Amanda's Guide to Love (32 page)

“Yes. My answer is yes, I’ll marry
you.”

He blinked and narrowed his eyes.
“You really mean it? You’ll marry me despite all our differences?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been reformed,
too. I now believe that when you feel so deeply about someone, it’s more
important than . . . the other stuff.”

He grinned.

She gave him a sly smile. “I also
believe that accepting all that other stuff is a small price to pay for having
you.”

“Kamotoute,” he said, looking the
most solemn she’d ever seen him.

She’d heard him say it once before.
“What does that mean?”

“I love you.”

She put her arms around his neck.
Could it be hazardous to feel so happy?

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll never
stop.”

Good. Because I’m a handful.

He kissed her eyes.
“No matter what happens, no matter what you say or do, I’ll just keep on loving
you. Until the end of time.”

<<<<>>>> 

bit.ly/alix-freebook

Excerpt from
“What If It’s Love?”

(Bistro
La Bohème Book 1)

When the hottest
man in Paris - Rob Dumont - shows interest in geeky, introverted heiress Lena
Malakhova, she suspects something fishy.

And so she should.

~~~

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.”