One Shade of Gray Read online

  One Shade of Gray

  Monica Corwin

  ADVANCED READER COPY

  One Shade of Gray Copyright © 2017 by Monica Corwin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art: Covers by Christian

  Editing: Evident Ink

  Print Format:

  To Margie Lawson—who finally gave me the instruction manual to this thing.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Izzy

  2. Izzy

  3. Dorian

  4. Izzy

  5. Dorian

  6. Izzy

  7. Dorian

  8. Izzy

  9. Dorian

  10. Izzy

  11. Dorian

  12. Izzy

  13. Dorian

  14. Izzy

  15. Dorian

  16. Izzy

  17. Izzy

  18. Dorian

  19. Izzy

  20. Dorian

  21. Izzy

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Monica Corwin

  Author’s Note

  My Dearest Readers,

  Dorian Gray has been one of my favorite characters since I was a teenager. Like King Arthur, he was one of my first book boyfriends, ok more like my book bad boy. This book is a love note to him and a book I fell in love with. Any mistakes made here are my own and not reflective of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Furthermore, I hope no one takes my use of Dorian and his source as offensive. I only commandeered him a short while and I promise I will put him back where I found him.

  XOXO

  Monica

  1

  Izzy

  A girl knows when she is being followed. Just because the man was more or less my boss—my insufferably arrogant and oh so hot boss—didn’t mean I should allow it. In fact, I considered myself quite solicitous in reigning in my urge to knee him in the balls.

  I jerked to a halt in the middle of the Rue Des Barres and spun to confront him, but he must have stopped before I did. He now stood near a café, looking quite at home in his couture black Sandro suit, despite the casual tourist crowd oohing and ahhing over fresh croissant.

  Any other day I might have ignored his presence and continued to the theater, but today I had been pushed to my limit. He was always watching me, and he’d no doubt witnessed me dump an entire espresso down the front of my cream blouse. So instead of heading straight to work, I drew myself up, made sure my red lipstick was smooth and my pixie cut ruffled just the right way before taking practiced steps across the cobblestones toward him. I could break an ankle on some of them, even in flats.

  He stayed and surveyed my progress, making me doubt he had been the one trekking behind me since I left my apartment, until the innocence on his face caused a sense of foolishness to descend as I finally reached him. I skipped the pleasantries. “Why are you following me?”

  His perfectly arched eyebrows rose a millimeter and I had to resist the urge to lick my thumb and muss them up. I also needed to get the name of his stylist.

  A few weighted seconds passed and then the look of intense study on his face cleared to one of suave charm. It was so smooth I wondered if he kept masks in his back pocket to rotate. Or maybe he had practice at concealing his emotions. Or maybe he didn’t have emotions.

  He answered before my brain went too far off the rails. “I think perhaps we were going in the same direction.”

  No. I shook my head with all the dignity I could muster against that knee-bender of a smile. “You’ve been following me for two months. Ever since I took over the production of Romeo and Juliet. I know who you are Mr. Gray, I’m not an idiot.”

  His smile silkily shifted into something else, that caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end. “Mon Coeur, I very much doubt you know me at all.”

  Standing face to face with him was very different than seeing him hovering at the back of the theater, or passing him on a staircase. He wasn’t much taller than my five-foot eight but his presence seemed larger somehow. His golden hair and deep blue eyes spoke of a man much older than the mid-twenties I thought him to be.

  His voice broke my study of him now. “You did consider that we work in the same location?”

  It sounded like a question but also a statement. One of those billionaire tactics to make people thing they have a choice.

  He was often at the theater overseeing my show. To his credit, he never interrupted or tried to overrule my authority with the cast or its actions. If he had, then we might have had this come-to-Jesus moment a lot sooner.

  Instead of releasing the tirade I’d prepared the week before, I narrowed my eyes, hopefully imparting my feelings about him, and his BS suggestion, and turned back toward the theater.

  He followed after a minute. The tip tap of dress shoes matching my pace alerted me to the moment when he caught up. Today he very well might have been going to the theater, so I wouldn’t press further. But if I saw his face on any of my city walks, he and I would have more than words.

  It was Friday, so the cast would be off. I usually spent the day working with set design and behind-the-scenes production. Gray’s presence on a Friday wasn’t unusual but I rarely caught a glimpse of him on days the staff took off.

  He slipped through the side door at the back of the theater a few minutes after I did. This time I laid in wait. He stopped and straightened his suit jacket when he caught sight of me. In all the time he’d been watching me, I’d also been watching him. He straightened his lapels and the bottom of his coat whenever he got the tiniest bit ruffled. I was beginning to think it cute. Not today.

  “We meet again so soon, Miss Vale.”

  “Why are you here?”

