Chapter Four #2
“Is that what you were doing the other night?” he asks, so mildly, though that voice of his is nothing but silken temptation. “Measuring my instep?”
I’m shocked that he’s referencing that night in the office. Willingly. And seemingly out of nowhere.
But then, after a moment, I’m not so shocked. If he’s trying to divert my attention from a conversation regarding his origins, however obliquely, that means that I’m correct.
Fake Luc is someone with a capital S .
This is why I smile at him. “I wasn’t studying your instep at all, actually.
I was wondering why it was that the magnificent Luc Garnier, known far and wide for his wealth, taste, and commitment to luxury that apparently includes private jets like this one, is homeless.
Sleeping in an office instead of in one of the numerous investment properties that make up his portfolio.
” I pick up the heavy silver fork on my tray.
“Given the opulence that is available to him, you can understand my confusion.”
But he only smiles back and applies himself to his laptop. I know he won’t answer.
Some part of me would be disappointed, at this point, if he did. Because I am good at finding my own answers and solving my own puzzles. It’s only a matter of time before I solve the mystery of him, too.
I’m less certain I can solve the mystery of my reaction to him, sadly.
“I have an idea,” I say then, perhaps a bit too brightly. “Why don’t you tell me one thing? One true thing.” Then I laugh. “Between you and me, I don’t think you’re capable of it.”
“I am fascinated,” he says after a moment, almost musingly, “that you have such an apparent commitment to honesty, Annagret.” He looks up then and his dark eyes seem to spear me where I sit.
“When your entire life is built on a lie. I think some people would consider that hypocrisy, yet you seem to think it imbues you with some kind of moral superiority.”
Ouch.
But I only shrug. “Women have to do what they must do to make it in this world,” I say flippantly, even though I do not feel flippant at all. “I’m not apologetic.”
“Why would you be apologetic? You haven’t exactly been found out. No one knows the liar you are but me.”
It turns out I really dislike being called a liar. More than I disliked it as a child, but I suspect that has a lot to do with how warm I feel in this man’s presence.
“Because you’re not a liar?” I manage to ask, softly enough.
Which is maybe not soft at all.
His gaze cuts to mine and there is something so stark, then, all over his face that I know I will never have to consult those photos I took to remember him. Not when the way he looks at me now seems to burn its way into me, as if he is branding my bones.
“You have no idea how much I wish this was not necessary,” he says, and he manages a quiet in his tone I couldn’t.
“Then make it not necessary,” I say, but I don’t know if I mean I want him to go away or…tell me the why of this. And it feels like a kind of ache in me that I can’t tell the difference.
“There are greater things at play than—” He shakes his head.
“Than what?” I’m leaning forward then, my gaze trained on his. “My life?”
That hits him. I see the force of the blow.
“Annagret.” And I don’t want my name in his mouth. Not when he says it like that. “I did not understand, I think, what this would ask of you.”
My heart is a driving, terrible force, a threat in my chest. “You didn’t?
That’s astonishing. What did you think it would be like to insert yourself into the middle of a stranger’s life like you have a right to it?
What did you imagine would come of simply taking over what isn’t yours?
I don’t even know why I’m surprised. Men like you always take what they want and care not at all for the consequences, don’t you. That’s what makes the world go round.”
He looks stricken. As if I’ve sunk a knife deep into the center of his chest.
If I squint I can almost see it, and I tell myself that what I feel is a surge of something like victory, not the far more concerning pulse of…distress. On his behalf.
“If I could tell you the reasons I am here, I would,” he says. “I am exploiting a loophole, not exposing you.” He swallows. That starkness recedes and he is unreadable again. He inclines his head slightly. “You might want to find your way to more gratitude.”
I feel many things then, but none of them are gratitude. Some of them veer worryingly close to homicidal, actually . “I suppose I’m glad we’re admitting that you’re a con man now, instead of pretending that a fictional character is real. Progress?”
If I want him to respond to that—to actually admit, out loud, that this is a game we both know full well he’s playing, no matter his reasons—I’m disappointed.
