Million Dollar Road (40 page)

“An improvement, no?” Her smile widened. “You can wash your head, but an asshole is what it is eternally.”

Her good-natured teasing seemed to coax a pale flame of Con's charm into flickering life. It was a hollow, empty thing compared to his old blaze of talent, but still, Con carefully cupped that flame in his hand, grateful beyond all reason that he'd made this woman laugh. Even though it was at his expense, it was better than nothing.

“To shitheads,” he said gallantly, raising his drink. The woman's eyes met his. They touched their glasses together.

“Salut,”
she said. “To shitheads and their friends.”

So then, as it often does in bars after midnight, the conversation really began, seamlessly sliding to the personal. Con gave the woman a condensed, censored version of his vital statistics—forty-three, divorced, alligator-skin-dealing lawyer for the world's largest farm. She seemed fascinated, but then everyone, Con had learned, was fascinated by alligators. Having exhausted that topic as quickly as he could, he learned that her name was Maxine—“Call me Max, everybody does”—she was from Marseille, was an amazing fifty years old, and she was married. A lawyer like himself, she was only in Paris for the night, having come to town to finalize a settlement for a client who'd divorced her husband of twenty years.

“He was more trouble than he was worth, apparently,” Max said, one corner of her mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Sometimes it goes like that, yes?”

Con slugged back the last half-inch of his scotch and signaled for another. “Happens to the best of us,” he said after a moment. “One minute you've got the world by the balls, and then . . . you're just another shithead. Still, it's better to have loved and lost, et cetera. Or so they say.”

Those yellow-green eyes regarded him over the rim of her glass, amused and somehow understanding. “
Eh bien,
truly there is no argument. The experience for which one pays is better by far than the kind one gets for nothing. Everyone knows this is so.”

Reluctantly, Con nodded. “Yeah, well—then I just got handed the experience of a lifetime. But if you ask me, I'm positive I could have learned the same damned thing without getting my ass kicked. That, as the recent, now-departed love of my life would say, sucks.”

Max lifted her glass to his. “We are in agreement. Pain is an unforgiving tutor.”

There fell a moment's silence, but this quiet between them was companionable. It felt . . . honest. Con would have been hard-pressed to say why, but he was thinking he'd never really known he could simply talk with an attractive woman, to be this relaxed with a potential bedmate. The conversation had a flavor strange to him, like that of enlisted men sharing war stories, but it was a welcome respite from years and years of the pressures of having to be Obi-Wan. Con hadn't understood that about himself, not before tonight, when Obi-Wan had taken a powder and Con had been left with none of his usual resources. Tonight, instead of being bent on seduction first above all things, he could enjoy paying attention to Max for its own sake. He was genuinely
liking
this confident, intriguing woman. She appeared to be a player equally skilled at his old game.

“So . . . what do you think about a man with a crippled hand?” Con found himself asking Max the question that had plagued him for weeks. He wasn't sure he was ready to hear the answer yet, but she seemed to be playing this straight, almost too straight. Still, in any case Con had nothing left to lose tonight by asking.

“Could you ever . . .” he hesitated. “Stand for someone like that . . . to touch you?”

Max tilted her head in inquiry. “Is this man a shithead? I have a weakness for them.”

“Oh, I'm a shithead, all right.”

“What courage. I wonder, is this a habit? Do you ask every woman this, or am I an exception?”

“You're the first,” Con said, his mouth dry.

“Show me,” Max said simply.

After a long moment's struggle and internal debate, Con removed his gauze-wrapped left hand from the safety of his jacket pocket and placed it on the bar. In the low, intimate light, the hand didn't look like anything human. It looked like a mistake at the end of his arm.

But Max didn't avert her eyes in shock or disgust. She didn't turn away in pity.

“And without the bandage?”

“Are you kidding? Isn't this bad enough already?” Con tried to draw his maimed hand away, but Max placed her well-manicured one over it, holding it in a soft, firm clasp.

“Show me,” she said again.

“Nobody wants to see this, trust me. Nobody.”

“
Vraiment,
I am sure you believe so. But you will let me see, yes?”

Could he really? Con wondered. And why was he even thinking about doing it at all?

