Fierce (18 page)

“Because you checked that she could before you hired her.” This was going too fast, as usual. “I haven’t said I’ll stay, though.”

“Haven’t you?” He looked at me for a long moment while I didn’t answer, then inclined his head in the direction of the door. “I reckon Martine’s about to burst a blood vessel. You may want to go do…whatever it is you’re meant to do.”

Which I did. Of course I did. I needed my job. But I couldn’t kid myself that whether I went home on Friday or stayed in Paris would have anything at all to do with my job. It would have everything to do with me. And with Hemi.

I woke up on Friday morning in what was surely the smallest room the Best Western possessed, edged my way quietly around my bed to reach the tiny bathroom so I wouldn’t wake Kasey, and hurried to finish so she could get in there. 

She had a plane to catch, after all. And I didn’t. 

I dressed in low, tight gray jeans, soft low-heeled western ankle boots with tooled silver buttons, and a close-fitting, stretchy hoodie with a wide neckline in swirling blues and greens. If it tended to slip off to one side and show a ribbon of pale-blue bra strap, I could hardly help that. Suitable clothes for a student-budget visit to Paris, I hoped. My protective camouflage, and maybe just a little bit sexy, too. In case anybody was looking.

“Cute outfit,” Kasey said when she came out of the bathroom. “Wish I could afford to stay here for two more nights. Do you have a secret sugar daddy or something?” 

I laughed, wishing it sounded more natural. “I wish.”

“Well, maybe you’ll meet a cute French businessman and never come home, huh?”

“Maybe,” I said. “We can but dream.” 

I had breakfast with her and the rest of the marketing and publicity staff—except the important people, of course, who had breakfast meetings—then went to the front desk with the others and waited in a long, slow line to check out. And when the desk clerk handed me my receipt, he gave me a white envelope along with it. 

I didn’t open it, not in front of everybody. Instead, I gave Kasey a hug. 

“Bye, roomie,” she said. “See you back at the salt mines.”

I said goodbye to the others, then escaped to the café in the corner of the lobby, where I sat down and opened my envelope with trembling fingers.

A car is waiting for you outside,
I read in a neat handwriting that I couldn’t imagine was Hemi’s. I turned the piece of paper over, but that was it. 

To take me where? It was like a scavenger hunt.

I wheeled my black suitcase back through the lobby and peered cautiously outside. No Te Mana employees lurking about, so the airport bus had come and gone. I walked through the revolving door, then hesitated long enough that the doorman approached me.

“Puis-je vous aider?”
he asked me. “May I be of service? A taxi, perhaps?”

Even as he spoke, a black car rolled to a stop in the middle of the semicircular drive, and a driver in a black suit emerged and approached us. “Madame Sinclair?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and he nodded and took my suitcase. “Thank you,” I said to the doorman, and followed the driver, feeling more excited—and more confused—than ever. 

The driver hoisted my bag into the trunk and shut the lid, then held the rear door for me, got back behind the wheel, and rolled out into Parisian traffic that nearly had me shutting my eyes. 

I considered asking him where we were going, but didn’t. It would certainly sound odd. In any case, I figured it out quickly enough. Most of the events during the week had been held at the Carousel du Louvre, the underground mall adjoining the huge museum, and that was the direction we were headed.

Sure enough, the driver slowed fifteen minutes later and pulled into another entryway, but such a different one. The French flags flying over stone columns topped with gilt, a stately edifice of warm stone rising above them, and all around us, everything that most said
Paris.
The Avenue de l’Opéra, the heart of the city. And the Hôtel du Louvre.

I didn’t have time to stand around and gawk. I slid out of the car, waited while the driver retrieved my suitcase, and fumbled in my bag for the appropriate French tip.

“Non, Madame,”
he said with a waving-off gesture that had to be Hemi’s influence again, and I stepped forward to encounter a splendidly uniformed doorman, infinitely more magnificent than the plebeian specimen at the former hotel, and a soaring lobby, all white marble floors, ornately carved furniture upholstered with velvet, glittering chandeliers, and black marble columns. 

