Chapter 17
RAFE
When we return, there are wine bottles prepared for us outside on the terrace. Wren, Karim and Antonella are all working together, and the photographer from the patisserie joins us.
I tug at my collar.
I hate the idea of someone photographing the villa. Thank God they’re only doing a portion of the backyard. I’ve always worked hard to keep cameras and publicity as far away from me and the family as possible.
But here I am, inviting them in.
Paige walks beside me with a wide smile and a box in hand. The chef sent her home with her favorite half-eaten cake slices. She quickly won the award-winning chef onto her side, talking to her after the shoot.
She’s so good at that. It’s annoying.
I sit down on the terrace and watch her disappear inside.
Sucking on her finger was such a bad fucking decision. But she didn’t expect me to do it, and I wasn’t about to hand her a win.
Except I saw the way her lips parted in surprise, heard the little sigh that escaped her and the flare in those eyes. They’re the same color as the chocolate frosting I licked.
But then she’d moaned when she ate a slice of cake, and the sound went straight through me and made me half hard beneath the tablecloth.
When I went up to my room the other night, after seeing her wet and half naked in the guest bathroom, I was turned on and angry. Hating myself for wanting her.
And found her gift waiting for me on my bed.
It was a sex toy. One of those silicone sleeves with a man’s best friend written on the side of the packet.
And beside it lay a bottle of her perfume and a red, lacy thong.
It was unused. The price tag was still on it, for fuck’s sake.
No doubt another thing she picked up on her shopping spree with my card.
As if I’d use a sleeve.
So I shoved it all into a drawer and went to bed with the image of her soaking wet and standing defiantly in the fountain.
I was attracted to her.
And it was the least logical reaction I’ve ever had. The least sensible and by far the most traitorous. I can’t trust her.
So I lay awake for a solid hour, fighting with myself, before I finally jerked off, hard and fast and with only my left hand. The sleep I fell into was deep and dreamless, and that should’ve been that. Attraction arose, but attraction squashed.
Except now she’s gone and added the feeling of her finger in my mouth and the sound of her moans to my mental catalog.
I tug off my cuff links and start rolling up my sleeves. The sun is still out, but it’s lower on the sky, about to start its slow dip behind the mountains. If we’re going to get pictures, it has to be now.
“We’re ready when you two are,” Wren says. She’s standing next to Karim, both of them waiting.
“It might take a while,” I tell the photographer. Luca, I think his name was. “You never know when dealing with my wife.”
They all laugh like I’ve made a sweet, loving joke.
She arrives six minutes later. There’s a deck of cards in one of her hands, and they look curiously like the flashcards I remember from school.
“Let’s drink,” she says, and sits down beside me. Her hair is loose now, released from its low ponytail, and it flows like golden silk around her shoulders.
The photographer takes pictures of us as we uncork a few bottles.
There are reds, whites and champagnes, and at least a dozen glasses set out for us.
We chat for a bit. It’s all nonsense about grapes and the brands on display.
She asks me how many of the wine houses I own, and I tell her the truth. All of them.
That makes her laugh. She reaches for a bottle of Sancerre and pours herself half of a glass. It’s more than you should drink for a tasting. “Of course you do,” she says. “You’re predictable.”
“And you’re drinking too much,” I say. If I’m hosting a giant wedding for publicity reasons, I’ll be damn sure to serve Maison Valmont wine during it.
“I thought that was the point.” She lifts the glass to her lips. It’s not her first, but neither is mine. We’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes already. Talking, touching hands, drinking.
The sun has dipped low over the mountains.
“I think that’s a wrap on the pictures,” Wren says. She puts a hand on the photographer’s shoulder. “Do you have what you need for the feature? Come, let us go inside and look what we’ve got…”
She disappears, and Karim gives me a discreet, questioning nod. I nod back. He disappears too, and finally, we’re all out of an audience.
I lean back in the chair with a glass of the sauvignon. My team knows how to read me by now.
“I like this wine,” Paige says. Her fingers go to the stack of cards in front of her. She hid it behind a cloth napkin for the pictures. “It’s smooth.”
“It’s one of our best. What’s on those cards?”
“Intrigued?”
“Cautious,” I say.
“I made us a list of questions earlier.” She glances over her shoulder, back inside. “Do you think we’re…”
“Safe? Yes. Wren will make sure the photographer gets out of here.”
