32. Mille-feuille #2
So, this was what rejection felt like, really and truly. For a moment, I was reminded of why it took me ten years to put myself out there at all. I didn’t want to care so much about what an oily, condescending stranger thought of me, but now that I was here, I found I did. I really did.
“Well, thank you,” I said. “If anything changes?—”
“It won’t.”
I nodded but set my CV on a table anyway. “If it does, please give me a call. Thanks again.”
The last thing I heard before the door closed was the sound of paper being crumpled into a ball.
“They don’t deserve you.”
I whirled around to find Lucas sitting at a table outside the café next to the restaurant, a newspaper in hand, while he sipped coffee like he had all the time in the world.
Once again, he looked a far cry from the reserved CEO I’d always known, clad instead in jeans again and this time, a blue button-down.
That said, he still looked as if he could have walked off a GQ cover.
He raised his cup in a small salute. “Hello, Marie.”
I marched over to him. “Are you stalking me?”
“I prefer to call it waiting.” He tilted his head, studying my face with those storm-gray eyes. “I can actually be a very patient man when I want to be.”
“Could have fooled me.” I glanced down the street, which wound up toward the towering église de Saint-étienne-du-Mont, and beyond that, the enormous shadow of the Panthéon.
Passersby barely gave us a glance as they moved on their way to lunch, home, or wherever else they meandered on this otherwise pleasant September afternoon.
“How are the interviews going?” Lucas gestured to the empty chair across from him.
I remained standing, clutching my portfolio like a shield. “How do you even know I’m job hunting?”
He nodded toward the résumés in my hand. “Lucky guess. I suppose the better question is why?”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m out of a job.”
Lucas frowned. “If you’re referring to those threats the other night, I think we can both write that off to alcohol, don’t you?”
My foot stamped on a hard cobblestone like a child’s. “No, I don’t think . I told you, Lucas, I don’t work for you anymore.”
“Why not? The hours are better, and I pay a hell of a lot more than any of these places.”
“It costs me a lot more too.”
His lips quirked. “Well, I can’t argue that.”
We eyed each other over the table. I could walk away, I knew. Or use this opportunity to tell him to go to hell. But he was, actually, quite patient. Waiting. Watching. Not hurrying me, not turning me down.
After the day I’d had—really, the life I’d had—it felt kind of good to be wanted. Even if it was just for whatever game he was playing.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the empty chair again. “You look tired.”
I was tired. The combination of stress and emotional exhaustion was wearing me down, and the scent of coffee and bread was making my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten since that espresso and two bites of croissant this morning.
I sank into the chair. “Fine. But I can buy my own coffee.”
“I’m sure you can, but it’s too late now.”
Before I could object, he’d signaled the waiter and ordered two café au laits and a baguette with butter. The efficiency annoyed me almost as much as his presumption that I’d sit down.
“No one drinks café au lait in the afternoon,” I informed him.
“You look hungry,” he said. “Have you eaten at all today?”
I didn’t answer, just flexed my toes in my shoes. They were flats generally well-suited to the cobbled streets of Paris, but after hoofing it all over the city, my feet needed a good soak and a rub.
“Give me that.”
Before I could stop him, Lucas had bent down, slipped off my shoe, and pulled my foot into his lap, where he proceeded to rub it under the table.
My jaw dropped. “That is…you can’t just…right here at a café?”
I should have pulled it back, but it just felt so. Damn. Good.
Lucas smirked as he pushed a thumb into my arch, eliciting a long moan from deep within my chest. “Good?”
“Too good. Stop—oh my God, don’t stop that.”
The waiter arrived with our coffee and bread, took one look at what Lucas was doing, and immediately left, muttering something like “vulgar Americans” in French.
I couldn’t find it in myself to care as Lucas switched to the other foot.
Ten minutes later, my feet were completely rehabilitated. I’d eaten some of the baguette, drunk half the café au lait, and felt like a new person.
“Thank you,” I said stiffly as I put my feet back in my shoes. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“Then tell me what I do need to do to win you back.”
I sighed, coffee halfway to my mouth. “Lucas…”
“I mean it, Marie. This isn’t a joke.”
“No, it’s just another attempt to bribe me.” I set my coffee back on the table. “The job. The trip. The bonus. It’s all been a way to manipulate me, whether it’s to get me away from your brother or just keep me for yourself. Those gifts, by the way, are completely inappropriate.”
