Jim shook his head, laughing at her suggestion. “You can’t wander around the grounds, Helen. There are motion sensors all over the yard. If you accidentally trip one off, a pack of vicious dogs will come out and scare the living day lights out of you.” He picked up her hand and tucked it back into the elbow of his arm. “Come along. I promise we’ll stay out of my boss’s way and I’ll introduce you to the others I work with. Unfortunately, I’m not high enough on the food chain to actually know Mr. Dionysius on a very personal level yet so he won’t be in our main crush of conversations. He’ll be schmoozing with his vice presidents tonight and won’t even notice us as we partake of his excellent liquor and possibly the best food you’ll ever eat.”
Helen was doubtful but she accepted that there would probably be enough people here tonight so she could at least hide in the crowds and be inconspicuous.
Warily, she followed him up the stairs once again and into the house. Thankfully, they were late enough that, if there’d been a receiving line, it was gone now and they could enter the house without being greeted by the man himself.
“Come on,” Jim said, leading her through the enormous foyer to the back of the house where most of the people were mingling. “You’ve got to see this place. It’s amazing.”
Helen had to agree with him. Even having grown up with her father’s palace-like house, she was impressed with this one. Jim led her to an enormous living room area that had to be more than five thousand square feet and two stories high. The back wall had Palladian windows on the first level, then another set of enormous square windows on the second story. The room had honey colored hardwood floors that added warmth as well as elegance with large, comfortable looking sofas and chairs placed strategically around the room and large white columns spacing the rooms geometrically. She counted three groupings of sofas and chairs in this area with a massive fireplace at each end. The hardwood floors were softened in these groupings by large carpets that made the room look more welcoming.
As she stared out one of the five sets of French doors currently opened onto the patio, she could see more white but this was of stone instead of marble. It extended out to stairs that descended into a formal garden laid out in patchwork with large oak trees framing both sides and marble statuary in the middle. Directly down the center was an Olympic sized swimming pool with floating candles surrounded by flowers dancing on the surface.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Jim mumbled to her as he took two glasses of white wine from a passing waiter. “Mr. Dionysius doesn’t scrimp on the entertainment budget, does he?”
“Nor on the home heating bill,” she mumbled, trying desperately to find something about the party she didn’t like. She didn’t want to be impressed. She didn’t want to know anything about the man that might tip the scales in his favor. Already loving his home, she had to find something that was wrong – and the open doors letting the air conditioning out of the house was the best thing she could think of.
Unfortunately, when she mentioned it, Jim only laughed and shook his head. “Don’t be too hard on him. I think he uses solar energy for most of the appliances and the air conditioning would be one of them. It’s my understanding that one of his smaller companies is one of those research firms and this house is a sort of test tube for their ideas. This house probably uses less energy than my two thousand square foot condominium.”
Drat! Helen hated that little factoid and wanted to find a small corner to hide out in. She sipped her wine and looked around, searching out the one man she’d been avoiding for a week. He must have gotten her phone number from Edna because he’d left her several messages the first few days after their most recent encounter but then she hadn’t heard anything. She’d hoped he’d finally given up on her but something told her that wasn’t the case. She suspected he was just biding his time. Sort of like a spider waiting for the bug to fly into his web. “I’m sure he’s still wasting something,” she grumbled.
“I’m sure he does, but then don’t we all? But Mr. Dionysius isn’t really in the same league, is he? Men like him live in a whole different world than we do.”
Helen looked around at his beautiful home. “Obviously. And these two worlds should stay well apart from each other,” she said and took his hand to lead him over to the patio.
Jim was about to grab a plate at the buffet table when one of his co-workers found him. They were engaged in a lively conversation about the acquisition and their excitement that it was finally over. Jim introduced her to several of his co-workers, all of whom were very nice and instantly incorporated her into their conversations as if she were one of them.
Helen had been at the party for perhaps an hour when she finally started to relax. She sipped her wine and smiled at all of Jim’s co-workers and their significant others when she started to see Jim’s eyes stray to the right several times. Helen followed his eyes in that direction and caught a pretty blond waitress glancing back at him.
When Jim realized that he’d been caught, Helen laughed softly, not taking offense at his distraction since she’d already realized that she wasn’t attracted to Jim in that way either. “She’s pretty,” she said with an encouraging smile.
“Yes, well,” he cleared his throat, a blush creeping up his neck and he adjusted his tie slightly. “Let’s go say hello to my direct boss. He’s over there. Then we can relax and grab something to eat.”
Helen looked in the direction he’d indicated quickly to determine which boss Jim was referring to and, when it wasn’t Alec, she relaxed. Glancing in the opposite direction she searched for the pretty blond waitress, catching the other woman’s eye. Initially the waitress looked away, embarrassed but Helen already had a mind to do something about this situation. Jim was a very nice man. She wasn’t really interested in him as anything more than a friend but the fact that he was being an absolute gentleman and ignoring the blond warmed her heart. She followed Jim and chatted for several more minutes before excusing herself from the group.
She made her way to the bathroom and washed her hands, then searched out the kitchen, determined to find the waitress and find out what was going on. She lucked out and found the woman setting up another tray of creative and delicious smelling appetizers. “Good evening,” Helen said, sliding up to the blond and popping one of the appetizers into her mouth. “Oh, these are scrumptious,” she said as a way to open the conversation. “Did you help make them?”