34. Vinaigrette à la moutarde
VINAIGRETTE à LA MOUTARDE
*It’s supposed to taste a little too sharp.
T he pounding on the door was violent enough to rattle the windows of the lavish suite. Lucas and I froze, still wrapped around each other in the bed like a double helix.
For a moment, I wondered if I’d imagined the boyish charm twisted into some kind of hideous anger. “Is that—Was that?—”
“Yeah.” Dread filled Lucas’s voice, still hoarse from our earlier endeavors. “I think so.”
Still, I couldn’t believe it. There was no way Daniel had flown across the ocean to chase us here. No world in which he would come all the way from New York to Paris just to fight Lucas.
And certainly not over me.
Right?
Guilt twisted in my stomach, although I knew I wasn’t in the wrong. Daniel and I had a brief connection, but he had all but stopped answering texts since Japan. I hadn’t heard from him at all in over a week, and before that, his replies were barely more than one-word answers.
I wasn’t his “girl”, no matter what a drunken kiss and one playful phone call might have suggested.
I wasn’t anything to him, nor, truthfully, was he to me.
But his brother and I were something real.
I didn’t want to apologize for that at all.
“Lucas!” This time, Daniel’s voice was louder, though slightly slurred. “Open the fucking door! I know you’re in there!”
“Fuck.” Lucas stamped a kiss on my forehead and then gently eased out of me so he could dispose of the condom. He then pulled on his underwear and pants with the efficient movements of a man accustomed to unexpected crises, even in the middle of his most private moments.
For the first time, I wondered just how much of himself Lucas had given up over the years to appease his family. How much had they demanded of him? How much they had taken without thanks?
I clutched the sheet around myself, suddenly aware that my clothes were scattered on the bathroom floor. As Lucas reached the door, there was no way I could make my escape now without being seen.
Lucas opened the door with preternatural calm, uncaring of his half-dressed state. “Daniel. I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment.” He gestured at his shirtless torso. “If you’ll come back in a few?—”
“You asshole.” Daniel shoved into the suite, his handsome, tanned face flushed with rage and probably hours of drinking. “You absolute fucking bastard .”
“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Lucas said, pulling his brother’s attention back to him—and more importantly, away from where I lay burrowed in the bedding like a terrified rabbit.
“It’s not the first time you’ve called me that, although since you’ve flown all the way to Paris to do it this time, I’m sensing it’s a big occasion. ”
Daniel whirled toward him, his typically combed hair disheveled, his ironed Polo shirt wrinkled. His blue eyes, which usually danced with merriment, were glassy with rage. I didn’t have to be next to him to guess that the scent of gin or vodka was rolling off him in waves.
“Don’t be coy,” he snapped. “You and your grand plans. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think I wouldn’t figure out the whole fucking scheme?”
Was this about me? Maybe I was na?ve, but I had assumed that when Lucas had returned, the matter was settled between him and his family. Or that he had ignored their wishes and come back to me anyway.
“Daniel, I don’t know what Winnifred told you?—”
“Mom didn’t tell me shit ,” Daniel snarled. “But none of you ever seemed to remember Dad. Just like you never remember me. Poor old Cliff Lyons, soft in the head. Well, he had a lucid day, you fucker, and he told me everything.”
With a quick glance my way, Lucas tried to shuttle his brother back toward the exit. “Daniel, come on. I need to get dressed. Why don’t you go down to the bar, get another drink, and then we can talk about it?—”
“You knew I wanted her! You knew it the whole time!”
I sat up more, unable to keep from watching him as he whirled around like a spinning top. Wanted who? Me? If that was the truth, he had a funny way of showing it.
“Daniel,” Lucas said sharply. “Cut it out. You’re drunk?—”
“Don’t tell me I’m drunk!” Daniel’s voice cracked with emotion. “I’ve been going out of my mind, you know, wondering why she disappeared, why she won’t return my calls.”
I frowned, resisting the urge to find my phone, which was in my purse somewhere in the front room, and check for said calls.
As far as I knew, I hadn’t received any.
“And now I find out you’ve been here the whole time, seducing her away from me with a whole lot more than ‘business,’” he babbled on in that too-fast way some people spoke under the influence.
“Did you really think that by coming here, I was just going to skip off into the sunset with Emma Hubbard like a good boy? Did you really think I was just going to let Mother tie it all up like a damn bow while the woman of my dreams was out here with you ?”
I sucked in a tight breath.
