A/N: New story! I am so excited to share this with all of you. I thought up the idea probably a month ago and finally got around to writing it. I hope you all enjoy it!
Promises, Promises
The first time he saw her he was sitting in some restaurant when in she walked, her chestnut hair curled demurely around her heartshaped face. He thought she was beautiful but hell, with looks like hers he didn't imagine that anyone looked at her and didn't. She had classic looks that reeked of patrician upbringing. Almost immediately, he knew that he wanted her.
"Who's that?" he asked his friend beside him. Nate Archibald followed his penetrating gaze and said, "Someone you should stay away from."
"And why is that?"
"A politician's daughter."
"Ah," Chuck breathed out, leaning back in his seat. "Which politician?"
Chuck was a well-known man and despite his bootlegging and gambling he had several politicians safely in his well-greased pockets. Nate did not hesitate before answering, "Harold Waldorf."
Chuck frowned. Harold Waldorf was one man who was not a friend of the mob and it was his refusal to comply with mob dealings that lost him the previous year's election for governor. What Harold did not understand is that a successful politician openly attacked mob activity while secretly enabling it. That was how the things were done.
Harold instead chose to be a hard nose about it all and in the end it had cost him his career. The man was still doing well for himself, though. His law firm was thriving and by the look of his daughter money was not an issue. Her clothes were in season and he could tell they were tailor made. No off-the-rack pencil skirt would hug her curves the way the one she wore did.
"It's a shame," Chuck remarked. "Such a waste of beauty."
CHAIR-CHAIR-CHAIR
She recognized him from the papers.
Chuck Bass.
Her father had told her all about him and how the law had been unable to pin any particular crime or deed on him. "He'll get what's coming to him," Harold vowed. "One day it will all come crashing in."
Her father's apocalyptic attitude was something she was used to. It bled its way into every facet of their life. Every single act of every single day was of utmost importance. Whether it be choosing the menu for a dinner party or picking out a tie-nothing was too menial for Harold Waldorf's full attention. That included his daughter.
"You are going to really become something," he told her one morning. "I will introduce you to all the best so you can go and forge a bright future for yourself."
The unspoken fineprint was that this bright future would be one that Harold had prior approval of. He would arrange the dates and the meetings. He would approve all and she would live out the life that he had so meticulously planned for her. Some would find it freeing, the absolute ease in which she should have conducted her life with it all being planned out. She didn't have to think. All she had to do was walk in the direction her father pointed and smile.
She felt smothered, though. Only nineteen she still held no answer as to what she wanted to do for herself but she believed it should be her decision and not something her father concocted. Oftentimes she wondered if things would have turned out differently if her mother were still alive. Would a woman's presence softened her father's ambition? She had no real way of knowing.
She sat down at the table with her escort and felt her eyes slide to him again. She had always found him attractive his face all angles and shadows. He was a bad boy or as her father would correct, a bad man. That didn't bother her, though. Nor did it appeal to her. What fascinated her about him was the autonomous air that he carried wherever he went. She saw there was no man guiding his actions beyond himself. She wondered what that felt like. Full control.
A waiter approached and put a mixed drink on her table. She hadn't ordered anything and looked at him strangely as he explained, "That is from Mr. Bass." She looked up quickly and found her eyes locking with those of Chuck Bass. He lowered his head slightly and smirked.
"Tell him I do not want it," she said coolly. "I won't take drinks from men of his standing."
"Yes, miss," the waiter said, quickly plucking the drink from her table and walking away.
"What gall," her friend Penelope said. "He must know who your father is."
"Oh, yes, he does," Blair said, eyeing the man warily. "That is exactly why he sent me the drink."
Penelope gave another succinct turn of her head to either side. "No manners, I tell you, absolutely no manners."
CHAIR-CHAIR-CHAIR
Blair had returned from lunch out at the club and had spent most of the day rearranging things in her room and going through her closet. It seemed every season she accumulated more clothes rendered useless. Style changed drastically and something from the year before simply would not do in the next. There was a knock on her door which she knew immediately was her father. He always did three succinct knocks with a breath of pause between.
