Chapter 1
SCARLETT
Some things feel true, even if you know they won’t ever come true.
But in the moment, your imagination takes hold.
Like right now.
As I stroll down the street in Avignon with my business partner, the sun shimmering low in a clear blue sky and the scent of lavender wafting in the soft breeze, I feel as if I could linger all day. Funny, because I am not known for lingering.
Yet lingering feels inherently right. “I could spend hours roaming this town,” I declare with a deep inhale of the South of France air, far away from the glitter and lights, the hustle and bustle of Paris.
Daniel shoots me a skeptical look as we wander past a chichi boutique peddling silk scarves and sky-high heels. “You could definitely not spend hours wandering, Scarlett.”
I scoff, raising my chin. “You doubt my ability to roam?”
“I doubt your tolerance for roaming through here.” He gestures grandly to the plethora of boutiques and cafés on the street. “You don’t even like to shop.”
“I do like to shop,” I say defensively.
He shakes his head, laughing. It’s a rich, deep sound that I’ve loved to hear ever since I became his financial advisor a few years back.
I’ve grown to know him even better in the past twelve months, after I bought a third of a stake in his company.
“No,” he counters. “You like to buy. You like to have a list of things you need. You like to pop into stores, grab what you’re after, then scurry on out. ”
I argue that point, something I do love to do. “That’s shopping. Going in, buying what you need—that’s the literal definition of shopping.”
His blue eyes glint with mischief. It’s a look I see often in those crystal irises.
“Exactly. We’re only wandering down this street because our train arrived early.
I doubt you’d actually spend hours strolling through this town otherwise.
In fact, I don’t think you’d spend hours doing anything except work,” he says, throwing that down like a gauntlet.
I square my shoulders, bristling at his accusation, though it’s largely true. “What do you think I should spend my hours doing? Sunning myself? Being fanned with palm fronds?”
He gives me a lopsided grin that is both endearing and infuriating. “The latter sounds perfect. But I’m simply saying that you don’t lollygag. You have a plan for everything. A strategy for ‘tackling every day because days should be tackled.’”
He sketches air quotes around those last words—words I use, well, daily.
I toss my head back, laughing as we near a café with its red windows flung open, green tables spilling across the sidewalk. “So this is what we’ve come to? You mock me for having strategies?”
“Well, you do make it easy,” Daniel teases.
A waiter rushes out of the main door of the café with a tray of wineglasses balanced on his forearm expertly, different shades of crimson in the glasses.
“Strategies are a woman’s best friend. And a man’s,” I add, making a move to swat Daniel’s elbow.
Playfully, of course.
He sidesteps me.
The waiter bumps into him.
“Excusez moi,” the waiter says, an apologetic frown creasing his brow.
“De rien,” Daniel quickly reassures the man. The waiter smiles, nods, and weaves through the tables.
The Englishman by my side returns to ribbing me. “As I was saying, you don’t actually like to linger, wander, or roam, Scarlett. You like to do. You like to accomplish. I suspect you’re secretly pissed that our train was early, since now we have to kill a whole half hour before our meeting.”
“Oh yes, that’s me. Secretly mad,” I say deadpan. Then I deal him a sharp stare. “I don’t get mad in secret.”
He taps his chin. “True. You have been known to march right up to me and give me hell though.”
“When you deserve it. Which is often.” I glance his way, then flinch when my gaze catches on a spot of burgundy on the sleeve of his silk shirt.
“Daniel,” I say, touching his forearm.
“Yes?”
“It seems your shirt might have been the collateral damage back there,” I say, gesturing to a small but stands-out-like-a-sore-thumb spot on the expensive fabric.
His eyes drift down to the red stain on his sleeve. “Huh,” he says, amused. His lips curve into a grin. “C’est la vie. Or perhaps that’s one of the hazards of lingering?”
“Do you want to go back to the hotel so you can change?”
He checks his wristwatch. “Not enough time before our meeting.” He squints, peering along the street. “Looks like there’s a men’s clothing shop up ahead.”
“Ah, is that your strategy for tackling the spot?” I ask, imitating him in his crisp London accent.
He grins. “I never said strategies were bad.”
“I beg to differ.”
“You just assumed I was giving you a hard time,” he tosses back at me.
“As you do,” I say.
Of course, it’s not a bad thing to get along swimmingly with a business partner.
We’re like gin and tonic, and it’s a good thing.
We don’t always see eye to eye, but we complement each other.
