Page 17 of The Billionaire's Masquerade Ball

Chapter 6

Xander eased himself into a chair on the balcony. He could still see the room and watch the people dancing and talking below. But he didn’t see her.

His breath caught just thinking about the dance they had shared moments earlier. The mask made it impossible to see her full face, but he had done his best to memorize what he could see: silky brown hair that fell over her shoulders, high cheekbones, full lips. Her smile was a little crooked, higher on the left side—no, it was her right, his left. It lit up her whole face from within, leaving him feeling breathless.

She had seemed nervous, not making eye contact, dancing stiffly except for a few moments when she seemed to lose herself or stop thinking. Her nerves bled over to him. Not only did he not get her name, but in his nervousness, he quoted a poem to her.

Idiot.

She didn’t seem to mind, but who does that? No wonder she had run off as soon as the dance was over. Maybe that Patrick creep knew her and could tell Xander her name. He should thank Patrick for sending her right into his arms, but what he really felt was rage, imagining whatever Patrick might have said to her. He hadn’t heard, but seeing the way Patrick looked at her was enough.

Xander needed to calm down. His emotions, usually carefully walled up, were raging. Not only did he want to tear off Patrick’s head, but his whole body felt like it was on high alert thinking about her. The last thing he needed at this moment was to let the walls he had so carefully built up over the past fifteen years come down.

It was too late for him. Xander tried to remind himself of the facts. He already had and lost the love of his life. Trying again was like thinking you might win the lottery twice in one lifetime. Not possible. Even if it were, the risk of loss was too great. He couldn’t be open to that again.

Xander knew that creating the Foundation would bring back memories and open up old wounds. But it hadn’t hit him fully how doing this might wreck him until he went to the cemetery the day before. It had cracked open the vault of his feelings, opening him to feel other things as well.

The Foundation was the right thing. It was honoring to Sarah and to Ryder and the best thing he had ever done with his wealth. But more than once this week, he had thought of Sarah—beautiful Sarah, so brave even as they wheeled her back for the surgery they hoped would save her and their baby, only twenty-one weeks. It was a risk, the doctor had told him. But really their only choice to save them both. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Her body was too weak from the pregnancy and the ravaging cancer cells. She never woke from the anesthesia. They took Ryder via C-section, but she too tiny, her lungs too undeveloped.

Xander could still feel the weight of their daughter in his hands. Tiny, perfect, beautiful. Warm, but so very still. Hardly weighing anything at all.

He had always feared being a father until that moment—the moment when his child took her only breaths and died as he held her. Sarah never even got to see her.

The pain rocked through his body and Xander put his head between his knees. When the black spots over his vision faded and his breathing stilled, he sat up.

Was it better to open himself up to remember? To feel?

He couldn’t open himself up to love without opening himself up to remember and feel the intensity of his grief, again and again. Still so sharp after all these years.

But when he had danced with the woman a few minutes before, he felt something else. Hope, warm and bright, unfolding in his chest.

Maybe he could love again. Xander always thought it was impossible, but for the length of one song, he believed it. His heart stirred with the kinds of fluttery excitement he last felt when he first met Sarah at seventeen.

Could he really have another chance?

He sighed. The woman had slipped away. If hope had been so close, did he lose it already?

Looking down through the spindles of the balcony, Xander spotted Jake spinning Shelby around on the dance floor, an enormous smile on his face. Jake didn’t even like dancing, but there he was. Shelby laughed as he pulled her in, kissing her in the middle of the room as though love was an easy thing to give and to receive.

Maybe it was that easy.

There had to be something more to his life than business meetings and stock prices and society parties. Even more than this charity. Once, these had all held a certain allure. They’d set his nerves humming like the string of an instrument. Building Obsidian had been a lifeline to him, helping him move past the grief, but also from the hard childhood he didn’t want to remember. But now all that he had built felt paper-thin.

Xander no longer cared about the things he had been so consumed with the past fourteen years as he built up Obsidian from the ground. Work had been an escape and he was good at it. Better than he ever could have thought. He and Sarah had lived on so little, but they had been so happy. She would have been delighted for his success, but disappointed in the emptiness of his life.

His mind went back to the woman he had just met. Well, not met, since he didn’t get her name. Xander couldn’t know everyone on the guest list for an event like this, but he didn’t think he had ever seen her before at any event. He had to find her before the night was over.

There was just something about her. One minute she seemed so bold and the next it was like she was scared to look at him. She had none of the pretense and performance of the women he typically interacted with. Was it because she didn’t know who he was?

He was just thinking about the bright allure of her smile when she stepped onto the balcony. He blinked, not believing it for a moment. He knew he was staring with his mouth open.

She stopped when she saw him, frozen, but then seemed to twitch with nervous energy. He sensed she was about two seconds from bolting back the way she’d come. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and took her hand.

“Don’t go,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Please?”

He could see her hesitating. This was the second time he had begged her in the span of an hour. Xander Callahan, the man who didn’t need to ask for anything. The one who commanded things to be done. The one who had women chasing after him. Yet he couldn’t seem to hold onto this one woman for more than a few moments.

But she hadn’t walked away yet. He gave her a half-smile. “Was I really that bad of a dancer?”

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