The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) (6 page)

I needed an explanation. But I couldn’t demand one. Marie might ask me why I wanted to know, in which case I would have to explain. “Oh, yeah, well I nearly bopped him in your bedroom just last night, no biggie.” Not exactly dream-daughter material. We were still getting to know each other. The last thing I wanted was to ruin her impression of me.

Curiosity competed with discretion.

Nope. Don’t say a word.

I clomped down the hall, brooding on the other inexplicable Louis moment: the whole stare-down with Bastien. He’d zeroed in on our dinner companion with a look that seemed to say, “Prepare to die.”

His actions could only mean one of two things, I deduced, as we paraded into the apartment and set about unloading groceries.

Either Louis knew Bastien—and really, what were the odds?—and he didn’t like him, or, Louis had blasted Bastien on my account. And that sure as blue blazes didn’t make sense. Because even if Louis had mistakenly thought Bastien and I were together, why would he care? He’d made it very clear, last night and definitely just now—I rubbed my face, surprised to feel my nose tickle with tears—that he didn’t want me.

And frankly, I didn’t want him anymore either.

Okay, I still wanted him.

It had been a struggle to prep the meal, drink and be merry, knowing what Louis was up to six floors above me.

Of course he could totally handle two women, I fumed. Just not one virgin.

Worse, how could I still want him? That was the truly baffling part. People wonder why women are attracted to bad boys. I always thought the answer was easy: picture Ryan Gosling in a biker jacket, fitted out in movie-set press-on tattoos, pretending to wear his heart on his sleeve. Nuh-uh. The reality is far more . . .
visceral and exciting
. How
the risk
beckons one like a wildly steep ski run. Oh God.

I needed to get this dinner over with so I could call Jess. She left that morning and it was about seven-thirty p.m. She would make this all better. Or Mom. I wouldn’t tell her any of this stuff. I just wanted to hear her voice.

“Be careful, my love.” Marie was watching me chop onions. Her mood had shifted back to lighthearted after the meal preparations got underway. Bastien reached out for the knife, and I gladly handed it over, eyeing the wine that had been poured for me.

I needed to get it together. Marie was a cop. She was reading me. And I wasn’t ready for her to see the real Fleur. The one who, on rare occasions, had major meltdowns. Plus, I would have to lie and say it was still the torn dress upsetting me, which I should be over by now.

I took a deep breath, smiled, and asked about her day. She said the usual, “Fine,” (she never divulged details) and began talking up Bastien. Somewhere around finding out what Bastien thinks of my blog, how much he loves cooking, and visiting America, I realized she had invited Bastien to dinner
for me
.

Um, okay.

I tried to go with the flow. And why not? Pile on the strange, I thought, unlocking my stiff shoulders.

Mid-meal, I was enjoying myself. Mid-dessert, I was laughing at Bastien’s understated charm. Over coffee, he had me making eyes. At the door, when he asked me on a date in two days’ time, I said yes.

Friday night. A fabulous new restaurant.

And why shouldn’t I go out with him? He and Marie had worked together before he’d been transferred to a different division. How could I go wrong?

This is what I told her, sitting side by side, cozy in our PJs, watching a local French news station.

She smiled. “I do not want you to think I care either way,” she said, earnestly. “I only wanted Bastien to meet you before you were in Toulon too long.”

“What do you mean, before I’m here too long?” I asked, midway into a bite of the best brie I had ever tasted. Cheese heals wounded pride, apparently, or temporarily, anyway.

She frowned at me. “Come now, you do not need compliments I think,
non
?”

I stopped chewing.

She thinks I’ll attract lots of men and that I know this and that I’m fishing for compliments. That’s not the way I am at all. That Marie had misunderstood me struck me straight in the heart, like a sharp-pointed arrow. There isn’t a vain bone in my body. She wouldn’t know how I didn’t get contact lenses until high school, or that until I got braces, I had been referred to behind my back as “beaver.” This beauty everyone refers to is as fleeting as bubble skirts.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, taking in my stricken face. “You are sincere!? Oh
mon Dieu
, how
innocente
you are.”