That’s how we’ve been able to make magic happen with our hotels—with our different approaches and the way we’ve been able to mesh them to grow our business.
He reaches the door to the shop and holds it open with a flourish. “After you.”
“Show me how quick you can be,” I say.
His eyes narrow, flickering with naughty intent. “I don’t think you really want me to be quick.”
Heat flares across my skin at his sexy subtext, but I do my best to ignore it. “Is everything innuendo with you?”
“Life is innuendo. Of course everything is too. Now, let’s make sure I look the part of the impeccable hotelier wooing the town historical society with our plans to renovate the inn on the corner.”
In the store, the man is the model of efficiency. He’s incredibly fast, but that doesn’t surprise me. He’s a determined guy who makes quick decisions, and usually the right ones.
He finds a white shirt with thin blue checks, then tips his forehead to the back of the shop. “I’ll go try on this one.”
“Great. I’ll wait outside and answer some messages.”
He jerks his head back. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll wait outside the dressing room and tell me how the shirt looks.”
I arch a brow, laughing. “Like we’re a married couple?”
“Yes. Pretend, Scarlett,” he says in that husky tone again as we weave our way to the dressing rooms. “Pretend you care deeply what your husband is wearing to the dinner meeting.”
“Fine. If you insist,” I say with a huff.
“I do insist.”
“Don’t you just love giving orders?”
He wiggles his brow as he opens the dressing room door, tossing me a wry look. “Yes. Yes, I do,” he says in a voice that drips with sex.
Daniel Stewart is the living, breathing manifestation of sex appeal. I’ve learned to live with his hotness. What else can I do? I work with him. I’d be a fool to entertain thoughts of him sexually.
We run a billion-dollar hotel empire together.
I heave a sigh, an absolutely aggrieved one, as if a make-believe marriage is the worst thing in the world, then I flop onto a leather chair outside the dressing rooms. “If I must check out your clothes, I will.”
He ducks into the room, his voice drifting out. “Thanks so much, my darling bride.”
I laugh, shaking my head at his antics, then reach for my phone. But as I tap out replies to emails, my brain wanders into the dressing room, opens the door, and tries to get a look at Daniel trying on the shirt.
I squeeze my eyes shut, doing my very best to banish those thoughts. To put them in an airtight container, close it up tight, and tuck it away.
Never to open it again.
The door creaks open.
I glance up as he steps out of the dressing room, showing off the new shirt, and I hum low in my throat, admiring the hell out of the view.
He’s a little over six feet tall. His brown hair is tinged with gold, sun-kissed, and his jawline could grace magazine covers. A rigorous commitment to cycling through the Alps and the streets of London and Paris has made him toned. The gym has made him muscular.
The job has made him filthy rich.
He’s the kind of man designers make clothes for. Clothes that should be so lucky to snuggle up against his skin.
Everything he wears looks devilishly handsome because he is devilishly handsome.
That’s a thought best kept in the container with the rest. I wrestle the errant idea, intent on securing it away with the others. But as I do, Daniel lifts his hands to the shirt’s buttons, and the thought wriggles free and shoves itself front and center in my head.
Because he stands mere feet away, doing up the buttons.
Which means his shirt is halfway open.
My eyes take a stroll.
So that’s what his pecs look like. So they do sport a smattering of hair. So they are, in fact, as carved as I’d imagined.
As I’d hoped.
And what of his abs?
My mouth waters as my eyes travel lower, eager to catch a glimpse of the ridges and grooves.
Snap out of it, Scarlett! He’s your business partner.
I blink, squashing the thoughts. Then I jump up and down on them to make sure they’re dead, reduced to dead-bug levels of thought mortality.
I swallow roughly and give Daniel a thumbs-up.
He rolls his eyes. “Your husband merely gets a thumbs-up?”
“I would think my husband should be happy I’m still shopping with him after all these years of marriage.”
“But maybe we’re newlyweds,” he says.
“As if.”
He grins, then echoes, “As if,” letting that hang importantly in the air, knowing that neither one of us would go there.
For very different reasons, but reasons nonetheless.
A little later, with Daniel in his new shirt, we head to the dinner meeting, where we explain to the Historical Society of Avignon how our renovations of the century-old inn we purchased here will benefit the town, and they agree.
When it’s over, we return to our new hotel, and I’m ready for bed. I tell Daniel I’ll see him in the morning.
He brushes a kiss on my cheek. He always brushes kisses on my cheeks. So very European.
Though sometimes my body reacts in ways it shouldn’t.
With tingles.