The woman of his dreams?
Really?
The idea of Daniel Lyons flying off the handle over me, calling me anything close to this, would have been the stuff of fantasies a year ago. Even a month ago. Now, with the imprint of Lucas’s body still fresh on mine, it just made me feel ill.
“Jesus, did you drink the entire galley on your flight?” Lucas’s voice was sharp with disgust. “You smell like a goddamn distillery.”
“That’s none of your business, you fucking rat!”
“It is when you show up at my hotel ranting like a lunatic.” Lucas’s jaw tightened.
“You want to know why I wouldn’t let Marie near you?
Because you can’t go twelve hours without a bottle, and she doesn’t need to have her life ruined again by another alcoholic.
Which you would know if you had ever taken the time to learn one fucking thing about her! ”
I sucked in a breath at the mention of my parents. I didn’t know why it always surprised me how acute Lucas’s memory was, or the fact that he clearly did his research after I shared the smallest things, but it did.
Daniel’s perfectly proportioned face contorted with rage. “You don’t get to judge me! You don’t get to?—”
Those sky-blue eyes swept around and found me wrapped in the white sheet.
Even through his drunken haze, they touched over the pieces of a puzzle that had to be obvious: hair mussed from Lucas’s hands, lips swollen from his kisses, red marks on my neck and shoulders, and remnants of a flush on my cheeks.
He turned back to Lucas. “You son of a bitch.”
And then he launched.
The punch connected with Lucas’s jaw with a crack that filled the suite. Outside, Paris sank peacefully into its early evening rhythm, but inside was chaos as Lucas fell onto the desk, knocking over a cup of pens and a lamp, but kept his feet as he touched his split lip.
“Daniel, stop?—”
“You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Daniel levied another wild swing that Lucas dodged easily this time. “You knew I wanted her. I told you so. But you saw those pretty green eyes and luscious tits, and you just had to take her for yourself!”
At that, Lucas flew forward, pouncing with the speed of a big cat as he grabbed Daniel by the shirt and slammed him against the wall. “You ever talk about her like that again, you spoiled fucking prick, and you will swallow every one of these veneers I paid for.”
“I was in love with her!” Daniel shouted as he rammed into Lucas at the waist, only to be parried easily to the side.
“The fuck you were!” Lucas spun, then grabbed his brother by the collar and hurled him onto the couch. “You didn’t even see her for ten goddamn years, even though she actually was in love with you the entire time!”
I sucked in a harsh breath. How did Lucas know that?
Because he knows you , some voice in the back of my conscience informed me. Because he knows you better than anyone does .
“I don’t know how you missed it,” he continued as he lurched over Daniel, then yanked him up and shoved him toward the door. “She’s the most beautiful thing on the planet, but you narcissistic piece of shit, you never even noticed her until she was just another shiny new toy you couldn’t have.”
Daniel broke free and swung again, this time catching Lucas in the ribs. “At least I’m not manipulating her for a tax write-off!”
“No, you’re just too busy blowing off your engagement to a senator’s teenage daughters to notice what’s right in front of you!”
Daniel went rigid, his face paling beneath the flush of alcohol.
“Stop it!” I finally found my voice, sitting up with the sheet wrapped around me like a toga. “Both of you, stop!”
The brothers froze, breathing hard, though Daniel, in his tousled clothing and slovenly state, looked considerably worse for wear than Lucas, even with the missing shirt and split lip.
They turned to me, as different as black from white. Lucas’s dark column of fortitude and fury next to Daniel’s bright-eyed blaze of vitality and righteousness.
How could anyone choose between them, these two gorgeous brothers who were somehow fighting over little mousey me ?
No one could, I decided.
Even if I knew I already had. Even if something more important had now grabbed my attention.
“What did you say?” I asked. “About a senator’s daughter?”
Lucas released Daniel’s wrist and stepped back; something like sorrow flashed across his features. “Her name is Emma Hubbard, and she’s engaged to Daniel. He should have told you.”
“We are not engaged,” Daniel seethed. “That’s just what this jackass and every other viper in this family wants.”
“I don’t understand.” I glanced between them. “Why would Daniel need to get married to this senator’s daughter if he doesn’t want to?”
Daniel shot Lucas a look of pure hatred. “You prick. You couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“It’s a political favor,” Lucas said shortly, though he already looked like he regretted it.
I frowned. “In 2025? Would someone actually marry off his own daughter these days for a political opportunity?”