That made me feel even more naive. “Ah,
ma belle
,
non non non
, that is part of your
je ne sais quoi
, I see now,” she exclaimed, grabbing my cheeks, pulling me to her in a hug, petting my shoulder. “I love this about you.”

I was instantly consoled.

She pulled back and held my gaze. I smiled. But her face dropped, and with it, my heart.

“Promise me something?” My stomach swooshed. I nodded. Anything. “I do not wish to be . . . motherly. But I want to say—” I nodded my head encouragingly, very much wanting her to be motherly “—when we are born
le monde est beau, n’est-ce pas
? (the world is good, is it not?)” I nodded. “
Mais
, eventually the bad”—I imagine she had seen a lot of bad in her line of work—“eats the good.” She held her hand to her mouth as though she were pouring invisible water into her mouth. “It consumes all, until you can’t remember what is good.”

Sadness pervaded her beauty. Her bunched up brow and faint smile lines drew her down.

“Marie,” I whispered, wanting more than anything to give her back whatever it was she had clearly lost.

“
Fleur, ma belle
, please remember,” she said. “It is a—” she searched for the right word “—choice. I never knew I had a choice.”

My chest was laden with pressure—it was the weight of love, love that I had for her. She’d opened up to me. Goosebumps tingled down my arms. I wanted to soothe her, whatever it was that had hurt her so badly. So I hugged her to me and inhaled her orange blossom scent.

I should have asked what had happened to her, what she meant about choosing or not choosing good, but I was overwhelmed with raw, new, tender feelings. And I felt childish, sensing innately that some things should be kept private between mother and daughter . . . for that’s what we had become.

• • •

She’d left early the next morning before I was up—apparently there had been a murder in the port area—and it had now been two days since I’d seen her. She’d called quite a few times, reassuring me she was getting short naps in the station and apologizing for her absence.

“Are you kidding?” I told her. “Solve the crime!”

I was in awe. My mother was one of the good ones. She was like Beckett from the TV show
Castle
. Smart. Driven. Cool-headed. Virtuous. In Austin, I watched repeats of the show on weeknights with my mom, who loves the actor Nathan Fillion.

Of course I wanted to impress Marie, badly, and the only way I knew how to do that was to be organized, helpful, funny, and kind. And kick some ass at my new job.

Only . . .

My first day, today, had been less than monumental. I flopped down on my bedspread after walking home alone in a funk. Sylvie had spent four hours explaining the books in frustrated French. It took me another two hours (they only work seven-hour days in France—
awesome
) to begin to make sense of them on my own.

I gathered Sylvie intended to have me manage the back end of the studio until Anne gave birth. Fabric orders. Deliveries. Making
demi-tasses
of Nespresso. I did get to observe as she took measurements of a middle-aged, elegant lady who stared me down like a hamburger wrapper crumpled on the floor.

Anyway. It was going to work out fabulously. It was. I would make it work.

More importantly, tonight was my date with Bastien. And I had successfully not thought about my Frenchman for, oh, let’s see, about five hours.

Unfortunately, I was now boring a hole in the ceiling. I was alone in the apartment and needed to blow
three hours
before Bastien was picking me up.

I had already blasted Jess’s ear off about the Frenchman and his
bimbettes
. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell her about Marie’s reaction and warning—maybe because Jess was less than impressed herself. After fifteen minutes of my speculative ranting, she called off the conversation. “He’s not worth it. Move on,” she ordered.

But . . . she hadn’t been there. She didn’t know what it felt like to levitate under that man’s touch, to hear him gasp from appreciation, to lose your mind in mutually fueled lust—it made me weak just thinking about what he did to me.

My finger hovered over the Google search button. I had typed
Louis
and
Rugby Player Toulon
into my notebook.

And really, what had taken me so long?

The minute I hit search, my heart racing, I regretted it. I was assaulted by page after page of content about my Frenchman. Photos. YouTube videos. Dozens of articles. My hands were clammy, my pulse erratic. My God, there were dozens of pages of links.

He was famous.

Maybe that’s how Marie knows him, I speculated. A famous, rich rugby player was living in the penthouse of her building. But why would she call him a scumbag? Was it his rich and famous lifestyle? Seemed kind of harsh, but I was learning that Marie could be rigid in her views.

