Your Wish Is My Command (2 page)

Well, she'd been on the wrong end of the joke where men were concerned once too often in her life. And dammit, it just wasn't funny anymore.

She was a tall woman, almost six feet. And a life
spent manhandling high-performance speed machines had made her strong, very strong. But he was taller, and the ease with which he'd just handled that heavy sword—and her—predicted great strength. She was debating whether to jam him with her knee, shout out for help, or both, when he stilled her with the light touch of one long finger against her lips. “I mean you no harm, but you must hear me out,
ma chÉrie.”

Jamie swallowed dryly, but she didn't move. She didn't so much as blink.

“I am Sebastien Valentin, and my spirit resides in the Sword of Hearts. I am summoned forth when the blade is unsheathed.”

Jamie's eyes widened. “Either you're a really good actor, or you honestly believe what you're saying.”

He cocked one brow, looking from the sword back to her face. “I thought you, of all my masters, would accept the whimsy of a … how did you call it? 'Pirate genie with a cupid complex'? You like to play pirate queen, no?”

“I am not your master.” And just how long had he been spying on her? She felt her cheeks redden and she tried to tell herself it was just righteous indignation.

“Ah, yes, forgive me. You would be my mistress, no?”

He winked, and damn her if she didn't have a little loosey-goosey moment in her knees.

Enough already. Her eyes narrowed. “The truth. Did Jack send you here or not?”

Sebastien slowly shook his head. “Although I'm certain I will enjoy making this Jack's acquaintance at some future date.” He said
Jack like Jacques.

Jamie almost smiled at that. How her cousin would love
that
affectation.

“You must make your selections,” he said.

“Selections?”

“The souls you must choose for me to fulfill my destiny. I will find their soulmates, then I will take my leave.”

Now Jamie did smile. “Boy, did you come to the wrong place.”

He tilted his head slightly. “You do not believe in soulmates?”

He seemed honestly surprised, and Jamie felt the power equation seesaw in her direction. “Let me put it this way: Life has taught my business partners and me that happily ever after really happens only in books. Of course, some of us have needed more lessons than others,” she added with a touch of self-deprecation. “So we named the bookstore downstairs Happily Ever After as sort of a private joke.”

“You name your shop Happily Ever After because you do not believe in them?” He shook his head. “American women.”

“How did you know my partners were women?”

He merely lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“Okay, fine. But, I don't think the feeling is exclusive to women, American or otherwise. I'm sure men and women all over the world would get that particular joke.”

He leaned away from her and folded his arms across his chest. “Allow me to prove you wrong.”

“How?” She asked the question rhetorically, of course. She didn't believe a word he said, but if playing his game would get him to leave quietly, she'd play.

“Make your three selections,” he said. “I will show you that there is a true mate for every soul.” He held her gaze. “In fact, mademoiselle, if you are so certain of your friends' lonely fates, I will offer a challenge. Allow me to find their mates as a way of fulfilling the first two of the three required matches. That will be your proof.

“And then what?” She was not going along with this lunacy, but she was curious to hear what he'd say.

“If I cannot fulfill my promise, I will take my leave from you and you will have your moral victory for women everywhere.”

He seemed not the least bit concerned that this might actually be the outcome of his challenge. “And if you do?” Not that she was remotely worried either. She only wished Ree and Marta were up here listening to this. Boy, would they have a good laugh over this later.

He stepped closer, and suddenly she found a distinct lack of air to breathe. A slight miscalculation, she assured herself. She was still in control. His eyes were just as black close up, she noticed, with no distinction between iris and pupil. And his lips looked incredibly sensual.

“If I succeed,” he said quietly, his accent making a sibilant murmur out of the last word, “your soul will be the final one I will match.”

Jamie realized too late that she'd been talked into a trap. She couldn't be encouraging this guy. Playtime was definitely over.

He tilted his head and stepped closer. He wasn't playing either, she realized with a dry gulp. “Do not be afraid,
ma maítresse.
Love is not all pain and anguish.” He placed a finger under her chin, and she found her gaze pulled to his mouth again. “I will show you.”

Before she could react, he dipped his head down and kissed her. His lips were firm and sure and every bit as sensual as advertised. The whole thing was over before she could comprehend any more than a fleeting sense of being kissed by fate. Absurd.

