A Deceptive Attraction: The Wilsons, Book 3

Violet Wilson has had enough of her boring life. Just when she decides to pursue her dream of designing haute couture, her mundane world is turned upside by Leon Girard, a charming Frenchman.

Unfortunately, there is a dark shadow behind Leon and Violet’s relationship.

Leon is not quite who he seems to be, and has his own reasons for pursuing Violet
, reasons that have more to do with secrets, greed and deceit, than love or emotions…

Chapter One

Violet Wilson had just spent the night in her boyfriend Tim’s loft apartment in the SoHo district of New York City. Actually, “boyfriend” was no longer the operative word – Tim was now her ex-boyfriend, as of this morning.

It had been a convenient arrangement for both of them for over a year.

Violet was able to stay at Tim’s place, close to her shop nine blocks away on Broadway, and avoid the long cab ride home after work to the apartment she kept on the Upper West Side where most of her siblings lived. Tim, a fine arts jeweler who despised the refined atmosphere of Upper Manhattan, had been only too happy to let her stay with him so he could get out of going up there to visit her.

Recently Tim had started staying out all night, and Violet was spending more and more of her nights alone in his big empty apartment.

At first he would leave breezy little notes for her telling her where he would be and don’t wait up for him. After a while he gave up that pretense, but it was still a surprise to Violet last night to find hundreds of texts to other women when she had snooped on his cell phone after he came home late and fell asleep without talking to her.

Violet hated drama, but Tim had insisted on it this morning when she simply handed him his phone and started packing the few personal items she had kept at his place. He had followed her around the loft reciting a litany of all the things he thought were wrong with her to distract her from the reality that he had been cheating on her for months. According to Tim, she had invaded his privacy by checking his phone, she was a rich snob, she was cold and calculating, and she was bad in bed. That last one had really hurt.

Tim didn’t offer her any help as she wrestled her two big wheeled suitcases full of her things out the door of his apartment. The only good news was that his building had an elevator left over from its warehouse days.

Violet took it to the street level, wheeled her bags to the curb, and looked around. Her argument with Tim had left her so off balance that she had forgotten to call a cab. The building was on a quiet street, and at six-thirty in the morning, her chances of hailing a taxi were slim.

Just as she was taking out her cell phone, a cab appeared out of nowhere and screeched to a stop in front of her. The door opened and a tall, dark-haired man leaped out. He wore a sport coat and tie, and Violet’s experienced eyes immediately noticed that his clothes were custom tailored.

He bowed slightly and said, “Do you need a ride?”

He was holding the cab door open for her, as if he had absolutely no doubt that she would let him pick up her bags and put them in the trunk before getting in the back seat next to him.

“Oh, no thank you,” Violet said smoothly. “I’ve already called my own cab.”

That wasn’t quite true – she was about to call her own cab – but it was a cardinal rule in New York City to never share a cab unless you were desperate.

I’m not desperate, she bravely thought to herself.

“As you wish,” the man said. “You appear to have everything under control.”

He had a foreign accent that Violet couldn’t quite place, and his brown eyes danced with humor as they took in the two enormous suitcases, and then Violet herself. She suddenly realized how handsome he was and wished she had bothered to comb her hair and put on a bit of makeup before bolting from Tim’s apartment.

“Thank you anyway,” she said curtly and started wheeling the suitcases up the street. They were awkward and she could barely walk and drag them at the same time, but she wanted him to get the message that she wasn’t interested.

Behind her she heard the cab door slam shut and saw it drive past her. Although the glass was tinted, Violet knew intuitively that the man was looking through it at her. In a way she wished she had accepted the stranger’s offer. Already the suitcases were much too heavy.

Violet forced herself to ignore him and look straight ahead as she took out her phone and called her own cab.

Ten minutes, later she twisted the key in the lock of her shop, Daylily, let herself and her suitcases in off the street, and locked the door behind her. It was still early, before the morning rush hour, but the ever-present sidewalk vendors that hawked their wares in SoHo were already unpacking their run-down vans and setting up their tables for the day.

Violet took a glance around her store to make sure all was as she had left it when she locked up the night before, and headed to the break room, where the coffee machine was located. Troyesha, her seamstress, always made sure the pot and filter basket were scrupulously clean before she left work for the day. This was only one of the many reasons Violet had hired her.

“The only thing worse than bad coffee is a bad lover,” Troyesha liked to say.

There was no arguing with that, Violet thought as she filled the grinder with the fair trade coffee beans from Colombia that her family’s business, the Zetta Corporation, had recently started importing to the U.S. She made a large pot of coffee, poured herself a steaming mug, and sat down at the tiny card table in the break room to collect her thoughts.

She heard a key turn in the lock and the door signal beeped out in the showroom. The door opened and let in a brief blast of noise from the street before it closed behind Troyesha. Her seamstress always seemed to be surrounded by a whirlwind while remaining at the center, cool and unruffled.