Messette. His last name was Messette.

Of course I waded in. I started with the photos because everything else was in French. Images seared my vision. There were Facebook fan clubs. Girls had drawn hearts on his photos. I stared and stared and stared. The sports photos were abundant. All of them were full contact—him ramming into some other giant. I watched a few YouTube videos, both impressed and horrified by the violence of the game. I mean these men didn’t just tackle, they collided, held each other down, fought over the ball. They were grown, super-sized men in a nasty schoolyard showdown that made the NFL look like practice. And there was so much more. Pictures of Louis on yachts, one, in particular, that was long, sleek, and silver with a big black logo on the bow. The symbol was a sharp-pointed, masculine rendering of the fleur-de-lis—like his tattoo.

Women were in a lot of the photos, too. Really beautiful, sexy women.

Louis was sometimes photographed with a few men sporting similar bone structure. Brothers? Impatient to learn more, I slowly worked through article after article about Toulon’s famous French national rugby player Louis Messette (thanks to Google’s translator).

Alas, I was spinning my wheels. All the articles stated the same facts: the Messettes were one of the world’s largest shipping families. Louis did indeed have brothers—three of them. They were practically celebrities for all of their charitable donations. And that was it. Over and over, the Messettes’ story read like a script.

By the time I was done, I had gathered only a few more details: Louis had taken his business degree while climbing the ranks in rugby. And when he retires from rugby some time in his thirties, he plans to run the Messette import arm of the family business.

There was nary a mention of him and a girlfriend. Of course I tried that search. It netted oodles of photos of him with nameless women.

I looked up at the clock on the wall. One hour until Bastien would arrive. I closed my eyes and stilled my turbulent emotions.

I hadn’t seen Louis Messette since the elevator incident, two days ago—an experience that burned on and on inside of me, scorching my innards with the question: why.

Why them? Why not me?

And, I inhaled deeply, I
really
needed to let the whole thing go. I was one hundred percent out of my depth with a man like him.

And yet I’d gone and created a deck of playing cards in my mind. Sports hero. Playboy. Future executive. Shirtless in the dressing room. Shirtless on the field. Shirtless on his yacht.
Gack!

I jumped out of bed angry with myself. He’s not into you. He’s into sluts. There was no other conclusion I could draw. He was never photographed with the same girl. Not once. That night in the bistro, with my high-cut dress and American accent, Jess being in touch with her mojo, taking home two guys, he thought we were sluts. And when he found out I wasn’t, he was disappointed. Why? Who feels that way?

I wanted to forget about him. Everyone was telling me to do just that anyway. And I
needed
to forget about him, since there really was no
him
in my life. Besides, I was silly pining for an idea.

So I got ready for my date with Bastien.

I chose a favorite dress, tight-fitted all over, scoop neck, no sleeves, in mauve to help boost my confidence. I finished the modern pin-up look by putting a few big chunky curls in my hair, and then pulled a section loosely over to one side and pinned it with a delicate barrette. To draw attention to the green in my eyes, I put on heavier than usual eye makeup. Checking for the right shoes in Marie’s full-length mirror—gun metal, delicate heels—I decided it all worked.

I may not be a Victoria’s Secret model, but I got noticed, and tonight, I had put in special effort, maybe because I needed to guarantee it.

I answered the door when Bastien knocked, twenty minutes late, and instead of apologizing, he appeared flabbergasted. “What? Is this too dressy?” I asked, thinking,
How can anything in France be too dressy?

“
Mais non
!” he exclaimed. “
Vous êtes très belle!
” He stepped in and kissed each side of my mouth, briefly, three times. He smelled fresh, like he’d just taken a shower.

The compliment pleased me to no end, and I smiled shyly. I’d been on a lot of dates, but none of them with a man who had a mortgage. He looked good in a pair of fitted dress pants, dress shirt, and blazer. I locked the door behind me, and, clutching the new purse Marie had bought me, headed down the hall with him. My confidence began to waver.

“You are hungry,” he said, breaking the ice, waiting at the elevator, his eyes flickering quickly about my dress and back on my face.