The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) (8 page)

Bastien’s hard stare was very disconcerting.

“How do you know him? What’s Marie’s problem with him anyway?” I fired back, trying to deflect away from my fib.

“Have you heard of the Messettes . . . of Toulon?” he finally answered. Shadows were covering his face. I shifted as flashes of my online stalking confronted me.

“No. Yes. Well, only that they are very rich.”

He nodded. “Stay away from them, all of them.”

My mouth popped open. I was shocked by his vehemence. It was as pervasive as Marie’s. “You don’t listen to me,” added Bastien, probably noting my pursed lips. “
He
treats women the worst. Very bad.” My heart dropped because I assumed by
he
, Bastien meant Louis. And this was not what I wanted to hear.

So these warnings
were
all about his alleged gigolo lifestyle.

“You stay away from him like Marie tell you. Okay?” He added this much softer.

Numb, I nodded, because I wasn’t going to argue with this man I barely knew. It was all too weird and frankly, seemed awfully melodramatic.

Surely Marie hadn’t told him I was a virgin? Good Lord no. Of course not. The two of them were just being overly protective. Resentment flared in me, momentarily, before I reminded myself that Marie was only worried about me because she cared.

Halfway into the quiet ride home, I let my body relax. And my mind, like the truant teenager it was, wandered right back to the moment Louis pressed himself into me against the bar. I clasped my forehead in embarrassed panic for experiencing a pang of lust while sitting next to Bastien.

And then I remembered, exclaiming, “Oh no, we never paid for our drinks!”

Bastien snorted. “Don’t worry. Messette will take care of them.” Bastien’s bitter tone tweaked a memory, and a symbol I had spotted on the coaster under my water glass popped into my mind. It was the same black, razor-sharp variation of the fleur-de-lis I’d seen in the photos of the Messette yacht and tattooed on his forearm.

My heart skipped as a terrible idea occurred to me. “Do the Messettes own Noir?” I met Bastien’s surprised glance, and my stomach squished. We pulled up in front of Marie’s building.

“You are smart girl.” I didn’t like Bastien at all in that moment.

“Why would you take us to a bar he owned if you want me to stay away from him?” Yeah, I can make deductions, too, I wanted to add. I was the daughter of a police inspector after all.

A corner of his mouth lifted up.

Whoa. Discovery: Don’t ask a question you think you know the answer to, and don’t like. I grabbed my clutch, the door handle, and let myself out.

“Fleur!” he called after me, but I rushed to the door, letting myself in before he had time to reach me. He loitered for a minute or two outside of the locked lobby. I didn’t want to give him a chance to explain away the events, which I needed to sort out for myself.

Once safely in the elevator, I went back over the encounter. I bit the remaining lip gloss off of my lips. Why would Bastien take me to the nightclub, which he seemed to frequent, owned by someone he thought was bad? And then, openly witnessing Louis come on to me, warn me off him?

It was hard not to conclude he’d used me.

Looking back on the elevator incident with the
ménage à trois
, Bastien had been watching me closely, and probably got a pretty clear read on me. I mean I was obviously riled up by Louis’s presence. More importantly, Louis stared him down. I swallowed, smoothing my hair and my dress, as the elevator doors opened and I stepped out. What if Bastien took me to Louis’s club to see if he could provoke Louis? And he had: Louis tried to get me to ditch Bastien. His smug smile popped into my mind.

But . . . why? Why would Bastien do that?

I stepped out of my heels, my feet whimpering
thank you
the rest of the way down the hall. What had Bastien really been after? I sensed somehow this wasn’t really about me. But what?

The worst part was the truth that stood quietly on the sidelines waiting for acknowledgement: those two were clearly playing games, and I had been nothing but a pawn.

“What? He humped you in the bar? Like a dog in heat?!” squealed Jess over the phone the next morning, delighted at the juicy news. Yesterday she’d sent me five texts about how bored she was back at work. She has to be the only person I know who misses school. She added, as if I’d been holding out, “Well, how big was it?”

“Big.” I sipped my coffee, sitting on the kitchen bar stool. I’d already told her the Bastien date was a bust, no additional details required.

“Of course it is!” I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Did you see the size of that man? He’s a mutant.”

