Bonus Epilogue
Luc
My grandfather spoke in rapid-fire French while I gritted my teeth and kept my eyes on the bright pink glow coming from Glazed.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he practically yelled into the phone.
“Nothing new. It’s the same things I’ve been telling you for years.” My family insisted on behaving like I’d become someone they didn’t recognize, but this only served to remind me they had never known me.
A string of creative curses filtered in one ear and out the other as a figure moved around the bakery. I could only see her crossing the doorway to the kitchen every so often. She wouldn’t be out to stock the trays in the glass case at the front of the shop and unlock the door for another eight minutes.
After another rush of vitriol streaming into my brain that I tried not to fully register, I sighed silently and interrupted. “Is there anything else you need, Grandfather? ”
A beat of silence swelled.
“You will meet Odette de Valois, you will become engaged, and you will marry her within the year,” he said, his words slipping through clenched teeth.
My pulse jumped just a touch. “I will not.”
“As the only male heir to this family’s dynastic wealth, you will do this.”
His face would be red and his entire body wired with fury. I could just see his fists and the vein in his forehead as he said the pompous words as though anyone spoke of dynastic wealth in real life.
“My apologies, Grandfather, but I cannot.” My mind filled in everything I could about the lie spilling out of my mouth. “I’m already with someone. I’m nearly engaged to her.”
“Nonsense. Get rid of her.”
I exhaled sharply away from the microphone, then braced myself to end this call. “I will not. I’m sorry.” Though was I?
Maybe it was just another lie I was telling.
“Who is she? What is her name? How have you not mentioned her until now? This is convenient, isn’t it?”
He was seething and the child I used to be, the one who cowered in his presence when he was like this, wavered.
But the man who’d made choice after choice to show him who I was, to separate myself from his control and the games of my family, stood taller.
She emerged from the back with a tray full of donuts glazed in that same bright pink to match the walls of her store.
And I did what’d become a little too easy over the years. I lied again .
“Her name is Elise Cordero, and I imagine next time we talk, we’ll be engaged.”
Oh goodness. What do we have here? A fake engagement with the sexy half Frenchman and our local donut-making mistress? Read Luc and Elise’s book today.