Luc
“You had another call from Marchand.”
Ignoring Jacque’s announcement, I tilt back my head as I continue to blow cigarette smoke circles into the warm night air. The door clicks closed behind him, his footsteps echoing against the tile until he’s standing by my side.
“I thought you’d given up,” he adds.
“I have.” I don’t look his way or stop.
“Sure. Let’s go with that. Did you hear what I said about Marchand?”
I make a gesture that’s not quite a shrug despite the tension that curls in my gut at his name. Lifting the cigarette to my lips once more, I sigh. “He can call. He has called. That does not mean I must answer.”
“Okay, Confucius. What other nuggets of wisdom do you have for me, one-third of a bottle of cognac deep?” Glass clinks and I realise he’s holding a couple of bottles of local beer. “I was going to offer you one of these, but…”
“I’ll stick to the Armagnac. But help yourself.”
“The Darroze 1924.” He whistles as he reaches down, grasping the bottle by its long neck. “That the bottle Marchand sent you? And you’re downing it like cheap liquor.”
I slide him a look that says careful. Then return to blowing circles out to the darkened mountain range, satisfied when the smoke blends with shadowed clouds.
Jacques sighs, the sound loud and long suffering, as he cracks the cap of his beer.
He swallows, then makes a noise of satisfaction.
“What do you want me to tell him?” he asks, lowering his long frame into the adjacent seat.
“You know, when he calls next. Once or a dozen times. Your phone, your office line, my phone.”
“He likes the chase.” My words sound lazy. Soporific. I haven’t drunk that much, surely.
“You sure about that?”
“Very.”
“Because he sure has a hard-on to for you.”
“That’s not a compliment.” Given how well he seemed to be known at Ardeo, the club in Paris. A select clientele… titans of industry, European royals.
Networking, Marchand had tried to explain after setting his worried eyes on me. He’d been selling me a lie, telling me his hotel chain was a family legacy, built on loyalty and trust. The man even introduced me to his wife. I can forgive many things, but hypocrisy isn’t one of them.
Ridicule. I sit suddenly forward and stub out the cancer stick.
It’s a habit I promised my son I would give up months ago after he suffered through a particularly gruesome health education lesson at school.
And I did give it up. I have. Tonight is just a tiny bump in my seat from the wagon of abstinence. Not a fall from it.
I throw the rest of my drink back and reach for the bottle to top my glass. I should never have gone to the fucking club, because then I wouldn’t be in this predicament. In these predicaments—I’ve allowed problems to arise and fester in two areas in my life.
Nils Marchand and Primrose Whittington. One a thorn and one not quite a rose. By name, at least. Two parties enmeshed in my life and causing me problems. If I hadn’t been there…
Then Primrose might well have ended up one of his conquests.
Fuck.
I have never in my life lusted after an employee—and for good reason. I don’t need the drama, and I certainly don’t need to feed the press gossip. There is always someone watching, someone willing to sell me out.
But Primrose. In a certain light, she be perfect.
“I was speaking figuratively.” Jacques lowers himself into an adjacent chair. “But what’s confusing me is if you’re trying to give him the droop or make him take his dick elsewhere.”
“I wanted the company.” I drag my mind out of the delightful dilemma named Primrose. “I wanted to own it. Absorb it and all it stands for—wealth, luxury, the household name—and bring it under the du Beaumont aegis.”
“Gee, really?” He makes a disparaging click of teeth and tongue. “I mean, I thought that was the plan. And Marchand wants to sell it to you. He’s frothing at the mouth for you to make him a very rich man. So what’s with the slow-down? You trying to get it cheap?”
“I’m making him sweat.” Making him pay for an insult he doesn’t realize he’s made.
“For the hell of it?”
“I don’t like the man. I don’t like how he does business, and I detest that he seems to want to make me his friend.”
“You know what they say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
My brow quirks. “You think I’m neglecting him?”
“I think you’ve given him a taste, and if you don’t follow through, he might drop trou elsewhere.”
“More penis analogies?”
A chuckle huffs out of him. “You said penis and anal in the same sentence. You, my friend, need to get laid. But not before you finish with Marchand. Smile, for fuck’s sake. You’re about to get what you want, making yourself richer in the process if I know you. And I do know you.”
But the aim is not more money, not anymore.
I’m building an empire. Restoring the family name.
Leaving my children’s grandchildren to want for nothing.
