Chapter 19
Maison Rêve on Royal Street does swanky old school waiters, white tablecloths and dark wood like it invented all three, which it basically did.
We step inside and the delicious scents coming from the kitchen make my stomach growl. I can’t actually remember when I last ate something.
I’ll admit I’m kind of teasing him because there’s something outrageously fun about arguing with Dallas. He’s so freaking cocky I’m hardly going to let him off every hook.
I can’t be too mad about him possibly upending my job.
I meant what I said about it being worth it.
It’s unbelievably nice to finally take a day off.
After years of work and stress and servitude, I feel like I’ve been given a reprieve.
I needed this. And I’m in too good of a mood after the helicopter flight.
And that kiss.
I still feel like I’m flying.
I honestly don’t care all that much about the job.
Maybe Sadie was right when she said it was time.
I’m wondering now if I’ll go back to it at all.
Ellen the Control Freak Armadillo will be even more of a nightmare than she already was, that’s a given.
When a Texan holds a grudge, they get mean, I’ve learned that shit first-hand.
Maybe it’s a sign from my ancestors up there in The Great Beyond that it’s time for me to do something else with my life.
Like go to New York with Sadie. If I could somehow afford to.
But that’s what jobs are for, after all. Trying like hell to make things better for yourself—even if other people pull the rug out from under you every chance they get, which seems to happen to me on a semi-regular basis.
Maybe things will be different in New York. It’s not like they don’t have restaurants and bars in New York. I’m sure I can find a job somewhere.
Either way, Dallas Wilder has every reason to be cocky, I’ll give him that much. With his hair all sexily messed up from my fingers and the turquoise of his eyes hot-blooded after our kiss, he’s even more handsome, if such a thing was possible.
He really does have outstanding hair. It’s thick and just as manly-silky as it looks when I weaved my fingers through it. His eyes are stormy now. I notice again how tall he is. And big. Those tattoos against the suntan give him the slightest bad-boy edge.
Every woman in the room turns as we walk into the restaurant.
Dallas is holding my hand. A jumble of new emotions filter through me and take me a second to identify.
Am I jealous, that they’re all staring at him?
Am I smug, because he’s so emphatically with me?
Am I self-conscious, because all the people here are dressed to the nines and even though I’m wearing the new dress Dallas gave me, I still feel like they might be able to see the real me underneath it.
The one who serves drinks to people like them.
Yes, to all of the above.
But none of it seems to matter. Dallas keeps tossing out these lavish, borderline-obnoxious promises that deflect off my forcefield but leave warm little dents in it, like they’re trying to melt their way through even if I don’t want them to.
I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you.
Sure you will. In some perfect universe where nothing is real and people don’t betray the ones they’re supposed to love most, smashing their hearts to smithereens in the process.
He’s the one I need protection from. He’s crazy-intense and more beautiful than any man has a right to be. If I let myself get carried away by him, there’s no telling what could happen.
I decide then and there not to let him affect me too much. I may or may not go to bed with him—on my terms. Because I want to. Not because I need him or because he’s in any way, shape or form in control of me.
Luckily for me, my heart’s already broken, so it’s not going to be overly impacted by his … alpha-ness. On any level whatsoever.
I just wish he wasn’t so freaking hot. It’s not fair.
Or weirdly kind, like he’s oh-so-genuine and actually means the things he’s saying.
And I especially wish he didn’t somehow know how to light up my body like his pheromones are electrically charged with million-watt ions or whatever.
I have no idea how he does it, but the man has a gift.
And I’m only human. A thoroughly female human who’s waited twenty-two long years for an opportunity that felt like the right one. When and if that opportunity arrives at some point during “the day we’re having,” I’ve already decided I’m going to enjoy the ride. With zero strings attached.
Sadie keeps telling me to stop being so guarded about cashing in my V-card and to seize the day already.
It never felt like the right day until now, but this one does.
He’s already given me several of my firsts, so I’m at least willing to go with the flow of wherever the rest of the day we’re having takes us.
Either way, I’m nothing if not realistic.
If it’s true that Dallas has somehow wrangled another day off for me tomorrow, then we’ll spend another day together.
And then I’ll thank my lucky stars I got to spend the weekend flying around in helicopters, riding around in limos, eating in fancy restaurants, potentially losing my proverbial and overrated innocence to a hunky almost-stranger, and get back to reality. I’ve got an entire life to figure out.
The ma?tre d’ notices us—mainly Dallas—as soon as we walk into the restaurant, doing that subtle double-take everyone seems to do in his presence. The slight recalibration. The professional smoothing.
“Mr. Wilder.” The guy sounds almost as breathless as I feel. The Dallas Wilder Effect, I’m calling it. “We’re honored you’d choose Maison Rêve. We’ve saved the best table for you.”
“Thank you.” Blasé again, like he expects nothing less.
We’re guided past several groups of people at the bar who have clearly been waiting longer than we have but don’t care because they’re all doing the same double-take, and we’re led to a raised corner table near the window with a half-wall of privacy and a view straight down Royal Street. The best seat in the house.
Maison Rêve is known as a place where celebrities and the well-heeled like to be seen. In fact, I think I recognize a quarterback. And a country music singer.
Walking through the chic restaurant on Dallas Wilder’s arm feels like stepping into a life that belongs to someone else.
In a good way, mainly. Like when you try on some million-dollar suede jacket in an upmarket store just to see how it fits without ever bothering to look at the price tag because you know it’ll never be yours.