Black-suited clerks, so urbane and discreet they were more like headwaiters, stood behind a reception desk of polished wood. No standing in line this time. Straight to the desk. “I’m Hope Sinclair,” I said, trying for an assurance I didn’t feel, trying to pretend that I knew what was coming next.

A few taps of computer keys, directions to the elevators, and the next part of the scavenger hunt was on. And if I’d worried, somewhere in the back of my mind, that Hemi would simply have installed me in his own hotel room as if that were my only choice, I’d been wrong, 

“Oh, boy,” I breathed as the door closed softly behind me. “No fair.”

I guessed this was what they meant by “Empire furnishings.” Soft rose carpeting, a plush couch and side chairs in the same hue, and sweeps of red draperies framing floor-to-ceiling windows, set against gold walls hung with light sconces. On the coffee table? A vase of lavender roses, of course, and a basket of fruit on the square dining table. And, through a doorway, a king-sized bed covered with crisp white linens and huge, fluffy pillows, with a magnificent chandelier overhead.

The whole thing was a giant boudoir, and I felt sexier just standing in it. And if this had been a scavenger hunt, I’d surely won the prize.

And then, of course, my phone rang. Did the man have spies everywhere?

“You know,” I said when I’d pressed the button, “just a room would have totally worked on me.”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “Am I playing dirty again?”

“You know you are.” I sat down on my velvet tufted boudoir couch and sighed with satisfaction. “I’m trying to keep my deeply held principles in mind, but it’s getting harder and harder. I’m just saying.”

“Nah,” he said, “I have faith in you. Don’t pike out on me now. I’m counting on a bit more resistance here.” 

“Mm.” I leaned back and turned my head to the side so I could see out the window. “You’d better be spending some time with me, then, and being your most arrogant self, too. I’m sure you can manage to say
something
to annoy me if you put your mind to it. Do you have more to do, or do we really get to explore together?”

“We really get to explore together. I’ll come take you for a coffee first, shall I?”

I sighed. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll let you get settled, then, and meet you in twenty minutes in the lobby. That do you?”

“You know,” I said, “if I keep saying, ‘yes, please,’ it’s going to get to be a bad habit.”

I heard a soft chuckle as he hung up, and I unpacked and tried to think stern thoughts about being sure, and making rational decisions, and not being swayed by externals, and pretty much failed completely. 

When I came out of the elevator and Hemi rose from another rose-patterned armchair set under a huge black marble column, I failed again. He was dressed in his usual tailored black jacket and trousers, but his white shirt was open an extra button to reveal a tantalizing triangle of bronzed flesh. And the gleam in his eyes as he came toward me told me that he liked how I looked, too.

I got a big hand on my shoulder, a kiss on my cheek, a subtle whiff of male cologne, and an impression of hard man, and that was all. And if I swayed into him a little to try to get more, I’m not telling.

“You look very beautiful,” he told me. “Very sweet and sexy. Very…” He smiled. “Young.”

“I could tell you how
you
look,” I told him, “but my room is so pink and red and velvety, I think I’d better get a little distance first, or I might embarrass myself.”

He took my hand, threaded his fingers through mine, and I enjoyed the feeling of being swallowed up in him. “Right,” he said. “We wouldn’t want that, eh. Coffee.”

He walked me around the corner to the Café Louise, and we sat at a little table on the sidewalk surrounded by twining archways of trained greenery, drank creamy café au lait and ate croissants that dissolved into a hundred buttery flakes as soon as we bit into them, and watched fashionable Paris walking by. One of those magical moments, and I experienced a pleasant sort of vertigo, of being so intensely
here,
and yet aware that I was here, as if I were watching myself from above.

“I’d think this would be a good place for ideas,” I said, taking another sip of coffee from a porcelain cup and nearly purring at the taste, at the perfection of the moment. “Paris, I mean. Wandering around here. Although I’m not sure I’d ever get any work done.”