“Good. Because you and I don’t know each other nearly well enough. In a few days we’ll be swamped by family, friends and the media. My uncle is still trying to counter-sue. Wren wants us to do a sit-down interview!”
I knock back the rest of my red wine. It’s not the way it’s meant to be drunk, and it’s an offense to the vineyard that makes it. “I know. I’m trying to talk her out of it.”
“Or we do it, but we just have to know what we’re talking about.”
“Doesn’t stop you from making up what my favorite cake is.”
“What’s the real answer?”
“I don’t have a favorite cake. I’m not twelve.”
She scoffs and pours herself another glass of wine. “Wow, that’s a depressing response. You can have fun as an adult, you know.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you sure? Because you never seem to have fun.”
“That’s because you’ve only seen me when I’m around you,” I say sharply. It’s harsh, but it’s also true. I’ve never let down my guard when she’s near.
A slow smile spreads over her face. “I make you miserable?”
“I should have known you would like hearing that.” I run a hand over my face. “Tell me what you have on those cards.”
She doesn’t. She pulls her legs up instead, tucking into the side of the terrace chair. “I don’t know very much about you,” she says. “If I’m asked almost any question by people at the wedding or a journalist, I will fail. I only know what I’ve read online.”
“Or what you’ve listened to. Since you’ve watched all my interviews.”
She smiles like she knows exactly how to ruin me and where to begin. “Don’t let that go to your head. I research most of my husbands before I marry them.”
“I find the word ‘most’ very interesting in that sentence,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Let me tell you what I know about you, and you’ll fill in the blanks. Correct me if I’m wrong. Okay?”
“Nobody’s going to quiz you about my life,” I tell her. Still, I can see the value in what she’s suggesting. We might have to pull this off in front of people more difficult than my designers or the press, especially if her uncle truly contests her inheritance. “But sure. I’ll play.”
“Okay. So I know you’re thirty years old and that your father was Swiss and your mother’s American. She was an actress, right?”
“Yes. Minor soaps, a few movies.”
“I watched one of them. She’s good,” Paige says, in an uncharacteristic display of either kindness or sincerity, I don’t know.
“But you were mostly raised in Paris, where your dad headquartered Maison Valmont. He inherited Artemis, the watch brand, and decided to use it to expand his portfolio. But I don’t know what Valmont stands for. Maison, I get.”
“Valley by the mountain,” I say. My hand tightens around my glass. “It’s a reference to the village in Switzerland where he grew up.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh. And Montclair, of course.”
I incline my head. “Yes.”
“Right. Well… You vacationed in America, Italy and Switzerland. You also went to boarding school in America for a few years, right? At Belmont Academy. I googled it. It’s an all-boys school in Vermont.” Her smile widens. “Were you sent away for being terribly naughty?”
“Something like that,” I say. If Etienne’s death can be classified as naughty.
After the avalanche, I wasn’t myself. I didn’t listen, and I didn’t behave. My parents sent me away to knock some sense back into me.
“You returned to Europe and completed an undergraduate in London and a masters in Paris. You interned at Maison Valmont every chance you got. At twenty-one you started as a junior, and you worked your way up through the company after that. He died unexpectedly a few years ago.” She looks down at her glass, and the long recital of my résumé stops.
“I’m sorry about that. It’s tough to lose a parent. ”
“Thanks,” I say.
The silence between us stretches on. I take another sip of my wine.
“What happened to him?” she asks, and for the first time, there’s a note of uncertainty to her voice.
“He was in his late seventies,” I say. “He waited a while to have children and, well, he’d always had a bad heart. It came suddenly. My mom is doing well. She’ll be at the wedding.”
“Right. And so will your sister. Nora. She’s a model and a fashion designer. And then you had a brother, I believe, but according to the internet…”
“He died.”
She digs her teeth into her lower lip. “I’m so sorry about that, too.”
“Mhm.” I shrug, and the movement feels like a lie. “It was a long time ago. In an accident.”
“I saw that online. It wasn’t mentioned in detail or anything,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” I’ve heard that so many times, and there’s no good response to it. I’m sorry suggests that I’ve been wronged somehow, when I was the one who wronged.
This is the last conversation I want to have with her.
“What was his name?” she asks.
“Etienne.” My voice is clipped, and I take another long sip of wine. My silence dares her to ask more questions down this path. And I wonder now, having invoked his name out here, if he’ll haunt me tonight.