I didn’t say anything. I was tingly all over at the idea of that
big
in me. Say what you will, Louis couldn’t have faked that arousal, no matter what kind of games were being played last night.

I had to wonder, was horniness an ailment? Sex, or lack of it, had never been on my mind to the point of distraction before I met Louis. I should be more focused on my job, or finding someplace to volunteer at, or making plans to entice Marie to spend more time with me.

Pretty much the only reassuring thing I could make out was that no one else had ever made me feel this way. That had to count for something.

On the other hand, my stomach dropped, that meant this aloof, ill-mannered, formidable man
was
special.

“Fleur? You still there?”

“Mhm.”

“Oh no. You’re not still into him are you? He’s most definitely not the Hymenator.” I rolled my eyes. My friends used this term frequently.

“He seemed to make the grade before. You said he was ‘hawt.’”

“That was before I found out he was some anti-virgin man-whore who spits out women like a wood chipper.”

Dammit. I shouldn’t have told her about the
bimbettes
.

“Come on, Fleur, what do you really know about him? Other than the fact he can barely keep it in his pants?”

Hm. Good point. And yet. “He supports a local charity for disadvantaged children.”

“Oh my God.
Fleur
.” Only Jess and my mother could say my name in a way that gave me pause. (I made a mental note to answer my mother’s last email. We’d been in touch every day, and it helped me miss her less.) “Of course. You googled him, right?” she accused.

Dammit. She knew me so well.

“You’ve probably also been listening to that
Get It On
playlist you made last fall, too, right?” she said, disgusted.

I cringed. There’s a point when someone can know you too well.

“I am officially telling you to stay away from him. What about that French class you’re taking? Anyone interesting there?”

“It hasn’t started yet. Next week.”

“Stay away from him. He’s a douche. He’ll hurt you. I mean it, Fleur.”

Jess was always saying “I mean it” to me, so it was hard to take her seriously. That said, she
was
the third person to warn me off Louis Messette.

I changed the subject and chatted about work. She was back at the Cove—the clothing store where we worked the past six summers. It was the same old story: the designer-owner was pressuring her to make more commissions. I told Jess how I wished I had that problem with Sylvie. “Be patient,” she advised, confident it would all work out, and I hoped she was right. She gave me the update on Tammy, she was dating a new guy, and we wrapped up the call. Thankfully, Jess didn’t bring up Louis again before saying goodbye. I didn’t want to defend my feelings. Hell, I couldn’t even make sense of them.

I stared dejectedly at a French cereal box and wondered if I would ever be fluent. The newspaper Marie had deposited on the kitchen counter this morning caught my eye. I glanced at her bedroom door. She must have got home after six a.m.

Wait. My eyes fell back to the paper, my brain on full alert. The photo underneath the headline “
Le meurtrier arrêté!
” was Marie’s headshot. There was another smaller headshot of a nasty-looking man. I grabbed the paper. My chest swelled as I read on, slowly. Marie’s task force had found the murderer of the drug dealer known as Casolaro. Apparently it had been a hit man from one of Toulon’s port crime gangs. Wow.

I regarded the closed bedroom door again with awe.

A superhero for a mother.

She deserved her sleep.

I was extra quiet as I got changed into my workout attire: Lululemon pants and a Texas Longhorns football tank top. I loved my university team’s white and orange colors. The logo, a pair of longhorns, arched over each breast, and a big number eleven for Jess’s favorite player was emblazoned on the front and back.

Marie was such an inspiration, I thought, tying back my hair in a sloppy knot. After my workout, I decided I would investigate local volunteer activities. I laced on my runners, stamping down the rush of anticipation of a pending burn.

I’m addicted to the stair climber. Not only is it the secret to a cellulite-free tush, nothing else makes me sweat quite like it. And I needed a deep, detoxing sweat.

Well, technically, I needed to be laid. Since the one man who’d come close to being the mythical Hymenator was apparently off-limits—recalling his latest actions, his need, another rush of lustful anxiety wracked me—the stair climber it was.

Who does that? Who has the
couilles
to just walk up to a woman and press his lust on her? A shiver ran down my spine: he was so much more than I could handle.