One thing was certain, though: he couldn't wear a bandage forever. He'd likely never see her again, not after tonight. The risk was as low as it was ever going to get. And so it was, there in the bar at the Plaza Athénée, that Con Costello sighed and resolutely rode out alone to meet the new day. For the first time, he allowed another human soul besides his doctor to see what was underneath the slightly grimy gauze.

After he unwound the bandage, though, the left hand lay there on the glass bar between them, a naked, white, and helpless mess. Although he'd seen it before, Con nearly wept at the sight. Along the edge of what remained of his palm, the seam was an angry red, puffy with scar tissue, laddered with neat suture lines from the heel of his hand up to where the webbing of his middle finger had once been.

“That's . . . it.” Con swallowed around a hard lump in his throat, scarcely able to speak.

Confronted by the evidence of his damnable injury, he'd broken into a sick sweat but forced a cavalier smile that was bound to look as false as it felt. Any second now, Max would turn her eyes away. Her mouth would turn down with pity, or revulsion. He would die inside then, knowing that this was the way it would be for him for the rest of his life—a crippled creep.

“Hazard of the trade.” Con strained to sound casual. “I'm the guy who kills tens of thousands of alligators every year. One of them bit me back and ate most of my hand.” Perilously close to tears, somehow he found a ragged ghost of a laugh. “It's a gory kind of karma, isn't it?”

Max traced a light finger over his ravaged palm, her expression grave. To Con's disbelief, she lowered her head and pressed her lips with a gentle pressure to the Mount of Venus below his thumb. She kissed his left hand. Con's breath stopped at the touch of her mouth, so soft, so deliberate. He was barely able to contain a bewildered moan.

Lifting her head, Max's yellow-green eyes met his and there wasn't an ounce of pity in them.

“
Mais non
. This is not fate,
cheri
. This was but an accident, a consequence of a life. You are still a man.”

Still a man. Almost undone by her unflinching acceptance of the crippled hand he loathed, Con blinked back the tears threatening to spill into a sob. This was the last thing he could ever have expected; any words he might have possessed deserted him. Con dropped his eyes. He gathered up the bandage, stuffing it and his left hand back in his pocket, safe from view. Con wanted another drink then, really wanted one, but his glass was empty.

And so was his bed. Con's pulse leapt like a racehorse out of the gate at that thought, bounding past his confused attempts to understand what this long night had done to him. Still, he avoided looking at Max because he couldn't find the nerve to meet those wise eyes.

“Please.” His voice was low and hoarse. Con fought his sudden desperation, afraid of his need. He might break down like a kid, lost in a crowd of strangers.

Ah—the agony of not knowing if he still could, but he had to try. Almost inaudibly, Con said it again. “Please. I'm, well . . . terrified, but . . . please.”

“Yes.”

Con looked up at her, barely daring to believe. “Yes?”

With a humid, sidelong glance and a smile, Max gathered her purse. “Let us pay for our drinks, and then . . . yes.”

 

When she came out of the bathroom, Max had taken off her suit and thin shirt. She was wearing only a creamy, lace-trimmed, rose-gold chemise—the kind of intensely flattering lingerie that only Frenchwomen seemed to own, a luxurious secret beneath their clothes. Con had always wondered where they bought the damned things, so damnably seductive, so perfectly fitted they had to be handsewn.

His heart pounding, he waited for her in the bed while she removed her earrings and put them on the night table. Max fluffed her mane of hair in the mirror and then she turned, her eyes meeting his. She raised her arms to pull her chemise over her head, slowly, and she was naked underneath. Con's breath caught at the revelation of her body: the high, insolent breasts, narrow waist, and solid hips flowing to smooth, round thighs. Max paused beside the bed, letting him look, her knowing smile as intimate as a whispered confidence.

She came to him then and slid beneath the smooth linen sheets. Con reached to turn off the bedside lamp.

“No,” Max murmured. “No darkness.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing the length of her body to his, and her breath was rapid and shallow in the hollow of his throat. “Kiss me now,
cheri
.” Her skin was scented with vetiver, clover, and moss.

With a groan, Con enfolded Max into his arms as though she were his very last chance, crushing her sharp breasts to his chest. His lips found hers and they were soft and cool, warming quickly as the kiss intensified. Con stroked Max's narrow waist, his right hand exploring the long, flat muscles of her flank before it found the ripeness of her sturdy hips, cupping her full buttocks, and all the while the kiss went on and on. He broke it before she did.

