Chapter Twenty

Half an hour later, Varner let Ornette leave his private room. After her comment about him wanting his drink too hot, he spent most of the reception talking to someone from the control room. They were unhappy because whatever Ornette had whispered into Varner’s ear had not been properly picked up. He’d knocked his microphone off when he hefted her onto his shoulder and he hadn’t fixed it when he put her down. The sound guys were asking Varner to make her repeat it, but she would not. She said she couldn’t share that kind of confidence more than once. It was a shame they hadn’t caught it.

Varner drank his coffee. It was tiny, an espresso, and he watched Ornette as she crammed her leftover jewelry into the bodice of her dress (along with all the other things she’d crammed down there), and carried her gloves in her hands.

Once back with the other guests, the party was basically over and she was the last one to go through the revolving door, Desmond pulled her into the secret room installed as part of the door. “Did you get it?”

She slapped the gloves in his open palm. “I think so.”

Ornette expected him to toss her out so that no one would guess she’d gone missing, but instead, he said softly, “There was footage of Fen kissing you.”

“Yes.”

“There was footage of Joel kissing you. Did Hans kiss you too?”

“No, but he touched me everywhere he could that didn’t constitute a sexual act or a pelvic exam,” she admitted.

“They edited it out?” he asked, his navy eyes looking both sorry and peeved at the same time.

“I didn’t see the aired show,” she said airily, “so if they didn’t show anything like that, then I guess they did.”

“What about Varner?” Desmond continued. “Just now. Did he kiss you in his little room?”

“No,” she answered, trying to look bored. She wanted her expression to look exactly the way he looked when he bid on Mikayla.

“And you didn’t have to kiss Rowan. You got a hair.”

“If I had kissed Rowan, it would have been your fault. You asked me to do that for you. Listen, I have to go.” She reached down into the bodice of her dress and pulled out the vial he’d asked her to collect her spit in if she’d had to kiss Rowan and the vial of stickum she’d used on her gloves. “You may as well have these back. Please, sneak into my bedroom later. I want you in my bed tonight if you have nothing better to do.”

He took the vials from her as casually as someone accepted a cigarette—the first one between two fingers and the second one between three.

“I don’t know if I can come back,” he said, looking bored. It was the exact expression she found the most attractive on his face.

She licked her cupid’s bow. She had to do something to replace the motion of kissing or she was going to kiss him. Seeing him was as good as she’d hoped. Wanting him badly, she said saucily, “If you’re so bothered by who has been kissing me, I don’t think you’ll be able to stay away.”

She didn’t wait for him to reply, but gathered her skirt and swept out of the small space and back into the revolving door.

She slapped his door shut and then banged on the glass revolving door like she was trapped. Yilin came back, but Ornette pretended to have gotten whatever was stalling the door fixed and came careening through it before Yilin got to her. No one noticed anything was out of the ordinary.

Ornette went to the changing room with the other contestants and turned over her dress and jewelry which would be going up for auction.

“Where are your gloves?” The Coordinator wanted to know when she didn’t include them in the pile of items she was returning.

“I lost them. I took them off in the room with Varner and then… I don’t know what happened to them. Is it a big deal if they can’t be replaced?”

It was at that moment that the seamstress from Hans’ workshop stepped forward. “I have a spare set of charcoal satin gloves that were made for Ornette if you can’t find the red ones.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Thank you,” The Coordinator said absently as his eyes traveled over his checklist. He was barely paying attention to Ornette, but his eyes did travel downwards to see the seamstress place the extra gloves on the pile. He thanked her again. “If we find the red gloves, what should we do with the charcoal ones?”

“Send them back to Hans. I’m sure he’d like them as a keepsake,” the seamstress replied. She gave Ornette a look that was neither pity nor admiration. Then she nodded and disappeared toward the exit.

“I’m sure they’ll turn up. I just had them,” Ornette said to The Coordinator.

He nodded like he was too busy to care. “What’s most important is that the jewelry didn’t go missing. We’re having these auctions every week. Did anyone tell you that your golden eagle dress sold for the most money in the first round of auctions?”