Luc returns his attention to his laptop again and we do not speak for the remainder of the flight.
Though from time to time I see a muscle in his jaw tense, as if he is not as calm as he wishes to appear. I try to take a bit of comfort in that.
We land in Nice. And it occurs to me, as the car sweeps us away from the airport and we are soon nearly blinded by the intensity of the blue sky and sparkling waters of the C?te d’Azur, that I’ve lost control.
This is not my car. These are not my arrangements. I don’t even know where he’s taking me, and the strangest thing is, it’s something I should have been paying attention to all this time. Yet I wasn’t.
It’s as if I was lulled into some false sense of security…why? Because I could perform Olympic gymnastic events on his cheekbones?
I can’t even take in the normally restorative views of Nice, the dome of La Negresco beckoning, because it has occurred to me only now that after all these years of cheerful immunity to men, it turns out that I am decidedly basic after all.
Because I know that if this man was not gorgeous, I would have waved him off at the airfield outside New York and found my own way here, then stayed in my own accommodations.
If he wasn’t absurdly beautiful in the exact way that gets under my skin, when I thought no one could, I would not be in this vehicle.
I would not be hugging the coastal road as the car winds its way out of Nice and on into Villefranche-sur-Mer, which clings to its hillsides and basks in the light.
I tell myself I’m perfectly capable of handling whatever he throws my way. And that may or may not be true—I don’t really want to find out.
The real truth is, I want to see where he’s going with this.
Still, as I sit in the car beside him, I do a quick check-in to make sure I’m not being too foolish.
I decide that I’m not. This man had initial access to every single part of my business and did not block me from it, lock me out, or help himself to the bank accounts before I quietly changed all the passwords.
He has not exploited anything more than the loophole.
More importantly, he has not behaved in a way that I would describe as inappropriate at all.
To my own dismay, if I’m being brutally honest.
Not just because he’s stunningly beautiful, with that gravitas to what ought to be pretty features that make him impossible to look away from. But because it would all be a lot easier if he would cross those lines. It would make things clear.
But he never does.
And I know it would be easier to dismiss him if he did.
Besides, I assure myself as I continue checking in with my rational brain, now that the golden glow of his plane isn’t addling my senses, I’m not exactly helpless. I’ve been in questionable situations before—that’s part of the job.
People get angry when you start poking around in their lives. Sometimes they get blustery about it, too. I’ve always been good at talking them down.
It helps to be a six-foot-tall woman who looks like a Valkyrie. Most of the men who’ve gotten a little too aggressive were smaller than me.
Nonetheless, I do not drift off as we take the turn and head into the peninsula that is Cap Ferrat, one of the most expensive places to live on the planet.
I pay attention to my surroundings as they become immediately more impressive and harder to see from the narrow, winding streets. I pay attention to him .
And there’s something about his total lack of concern that is comforting.
A person bent on harming me would have done so already. I was isolated at the moment I stepped on that plane. Besides, there’s no point taking me all the way to the South of France to do something that could have been easily achieved in an office building in Manhattan.
Especially when what he wants from this is not me, in any form, but Luc Garnier. The image. The name.
I am determined to find out why, and being here in France on the day of the masked ball only makes me feel more pressured to do so.
Because I’m almost positive that after tonight, I won’t see this man again.
We make our way along streets that are all walls and gates and hedges, and what look like houses rearing up into the street—but are only garages, a carriage house, and possibly a security detail or two. This is not the playground of the wealthy. This is several cuts above.
The wealthy play in their yachts out in the sea. Here on land, the villas house only the most elite. Some are so private that their names can only be guessed at, so I suppose that in that sense, this man is in good company.
We pull through a set of gates to a villa that is set behind a wall of thick vegetation so that no one can see it from the road, and we are greeted by staff members who do not bow and scrape, but somehow manage to give the impression of doing so all the same.
And all of them speak the same English as Luc, with the same cultured accent.
I grow more fascinated by this man by the minute.
I tell myself that it’s his mystery that intrigues me, nothing more.
Maybe that’s the real reason I feel not a single twinge as I follow him inside.