“Kissing isn't love,” she managed roughly. She should have been furious, slapping him or kneeing
him, screaming rape, or yelling to get someone's attention.

She did none of those things. She told herself it was pride. As a woman who'd spent all of her life competing—and winning—in a man's world, she'd had to handle her share of aggressive men. She could certainly handle one sexy French guy in a pirate suit.

He grinned. “Ah,
chérie.
The kiss wasn't to show you love; it was to seal our bargain.”

“We have no bargain.”

“Ah, but we do.” He stepped back and swept his arm out to the side as he bent forward in another gallant bow. As he straightened, he slid the sword easily into the wide sash at his waist, a sash she could have sworn he wasn't wearing moments before.

He blew her a quick kiss, then saluted her.
“Bonsoir,
mademoiselle.” He winked as he added a slight emphasis to that last word.

“Good Lord, Jamie, what in the devil is taking you so long?” Ree Ann's Southern-belle voice rang up the stairwell. “My forty-dollar mascara is threatenin' to drip right off my chin. I don't need waterproof makeup; I need stuff that's heatproof.”

Jamie turned toward the hallway. She could hear Ree coming up from the second-floor landing.

“Jamie?” The sound of her high heels clattered on the hardwood stairs, and her bracelets rattled against the wrought-iron railing.

“Here.” The word came out as a dry rasp. Jamie cleared her throat. “Just a … just a second.” She turned back, intent on making it clear to Mr. Sebastien Valentin that he was not welcome in her life or that of her friends.

But there was no one there.

Ree Ann climbed up the last step. “Why, sugar, you're as pale as powder.” She fanned her hand in front of her face. “Come on down before you have a stroke. The champagne is chilled to perfection and Jack finally got here.”

Ree Ann Broussard was one of Jamie's college roommates and her cousin Jack's favorite person. And it wasn't hard to see why. She was flamboyant without even trying. Deep-russet hair, bright blue eyes, the face of a beauty queen—Miss Metairie three times running back in their college days—and a lush figure that had turned more than one intelligent man into a garbling pile of hormonal mush. Of course, what Ree didn't advertise was that behind that bring-traffic-to-a-standstill exterior was the gray matter of a summa cum laude scholar.

“People are confused by what they don't understand,” she'd explained to Jamie early on in their relationship. “And they don't understand brains that come in a package like this.” She defended her flirtatious, Southern-belle manner by saying it was simply easier to give people what they expected.

Jamie had long ago given up trying to unwind that bit of logic. Of course, she'd never stopped so much as a moped with her looks, so what the hell did she know?

Ree studied her closely. “Honey, are you okay?”

Well, that was a loaded question. Jamie cast a quick look around the attic. The trunk lid was still open, but there was no sign of Sebastien. Or the sword that had started the whole thing. “I … I found this ancient old trunk,” she began. How could she even try to explain what happened?

“And you had to explore. What a surprise.” Ree laughed. It was one of those full-bodied types that begged anyone who heard it to join in. But Jamie didn't feel like laughing.

“At least you found the cord, so come on already.” Ree popped back down the stairs, her heels clacking on each riser. When Ree had walked the length of the second-story hallway, Jamie heard her call down the final curving set of stairs that led to the back of the shop. “Wouldn't you know, I found her diggin' for buried treasure. Don't y'all open that first bottle till we get down there, now.”

Buried treasure?
If she only knew.
Then the rest of what Ree said clicked in.
Wait a minute, what cord?
Jamie looked down at her hand and sucked in a breath. She was clutching a dusty brown extension cord. “I'm hallucinating and I haven't even
had
a drink yet.”

“Jamie?” Ree's voice echoed up to her.

“I'm coming, I'm coming.”
Right after I find the sanity I apparently lost somewhere in the last ten minutes.

Jamie grabbed a fan from the storage room on her way to the café area. Ree took it and went to set it up on the coffee-bar counter. Before Jamie could do so much as push the damp hair off her forehead, Jack's beaming face popped up in front of hers. Dressed in perfectly pressed polo shirt and khakis, every strand of his thick brown hair ruthlessly coiffed despite the million-degree humidity, he swept Jamie into his arms.

