Chapter 177: The Makeup Master

Chapter 177: The Makeup Master

Caesar layered his voice with a carefully calculated note of injury.

"There are a couple dozen young women here staring at me with their big, hopeful eyes."

"You really gonna make me look like an idiot in front of all these ladies?"

Back in her office, Elizabeth felt the corner of her mouth curve up before she could stop it.

"My personal wardrobe isn't up for loan."

Then her tone shifted, though it kept that ice-cold female-CEO edge. "But I can have PR pull a few brand-new sets from a boutique in Manhattan and courier them straight to her."

On the other end of the line, Caesar went quiet for a beat.

"You serious? You'd ship gowns across state lines?"

Elizabeth closed the cooked-books report in front of her and tossed it aside.

"When have I ever written you a check I couldn't cash?"

"Send me the address."

Caesar snapped his fingers, energized. "You got it, boss! I'll be waiting for the good news!"

He ended the call and turned back to face the room.

Caesar raised an eyebrow at the crowd.

"Dresses are handled."

Luna eyed him with open skepticism.

"Pops, you're joking, right? Couture gowns get reserved with the brand months in advance! And you got it done in one phone call, in ten minutes?"

Caesar slid his phone back into his pocket and said flatly, "Elizabeth never misses."

"Wardrobe's solved. Now the real problem is your face."

His gaze dropped back to Natasha.

She was still slumped in the chair, defeated. All that crying had wrecked her makeup completely—mascara smeared under her eyes like she'd gone twelve rounds with a raccoon, her hair a tangled mess. The only word for the whole picture was "disaster."

Caesar stepped closer and studied her for two seconds.

"Not as bad as it looks. Salvageable."

Beside him, Luna's eyes went huge, staring at him like he'd sprouted a second head. "Wait—old man, don't tell me you know how to do makeup too?!"

Caesar cocked a brow, radiating a devil-may-care confidence. "That's nothing. I'm a jack-of-all-trades."

He turned and faced the dozen or so girls still gathered backstage, clapping his hands together.

"Ladies! I'm gonna need a little assistance here."

"I need everybody to donate their makeup bags. As a thank-you, tomorrow at this exact time, the newest full-set gift boxes from Sephora will be delivered right to your dorms."

Big rewards make brave volunteers. The first to move was the girl with the glasses from earlier.

She dug into her tote and held out a concealer.

"Here, my NARS concealer. The shade should work for Natasha."

"This is my Urban Decay palette! Just bought it, barely touched!"

"Lipstick! I've got seven or eight MAC bullets right here!"

"Armani foundation! Natural shade!"

Once you light the fuse on college-girl enthusiasm, there's no stopping it.

In no time, the vanity was buried under an arsenal of every kind of "weapon."

Foundation, concealer, setting powder, eyeshadow palettes, blush, highlighter, Beauty Blenders—a small, technicolor mountain of it.

Natasha looked at the pile, stood up, and bowed deeply to all the girls, her voice still thick with tears. "Thank you. Really, thank you all."

Caesar pulled out a makeup chair and pressed a hand to her shoulder, steering her into it.

"Save the sentimental stuff. Sit."

Natasha sniffled and obediently sat up straight.

Caesar grabbed a bottle of foundation, squeezed a dot onto the back of his hand, and checked the shade.

"Eyes closed."

She shut them without protest.

He loaded a flat brush with foundation and dotted a few strokes across her forehead, cheeks, the bridge of her nose, and her chin. Then he picked up a slightly damp Beauty Blender and stippled it out, fast and even.

His technique was startlingly clean—the practiced flick of the wrist screaming professional.

"Your skin's combination, oily in the T-zone. Sweats and slides off there easy." Caesar kept up a running commentary as he worked the base. "So the foundation goes on thin, but the coverage has to hold."

"High brow bone, straight nose. That's your bone structure working for you."

He switched to a small concealer brush, feathering a couple of light strokes into the triangle under her eyes, then warming it in with the pad of his finger.

"Dark circles need an orange-toned corrector to cancel them out. Way more natural than just slapping dead-white foundation over them."

Natasha cracked her eyes open a sliver—and there was Caesar's face, right in front of hers. Less than eight inches away. Close enough that she could catch the faint smell of tobacco and aftershave on him.

Her heartbeat stumbled, skipping half a beat. She snapped her eyes shut again, but the tips of her ears flushed a helpless shade of pink.