"Come in," she called out.
"Blair Bear," he said affectionately, entering the room. "You look beautiful."
Blair looked down at her common clothes and said, "I'm hardly dressed."
"But you are always beautiful to me, dear."
She knew something was up. Harold was a kind man but this overstated affection meant one thing only. There was someone else downstairs he wanted to ensure she was beautiful for.
"There is someone I would like you to meet," he said after a moment. She exhaled sharply and set on her best society smile. There was no use fighting Harold because he would always win.
"I'll be right down," she told him, glancing at herself in the mirror.
"Don't take too long, now. You look beautiful just as you are."
She nodded and he exited the room, closing the door softly behind him. She gazed in the mirror at her reflection and sighed. She wondered who was waiting downstairs, yet another man her father paraded her before. She was only twenty and her father had a mounting fear that she would become spoiled meat, unused and discarded on the sidelines. He said she was too shy when in actuality it was the men who lacked gumption. She was a strong woman and knew that despite the silk casing, men could read that. She thought earlier to when that Chuck Bass fellow had sent her a drink. She could count on her five fingers how many times that had happened before.
Thinking of Mr. Bass, she slipped out of her dress and pulled on a nicer frock. A quick look in the mirror to make sure everything was straight and then she headed down to the foyer. There her father was standing with a man who looked at least ten years her senior and his junior. She knew this was the ideal age for a potential suitor.
"Oh, Blair," Harold said, reaching for her hand. "Let me introduce you to Ronald Palmer. He is a new lawyer at my firm."
Yet another person in your clutches, she thought. This was someone her father no doubt would want as a son-in-law because his power to control would be nearly absolute. Ronald Palmer did not see the trap he was walking into, though. All he saw was a beautiful woman. She could tell by the way his eyes travelled up and down her body that he had noticed the way her dress hugged her curves, how it offset her porcelain skin.
"Ronald and I were supposed to be out for dinner," Harold said jovially, "but I am just swamped. Would you mind accompanying him dear?"
"It's at Lawry's," Ronald said, as if this would make a difference. He did not understand that Harold's suggestion was a sugar-coated order.
"Let me just grab my coat," Blair said.
CHAIR-CHAIR-CHAIR
"New York is going dry," Chuck told Nate, leaning back in his chair as he continued. "I feel that my time here is coming to a close."
"Where are you going to go?"
As Chuck went to respond a waitress came with their food and he hesitated as she placed a steaming steak in front of him and then Nate. Chuck watched the waitress walk away and then said, "You've heard about Vegas, haven't you?"
Nate wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Seems a bit tried, doesn't it? Everyone's escaping to Vegas."
"I'm not escaping, Nathaniel. I'm expanding my horizons. Look, first and foremost I am a money man and there is money to be made in Vegas."
"What are you looking at?"
Chuck held all the cards in his hand and took a moment to build anticipation as he cut into his steak and took a bite. He looked at Nate and coolly said, "I've been talking with some people down there, Santori in particular."
"And?"
"He has a hotel that he thinks would benefit from my attention."
"A hotel?" Nate asked. "Don't you think you're going a little soft?"
"Look, I could live a comfortable life there and still have a hand in the business. It's too stressful here and I'm becoming too well-known. I don't like people looking at me like they do here. It makes it too difficult to get things done."
"And you think Vegas will be any different?"
"Everyone down there is like me," Chuck pointed out. "No one would take a second glance."
Something that drew a second glance in the restaurant was the entrance of Blair Waldorf on the arm of some guy too young to be a relative but old enough to welcome gossip. He knew the dinner was romantic as he watched the man clumsily pull out her chair. She gave him a slight smile and but Chuck saw it drop when the man was not facing her.
"Ms. Waldorf is gracing us with her presence again," Chuck noted casually. Nate turned for a glance and shook his head, "I know that tone, man."
"What do you mean?"
"Leave her alone."