“No,” Ornette balked. That was nice to hear. She bet that made Fen happy. “Who bought it?”

“They’re silent anonymous auctions. They don’t tell who bought the things.”

“Has the auction for the sporty dress happened already?”

The Coordinator nodded. “Your dress wasn’t the highest seller, but it did pretty well. It’s just as important that we get high bids when we sell off your clothes as when we sell you off. The jewelry designed by you and Clockwork Hans should bring in a small fortune.” He paused and looked at Ornette like he hadn’t realized who he was talking to. “What are you still doing here? Get to bed.”

Ornette ducked out. She didn’t have to wait for the other contestants now that everyone knew their way around the complex. In her dressing gown and slippers, she walked back to her room.

Once inside, she was starving, but there was nothing to eat. She went and got a drink from the fridge. She got a meal replacement and drank it as she wandered around her suite.

Wandering around got her thinking and wondering how Desmond had entered her room the night he snuck in. He hadn’t come in through the door. There was another entrance. Wandering around, she looked for panels or fixtures against walls that were large enough for a person to fit through.

She found three. One was behind the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, but that came off the wall without a hitch. The wall was unbroken behind it and putting the cabinet back on the wall was a pain. The second one was a bookcase in the living room that didn’t have any books on it, but just little statues and plants. She cleared the shelves and moved the case, but again, the wall was unbroken. The third was her closet.

The closet was mostly empty. There were a few things that had been given to her, but mostly, it was empty. It was made for someone who came with a lot of clothes to do the show they were filming on the premises. The shoe rack was the thing that was most interesting and most suspicious. It was round and fat. Ornette counted the places where shoes could hold a hundred and twenty pairs of shoes. Could someone fit in the shaft and open a door inside?

Ornette looked at it again and decided that was how Desmond could come and go from her room.

Ornette decided to get really involved with the shoe rack. She got right up in its face to see if she could pull the rack apart or what she had to do to get it to open and show how he’d got in.

“Come on, Desmond,” she started whispering into the shaft of the shoe rack. “Come on. Sneak in here. I didn’t want you before, but I want you now. I want you so bad, I can’t even… Give me something else to do... a little mission to keep me busy, to make me useful to you. Tell me you’re the Cheshire Cat and wrap your tail around me.” She scratched the shaft, but nothing happened.

Even if nothing happened, she felt a little better having said what she was thinking out loud.

Slowly, she lolled away from the shoe rack, turned out most of the lights, and slipped out of the underclothes they’d given her to wear under Hans’ gown. She let the panties and the corset fall to the ground before she snatched up the housecoat and wore it into her bathroom. She brushed her teeth, letting the robe gape open.

Slipping a hand into her hair, her tresses were stiff like cardboard from the handiwork of the hairdresser.

She started the water.

She needed a shower.

And she needed to change her mind.

Ornette had her habit of forgetting whatever happened to her each day at the end of the day. The cycle of working on Goldilocks Zone meant that her daily cycle was being replaced with a weekly one because that was when she got a new man. But she hadn’t been forgetting herself properly at the end of the night.

The shower water would help remind her who she really was.

The water was nice at first, but it became less so as Ornette was forced to shampoo her hair over and over again to get all the product out.

When she finished, she was finally tired.

She laid two towels over her pillow and went to sleep in her housecoat. She picked up the gloves Desmond had sent her. They were on the nightstand. She put one on and perked up.

There was a piece of paper inside the glove.

She had worn the gloves earlier. There hadn’t been a piece of paper in them before. She pulled it loose and unfolded it.

I missed you.

He had come in while she was in the shower. He couldn’t wait around so he’d left. She snatched up the second glove. The note inside that one read:

I’ll give you a month.

Her jaw dropped. Of all the things she’d ever been promised by owners if she did a good job, she had never been offered for him to become her slave!

Ornette melted into the bed.

He was lying. She knew he was lying, but it was such a wonderful lie that she fell asleep on it and dreamed of floating through orange clouds with a man with navy eyes.