Chapter Six
T oo lazy to leave the hotel room, they ordered room service, and after eating, Rayan found his second wind. Mathias proved no match for his persistence.
“Your days are numbered, kid,” Mathias remarked, equal parts scornful and impressed, when they collapsed onto the bed afterward. Not for the first time, he’d made use of Rayan’s remarkable turnaround time. “Those bounce backs won’t last.”
“Yours are pretty impressive for someone closing in on middle age.”
Middle age? “Watch your fucking mouth.”
Rayan laughed softly and lifted a hand to Mathias’s cheek. “Believe me, age has nothing on you.”
He kissed him then curved against Mathias and fell asleep almost immediately. While Rayan was a restless sleeper, he also possessed the uncanny ability to black out in seconds, especially once certain other needs had been met.
Mathias, on the other hand, found himself unusually wired.
He got out of bed and pulled the covers over Rayan’s shoulders then headed, naked, to the shower.
When he returned to the room, he dressed and patted down his pockets for his cigarettes only to find the pack empty.
He’d planned to stop at a superette on his way back to the hotel but had been sidetracked by the scene unfolding out front.
Mathias pocketed the room key and took the elevator down to the lobby. As he walked past the restaurant toward to the hotel entrance, he caught sight of Elise sitting alone at the bar. He slowed to a stop, silently cursing himself, then turned back and strode into the restaurant.
“Scotch, neat. Make it a double,” Mathias instructed the bartender as he pulled up a seat beside Elise.
His appraiser straightened and blinked at him, visibly tipsy. “Chief?”
“You look a sight.”
“I won’t deny that.” She knocked back the remainder of her drink. “But you’ll be happy to know I got rid of him.”
“The mouthy little shit?”
Elise’s lips quivered. “That was Theo. He does this—turns up out of the blue. He must have found out I was in Paris. We’ve been broken up two years. After I ended things, he started showing up where I was, waiting outside my apartment.”
That explained the jumpiness, the anxious silences. She certainly knows how to pick them.
“I used to get my coworkers to screen my calls at the museum because he’d phone, asking to see me,” she said with a grimace. “I don’t know how he does it. He reads all this stuff online, about location pinging or something. I’ve changed my number twice, but then it happens again. Like today.”
Mathias’s drink arrived, and beside him, Elise tapped her glass for a refill. The bartender took her empty glass and retrieved a bottle of gin from the selection lined up on the shelf behind him.
“When your contact first approached me, I only agreed to meet with him because I was desperate,” she said.
Shortly after Mathias had taken over the business, he’d reached out to an old contact in Paris who moved in museum circles to see if he knew of any qualified appraisers who might be persuaded to make the move to Calais.
Everything else, he could manage, but Mathias didn’t know the difference between a Rembrandt and a Renoir.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I accepted the offer because of Theo.
I couldn’t stay in Paris anymore.” Elise thanked the bartender as he placed her drink on the coaster in front of her.
“I’d already been looking elsewhere, but the chances of finding a similar position outside the city, where I could actually do what I’ve been trained to do, were practically nonexistent. ”
“You’d think I asked for your undying loyalty.” Mathias took a swig of scotch, aware of the irony. He’d expected nothing less from his subordinates in the past. “I don’t care why you took the job. I just needed it filled. Ideally by someone quieter.”
Elise gave a short laugh. “You know, you’re the first person who didn’t tell me to go to the police.”
“What are the cops going to do?”
“Exactly!” she cried, triumphant. “Nothing—that’s what.
I did go, by the way, and they looked at me like I was an idiot.
” Elise sighed and removed her glasses to clean the lenses with the hem of her blouse.
“Anyway, I’m glad I did. Take the job, that is.
Despite your sunny personality, it’s been a real trip.
Going out on my own, picking out pieces.
At the museum, I barely had any say in what I was assigned to, whereas you just hand over the money and leave the rest to me.
Honestly, sometimes it seems like you don’t even care about the work. ”
“That’s because I don’t.”
Elise snorted and raised her glass to take a sip. When she put it back down, she turned to him, suddenly serious. “The worst thing is, I know he’s crazy and controlling and a complete asshole, but every time I see him, it just serves as a reminder that there’s no one else, you know?”