“Violet,” the young woman called. “Girl, why you up so early?”

She entered the break room, and Violet saw that she had swapped her straight, processed hairstyle for an intricately beaded set of braids. She looked fabulous, but then Troyesha could wear anything and look fabulous.

When Violet didn’t respond, Troyesha got right to the point.

“What’s up with Tim?” she asked, pouring her own mug of coffee.

Violet didn’t see any sense in trying to hide things from Troyesha. It never worked. “We just broke up. I caught him cheating on me.”

“That dog!” Troyesha
slammed her coffee mug down on the card table so hard that Violet jumped.

“I took him for a cheata-bear the minute I met him,” Troyesha said, sitting down. “He came across soooooo sensitive….” She twisted the phrase mockingly and flipped her wrist. “Then as soon as I turned my back, I knew he was checking out my booty, big time.”

Violet smiled for the first time that morning. “Well, you could have told me.”

“I wanted to,” Troyesha said. “But he’s your man. Was,” she corrected herself. “I knew better than to get up in that.”

“Those sensitive types,” she continued. “All mouth. Reason they act so nice is so you don’t think to look for them dogging other girls.”

Violet nodded. Listening to Troyesha expose Tim’s phony character was making her feel better already.

“It’s all like, ‘Oh, I’m soooooo nice so you shouldn’t mind paying for your own dinner,’” Troyesha went on. “It’s, ‘Oooooooh, I love you baby, so you shouldn’t mind calling your own cab.’ Or it’s, ‘I’m soooooo sensitive so you can’t complain ‘cause I’m bad in bed.’”

Violet started to laugh. “He said it was me who’s bad in bed.”

Troyesha let loose with a string of swear words that made Violet blush.

“Trust me, girl,” Troyesha said when she had finished swearing. “It’s wasn’t you, it was him. Men like that make the girl do all the work and then blame her for trying to boss them around. Am I right?” She looked Violet in the eyes searchingly.

“Yes,” Violet admitted. “You’re right.” Troyesha was usually right, especially when it came to men.

Violet remembered the last time she and Tim had made love. It had been so long ago that she had to think back to the time before he had started staying out all night. They had both taken to wearing pajamas to bed, exchanging a quick good night peck on the lips before falling asleep, but on this particular night Tim had wanted to kiss her some more. So they had kissed…and kissed and kissed.

Violet had estimated twenty minutes of nothing but kissing before she had finally grown exasperated and put his hand on her breast. Tim had squeezed it half heartedly a couple of times. The rest took less than a minute. Afterward he wanted to cuddle like it had been the most intimate encounter ever.

The truth was, Violet had preferred to avoid sex with Tim. It was too much like work.

“You just haven’t met the right man yet,” Troyesha was saying, startling Violet out of her bad memories. “When you do, you’ll know it. Wild horses won’t be able to keep you away.”

She flashed Violet a smile with her beautiful, straight white teeth, rinsed her coffee cup, and disappeared into the showroom, where her sewing machines were set up.

Violet remembered her encounter with the man in the cab, then shrugged and started her work day.

Chapter 2

Leon peered through the window of his cab at Violet trudging up the street, wheeling her two enormous suitcases.

It had been too much to hope for that she might get in the cab with him, he realized. He had seen enough crime drama shows on television to know that New York was a dangerous place. Leon already knew enough about Violet Wilson to know she was too smart to get in a taxicab with a complete stranger, especially on a deserted street in SoHo at six-thirty in the morning.

He had been sitting in the cab since six o’clock that morning, planning to approach her on the street as she was leaving the warehouse building at her usual time to go open up her shop. The driver was only too happy to accept a $100 tip for sitting parked around the corner with the engine running, instead of cruising around trying to find passengers at that hour.

Upon his arrival in New York, Leon had quickly discovered that Violet spent her nights at the old warehouse, which had been carved up into loft apartments during the low rent era in SoHo, but it wasn’t her official address. This didn’t concern him because he had found Violet herself, which was his assignment. He assumed that her warehouse address had romantic origins.

To Leon, most things had romantic origins.

Her early exit had surprised him, and the suitcases had surprised him even more, but he had ordered the cab driver to follow her and pull up next to her. In Leon’s country, a man didn’t just drive past a woman carrying her own bags without offering help. If he did, he was a cad.

As he got out of the cab, he was immediately attracted to Violet. From far away he had only noticed that she carried herself with the assurance of a runway model, although he knew she had never been one. Up close, she was lovely, even without makeup and hours spent styling her hair. Until he saw her, Leon had believed only a Frenchwoman could look beautiful first thing in the morning.

There was an innocence about Violet that triggered his desire to protect and care for her, but he pushed it aside. This was business, he reminded himself, and he had already made a bad impression on her.

Leon briefly considered whether to call Hugh, his American partner, and report that their quarry had eluded him, but decided against it. Unfortunately for Leon, Hugh was an idiot. Instead, he dialed his sister, who always helped him with no questions asked.