmly that it was only her curiosity that was aroused. What kind of a man had such incredible determination that he could live not one, but two public lives, not to mention all the others? Why did he choose those masques? Was he after fame? Money? Anonymity? Or something else? Man, he must have great time-management skills, she thought irrelevantly.
Forget it. He was a masquerada. She was going to do her job, and do it well, but that was it. Thinking about his motivations, or about him in general, was asking for trouble. Masquerada were captivating by nature—their gifts of mimicry always drew people in. Look at her own parents, her poor father enthralled by the novelty of her mother’s parade of masques, finally leaving only when he realized he’d never know the real woman. Perhaps, Caro now thought, there hadn’t even been a woman to know. How could her mother become all those others without constantly fragmenting her own self? At the end, what would be left?
Caro leaned back and let Julien’s chatter wash over her as she stretched, then pulled herself out of her chair to walk to the window. JDPR was on the top floor of a small building near King Street and she could see a glint of blue water and a plane taking off from the island airport when she