What If It's Love?: A Contemporary Romance Set in Paris (Bistro La Bohème Book 1)

Other books
by Alix Nichols:

You’re the One (a Bistro La Bohème
novella)

Under My Skin (Bistro La Bohème Book 2)

Copyright ©
2014 by Alix Nichols

All Rights
Reserved.

Editing provided by Write Divas (
http://writedivas.com/
)

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Part I

La Bohème

Two trees are yearning for each
other.

My house is across the street.

The trees are old. So is the
house.

I’m young—or else I wouldn’t
stand here,

Commiserating
with a tree.

Marina Tsvetaeva

The man, who spoke mostly
Russian, had remained glued to his cell phone throughout his meal. When he
finished, he collected his change and placed a ten euro bill on the table.

“
Merci, monsieur
! It’s
a very generous tip!” Rob grinned.

The service being included by
default in all checks in Paris, the locals tipped scantily if at all. With the
recession, even the tourists were beginning to heed the advice of guidebooks
and do like the French.

“No trouble.” The man stood
to leave, then turned to Rob, and said in unexpectedly decent French, “Listen,
would you like to make some extra cash?”

Has God finally heard my
prayers?
Rob tried to
subdue his enthusiasm. “Depends . . . What’s the gig?”

“Nothing difficult. There’s
this rich kid—”

Rob shook his head. “Sorry,
monsieur, but I don’t think I’m interested in hearing the rest of it.”

On second thought, maybe he
should hear it—and alert the police.

The man tut-tutted. “Didn’t
your mother teach you not to interrupt people when they speak? Let me start
again. There’s this Russian kid—she lives in this very building. Her
father is my main competitor in business. I just want you to make friends with
her, be around her as much as you can, and keep me informed of anything that
may be of interest.”

“Like what?”

“Like when during his phone
calls or visits they discuss something related to his business. Or his travel
plans. Or any kind of plans.”

Rob furrowed his brow. “How
often does he call her? And where is he?”

“In Moscow. He calls her
every day, and from what I’ve seen, they talk for at least thirty minutes.
She’s his only child, so my guess is he’s grooming her to join the business.”

“What business?”

“IT services.” The man arched
an eyebrow as if to say,
What did you expect?

Rob glanced around the room.
Things were slow this afternoon, and the other waiters had the situation under
control. But he had to get back to work.

The man shrugged. “Basically,
I’m asking you to do corporate espionage of sorts.”

“But won’t this kid be
speaking Russian with her father?” Rob’s asked. The gig didn’t seem to be
anything horrible like kidnapping, but it still didn’t sound quite legitimate.

The man smiled. “And you can
understand it, can’t you? I noticed how you smirked at some of my, shall we
say, colorful expressions when I was on the phone. Are you part Russian or did
you learn it at school?”

Rob sighed. There went his
attempt at polite refusal. He might as well admit to this observant captain of
industry that he spoke Russian. “School and evening classes. I’m a business
student, so foreign languages are a big asset.”

“How admirable. Do we have a
deal, then? I’ll pay you decently, so you can cut down your working hours and
focus on your studies.”

When the man told him the
amount of the “commissions” for each piece of intel, Rob’s mouth fell open.
Jesus
.
If he delivered a dozen reports over the next few months, he’d be able to pay
the school fees in full before the end of August.

And get his MBA.

“Let me get this straight,”
he said. “You want me to spy on some chick in relation to her father’s
activity, right? Just pass on whatever I overhear from her in this regard, and
no funny business. I need to be sure of it.”

“That’s right. I’m not a
mobster, you know. Do I look like one to you? Where do you think I learned my
French? I’m an educated man and a respected businessman.”

Rob raised his eyebrows,
signaling he needed to hear more.

The man curled his lip. “It
just so happens that Anton Malakhov—that’s the girl’s father—has
been seriously hurting my business lately. He’s determined to grow even bigger.
And he plays dirty: dumping prices, stealing clients, and so on. I’ll go bust
if I don’t get my act together. And this includes taking some . . .
unorthodox measures.”

“Including a little foul play
of your own,” Rob said.

The man nodded and held out a
business card. “My name is Boris Shevtsov. Please go ahead and look me and my
company up.”

Rob took the card. “Will do.
I still have a couple of questions though. First, why don’t you have someone
spy on the girl’s father directly? Why this roundabout approach?”

Boris sighed. “Anton Malakhov
is spy proof. He’s extremely discrete and not given to excesses of any kind. No
wife or known girlfriend. Very few friends. A practically nonexistent social
life.”

“Have you tried through work?
A mole intern is a textbook tactic.” Rob tried to hide his sarcasm.

The man raised an eyebrow.
“I’m familiar with it, thank you. And yes, I’ve tried it. But his people do
advanced background checks on every recruit, including interns. So I figured
spying on his daughter was as close as I could get to spying on him.”