And keeping myself entertained because idle hands are the devil’s playground, or so my father was wont to say.
My thumb finds the pale band where my wedding ring once sat.
One day, the skin will tan and the indent smooth. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
“So?”
“The plan remains the same.”
“Okay.” He pauses, though he isn’t done. “It’s as hot as balls out here.”
“So go inside.”
“I will.” When he’s said what he really came out here to say. “I see the nanny situation is going well.”
“Situation?” My attention glides his way with the caustic lift of one brow.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says with a chuckle. “I mean, I hate to say it, but I told you so.” Hates to say it so much his smile is audible.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“The kids seem to like her. Sylvie’s calling her her new best friend, and even Felix seems to tolerate her presence. And bonus, she doesn’t wilt when you look her way.”
The corner of my mouth kicks up. She scowls. Sometimes she purses her lips. Other times she resolutely ignores me. Once or twice, she’s even rolled her eyes, like she finds me the most tiresome man in the world. She does smile, just not for me. I enjoy those moments anyway.
And then earlier today, I caught her looking at me in an altogether different way. I thought I’d imagined it, but no. I saw desire burning in her eyes—like recognizing like. Her gaze was meltingly seductive without her say-so and, perhaps without her understanding.
It’s clear she doesn’t know how hard she is to resist. Not that I’m cataloguing her responses. The minutiae of her expressions. But things these past days have felt a far cry from the flight out of Paris when I swear I could feel her plotting my demise from her seat behind mine.
“How are you finding her?”
I slide him a withering glance despite the semi-pornographic images that flit through my head. The ways I’d like to find her. To have her. But I’m not a slave to my impulses.
I need to focus on other things. Perhaps get laid. I’ll be in Barcelona to close a deal soon. Maybe then.
“Emmy doesn’t wilt,” I answer eventually, casually, returning to the previous thread.
“Not now maybe. I did wonder once or twice if we might’ve lost her in the early days. Poor girl would literally quake every time you walked into a room.”
“But she stayed.”
“Because you pay the big bucks.” He chuckles. He knows full well what I expect and why I pay premium.
“Relatively speaking. Emmy’s remuneration doesn’t include stock options, of course.”
“No need to tell me how fortunate I am,” he replies. “I know my place.”
“Sometimes,” I mutter. “Spit it out. Whatever it is that’s making you hover.”
His fingers touch his chest. “I’ve got nothing to say. Other than dinner times seem to be, dare I say it, enjoyable.”
I turn my head and spear him with a look. “You also enjoyed the tumbet?”
“Zoe’s food is always amazing,” he says, patting his flat stomach. “I’m gonna need to step it up in the gym.”
“See you there in the morning, then.”
“Luc, come on, man. Some of us need to sleep.”
What I wouldn’t give to be able to sleep more than a few hours at a time.
“Are you enjoying dinner?”
“What are you asking, Jacques?”
“Nothing. It’s just… Emmy doesn’t eat with you and the kids every night.”
“Emmy eats with the children most nights, as do I when I’m home. Sometimes we have dinner together. Other times, it means we do not. Correlation does not equal causation.” As I speak, my mind is yelling for me to shut the fuck up. Since when have I felt the need to explain myself to him?
“Sure,” his mouth says. But his face needs a punch. “Primrose told me about the virgin conversation,” he says with a crooked grin.
“What?” My body jolts—she’s not a virgin, just inexperienced. Isn’t she? She’s just chosen her partners badly. Been fucked by selfish men.
“I hear you nearly choked when Sylvie announced that Sophia is a virgin over tomato flan.”
Ah. That. The Armagnac must be clouding my brain.
He gives a huff of a laugh. “I’m pretty sure Maria hopes she’s a virgin.”
“Vegan,” I mutter, leaning forward to take up my glass again. “I almost showered the table in wine.”
“Not the rosé!” He makes to clutch invisible pearls. “You wanna make Jose cry?”
“The rosé. Sylvie wants him to put away a crate of it for her eighteenth birthday.”
He pulls a face.
“I know. I don’t want to think about her being eighteen.”
“I was thinking more of how rancid it’ll taste by then.” Jacques reaches for his beer, hooking a finger around the long neck. “You know, I’m not sure which I’d rather be, a vegan or a virgin. I guess it would depend how long I’d have to suffer.”
“Both are unlikely states for you.”