“Congratulations!” He swung her expertly around
in a smooth dance step ending with a dramatic dip, which he handled with great aplomb despite the fact he was a good five inches shorter than she was.

Jamie was breathless as she good-naturedly smacked his hands off her. “You're a danger to left-footed women everywhere.”

“Nonsense. I make you look good and you know it.” He kissed the back of her hand. Then he turned and motioned to the elaborate spray of exotic flowers now dominating the front counter. “A little surprise for you. I truly intended to have them delivered this morning, but Emil was late and the delivery I was expecting never showed and—well, you don't want to hear about
my
day, do you?”

Ree Ann laughed. “It's just as well, sugar. We'd have never seen the customers standin' behind this jungle.” She smiled at him and lifted a small tray off the coffee counter. “And I wouldn't have been able to dazzle the clientele with my new recipe for cinnamon pecan sticky rolls. Here, try.” She lifted one to his lips.

Never one to disappoint, Jack swooned dramatically.

Jamie rolled her eyes. “We'll move the flowers to the table just inside the foyer. They'll make for a grand entrance.” She shot Jack a look. “And we all know how important that is.”

“So, you have been paying attention. Very good.”

Jamie studied him closely. “You wouldn't have had any other kind of … grand-opening surprises planned, would you?”

He wasn't listening to her. He was watching Marta Lewis, fellow Tulane grad and the third partner in the venture, come out of the office door at the opposite rear corner of the shop. She wove her way through the shoulder-high bookshelves, never once taking her eyes off her calculator. Her brown hair was piled in a
slowly avalanching bun. She'd apparently tried to circumvent its imminent collapse by jamming a mechanical pencil into the tangled mass. Judging by the dangerous wobble that occurred with each step, it had been one of her few miscalculations. Her granny glasses had slid halfway down her nose, and she trailed calculator paper behind her, unnoticed.

Jack made a tsking sound. “Miss Marta and I definitely have to have a talk.”

Jamie hushed him. “Well? How'd we do?”

Absorbed in her world of numbers, Marta continued tapping away. “Not bad, not bad. I'm printing the whole thing out in the back, but there were a few more calculations and, well, we're about seven percent over the gross I anticipated, but then Ree had to have those imported linen cloths for the tables in the café, which reduces the net by—” More tapping.

Jamie slid the register tape from under Marta's elbow and quickly scanned to the bottom line. Her eyes widened. “Hey, did we really do this? Just today?”

Marta finally looked up, the barest hint of a satisfied gleam in her eyes. “Happily Ever After is now fully operational and proudly in the red.” A smile played at one corner of her small mouth. “But look out, black, we're coming. Someday.”

Ree let out a surprised laugh, but Jamie pumped her fist in agreement. It was rare that Marta made bold pronouncements. Well, positive ones anyway. The quiet one of the trio, she was perfectly comfortable handing out dire predictions right and left, which was why Ree had long since dubbed her Eeyore. So this was doubly encouraging. It was the happiest Jamie had seen Marta in years, maybe since Dan had died. Even if that single look of hope was Jamie's only reward, every sacrifice she'd made was worth it.

“Well, let's not just stand around while there's perfectly good champagne to guzzle,” Jack said.

The cork made a satisfactory pop, and the champagne poured out of the bottle. The chilled tickle of the bubbly had never tasted better. This wasn't the first victory Jamie had toasted with champagne, but sharing this one with the three people who meant the most to her made it sweeter than any that had come before. If only her dad could have been there, it would have been perfect.

As if reading her mind, Ree asked, “Did you hear from Sully yet?”

She nodded. “He called a while ago, when you were serving up your last latte of the day.” Jamie smiled, though it wasn't as heartfelt as she'd have liked it to be. “He was sorry he missed the grand opening, but something came up yesterday on one of the boats he sponsors and he had to fly to Crete.”

Ree propped a hand on her hip. “He's in Greece? I thought he'd retired.”

Jamie's smile turned rueful. “Did you really think that just because he finally stopped racing that he'd truly settle down?” And yet wasn't that exactly what he wanted for his only daughter? “I knew when he decided to keep his sponsorships going he wasn't going to really slow down.” Sully had told her it was too late for him to enjoy life in the slow lane, but it wasn't too late for her.