Mathias recognized the pained glint in her eye. It was strange to have grown so accustomed to the loneliness that only when it was gone could he see how much space it had taken up.
“What does that mean? Is that the best I get?” She exhaled through her lips. “At least he cares, right?”
“I’m sure that’s what everyone will think when you turn up dead in a dumpster.”
Elise glowered at him.
“Have some self-respect,” Mathias admonished her. “The man clearly has a screw loose. Where does he live? I’ll talk some sense into him.”
“No, no.” She shook her head adamantly, and her cheeks reddened. “I think I got through to him today. I made it very clear. He said he’s not going to bother me again.”
Mathias eyed her skeptically and took another swig from his glass.
Elise fiddled with the coaster under her drink. “Thank you, by the way. For before.” Her eyes darted down to the counter. “I know you did that for me. I didn’t want to assume because I figured you’re not… well…” She stopped, appearing to grasp for the right words. “You’re a very private person.”
Mathias almost laughed. She was more perceptive than his own mother. “I don’t give a shit what you assumed.”
She glanced at him. “Rayan…”
“What about him?”
“You’re lucky.”
That’s new. He’d always thought himself skilled and determined, but never lucky.
Everything he’d gained in his life, he’d worked hard to get, except for the one thing that meant more than the rest of it.
That had fallen clean into his lap—a credit to Rayan’s formidable tenacity. Perhaps the woman had something there.
“I’ve had enough bad to know a good one when I see it,” she said quietly.
“What do you want from me, Dumont? You’re not going to get advice or sympathy. As far as I’m concerned, the less your personal life encroaches on mine, the better.”
She smiled and leaned over to clink her glass against his. “Amen, Chief. Just listening’s fine.”
“If I see that smug fuck again, I’m all done listening.”
They downed the last of their drinks, and Elise flagged down the bartender for another refill, but Mathias put a hand over her glass and signaled for the bill.
“Please,” she protested. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t insult me.” He dropped a handful of notes on the bar, and she got down from her stool, wobbling slightly.
She must have registered his misgivings because she reached out to pat his arm. “I’m fine, really.” Then she lurched unsteadily toward the hotel elevator.
Mathias left the restaurant and walked to the superette at the end of the street. He bought his cigarettes but no longer felt like smoking. Instead, he returned to the hotel room, undressed, and slipped beneath the covers beside Rayan’s sleeping form.
The man roused slightly and stiffened. “Where are we?” he murmured.
Mathias wrapped an arm around his waist and buried his face into Rayan’s neck. “The hotel. Go back to sleep.”
Rayan let out a breath, and his body once again went slack.
In moments like these, the words rose fully formed in Mathias’s mind, and still, even with Rayan asleep, they failed to make it past the threshold of his lips.
But they lingered on his tongue, evoking a tenderness that was both fierce and sweet.
When Elise arrived at the hotel restaurant for breakfast, she looked decidedly less perky. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair was pulled back from her face in a simple ponytail.
“May I?” she asked, placing a hand on the chair across from Rayan.
“Of course.”
She sat and poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher in the middle of the table. “Good morning, by the way. I hope you slept well.”
He’d slept like the dead. Rayan often had trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places, but he’d woken that morning feeling alarmingly refreshed.
“I did. And you?”
“Not exactly. I might have had one too many before bed last night.” She made a grimace and waved down a passing waiter for coffee.
When the waiter returned with her drink, Elise reached for the small jug of milk and poured a generous serving into her cup.
“How’s the buffet?” she asked, gesturing at his plate of bread and fruit.
“Decent.”
Elise took a scalding sip of coffee and cleared her throat. “I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I put you in a difficult position.”
Rayan had thought at length about the events of the previous evening.
Beneath the shock of disbelief, he’d felt an overwhelming swell of elation at how Mathias had claimed him—the rightness of his arm around Rayan’s shoulders, coupled with the knowledge of just how far out of his comfort zone Mathias had ventured.
The man had never been demonstrative. It wasn’t in his nature.