“What happens if the girl has
no inclination to be friends with me? How long would you want me to keep trying?”
Used to girls seeking his attention, Rob wasn’t sure how good he would be at
making the first steps. Natural-looking first steps.

Boris smirked. “Trust me, you
won’t have to try for very long. I’ve watched her from afar for a week now.
She’s always by herself. Doesn’t seem to have any friends in Paris.”

“How come?”

“She’s new here. She’s shy.
And here comes a handsome educated boy like you offering friendship? Oh, I
think she’ll be interested.”

“Give me a day to think about
it.”

Boris nodded and pushed a
photo in front of Rob. “Her name is Lena.”

Rob looked at the picture,
then at Boris. “That’s her? I’ve seen this girl down here a couple of times,
with her books and laptop.” He paused before adding, “Are you sure it’s her?”

“Of course I am.”

Rob shrugged. “She just
doesn’t look like a Russian
minigarch
to me. Where are the oversized
sunglasses, tons of makeup, extravagant shoes, and the flashy Louis Vuitton
handbag? She looks like the girl next door.”

“Must be her Swiss boarding
school education. Then again, Anton Malakhov isn’t your stereotypical Russian
oligarch
either.”

* * *

Stepping out of the cheese
shop, Lena eyed the stately—albeit a little worn—limestone building
on the other side of rue Cadet.

My new home.

Her gaze lingered on the
café,
Bistro La Bohème,
that occupied part of the ground floor. It had
all the requisite attributes of a Paris café: red awnings, wicker chairs, and
tiny round tables overflowing onto the sidewalk. Over the past week, the bistro
had become her stomping ground.

She crossed the street, keyed
in the code and pushed the green gate that creaked open onto a cobbled
courtyard. Across the way, she had to enter a second code to gain access to a
glass door before she stepped into the foyer. The building smelled of old floorboards
and something much less enchanting.

Trash
.

What a change after her
sterile student residence in Geneva!

A few minutes later, Lena and
her grocery bags were safely inside her apartment. She went straight to the
bedroom and collapsed on the bed, tired after her long walk and grocery
shopping. But it was “good tired.” She liked the 9th arrondissement, or
le
neuvième
, for its diversity. Quintessentially French,
le neuvième
was also Jewish, Armenian, Greek, and Arabic. Its arched
passages
cutting through handsome buildings were lined with antique shops and secondhand
bookstores. Its streets ran in wayward directions, forming a web rather than a
grid. She would do something celebratory, she resolved, the day she managed to
find her way around the 9th without a map. 

Originally, Lena was supposed
to move into a high-end apartment complex in the posh 16th arrondissement. But
having spent the past seven years of her life in Switzerland, she refused to
live in a place that would remind her of its eerie neatness.

Not that she’d been unhappy
in Switzerland. She’d had absolutely no reason to be. She was the pampered
heiress to an oligarch. Like many minigarchs
,
she’d been
sent to one of the best European boarding schools at the age of sixteen. When
she decided to continue her education at the University of Geneva, she got her
father’s full support. She’d been happy in Switzerland, Lena repeated to
herself, even as her mind flashed an image of her last picnic with Gerhard. The
one that put an end to their relationship.

“I’m moving to Paris,” she
had announced as soon as they sat on the campus lawn, with their croissants and
paper coffee cups.

“Oh,” Gerhard had said.

As she waited for him to say
something more, she began to feel the dampness of the grass through her jeans.
She shifted to sit on her heels. An early morning picnic in April, without a
blanket to buffer the dew, had been a dumb idea.

As the silence stretched, and
the dark sky threatened to burst out sobbing any minute, Lena wished they’d
picked a spot by the wall.

So that she could bang her
head against it.

“Why now? It’s only a couple
of months until our graduation,” Gerhard said at length.

“I want to write my thesis
there.”

“Isn’t it easier to write it
on campus?”

“It is. But I’d rather do it
in Paris.”

Come on, get mad. At least
annoyed. Anything
.

He shrugged. “OK, then.”

Her throat hurt. It was
amazing she could still breathe given the size of the lump that had formed
there. She’d been stupid to think she could provoke him into an emotional
outburst. This was Gerhard—a paragon of self-control.

“After I get the degree,” she
said. “I’ll probably go back to Moscow. Or maybe stay in Paris for a year. I
haven’t decided yet.”

He stared at her.

Ask me to stay. Please.
Just ask
.

“I don’t like Paris,” he said.
“It’s noisy and dirty. And polluted.”

She gave him a long
unblinking stare, and then shifted her gaze to the vast lawn. So much for her
brilliant idea to shake him up a little.

This is it—the end.

“I’ll visit you,” he said
with the enthusiasm of a child in front of boiled broccoli.

“No you won’t,” she said with
a sad smile.

He didn’t argue.

Over the next week, she
packed up, found a place in Paris, and left.