“My God,” Con gasped into her hair, burying his face in her neck.

Here at last was the oblivion he'd been seeking, he thought. His hands, good right one and the other, opened her round thighs and Con, lost in her, thought no more. Blindly, he lowered his mouth to her breast and then it was her turn to gasp.

Max's fingers were in his hair and then they were on him, guiding Con with sweet impatience to the cleft between her thighs. His body covered hers and, with a sudden inevitability, they were joined. Pleasure claimed them. It was good, it was better than good, and then it was better yet.

And after they had both found their way, Max and Con lay spent in a companionable tangle of drowsy satiation. His racing heart slowing to a trot, Con rolled over, bracing his forearms on either side of Max's tousled head. He looked down at her wise face, into her chartreuse eyes, a green so different from Lireinne's vivid emerald. She smiled up at him.

“Thank you,” Con said. His voice was quietly intense. “Thanks for showing mercy to a crippled shithead.”

Max's soft laugh was a chuckle of completion, ripening into a contented sigh.

Knowing it then, the honesty between them demanding the truth of him, Con said what was in his heart.

“I miss my wife.”

Max turned her head to kiss his shoulder.

“I know.”

“B
onjour, mademoiselle.
”

This early Saturday morning the snotty valet's greeting was respectful to the point of obsequiousness, his bow practically a genuflection. Lireinne, clothed in samples from Luigi's fall line and her new Prada stilettos, ignored the uniformed young man holding open the door to the Plaza Athénée. She didn't bother returning his greeting.

Underneath the soft, black, cashmere sweater-coat trimmed with umber leather, she wore a white silk collared shirt, a tight-fitting alligator-skin skirt, and black patterned stockings. Lifting a long-fingered hand gloved in a gauntlet of olive-hued hide, she smoothed her careless chignon, its loose strands framing her face. Except for her underwear, the battered bag slung over her shoulder was all that remained of her own clothes.

As she cat-walked across the quiet lobby of the hotel, her heels sounding a brisk, light tapping that echoed in the hush, Lireinne was sleekly aware of the effect she was creating. All eyes, those that were open at this hour, seven a.m., followed her as she approached the bank of elevators.

Earlier this morning, before October's first hazy light dawned, Luciana had carelessly tossed the ensemble onto the worn, brown velvet Empire sofa that had been Lireinne's bed the night before.

“These will do,
cara,
” she said. “Now, have a
caffè
and hurry away, make done your business with this man. We have much to do today before Luigi and I must fly to Milan this afternoon.”

Lireinne brushed her teeth with the First Class toothbrush and untangled her hair with the comb from the travel bag she still had in her purse. As she dressed, she stroked the rich fabrics and leathers, marveling at the way the alligator skirt slid onto her slim hips, clinging with a just-right combination of suggestiveness and style.

And like in the fairy tale, on her way out of the door, the long gilt-framed pier glass in Luciana's hallway told her that she was indeed the fairest of them all. For
real
. Bolstered by the mirror's tidings, Lireinne set out in a cab to return to the Plaza Athénée. She meant to collect the few things she'd left there, the last pieces of her old life.

Much as she hated to give her any credit, Lireinne had to concede that Emma had been right. Clothes mattered. This flower-filled lobby with its glittering chandelier and marble floors seemed an appropriate setting for the tall, beautifully dressed girl waiting by the elevator doors. Nobody here would take her for a whore now, Lireinne thought with proud satisfaction.

But when she got in the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor, her satisfaction was tinged with a stubborn anxiety. For all Lireinne's bravado, she hoped she'd be able to slip inside the suite, grab her things, and get out of there without having to encounter Con. With any luck at all, he'd be sleeping or have left already. Last night's confrontation in the bar was still raw in her memory. The things she'd said to him had been
harsh
.

Lireinne winced, sort of wishing she could take it all back. Okay, maybe everything she'd said had been the truth, she thought, but that didn't mean she hadn't hurt him—she knew she had and that wasn't something she'd set out to do. But there hadn't been a good way to tell him any of it, Lireinne argued with herself as the elevator traveled silently upward. There wasn't any way that conversation had been going to end up being anything but, well, kind of mean.

Still . . .