  He gave me a dismissive shrug. “Protecting my investment.”

  “Is there some doubt about my ability as a producer or director?”

  He shook his head. “No, of course not. I have a personal interest in this production.”

  I waited for him to elaborate but he remained silent. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”

  He chuckled, an infectious laugh that pounced on my nerves, as none of this was funny. “No, of course not, where’s the fun in that?”

  I rolled my eyes and headed up the stairs to my office. He followed on my heels. “You may have a personal interest in the production but you have no business in my office,” I said, as made it to the top, holding tight to the worn wooden bannister.

  He called out from a few steps below. “I do have a question for you.”

  “Are you going to tell me what interest you have in my play?”

  “Come to dinner with me and I might.”

  I stopped and twisted around to get a look at him. “Did you just ask me out on a date?”

  “If you have some objection to the nomenclature we could call it a business dinner.”

  It took a moment for the situation to sink in. My boss—the man who owned the theater in which my first international production would show and the man who had been following me around town for weeks—had just asked me to dinner. “Is this some kind of test?”

  He had the grace to look offended. “No, why would I need to test you?”

  “I don’t know. You’ve been following me and now you ask me out. I don’t know what’s next, a proposal of marriage or a pink slip.”

  “Pink slip?”

  “Firing, Mr. Gray.” I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, I forget my American colloquialisms sometimes don’t translate.
”

  “I have no intention of firing you.”

  “Then what are your expectations here?”

  “To take a beautiful woman to dinner. Why do there need to be expectations?”

  “Do you expect me to sleep with you?” I intended to catch him off guard with the crass question, but he didn’t bat a single perfect eyelash.

  “I never expect a woman to do anything. But if you want to go to bed I’m amenable.”

  There it was, that playboy smile I’d seen him wield with deadly accuracy several times. It was different turned on me and I realized Mr. Gray was a lot more dangerous than I’d originally believed.

  “I’m sorry Mr. Gray, I don’t sleep with my employers.”

  “You object to my employment?”

  “I object to losing my job if things go south between us.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of separating business and pleasure.”

  “That’s just it, Mr. Gray. I am all business and no pleasure.” I turned back, climbed the rest of the way to my office, and slammed the door in his face.

  That smile was imprinted in my brain. It said he got what he wanted and be damned the consequences. But I had no intention of becoming a consequence to Dorian Gray.

  Dorian

  I stood at the threshold of her office. It was nothing more than a shoebox situated above the staff quarters, but she’d made it her own by bringing in her scripts and pieces of feminine décor. I caught a peek before she gave me a face full of wood. Rejection was a new sensation for me, and novelty always gave me reason to smile.

  When I left home this morning and fell in step behind her, I hadn’t expected to be confronted.

  Perhaps I had underestimated my ability to blend in. Maybe the designer suits were too much? Regardless, I let out a sigh of relief. I’d grown weary of the subterfuge a couple weeks into the game. She turned me down now, but it wouldn’t remain so. One hundred and fifty years of practice meant I usually got what I wanted, and Isobel Vale was at the top of the list.

  I headed back down the stairs to my own office toward the front of the building. Decorated in the same turn of the century style as the theater itself, it made me feel more at home than the modern accoutrements that populated some of the other offices in the building. As the owner, of course I could pick and choose.

  My secretary Mina sat at her small desk in my office’s antechamber. “Good morning, Mr. Gray,” she offered as I swept through.

  “Bon Jour, Mina. Any messages?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Gray. But your meeting with the contractors about the theater’s west wing renovations was moved to after lunch.”

  I gave her a nod, went into my office, and closed the door. Mina, while a sweet girl, was so young. Her presence grew tiresome for me in minutes. I could only tolerate her in small doses.

  After she read that God's forsaken book about the sadist who shared my surname, she couldn’t look at me without snickering for a week. It made my entire office unproductive for much longer. I’d had to ban the book and its sequels from the building. And we weren’t even going to acknowledge the other book. Whoever deemed The Picture of Dorian Gray classic literature should be shot.

  Thankfully the craze passed quickly, but then the movies followed. I counted the days until I was free of the entire plot. I had no time or inclination to make games out of dominance or submission. And while my sexual exploits were eclectically varied, I’d yet to get sexual gratification out of subjugating a woman, at least in this century.

  Times had changed since I was a boy. Over a hundred years had passed. Women’s rights, civil rights, fashion, it was all evolution. Which was something my survival depended upon. Any woman who would remain in my life would learn quickly my tastes, or be dismissed. I liked to keep things simple and straightforward—something modern women usually appreciated.

  I unbuttoned my jacket and sank into the couch across from my desk. I’d only come to work because I followed Izzy in. It became a habit. But how long had she known? There was no reason for me to be in the building today except for the contractor meeting, which wasn’t until later. For now I needed to strategize a way to get that woman to agree on a date.

