Damian Cross did not remember the last time a stranger walked away from him first.
He stood by the window of his office, twenty floors above the city, and told himself he was not thinking about the woman in the red dress.
He was thinking about the quarterly numbers on his desk. He was thinking about the merger his lawyers were still fighting over.
He was not thinking about a stranger who told him to give her a reason to smile, and then left before he could answer.
He failed to convince himself.
"You're distracted," said Grace Lin, stepping into his office with a folder under her arm. She had been his assistant for six years and knew his moods better than anyone alive.
"That never happens."
"I'm not distracted."
"You've read the same line on that page for two minutes." She set the folder on his desk. "Must be something interesting."
Damian did not answer.
He closed the folder and looked up at her instead.
"Find out who attended Friday's gala. Get me the guest list."
Grace raised an eyebrow but did not ask why. That was one of the reasons he trusted her.
"Any name in particular?"
"A woman. Dark red dress. I didn't get her name."
"That narrows it down to maybe forty women, sir."
"She had dark hair. Pulled back. She spoke like she wasn't afraid of me."
Grace's mouth twitched, almost a smile.
"That narrows it down a lot more." She left to check the list, and Damian turned back to the window, hating how much the conversation had bothered him.He was not a man who chased anyone. Women had thrown themselves at him for years — for his money, his name, the company he built out of nothing after his father died and left him a mess of debts and broken deals. He had learned early that most people wanted something from him, and it was never him they wanted.
So he stopped looking. He stopped smiling. It was easier that way, and safer.
But the woman at the gala had not asked him for anything. She had not complimented his suit or his company or his name. She had noticed he was unhappy, and she had said so, straight to his face, like it was nothing.
*Give me a reason,* he had told her.He was still waiting for it.
Grace returned an hour later with a printed list and a photo clipped to the top page.
"Elena Reyes," she said, setting it on his desk.
"Guest of the Whitmore family, though the Whitmores say they don't actually know her well.
"Interesting."
Damian looked at the photo. It was her — the sharp eyes, the confident tilt of her chin, though the photo did not capture the way she had looked at him in person, like she was solving a puzzle only she could see.
"Reyes," he said slowly.
"You know the name?"
He did. His father had mentioned it once, years ago, in the kind of voice men use when they are hiding guilt. The Reyes family had been partners with Cross Enterprises long before Damian took over. Something had gone wrong between them. His father never explained what, and by the time Damian was old enough to ask real questions, his father was already gone, and the company was already Damian's problem to fix alone.
"Old history," Damian said. "Before my time."
"Should I worry about her being at the gala?"
Damian studied the photo a moment longer.
"No," he said. "Find out where she'll be next."
Grace hesitated, but she was too smart to question a direct order twice in one day.
"I'll look into it."---It took three days for Grace to find the answer.
Elena Reyes was performing at a private fundraiser downtown — singing, according to the flyer Grace slid across his desk. Damian read it twice before he understood what he was feeling. It was not simply curiosity. It felt closer to hunger, though he refused to call it that.
He told himself he was going to the fundraiser for business. Half the guest list were investors he needed to speak with anyway. It had nothing to do with a woman he had spoken to for less than two minutes.He almost believed it.
The fundraiser was smaller than the gala, more intimate, with round tables and a small stage at the front of the room. Damian took a seat near the back, close enough to see the stage but far enough that no one would notice him watching too closely.
When Elena walked out under the lights, something in his chest went still.She wore simple black this time, nothing like the red dress, but she did not need the color to hold the room's attention. She stood at the microphone, waited for the music to start, and then she sang.Her voice was not the loudest in the room, but it was the clearest. It carried something honest in it, something that made every conversation at every table fall quiet, one by one, until the whole room belonged to her. Damian had heard professional singers before, hired for events just like this one, polished and perfect and forgettable.
Elena was different. She sang like she meant every word, even if the song was not about her at all.When she finished, the room clapped, and she smiled — a real smile, easy and warm, nothing like the calculated look she had given him at the gala.
Damian found himself wondering which version of her was true.
Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
She left the stage and moved through the crowd, shaking hands, accepting compliments, until her path brought her close to his table.She saw him before he could decide whether to look away.
"You again," she said, stopping in front of him.
Up close, her eyes were sharper than the photo Grace had found, and far more amused.
"Are you following me, Mr. Cross?"
"I was invited," he said. "Same as you."
"Mm. Convenient." She tilted her head, studying him the same unafraid way she had at the gala. "Did you think of your reason yet?"
Damian almost said no. He almost said he had not thought about it at all, which would have been a lie so obvious she probably would have laughed in his face.
Instead, he said, "You have a good voice."
"That's not a reason to smile. That's a compliment."
"I don't give many of those either."
Something shifted in her expression — surprise, maybe, or the beginning of real interest, hard to tell with a woman this good at hiding what she felt.
"Careful, Mr. Cross," she said, leaning in slightly, her voice lower now, just for him. "Keep talking to me like that, and I might actually like you."
She walked away before he could respond, same as before, and Damian sat there long after she disappeared into the crowd, aware — for the first time in longer than he could remember — that the corner of his mouth had moved, just slightly, into something close to a smile.
