34. Vinaigrette à la moutarde #2
“He would when she’s pregnant,” Lucas said flatly, his eyes never leaving mine. “Emma Hubbard is three months along with Daniel’s kid.”
Beside him, Daniel deflated like a pricked balloon.
“Fuck you,” he said to Lucas. But it was clear his heart wasn’t in it anymore as he turned toward the minibar under the television. “Jesus, water? What kind of place is that?”
“I requested no alcohol,” Lucas said. His eyes still hadn’t left mine.
But I was still reeling from the other news about Daniel and this Emma person. “Pregnant? Daniel, were you—was this going on when I first got back?”
“I didn’t know it was mine then,” said Daniel, who rather looked like he wanted to jump out the window than answer my questions. “Not for sure. Honestly, I’m still not convinced.”
My mouth dropped. He sounded so cold about it. So heartless.
All the charm I’d ever associated with him had vanished.
“The tests say otherwise.” Lucas strode back to the bedroom and pulled his shirt off the floor to put on.
“Anyway, the senator demanded a wedding before she starts showing.” Daniel seemed to be sobering with every word.
His anger had tempered to something closer to fatigue.
“Too many deals to protect. Tax subsidies to be ensured. A bill that had to go through. And Lucas here made sure I had no choice by keeping you out of the picture and getting his dick wet in the process.”
“ Daniel .” Lucas’s voice sharpened like a blade now.
But Daniel was past caring about warnings.
“Oh, you didn’t tell her the best part, brother ?
” My childhood crush was gone now, replaced by a man who spat venom.
“How you were supposed to stay in France just long enough to keep her here while the Times announced the engagement next fucking week? Then get her a job somewhere in Europe so you could let her go without a problem? Don’t worry, Marie, he was going to set you up real nice.
An apartment, a good payoff, everything you need for a nice new life.
All of it with the assumption that he’d stay, of course.
But the plan was to come back at the end of the month for my little ‘wedding’ and leave you here for good. ”
The room tilted, and I reached out for anything—a pillow, the headboard—to keep me from falling over.
“Lucas?” His name was small and high on my tongue. “Is this—is any of this true?”
Lucas stood between us, halfway through buttoning up his shirt, when my eyes found his. His entire face had gone white. “I can explain.”
“Explain what?” My voice was rising as I scrambled backward in the bed, suddenly twisted in the soft cotton sheets. “Explain that yet again, you seduced me for the sole purpose of distracting me from your brother? That you manipulated me into loving you just to break—no, smash—my heart?”
Lucas seemed to crumple as he stepped toward me. “Marie, please?—”
I thought of the gifts. The way he’d tracked me to the club. Piled on literally everything he could think of to present the idea of a happy ending for the two of us.
It had all been a lie. He had known the whole time that there was no future for us, just like I’d always suspected. But he’d played his part well, all the way to this room, where he’d stripped me naked, body and soul.
“Answer the question!” I yelped, loud enough that he jumped back. “Is it true?”
On the couch now, Daniel swayed, now singing softly to himself in his inebriated state.
Lucas closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, they were full of pain. “Originally, yes. That was the plan.”
The admission slapped me across the face as if it had been his palm.
“So this afternoon—this week—the gifts, the following me to my interviews. The talk at the café, bringing me back here to m-make love—” I cut myself off just as my voice warbled.
I didn’t know what else to call what he had done to me, but maybe that was just another moment of me being a poor, blind idiot.
“That was all just part of keeping me away?”
“No,” Lucas said, but his voice was weak.
Suddenly, I couldn’t stay here anymore. Suddenly, I couldn’t move quickly enough, taking the sheet with me, I lurched out of the bed and started searching for my clothes. “I have to leave. I have to go. Now.”
“ No .” Lucas was a flurry of movement, crossing the room quickly, hands outstretched to stop me as I made for the bathroom. “Marie, sweetheart, please let me explain?—”
“ Don’t call me that !” I howled as I whirled around and slapped him. Hard. Much harder than I had in the conservatory that night so long ago, and with more vitriol than I ever thought I had in me.
The sound of my palm meeting his cheek echoed through the room like a gunshot, and Lucas’s head snapped to the side from the force of it.
He took it without flinching, without trying to defend himself.
Didn’t even touch the handprint after. It was like he wanted it to sting even more.
“For what it’s worth,” Daniel called from the couch, where he now seemed to be settled in for a nap, “I don’t blame you for sleeping with him. God knows I’ve never been one to walk away from a good time, and I’m paying for it now, aren’t I, honey? We all are.”
He slouched onto the couch, and a few moments later, his eyes were closed, a light snore pouring from his mouth.
I looked between him and Lucas—two men who had turned my life into a chess game where I was just a pawn to be moved around at their convenience. Disasters, both of them, in completely different ways.