The doors slid open. After a second's hesitation Lireinne stepped out into the corridor. Did she really need her old clothes? Lireinne wondered, unsure if she was ready to do this. She thought of being dependent on Luigi and Luciana for
everything,
though, and decided she did. Besides, she'd paid good money for those clothes. Firming her resolve, she removed her gloves and stuffed them in her purse before she slid the key in the lock and turned it.

To Lireinne's surprise, the door swung open just as she put her hand on the doorknob. An older woman stood in the entrance, apparently in the process of leaving Con's suite. The woman, wearing a well-fitted business suit and heels, looked equally surprised to find Lireinne outside the door in the deserted hall.

Did she have the wrong room? Lireinne wondered. No, this was the right door. She was sure of it because the key had opened the lock. Removing her hand from the doorknob, she stood tongue-tied, feeling somehow at a loss.

With a lifted eyebrow, the woman studied Lireinne, nodding as though she'd just had a mystery explained to her. In lightly accented English she said, “Ah. You will be Lireinne, I think.” She shifted her expensive-looking purse to her shoulder and extended her hand. “I am Max.
Enchantée
.”

Who was this Max and what was she doing, coming out of Con's suite at such an early hour? Lireinne wondered. How did she know her name? And
hell,
this meant Con had to be up.

More uncertain than ever, Lireinne found herself taking the woman's offered hand and shaking it.
“Un plaisir de faire votre connaissance,”
she answered automatically. In that awkward moment, some of her high school French rescued her.

Max smiled widely in frank delight.

“
Vous parlez français! Merveilleux
. Your accent is good—not French, precisely, but quite good for an
Américaine
.
Mais,
Con did not confide this to me. He said you are
très
beautiful—and very young—but nothing about this. Where did you learn your French?”

Lireinne flushed under the older woman's yellow-green, assessing gaze. In spite of Luigi's supercool clothes and her new Prada heels, she felt impossibly childish and gauche.

“I didn't learn all that much.” Trying not to be intimidated by this sophisticated woman, Lireinne struggled to reclaim her former attitude. “Just a year of high-school French.”

“Now that you will be living in Paris, you will learn quickly, to be sure.”

Exactly how did this Max person know so much about her? Con must have told the woman an awful lot. Was she a business contact, or was she . . . something else? That
dog,
Lireinne thought with grim amusement. He sure didn't waste any time.

Max must have read her mind. “Ah,
chérie
—Con spoke of you only
un petit peu,
and I am but . . . his good friend. May I say I find you charming? Such élan, so
comme il faut, parfaitement
! I see now why he lost his heart to you.”

She stepped out into the hall, leaving the door to the room ajar. Tilting her blond head to one side, Max lowered her voice, her tone confidential. “Only a man made of wood could resist such a one as you, and Con is not such a man. Be kind, Lireinne, for his heart is not yet at peace. And now I must go.”

So bewildered at this advice, before Lireinne could find her voice and long before she could figure out how she should respond, Max had stepped into the open doors of the elevator.
“Au revoir.”
The doors closed, and Lireinne was alone in the corridor in front of the suite.

Be kind?
Kind?
To Con? Unable to make sense of this, Lireinne had no time to puzzle over Max's comments for Con's voice came from the other side of the half-open door.

“Hello? Lireinne? Is that you?”

Her confusion was instantly replaced with her earlier nervous apprehension, but nevertheless Lireinne straightened her backbone and pushed the door open wider. Reaching for the poise she'd been robbed of in the encounter with Max, she strode as confidently as she could into the sun-filled space of the sitting room.

“Hey,” Lireinne said, wishing she felt as offhand as that had sounded.

Con, backlit by the morning light streaming through the windows, stood in the middle of the room holding a copy of the
International Herald Tribune.
Still in the hotel's white cotton robe, his red hair was disordered, as if he'd just gotten up. He was unshaven and his feet were bare on the room's carpeted floor.

“Lireinne,” Con said evenly. His face could have been expressionless as he greeted her, but there was a subtle play of some emotion behind his blue eyes. “I suppose you've come for your clothes.” He absently ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it.

Lireinne nodded, relieved that she didn't have to explain. “Yes.”

“Well, you look marvelous this morning. Great skirt.” Con crossed the room and poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver pot on the room service tray.

Lireinne was startled to see that he'd removed the bandage. She'd never seen his hand without the gauze before. It didn't look as terrible as she'd imagined it would—bad, but not heinous. She shifted from one foot to another and clutched the strap of her purse, wondering what she should say now that she'd have to talk to him after all. Like, “Your hand's not as gross as I thought it was going to be”? Probably not a good move, she thought.