"You've got that classic Slavic bone structure, Natasha. Very authentic Russian blood."

He swapped in a fluffy powder brush and swept a thin layer of setting powder across her face.

Natasha bit her lower lip and let out a soft, "Mm."

"Which means this face of yours was born for aggressive, dramatic looks."

Caesar picked up the eyeshadow palette.

He laid down the palest matte beige across her whole lid, then loaded a small blending brush with a deep brown.

"Deep-set eyes are the canvas every Hollywood makeup artist dreams about. Make the most of it."

Next came contour.

He chose a two-tone contour cream and, with a small brush, carved precise shadow lines along her jaw, beneath her cheekbones, and down both sides of her nose, then blended it out with the Beauty Blender in seconds.

Her face already had definition—under the contour, that bone structure suddenly read as pure high fashion.

About half an hour passed.

Caesar tossed the brow pencil carelessly onto the vanity, stepped back, and looked his work up and down like a man appraising a piece of art.

"Done."

Natasha opened her eyes and looked into the bulb-lit vanity mirror.

She could not believe the person staring back was her.

The eye makeup was deep and clean, the earth-toned shadow catching the light with a subtle, expensive sheen. The winged liner curved upward, wild but perfectly restrained, stretching her eyes into something lazy and catlike and magnetic.

The contour had sculpted her features so sharp she looked like she'd just stepped off the cover of Vogue.

And to finish it off, that full, brick-red vintage lip.

In an instant, she'd gone from drowned-rat to a radiant, commanding queen. A face that had only ever qualified as "pretty" had just been dragged up, by sheer force, into "stunning."

Backstage, a wave of gasps broke loose that no one could hold in.

"Oh my god… she's gorgeous!"

"Is that seriously Natasha?!"

"Even a top pro in Beverly Hills couldn't do better!"

"How did he even do that? I watch beauty tutorials all the time—how come when I do it, I look like I got punched in the face?"

"That shading technique—unreal!"

"This man knows how to make a woman beautiful better than an actual woman!"

Luna rushed to the mirror, both hands clamped over her mouth, and finally let out a shriek like a startled prairie dog.

"Pops! You know actual magic?!"

Caesar leaned back against the vanity, arms crossed over his chest, a wicked grin tugging at his mouth.

"You can call me the Houdini of makeup."

And just as the backstage awe rolled on, wave after wave—

A set of extremely steady, well-drilled footsteps came from the direction of the hallway.

A moment later, a middle-aged man in a sharply tailored black suit and white gloves appeared in the dressing room doorway. He looked like a top-tier butler straight out of a British period drama.

"Pardon the interruption. Which of you is Mr. Montague?"

Caesar lifted a hand. "Right here."

The man dipped into a small, immediate bow, then gestured behind him.

Six brawny young men in matching black uniforms wheeled in three extended, heavy-duty garment racks in perfect, orderly file.

The racks were hung wall-to-wall with neat rows of black garment bags.

The three racks fanned out across the center of the backstage area, swallowing up an enormous amount of space.

The man's white-gloved hands unzipped the garment bags one by one.

Zzzzip—

The first row: floor-length evening gowns in every color, in lavish, luxurious fabrics.

The second row: sharply cut cocktail dresses and couture suiting.

The third row: accessories of every style, diamond necklaces, fur stoles.

A dazzling, glittering spread of it.

Over a hundred current-season couture pieces—tags still on—crammed the backstage aisles wall to wall.

The entire backstage fell dead silent in a heartbeat.

Every girl's mouth had dropped into an exaggerated "O." A few of them had forgotten to breathe entirely.

"God… is this what they mean by 'crazy rich'?" one girl murmured, half in a daze.

Natasha rose to her feet, disbelief written all over her face, and pointed at herself. "These… these are all for me? I can just pick?"

Caesar shrugged, as breezy as if he were deciding what to order for dinner. "Of course."

Then he turned his head and noticed the girls who'd lent their makeup earlier—every one of them staring at those gorgeous gowns with naked longing, wanting but not daring to say a word.

Caesar swept his arm out with a magnanimous flourish, his voice echoing across the backstage.

"You girls who pitched in just now—listen up."

"Every one of you can pick something to wear tonight. On me!"

Backstage went quiet for one full second—then erupted in a scream loud enough to blow the roof off.

"Ahhhhhhhh!"

"Old man, I love you!!!"