Million Dollar Road (35 page)

“Merci, m'sieur.”
The older man sneaked another glance at Lireinne on his way out.
“Bonsoir, mademoiselle.”
With a suggestion of a bow, the waiter backed out of the door to the suite and shut it behind him.

“Is it late? I didn't notice, but oh, Mr. Con!” Lireinne's face was radiant as she slipped her black coat off her shoulders. “I gotta tell you. The taxi driver was, like,
so
freaking funny. When I tried to tell him I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, I used the wrong verb—
voler,
to steal, and not
voyer,
to see—and he, like, totally lost it.” Lireinne's helpless laugh was as welcome as well-loved music to Con's overstretched nerves.

“How so?” He couldn't take his eyes off her, making a mental note to speak to her about being out after dark in Paris, how dangerous it could be for a young girl, alone.

Lireinne explained, “I'd said I wanted to steal the Eiffel Tower! So, this cab driver says, ‘Mademoiselle will need a much bigger bag to hide it in.' I had to crack up, too, 'cause that was a stupid mistake. Anyway, when we both stopped laughing he took me there. Oh my God, Mr. Con—it was, like, so fantastic. You can see all of Paris from up there, for miles and miles.”

“You went to the Eiffel Tower by yourself?” Con was more than a little impressed at her audacity and initiative. Parisian taxi drivers were infamous for their impatience and borderline rudeness. He hadn't known she spoke enough French to be able to order lunch at a bistro, much less take on one of those snide semi-gangsters and come away laughing.

Lireinne draped her coat over the back of a gray silk-brocade armchair. “Well, yeah—I always wanted to get to the top of it one day. But that was just this morning. When I saw the bridge, the Pont de L'Alma, I decided to walk back to the hotel along the Seine and it took, like, forever. And you wouldn't
believe
how much dog crap there was on the sidewalks—I had to watch my step or my shoes would've been toast.” She accepted the glass of champagne Con offered her and drained half of it, the smooth muscles of her long throat working. “Thanks. I didn't realize I was so thirsty.”

That was a long walk, about four kilometers. Forgetting that until just a few weeks ago, Lireinne had walked two miles a day to work and home again, Con marveled at her stamina.

“I thought for sure you'd go shopping today,” he said, his thoughts going fleetingly to Liz as he topped off her glass. There'd have been no Eiffel Tower stopping
her
from hitting the stores. “Hell, Lireinne, the Avenue Montaigne is designer nirvana, but I'm glad you had a good afternoon sightseeing. Why didn't you take a cab back to the hotel?”

Lireinne shrugged. “I wanted to see as much of Paris as I could up close, you know, so I bought a map at the gift shop.” She sank into the deep, down-filled cushions of the settee with a groan of relief. Kicking off her suede pumps, she rubbed her narrow, black-stockinged feet, saying, “That's better. These heels really sucked for walking. My feet are, like,
killing
me.”

“I bet they are.” Con took a sip of champagne. “That's one bitch of a hike. You're not too tired to go to dinner, are you? I've made us reservations at—”

Lireinne interrupted him. “Oh, hold on. I almost forgot.” She rose from the settee with a pretty grimace at her feet. “Ouch. Look, I didn't use hardly any of the money you gave me. After paying for the taxi and buying the map, there's six hundred and eighty-two euros left over.” Crossing the suite in her stocking feet, she went to her purse on the gilt table by the door, dug around inside it, and found a crumpled handful of money.

“Here.” Lireinne hurried back to him, proudly presenting the wad of bills.

She had to have seen a thousand things she'd wanted to buy today, Con thought, full of tenderness at this evidence of her sweet frugality. Lizzie would have spent every nickel in the first store she walked into before demanding another infusion of cash. What an amazing, incredible girl she was. How lucky could one beat-up skin dealer get? Con wondered.

“Darling, that's just walking-around money,” he said with an indulgent smile. “Keep it. Buy yourself something pretty.” Con was thinking of the small, dark-blue leather box from Chopard in his coat pocket and the pair of earrings inside it—perfect sprays of dangling droplets, a rain of green tourmalines and tiny diamonds. The unusual green stones were the precise color of Lireinne's eyes and he planned to give them to her at dinner tonight. And then, once he brought this glorious girl to bed, those earrings would shimmer like green fires in the dark, silken forest of her hair when it was spread across his pillow.

He couldn't resist. Ignoring the money she was holding, Con closed his hand around Lireinne's possessively. He tightened his fingers, drawing her closer.

Her eyes shifted, her face fell. Yanking her hand free of his, Lireinne took a hasty step backward. “Oh, no! I can't take all that money. It's, it's not right. I should have used my own, really.” She dropped the bills on the carved pear-wood coffee table as though the notes were burning her fingers. With a nervous-sounding laugh, Lireinne shook her head in vehement denial.

“I mean, you don't have to do that, Mr. Con.”

“But I want to,” Con said. Grinning, he took a confident step and captured her hand again. “And come on, baby—don't you think it's about time you stopped calling me ‘
Mr
. Con'? Call me by my name, Lireinne. Please.”

In the sudden silence that fell in the sitting room, the measured, calm voice of the BBC announcer on the radio seemed too loud. Except for her stricken eyes, Lireinne's heart-shaped face was expressionless. Her hand was limp in his. Con was forced to let go of it when she backed away from him and turned around to face the long windows. As if she felt a chill in the warm air of the suite, Lireinne crossed her arms tightly to her chest, staring at the lights of Paris outside the window, glowing like stars and bright nebulas in the black vault of the night.