And besides, Con seemed . . . distant, changed somehow from the man she'd walked out on the night before. How the hell should she play this?

Find that attitude, girl, Lireinne thought. It had served her well before.

Con said casually, “And I like your hair that way, too.”

Her hand going to her chignon, Lireinne lifted her chin, saying, “Thanks. I figured putting it up would make me look more professional.”

Con made a noncommittal noise. He stirred his coffee. “I see.” He didn't sound as if he cared, not really.

This was so weird. It was like Con was making conversation with someone he didn't know, as though last night's scene in the bar had never happened. In a way, this made things easier, but Lireinne felt oddly . . . deflated. At least Con didn't seem like he was still mad. She was glad about
that,
for sure.

“I assume everything is well
chez
Spada?” he said.

“It's all good,” Lireinne said, striving for an airy tone. “Luigi says I need to lose five pounds, but I'm cool with it. Like, five pounds is nothing. I lost over thirty when I came to work at the farm, you know.”

“Oh, really? I had no idea.”

Lireinne's hand twisted the strap of her purse at Con's indifferent reply. Her regained attitude was holding, but it felt like an act and she was unsure of her lines. Suppressing an unaccountable urge to bolt, she wondered if maybe she should just go now and leave her clothes behind. There weren't that many of them and it wasn't like she was all that into those clothes anyway. She'd always keep the green silk dress because it had been lucky for her, but the rest, the gray skirt and sweater, her underwear—she'd never have to dress in clothes from Banana Republic or Walmart ever again.

Con took a sip from his steaming coffee. “Have you told your stepfather about your new job? Is he happy for you?” His tone was politely inquiring.

Lireinne shook her head. “Not yet. I'm going to call soon, though. I didn't want to use Luciana's phone and run up her long-distance bill. I mean, I'm a guest. That would be rude.”

Con smiled a faint smile. “Knowing what I do about the House of Spada, you shouldn't have worried. That's an old Italian family that made its money generations ago, in olive oil. Luigi's couture business is a drop in that bucket, trust me.”

“Seriously?” Lireinne found this hard to believe. Luciana's huge, dark-curtained apartment on the Île-de-France was crammed full of really old, dusty furniture and collections of weird stuff: tiny ivory carvings, cracked blue-and-white vases, and these murky little religious paintings. It was kind of shabby, in fact. “Olive oil?”

“The extra-virgin kind. In any case, you should let your people at home know what's going on as soon as you can.”

Lireinne nodded reluctantly, knowing he was right. She'd wanted to call Bud last night, feeling like a lost Louisiana mouse tiptoeing through Luciana's crowded rooms overlooking the Seine. She'd told herself she'd find a pay phone to use this morning after she'd picked up her clothes. She still had some money left after buying her shoes.

“I'm going to call them later,” Lireinne muttered.

“Well, I won't keep you then,” Con said. He put down his coffee cup with a yawn.

This felt so freaking
wrong
somehow. Now that Con was being so cool toward her, Lireinne suddenly felt as though she wanted to clear the air. She wanted to tell him that no matter what he thought, she was always going to be grateful for the chance he'd given her, always. It wasn't like Con had done it out of the goodness of his heart, not at all, but still . . . he'd done her a huge favor. Lireinne knew then she'd never, ever forget him because her new life wouldn't have happened if he hadn't brought her to Paris. It wasn't her fault she couldn't love him for it, but that didn't mean she didn't understand what she owed him.

I mean, Lireinne thought, it's not like Con ever
grabbed
me, not totally. Unlike Harlan and Brett, when he'd come on to her, it wasn't like being attacked by a wild animal.

And to tell the truth, Lireinne realized, from the first she'd understood him well enough, she'd always known she could say no. She could have told him to stop it that night; he'd have respected that. He wouldn't have fired her either. That kind of mean wasn't Con's way. He was a dog when it came to chasing women, but he was basically a gentleman about it.

Maybe . . . in this strange tangle, they could just shake hands and call it even.

But she couldn't say any of that. Lireinne paused, wondering how to make herself understood, and in that interval Con's waiting silence was as loud as a jet engine. She was sure she had to say
something
.