CHAIR-CHAIR-CHAIR
Ronald Palmer was by far the dullest man Blair had ever met in her twenty years of living. The one favorable thing regarding her father was that he did not bring his work home to her-excluding possible son-in-laws of course. He rarely spoke of the firm and it that was something that made Blair grateful. She played the avid listener, however, and Ronald was ever so happy to play along.
"That is so interesting," Blair remarked after a rather long story that she had zoned out of halfway through. Ronald beamed and she let her eyes casually slide over his shoulder. Her spine jolted erect when she found the eyes of Chuck Bass watching her.
Ronald began some other story that held none of her interest and she struggled to feign interest as Chuck Bass' eyes kept drawing her back. They exchanged looks so often they may have been sitting at the same table for all the internal dialogue. She grudgingly noted to herself that he was rather attractive. It went beyond the element of danger, too. His face was just pleasant to look at.
"Blair?" She looked at Ronald in alarm. "Are you alright?"
"Yes," she answered, nodding her head quickly. "I..excuse me."
She rose from her seat and headed toward the bathroom. She passed Chuck's table as she walked and swore she felt his hand brush her skirt. She went into the bathroom and stepped in front of the mirror. She saw her cheeks were unnaturally flushed and when she laid her hand against one it was hot. Taking deep breaths she told herself to calm down and fixed her hair. Who cares if she happened to run into Chuck Bass twice in one day? Who cares that since she left the club she had been unable to drive him from her mind? None of it mattered. Not one bit. The trajectory of her life was already planned and there was no role written for Chuck Bass.
She found herself peculiarly disappointed at this.
After checking her hair one more time she left the bathroom and found herself face-to-face with Chuck Bass. The way he grinned told her that he had had been waiting for her which oddly thrilled her.
"What are you doing?" She demanded. "You nearly scared me to death."
"Ms. Waldorf," he said in greeting.
"Hello, Mr. Bass. Now, what do you want?"
"I have a proposition for you," he said smoothly. She had expected some lead-up to an improper proposition and was surprised he cut to the chase so quickly.
"And what is that?" She asked coolly.
"I'm heading to Vegas later this week. I would like you to accompany me."
She laughed and asked, "What makes you think I will say yes?"
"A hunch," he said. "I see you paraded around by all your different elderly men."
"Ronald is only thirty," she countered.
"You deserve to be around some men your own age," he filled in. "And I want you." Blair snorted. "And I always get what I want."
"Well, I hate to cut this short but Ronald is waiting." She went to move past him but he grabbed her wrist. "Just think, Blair, all that could be yours. Riches, all the clothes and jewels you could dream of- it could all be yours. You would have your own life."
She avoided his eyes but his words had struck home. He let go of her arm and wiped his hands on his pants as if to wipe himself of her. "The choice is yours."
He walked away, leaving her alone in the corridor. She took a moment to compose herself and then walked back to the table. Ronald started another riveting story while she kept tearing her eyes forcefully from Chuck. His words kept replaying in her mind.
You would have your own life.
She thought of her father and the endless round of dates she would be subjected to until she was effectively married off. She thought of her clothes for events carefully laid out and the harsh looks for when any unruly behavior-however slight-surfaced. Her entire life had been chosen for her and now she had a chance to be the driving force of her future.
The choice is yours.
A bit of movement over Ronald's shoulder caught her attention and she looked up to see Chuck and his partner leaving. She watched them walk out and felt a mounting panic as she considered that she would never see him again. He would be going to Vegas. I could be going to Vegas, she thought.
She was up from her seat before she could effectively think through her actions and rushed out the door. Chuck was climbing into a towncar and she called out his name. He stopped midstoop and straightened up coolly.
"Reconsidering?"
"I'll go," she said. "I'm not going for you, but I'll go."
Slowly a smile spread on his face and he said, "Very good. We'll be in touch." He went to climb into the car and she asked, "When will I hear from you?"
Over his shoulder he told her, "Like I said, we'll be in touch."
The door closed and the car drove away, leaving Blair shivering alone on the street wondering just what she had gotten herself into.
A/N: So, thoughts? Is this worth continuing? Next chapter will be the departure and then the story will take place primarily in Vegas :-)