I left a note for Marie, in case she got up, letting her know I was down in the gym. Before walking out the door I scrolled through playlists on my iPod. I needed a perky, chaste selection to stave off the cobbled, anxious confusion plaguing me.

A strange rustling noise outside the door caught my attention. Glancing into the peep hole, I spotted the back of a man’s leather coat disappearing from view. I opened the door, and an envelope jettisoned down to my feet. The man looked back at me, expressionless, before reaching the elevators. Anxiety surged in my gut. I recognized his dark, thick beard. One of Louis’s pit bulls from the club last night.

I glanced back at the envelope on the ground.

Fleur
it said on the outside. I swallowed, bent down, picked it up and shut the door quickly, locking it, even though the man was clearly not coming back.

I weighed the envelope in my hand. It was thicker and heavier than if it held just a piece of paper. The penmanship was abrupt.

In a burst of curiosity, I flipped it over, pried my finger into the flap and ripped it open. Peering inside, my chest squeezed, and everything kind of sank.

Euros. Lots of them.

I pulled the wad of colorful notes out. They were wrapped in a smaller piece of paper. I unfolded it, barely breathing.

Je suis désolé
.

Louis

He was . . . sorry?

I looked up, only to see myself in Marie’s foyer mirror. Appalled. Totally appalled, and, I watched my brows pinch severe, my green eyes flash dark, I was angry. Very, very angry.

He was effectively, I gawked down at the handful of euros, buying his way out of humping me? This was the worst insult yet from him. I mean, that’s what this was, right? Or wait. Was he was paying me for letting him hump me? Or, my heart swooped dangerously low, maybe trying to buy his way into my bed?

He thought so little of me? That I would what, run to him, and say, “It’s alright, but a full fuck would cost double”? I mean, my God, there was, I shuffled the wad of bills, three thousand euros or more here.

Enough was enough. Blind, with shock—
I mean how dare he send a friend to drop off money to buy me or buy me off, or whichever it was!—
I had already reached the elevator, and pressed the penthouse button, cash in one hand, before I even questioned what I was doing.

Nuh-uh. No way. Adrenaline was coursing through me. He’d insulted me enough. I’d had enough. I wasn’t going to let Louis believe for one second that I’d even thought about taking money from him. I needed to give it back to him right way. Who does that?! Who acts the way he does? Was it because I’m American? Well, he needed a lesson in manners.

The elevator reached the top floor, and I stepped out into a marble-walled vestibule before the elevator doors had finished opening.

I never felt so sure, so strong, in my life.

I halted in front of the only door, and heard the faint noise of television. A sports match.
He’s home
. I knocked with emotion that should have warranted a loud boom, but it turned out to be a light knock.

After a moment, when I steeled my resolve, the door opened.

Not Louis
.

A man with salt and pepper hair, a nasty scar above his lip and astute eyes, scanned me. “
Oui?
” he asked rudely.

I hesitated, but then thought, I’m all in.

“
Je suis venue pour voir Louis
.”

He scanned me much more carefully, and his dark eyes stopped at the cash in my hand. After his eyebrows rose, ever so slightly, his face relaxed and a side hitched up. He shrugged and opened the door wider.

I stepped into another foyer, encased in a marble, circular partition. With one last wave of jacked-up energy, I barreled around the wall, quickly scanning the,
holy massive
, space, hesitating only to admire the incredible view provided from floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere. Gorgeous kitchen, too. I sucked in a waft of cooked chicken. God I missed meat. Pausing to get my bearings—this was an extremely large suite—I followed the faint sound of the television sports game. There was the living room. I spotted a giant flat screen against a wall, blinds tugged down around it.

My heart was going a mile a minute, my hands shaking. I couldn’t turn back now. I stepped down the two stairs, powered across the
empty
dining room area, into the living room space, aiming straight for the middle, where . . . my eyes scanned quickly . . . there were others present, two, I think, standing behind one sectional.

Ah-ha!

There sat Louis, legs wide apart, on a giant leather sofa, a remote in one hand and an empty plate of chicken bones beside him. He was in a pair of track pants and nothing else. To say he was shocked, when he realized the girl standing in front of him was not a cute American announcer suddenly on his TV screen, was an understatement.