  I closed my eyes and recalled the first moment I saw her. I frequented a café on the corner across from the theater. She’d come walking through the square clutching a newspaper. Her dress was a practical white summer thing, a tan fedora topped her short mop of blonde hair, and black sunglasses covered almost half her face. She held the American periodical under her arm and trotted through the square without so much as a glance around.

  I’d thrown some money on the table and followed her down a narrow alley. She barreled through that as well, clearly with a destination in mind. As I walked, her image overlaid with another I knew so well. One I’d visualized over and over, more times than I cared to admit: Sibyl. Every inch of this woman looked exactly like her, down to the mole on her left ankle just above the strap of her shoe. I’d touched that mole, kissed that mole; seeing it again on living flesh threatened to rend me in two. Her hair, while the same soft texture, was shorter and blond, where Sibyl’s had been brown. Otherwise it was as if I were looking at the same woman aged ten years. Ten whole years Sibyl never claimed.

  I followed her to the solicitor I’d hired to find a producer. She exited with a smile and her sunglasses in her hand ten minutes later. Even those eyes were the same, big and dominating her face in an endearing way. The second she stepped off the curb I was torn between questioning my lawyer and following her to her next destination. My curiosity won out and I entered the solicitor’s office a minute after she’d departed.

  The secretary greeted me. “Mr. Gray, what a surprise. I didn’t think you had an appointment today.” Her French accent overtook some of the English words but I got the meaning well enough.

  “May I go back?”

  She gestured for me to continue and I walked through the open door at the back of the small office. Mr. Leroux sat eating a pastry, and immediately dropped it and hopped to his feet. “Mr. Gray, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  I smiled at my old friend. “Seems to be going around, Jean-Claude.”

  “How may I help you, Sir?”

  “The woman who left moments ago, what was her business here?”

  Jean-Claude shuffled some papers on his desk before handing me three, stapled together at the corner. “She’s the director and producer of Romeo and Juliet, soon to start casting at the theater.”

  Romeo and Juliet. I sighed as I glanced down at the contract. “Isobel Vale,” I read aloud.

  “She prefers to be called Izzy. She’s an American, famous in certain Broadway circles according to her references.”

  I memorized her address and committed any other details I could catch to memory. If Sibyl had been reincarnated, this might be my chance to make amends. To right the wrongs committed so many years ago.

  The idea unfurled inside me. Something like hope. An emotion I’d let die decades past. If I could finally be at peace, finally die, then Izzy might be the ticket to that end. And if death was off the table for me, then at the very least I might grasp atonement.

  2

  Izzy

  I stared at my closed door off and on throughout the morning, half expecting Gray to barge in at any moment. He had the right, but if he possessed any knowledge about me as a person he wouldn’t try it.

  I went over scripts and finalized some understudies I wanted to test, and when my stomach grumbled loudly I glanced up at the clock. Noon. A good time to stop for lunch. I favored the café on the corner across from the theater. They made heavenly croissant sandwiches. Not exactly health food but I considered the almost mile I walked back and forth to work every day enough exercise to stave off the effects of too many carbs. And . . . when in Paris right?

  I grabbed my wallet and phone and stuffed them into my pocket, leaving my bag as I hated lugging it around on quick trips.

  The weather was warm with a nice mid-summ
er breeze. Any other day I’d have spent my lunch people watching outside the café. But I had more work to do and I wanted to leave earlier in the evening than usual. Which in my world meant I wanted to leave before it got dark. As I carefully navigated the cobblestones in my low heels I spotted a familiar face at my usual table. He looked different now, his jacket was thrown over the back of his chair, his dress shirt sleeves bunched up at the elbow. He held a hefty tome in one hand as he gracefully sipped an espresso, pinky out, of course.

  I walked straight to the table and waited for him to look up. I cleared my throat and he finally met my eyes. The resounding zing that went through my body troubled me. It was like touching a nine volt to your tongue. “What are you doing here?”

  He waved at the table with his now empty demitasse, “lunch.”

  “I come here for lunch.”

  He didn’t seem fazed by my declaration. “It’s the best café in the area. I know, I tried them all. You don’t hold a monopoly on lunch locales.” He set down his glass and gave me one of those long slow challenging looks that made me wonder whether he was arguing with me or flirting with me. Either way, I didn’t like it.

  I scowled at him. “Awfully suspicious though, you here eating lunch just when I come down for lunch.”

  “It’s twelve o’clock, my dear. It’s the lunch hour, that’s not suspicious at all.”

  His focus and his gaze strayed back to the book as he spoke, and he said “my dear” in a scolding tone that should have reminded me of my grandmother, but actually made me want to hear it again.