“Mm. For ideas, I do better outdoors,” he said. “Near the sea, or in the bush. That’s where I see everything. Patterns. Textures. Color. Especially if there’s nobody around. In the quiet, when I can let my mind go.”

“Oh.” I considered. “I can imagine that. At least I think I can. I’ve never been anyplace where there’s nobody around.”

He looked a little startled. “Never?”

“Nope. The ocean? That would be Coney Island. The bush? I guess you mean, like the woods? I haven’t been anywhere much more remote than Central Park. Do you want to know something really embarrassing, since I’m pretty much the Little Match Girl here? This trip was the first time I’ve been in an airplane.”

“How can anyone not have been on an airplane?” He looked truly shocked at the thought.

I shrugged. “I’ll bet I’m not the only person in the world who hasn’t, though. Have I mentioned this sister of mine?”

“Karen, and your mum. Reckon I see why there haven’t been any flights in your life. First time in a suite as well?”

That one got a pretty good smile out of me. “You could say so, yes. I’m trying not to let you turn my head, but it’s a serious effort. If you buy me some more wine tonight…” I sighed. “And look at me the way you do? I could be in real trouble.”

“We’re meant to be conversing,” he said severely, “so I’m going to ignore that and just say that I’m considering myself lucky that you had a passport.”

“You should. You could conclude from that that I’m a hopeful dreamer, or you could suspect that I’m a realist whose boss was going to do a shoot in Mexico once, so I got all prepared and then didn’t get taken along after all. I’ll let you decide which option is more likely. And now here I am in Paris. It’s really very exciting. You could have put me up at the youth hostel and I’d probably have been plenty thrilled. Sure you don’t want to re-think? It’s still early in the day. You could get your money back.” 

“Nah,” he said. “I’m too much of a Kiwi to sneer at youth hostels, but the way I remember it, they’ve got bunkrooms.” 

“I suspect you’re right. And my bathtub has spa jets and red candles around the rim. Just mentioning, in case you didn’t know, which I suspect you did. In case you’re interested. So what are we doing today?” 

He sighed. “Going to have to do something about you, aren’t I? Where did all this sauciness come from?”

“I can’t imagine.” It actually
was
a surprise. I was keyed up, yes, but in a good way. Feeling reckless and free so far from home, light years away from my real life. I was teetering on the edge, my wings spread, ready to take off and soar, and I was scared, but I couldn’t wait. And teasing Hemi? That, I was discovering, was a pure pleasure. “Maybe you made me feel too powerful, with my suite and all,” I suggested. “Maybe you’re being too nice to me.”

“Hmm. Maybe I am. I can do something about that, too. Eventually.” He gave me another of those looks he specialized in, dark and intense, like he had a secret he wasn’t sharing, and the tingle of awareness went straight down my body. “And meanwhile,” he went on, forcing me to come back to myself with a jerk, “what would you think about the Musée d’Orsay? The Impressionist museum.” He must have seen my eyes light up. “Yeh. Thought that might work for you. We could do the Louvre, of course, but…”

“No!” I burst out, and he smiled a little. “Please,” I added more quietly, even though I had to laugh. “I’d love that.”

“We’ll walk through the Tuileries, shall we?” he asked.

“Oh, let’s.” 

After that, I almost forgot to look at Hemi, because there was so much else to look at. The statues and fountains of the garden of the Tuileries, and, all too soon, the soaring majesty that was the former train station turned museum. And everything in it. Wandering from room to room, drunk on color and light and brushstrokes, and, when I began to flag, Hemi taking me out for a salad and another coffee to restore myself, then going back to look at paintings with me again, seeming to understand my need to gorge myself on the experience, to drink everything in.

Finally, I sighed, and he said, “Tired, eh. We’ll walk back, shall we, and I’ll get a bit of work done, and you can use that spa tub of yours, maybe have a wee nap as well before we go to dinner.”