He gives a grin. “Everyone was a virgin once, though I doubt your memory goes back that far. Do you remember your first time?”
“Juliette,” I say with a fond smile. “My fourteenth birthday. She was the older sister of a friend.”
“Older?” He quirks a brow.
“By a couple of years.”
“That is a pattern for you.”
I ignore him. Allegra was only three years older than me. And now she’s suspended in time.
“Not much older than Felix, really.”
“Are you trying to upset my peace?”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“Say less,” I mutter, stretching my legs out in front of me, crossing one ankle over the other.
“Getting laid is the best. It resets everything for me, puts me in a flow state.”
I make an unhappy noise, and his amused gaze slides my way.
“You ought to be invested.”
“I think I’d rather be deaf.” Deaf to this conversation, at least.
“The better I fuck, the harder I work.”
“I think I work hard enough.”
“But do you fuck enough?”
“That’s none of your business,” I answer smoothly.
“So secretive these days.” He gives a pause. “Man, I remember being Felix’s age. Talk about being a slave to hormones.”
“Felix is twelve. The only thing he’s interested in is Pokémon.”
“And Sophia. One minute, it’s Pikachu, I choose you! Next, it’s damn, girl, I wanna Squirtle on them Jigglypuffs.”
“I don’t even want to know what you just said.”
“We were all jerking off to hotter, older girls at his age. And if we say we weren’t, then—”
“I’m not ready to have this conversation.” Not when I feel like a ball of raging hormones myself.
“Fine. How about this instead? You could do worse.”
“Than what?”
“She’s smart and beautiful. From a similar background.”
“Sophia?” I jerk upright, the poor girl’s name out of my mouth before I can correct my train of thought.
“Primrose.”
“Stop talking.” I reach for the bottle and splash more into my glass.
“She’s kind of ideal. You’re both rich. At least, her family is. You have the commonality of an English mother. And she’s here temporarily.”
“You are my assistant, not my priest.”
“That’s true. I help cover up your sins, not absolve you of them.”
“She’s far too young for me.”
“She’s twenty-eight, not a kid.”
“Do you think I don’t already know that?” I almost explode. “Enough.” I make a cutting motion in the air to signal enough. “Primrose is the nanny and nothing else.”
“She’s no nanny. I don’t even know how you got her to come to Mallorca.”
“I’m sure she has her reasons. Reasons we’re not privy to.”
“I’d hate to think you were taking your dark dealings elsewhere.”
“Meaning?”
His mouth turns down and he makes a motion with his hands. “You don’t usually dig up your own dirt.”
“There is no dirt in this instance, no manipulation,” I lie. She tried it first. I just happen to be better at it. “As far as I’m aware, she’s here because of Emmy. Because of her friend.”
From the corner of my eye, Jacques’s expression twists. “Must be some friendship,” he huffs. “A weekend, sure. But a month?”
I can feel him staring at me as I swirl the contents of my glass. “You want her reasons, you ask her.” And if I know her, she’ll tell him exactly where to shove his questions. But I don’t know her, I remind myself.
“Maybe I will.”
“Your prerogative.” Your funeral, more like. She’ll cut him down with that tongue of hers. As sharp as a knife. In a mouth as lush as—
“I like her. She’s smart and funny and easygoing. Helpful, you know? Obliging, I guess. Nothing seems to be too much of a problem.”
I feel my lips flatten.
“And she’s so fuckin’ easy on the eye. That red bikini. Ah!” He clutches his hands to his chest, feigning a heart attack.
Maybe heart problems are catching as pain shoots down my arm.
But I will not answer. I will not turn. And I will not rip off his fucking head for noticing her.
The man is clearly deluded. Easy on the eye?
Try frustratingly gorgeous. Arrestingly lovely.
The colors of her hair no painter could capture, the flush of her cheek like crimson on satin.
She has eyes that flash like sapphires and a mouth made for sinning.
She’s witty, intelligent, admirable, honorable, and ought to be completely beyond my reach.
“But you know what I like best about Primrose?”
“I’m uninterested in your ramblings,” I retort, instilling my answer with boredom while hoping he’ll shut the fuck up.
“I like how she is with you.”
“You are sailing very close to—” My attention swings his way along with my demand. “What do you mean?”
“That Doctor Whittington is more than capable of handing you your ass. I like that for her. And I think you like it too.”