What was
this
about? Con wondered. Was she upset? He'd only wanted to hear his name on her lips. No, that “Mr. Con” business was a relic of before, and he was more than sure that even if she wasn't ready to love him yet, Lireinne had to feel
something
for him. The past weeks proved it. She'd agreed to come on this trip, after all, and it wasn't like he'd been keeping his feelings for her to himself. Puzzled at her reaction, Con waited for Lireinne to talk to him, to explain, but she said nothing.

Unable to bear the apprehension her silence provoked, Con pressed her. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

Her back still turned, Lireinne ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. Her slim shoulders drooped. “I think . . . I'm just tired. It was a big old walk. I hardly slept at all on the flight, too. I guess I was too wired to take that nap like you said I should.”

So that was it, Con thought, his apprehension dispelled. The silly, darling girl had been on her feet for miles and she was exhausted.

“Do you still want to go to dinner, honey? We could order up room service, stay in for the night instead.”

Since she was so tired, that could be a better plan for them than the romantic dinner he'd arranged at Marius et Janette. Con's breath caught, imagining Lireinne wrapped in the hotel's sumptuous terrycloth robe, naked underneath its soft white folds. Oysters and caviar would still be there tomorrow night, and suddenly all he wanted was to hold her.

“Oh, no—not room service.” Lireinne glanced back at him over her shoulder with a forced-looking smile. “I mean, going out sounds like a great idea to me. I was having such a fantastic time I forgot to eat anything today, so I'm, like,
starving,
okay? I think I'll just have a quick shower and get dressed up. I bet we're going to a real fancy place.” She turned her head away from him, facing the windows again.

“You're so beautiful,” Con said. It felt like a staggering understatement.

She didn't reply.

He tried again. “Lireinne, sweetheart. You'll be the most fabulous girl in the room, no matter what you wear.”

Con couldn't continue merely watching her anymore. He put his empty champagne glass down and went to Lireinne. Her slim back to him still, he encircled his right arm around her slender waist, pulling her tight to his chest. He pressed his lips to the dark crown of her head and inhaled deeply of her hair, scented with the cold night air of Paris and her own subtle perfume. Except for the rigidity of her back and shoulders, she fit perfectly into his embrace. Closing his eyes at the intensity of his sudden arousal, Con's breath left his body in a long sigh that was almost a groan, as if it had been living at the bottom of his lungs for months, waiting for this moment to be freed.

At last. Con's previous concern evaporated at this long-awaited intimate contact with Lireinne, his heart and mind and body united and at peace for once. At last, she's mine, he thought. I'm holding her and I'll never let her go. His hand tightened on her waist, and loving the lyre curve of it, Con lowered his flame-red head to kiss the point of her left shoulder, the hollow where her shoulder met her neck, the corner of her jaw. The hard length of his erection pressed against Lireinne insisted that he cancel the dinner reservation.

“Look, I . . .”

Lost in his need, Con almost didn't hear what she was saying.

“What's that?” he murmured.

“I need to get ready now.” Lireinne's low voice was curiously flat. “I don't want to make us late.”

“Relax. We can be late.” Con buried his face in her hair, glorying in the feel of it against his lips.

“Look, I need to
change,
” she said urgently.

She must really want to go out, Con thought. Lireinne must have been looking forward to a night on the town in Paris for a long time. She'd probably never traveled far from Covington, he realized. With strong reluctance, Con dropped his arm from her waist.

“Well . . . sure, darling. We'll go out. Whatever you want.”

Lireinne turned to look at him then, her lovely face unreadable and closed. “Thanks. That is what I want.” Without another word or a backward glance, she crossed the suite and picked up her shoes and her purse. She went in her room and shut the door firmly behind her, leaving Con alone with his still-insistent erection. He shook his head, perplexed by love.

Women, Con thought, shaking his head. Who could figure out what they
really
wanted?

While he waited for Lireinne to get ready, Con cracked the long windows, letting the Paris evening into the suite with its sounds of traffic and faraway sirens. Walking outside onto the small balcony, he smoked a cigar while he made the phone call he'd been putting off since this afternoon's meeting with Julien. As he'd expected, Roger wasn't thrilled with the new skin deal, but on the whole Con thought he took the terms better than he'd expected.

“Cash flow, ol' son,” Roger said with a weighty sigh. “We need the cash right now, for certain-sure. Got to cut some corners before the end of the year, but I guess it'll all come out some better than I'da thought it would.” This was faint praise, although Con hadn't exactly expected Ol' Rog to turn backflips at the news of the discounted skins. “Damn lobbyist's eating up the operatin' capital.” Con didn't respond to that: you can only fix one mess at a time, he told himself. It's not like the EPA is going anywhere. It never does, not when you operate on the wrong side of it. SGE could pay to fix the problem, or they could pay the lobbyist: either way, they'd pay.

“By the way,” Roger said, “where's that pretty lil gal, Lireinne, at? Tina tells me she's with you.”

Roger's question was deceptively mild in its tone, but Con recognized the hard-shell, Baptist deacon disapproval behind it. He'd been anticipating something like this enquiry, certain that Roger wouldn't be happy about his new relationship with Lireinne once he found out about it. Even though he was well on the way to being a free man thanks to Lizzie's coup d'état, his boss would be of the opinion that Con should have waited a decent interval before he embarked on a new liaison—meaning, until he was actually divorced.

No sweat, Con thought, making an effort to shrug off his irritation at this intrusion into his affairs. Roger didn't have to know everything, not right now. “Lireinne's fine,” he said casually. “A huge help to me on this trip. Invaluable, really, so it's a good thing she came.”

Roger harrumphed. “Glad to hear it, 'cause I mean to tell you I was kinda taken back when I heard she was with you. Don't look right, in my opinion. Now I know you got a world of hurt brewing with the little woman these days, but you oughta be a mite more careful. I'd a hoped you'd think twice about how this kind of thang's gonna look to people.”