He tipped his head. “So, you did get the knives.”
“You mean the ones that could buy an entire apartment in the Bronx? Yes, I got them. And I sent them back. This is exactly what I’m talking about, Lucas. Stop trying to buy me!”
“What else do I have to offer, then?” he demanded with movement that shook the small table and made our cups clatter in their saucers.
“I don’t know, now, do I?”
It wasn’t true. Lucas Lyons had so much more to offer than his wallet. He was thoughtful. Loyal. Secretly but unfailingly kind.
Or maybe those were just things he wanted me to think.
God, it was so confusing when he looked at me like he was desperate for my forgiveness.
We sat there, sipping our coffee and glaring at each other over the table.
“I could put in a word with?—”
“No,” I cut him off. “I do not need you buying my way into a restaurant here. Or in New York. Or anywhere else, thanks.”
He scowled. “Fine. Have you at least reached out to Xavier? He has restaurants here, so I’m sure he could?—”
“I want to find my own way,” I snapped. “Not everyone wants to depend on connections. Some of us just want to make it on our own merits.”
At that, he looked genuinely surprised. “Why in God’s name would you want to do that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because not everyone depends on nepotism and bribery to get by in the world.”
“Then they’re idiots,” Lucas said plainly. “And if you think people ever make it without connections, you’re just being willfully naive.”
I glared. “I am not.”
“You are, Marie. Success doesn’t just happen with hard work.
The American dream of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a myth.
I promise you, literally anyone who has ever accomplished anything has had to combine their work ethic with some amount of luck.
Call it connections. Call it nepotism. Call it a system stacked against you.
But it’s still a break, no matter how it shakes out.
And you, sweetheart, have connections that other people would kill for.
A restaurateur magnate who’s in love with your sister and a billionaire investor who is in love with you . ”
By the time he had finished his speech, my mouth was practically on the ground. I stopped mid-bite, my croissant suspended halfway to my mouth. “I—you’re—what?”
Lucas’s eyes didn’t stray once they met mine again. “That would be me,” he said before taking a quiet sip of his coffee. “In case it isn’t clear.”
There it was. A simple, devastating declaration that made my carefully constructed defenses crumble like week-old bread.
“I—you—don’t say that,” I sputtered.
“Why? Because you don’t believe me, or because you do?”
The dove in my chest flapped her wings again, hard. She wanted to fly.
I kept her in her cage.
“Because it doesn’t matter. Not after everything you’ve done.”
Was it a lie?
I wasn’t sure.
Part of me wanted to take him back. No, wanted to do much more than that. Wanted to kiss him, hug him, even love him back if he’d let me. That part was crying, battering the inside of my mind like a child in a time out.
Another part told me to wait and see how he would respond. To be smarter this time. More careful.
To my surprise, Lucas nodded. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. Not yet.”
“It—it doesn’t?”
He shook his head. “Trust has to be earned. And I know that might take years, if it’s even possible.
But Marie, I’m going to try. You say you don’t know me?
Well, here’s your first lesson: I’m the most tenacious son of a bitch on the planet.
When I want something, I go after it until it’s mine, and right now, the only thing I want in the world is a future with you.
I’m willing to spend another ten years waiting if that’s what it takes to prove it to you. ”
“Even if I never forgive you?” I was pushing, but I had to ask.
Lucas didn’t blink. “Even then.”
The certainty in his voice broke something open in my chest. This man—this impossible, complicated man—was willing to spend years trying to earn back something he’d thrown away in a moment of deception.
For me.
Before I could stop myself, before rational thought could intervene, I was leaning across the table and kissing him.
It was supposed to be angry, a way to shut him up and prove that his words didn’t affect me.
But the moment our lips met, anger transformed into something else entirely.
Hunger. Need. The desperate acknowledgment that despite everything he’d done, despite all the lies and manipulation, I was still hopelessly in love with him.
I really was pathetic.
I didn’t seem to care.
“Marie,” Lucas mumbled when he realized just what we were doing. “Marie, does this?—”
“Don’t.” I kissed him again. Then again. And again, until I chased the doubt away again. For now, anyway. “Don’t make this more complicated than it already is.”
“Then—”
“Just take me somewhere,” I told him as I stood. “Anywhere where it can just be you and me again. We’ll deal with the rest of it later.”