Just as we reach our table, a young woman around my age rushes up to us. She’s absolutely giddy with excitement. She’s clutching her phone and has the lit-up energy of a banshee of adoration who couldn’t be more thrilled.
"Oh. My. God,” she squeals, staring up at Dallas with literal stars in her eyes. “You’re Dallas Wilder.”
“Nailed it,” he confirms. Easy, practiced, a little bored.
“I follow all your market analysis. And I mean all of it. And that ETF bundle from September? I’m up nineteen percent, which my dad said was impossible, so, like, thank you. Seriously.”
“You’re welcome.”
This is almost awkward but the woman is too ecstatic to notice. “And your father’s films? Meridian destroyed me when I was seventeen. I’ve watched it probably a hundred times. Maybe more.”
“I’m sure he’d be very flattered.”
“Can I just ask,” she gushes, “I mean, everyone wonders about it. I love your brother Apollo, but you … you just have, like, so much star quality and I read online that like at least a dozen different directors have pleaded for you to be in their films, but you always turn them down. Why?”
Hang on a minute.
Apollo Wilder?
Holy shit.
“Not my thing,” is all Dallas gives her, his annoyance gaining momentum at this point.
“I’m taking too much of your time,” the woman says, maybe hearing in his tone that this is beyond tedious for him. “Would you mind terribly—I would absolutely die—if I got a quick photo of you? With me?”
He couldn’t sound more bored. “Sure.”
“Would you mind?” she asks me, holding out her phone.
Dallas’s eyes narrow, as though he doesn’t care how rude she is to him, but any inkling of rudeness directed at me is inexcusable. But I reach for her phone as she stands next to Dallas and beams up at him like he’s the second coming.
I take a bunch of photos and hand the phone back to her.
“Thank you so much.” More to Dallas than me. She smiles gleefully at him again before making her way back to her table.
“Wow,” I murmur. “You really made her day.”
“Don’t start.”
“Don’t start? Actually, I think we have a whole lot to talk about, Dallas Wilder.”
“After you, Amelie Thibodeaux.” Dallas gestures for me to go first, so I slide into the seat closer to the window. He slides in next to me. There’s a small half-door shield, which he closes so the entire restaurant is no longer staring at us.
I start with the first question. “Apollo Wilder is your brother?” He’s one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
I don’t go to many movies because I’m always working, and I don’t follow social media or go on the internet much at all because my phone is so old it doesn’t support a lot of apps, but even I’ve heard of Apollo Wilder.
“To his great personal satisfaction, yes.”
“Your father is that famous movie director?”
“Jack Wilder, yes.”
“And your mother?”
“Hattie Carson.”
Wow. Hattie Carson is one of those movie stars of the ages. It’s all sinking in. “You’re the oldest. The banker, who’s …” I don’t want to say it because it shouldn’t matter. He’s famous for making billions and billions of dollars.
“Been written up once or twice, yes.”
That’s why his name sounded familiar when he introduced himself last night.
Because I’ve read about him. Sometimes there are newspapers on the bar and occasionally I read them.
He’s the quiet enigma of his family, the one who’s some kind of financial genius.
All four of the brothers live very different lives but they’ve all been successful, not just because of their name, I remember reading, but because they happen to be a family of very talented people.
“I’ve seen some of your father’s movies.
I loved that one about that ranch in Montana. ”
“Big Sky.”
“Yes. And he bought that ranch for your mother.”
“She never liked it. But my brother Rhett loves it. We kept it.”
This is crazy. The Wilders are literally one of the most famous families in America. For a lot of reasons.
If anything, the whole billionaire detail puts me off a little.
I always thought those billionaires must be greedy, uncaring people, hoarding all their money while other people suffer.
I mean, look at the one who bought my hotel: he’s stingy as hell, totally absent from the business he owns, and he also has a knack for hiring bitchy managers who treat their employees like they’re her own personal workhorses.
But something else gives me a reason to feel more connected to Dallas than I’d like to admit.
His family has suffered terrible tragedies.
Like mine. The media couldn’t get enough of his mother’s drinking habit and her slow, sad, messy downfall.
Or his father’s devastation after she was discovered floating in the pool of their mansion in the Hollywood Hills, which led to his own terrible decline.
The Wilder brothers were stalked by paparazzi for months after both their parents’ deaths. They were all over the front of those magazines you see in the check-out aisles at the supermarket, trying to shield themselves from the onslaught.
That explains the hat and the sunglasses.
The family even had bio-pics made about them on entertainment networks.
I never saw any of them, but I remember at the time thinking that it all seemed so unfair, to have your most personal tragedies fed to the public as entertainment.
Just like mine were, but on a much smaller scale, even if it didn’t feel small-scale at the time.
“I’m sorry about your mother, Dallas. And your father. ”
His expression is equal parts soulful and heartbreaking. Because he’s even more beautiful when he’s sad. “Thanks. I’m sorry about yours.”
I don’t want him sad. He’s my savior for the weekend. And I have this crazy sense that I’m holding onto a secret power. One that somehow means I can make him happy in a way no one else can.
Maybe I’m the one being presumptuous now, but I have a strong feeling it’s true. I smooth one of those thick locks of hair carefully back into place and he watches my eyes as I do this. I can see that he’s forgetting about his past for the moment. He’s thinking about the kiss, like I am.
And there it is. A bond we can’t help but share, and one that disconcertingly feels like the broken pieces of our souls, against all odds, fit together.