I turned to Lucas, who now blocked my way to the bathroom, as if he thought keeping me in nothing but a bedsheet would prevent me from leaving.
He was wrong.
“How much?” I asked quietly.
Lucas frowned. “What?”
“How much was I going to cost? What was my price?”
Those slate eyes begging for me to look away or maybe just take the question back. When I didn’t, however, he swallowed hard; the movement making the muscles in his throat cord like a fisherman’s rope. He looked me straight in the eye as he spoke.
“They suggested a hundred thousand. I said a million.”
I grabbed the edge of a bureau to steady myself. A million dollars. It was a pittance to people like the Lyonses, but still. They’d been prepared to pay me a million dollars just to stay away from their son.
“What else?” I asked.
Another hard swallow. “An apartment a few blocks from here. A permanent residency visa. A restaurant, plus a monthly stipend for the next few years while you get it off the ground. It’s in Saint-Germain-en-Laye—it’s a Paris suburb. Not as busy as here, but you can get there easily via train.”
He offered a rueful but knowing half-smile that made me want to hit him again. My dream. He’d even taken my dreams of things like living in France and my sweet little restaurant and weaponized them against me.
“And you were going to tell me all of this when?” I couldn’t quite keep my voice from cracking.
“Tonight, probably.” He was quiet with certainty. “Or tomorrow morning. I found I couldn’t—I couldn’t keep it from you for a month.”
I couldn’t breathe. If Daniel hadn’t burst in with all the grace of a battering ram, if we’d spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms and probably a good portion of the morning too, I would have truly believed that everything I’d ever wanted was coming to be.
I would have been grateful.
Happy.
Impossibly in love.
For a month.
And then he would have abandoned me here, no different from the car crash that had taken my father. Left me with a payoff and a broken heart.
“I don’t believe you,” I said finally. “Even you wouldn’t be that cruel.”
He had held me as if I were precious. Kissed me like he needed me to breathe.
Told me he loved me. Had loved me. All that time…
Lucas looked very much like he wanted to agree with me as he walked back to the desk in the living room, next to Daniel, who was now snoring.
I watched the elegant muscles in his back flex as he unlocked the drawer and pulled out a manila envelope.
From it, he withdrew several documents and a set of keys, then carried them back and set them on the bed in front of me.
A check made out to me for one million dollars.
Keys to an apartment in the Fourth Arrondissement.
Deeds with my name on them for both the apartment and the restaurant.
An approval for a permanent residency visa in France.
And a business plan for a little bistro, complete with startup funding and my name listed as owner and executive chef.
I floated a hand over each document as tears slipped down my cheeks. It was all there. Everything I’d ever wanted, wrapped up in a tidy little package designed to get me out of the Lyons family’s kitchen and away from their precious golden boy forever.
“How many lives would you steal?” I found myself asking. “How many to get your way?”
“I didn’t want to steal anything.” Lucas gestured toward the items. “Take them. They were for you anyway.”
I looked up at him, this man who had played me like a violin and somehow still sounded, just a little, like he actually wanted me to be happy.
Lies. All lies.
Even if my heart wouldn’t believe it just yet.
“I don’t want them,” I said. “I don’t want any of them.”
But even as I said it, I picked up the visa document.
It was a letter from a French official approving my supposed application.
All I needed to do was bring it to the appropriate office with my passport, and they would take my biometrics and place the visa sticker in there.
Whatever else was a lie, this was real. The rest, I might manage on my own one day, through a loan from a family member or just through hard work.
The visa, though, would give me the ticket to a new life I could still create on my own.
“France is where I found myself before,” I said, my voice stronger now. “I’m sure I’ll find myself again after you’re gone.”
Lucas’s strong features crumpled. “Marie?—”
“Get out.” I stood back and pulled the sheet tighter around my naked body, the visa document clutched in my free hand. “Take Daniel and go. Get out of this room so I can get dressed and leave. And then, I want you to get out of Paris. Get out of my life. Please.”
It was the last time I would ever beg him for anything.
Lucas’s dark gaze trailed over me one last time, as if to brand me with his need. His desire. Maybe even his love.
One last time.
Then, as if on autopilot, he finished getting dressed and found a pair of shoes, then lugged a slumbering Daniel off the couch and toward the door.
There, Lucas paused. “Take the rest. It’s all yours, whether you want it or not.
I wouldn’t. I knew that.
But I didn’t say so. Lucas Lyons didn’t deserve my thoughts anymore.
He seemed to know it too.
The door fell shut behind them, closing hard on the future I’d so briefly imagined. A love I’d barely known.
I sank onto the bed and gave myself exactly five minutes to fall apart before I picked myself up, got dressed, and left this world of riches behind.
In a way, it was a relief.
Deep down, I knew I’d never belonged there anyway.