The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) Read online

  Another man across the table, whose stare I did not appreciate (too cunning), announced his name, way too quick to grasp, and stood up to reach over and clasp my hand. I said in French, “Nice to meet you.” I felt my Frenchman stiffen beside me—we were seated that close—and he uttered something in a deep voice, fast and sharp, as I shook the man’s hand. At first, I thought it was directed at the guy who had introduced himself, but no one answered.

  I looked to the blond for interpretation. He shifted, clearly uncomfortable. After a moment, he said, his face a mask, “He wonders why you not speak français well.”

  My stomach flipped. My Frenchman’s tone had not been friendly. In fact, I think I’d heard the word terrible just now.

  So.

  I recalled once hearing how the French could be rude. My pride reared its ugly head.

  “En Amérique (in America) . . .” I said, trying to remember my friend Tammy’s coaching about my accent, “tout le monde (everyone) . . . parle anglais (speaks English).” I said this with a deliberate cheery tone, eyeing my Frenchman, who stared down his nose at me. I had no way of knowing if he’d understood what I’d said or my intended sarcasm. If anything, he appeared amused. “Anyway,” I smiled back at the blond, “I have time to learn. I’m here for a year, and I’m going to take a class down the street,” I added. Marie had told me about one near the police station.

  My friendly companion introduced himself as Alain Dubon and told me he was thrilled to learn I wasn’t just a tourist. He helped revive a lighthearted mood after introducing those seated closest. I skidded along a groove with the group, trying to speak broken French, mostly English with those who were fluent, answering vague small-talk questions. I asked the group, “What are you?” I pointed to one’s black eye, and raised my fists in front of my face.

  “Ah non! We play rugby!” exclaimed Alain.

  “Oh, you mean football?”

  “Non, non!” he admonished. “Rugby.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m not familiar with that sport. I mean I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen a game.” Alain translated for the group.

  My Frenchman made a tsk tsk sound with his teeth, and when I looked up, he was staring at me with a brand new expression. Curious.

  Others were expressing outrage, and Alain insisted I would be invited to the next Toulon game. But all I could focus on was my Frenchman’s eyes on me. I was relieved when he finally returned to his conversation.

  “You have not gone to the port yet?” Alain asked. “You must be careful. Some areas of Toulon port no safe . . .” I tried to pay attention but my eyes were drawn to the plate of fish that one of the chefs had placed before me.

  It had not been skinned. Or deboned. Even the head was still on. This, I am embarrassed to admit, as a popular hobby food blogger (with aspirations to be a cookbook editor), was a first for me.

  Starved, and never one to balk at a challenge, I poked at the top skin, cutting in, nodding politely as Alain talked my ear off about Toulon’s port. It was interesting, and I wanted to learn more about where I was going to live for the next year, but I do not multitask well. I managed to peel open a hole and gobbled down the most tasty twenty-five calories of fish I have ever eaten.

  Alain was explaining the port’s history. Much of France’s imports and exports pass through Toulon, and had for thousands of years. In addition to being a large military harbor, he said that Toulon manufactures aeronautical equipment, maps, paper, tobacco, shoes, and electronic equipment.

  Practically drooling, I remarked encouragingly at Alain and dug deeper into the carcass only to yank out a nest of bones.

  Disappointed, I put my fork down and eyed the baguette on the table. The wine was sloshing around in my empty stomach.

  A warmth spread through my arm. Realizing the source of it, my heart skipped.

  My Frenchman had leaned into me. I glanced down and my breath hitched. He was deboning my fish with his knife and fork.

  I thought he’d stopped paying attention to me.

  The side of his face was less than a foot from mine, and my pulse was pattering like rain. I could smell him, man, all man, and some exotic spicy cologne.

  I opened my mouth, maybe to protest, but the warmth of his shoulder pressing into mine now and again as he delicately peeled flesh away from bone shut me up. I examined him like a painting up close. He sported a scar over his left eye. Levers of muscle ran down his thick neck. Holy, work out much? I guessed he was a few years older than me, but it was hard to be sure given the athletic wear on his face. Maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight?

  “Louis knows fish,” said Alain, noticing, perhaps, my discomfiture.

  So. His name was Louis, pronounced with no s.

  “He eez from a famous nautique, er, nautical famille,” added Alain.

  Louis stiffened and paused his carving at the word famille. He gave Alain a stare that would sink a cruise ship. Alain looked at me, oddly, and then away.

  That’s when I peered deep into my Frenchman’s gem-stone eyes. They were hazel with rich green embroidery, vivid and full of passion. I tried to smile as my face flushed and my brain rattled. He had this expression, I’d seen it just earlier, when I imagined him taking me to the floor; intense, focused but vocal, like he was saying something silently.

  He turned back to the job at hand, nearly done, and I noticed his watch. Wide-eyed, I confirmed it with another glance. Yup. He was wearing a Patek Philippe. Holy smokes! It had to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. (I knew this because I’m nuts about fashion.) Wow. These guys were for real, like NFL-status for real. Even so, only the super-rich buy those watches. I’m not intimidated by wealth, mind you, or overly impressed by it, either, like others might be. But being raised in a single-income home (my adoptive dad split when I was still a newborn), I was definitely curious. It was exotic, like seeing a panda in a zoo.

  After he pushed the carcass to the corner of my plate, I murmured merci, and he stared at me again, with that look.

  “De rien,” he said, his deep voice plucking at me like I was an instrument. He held my gaze, this time with a question, or so I imagined.

  My eyebrows raised and, unable to control myself, I got that stupid grin on my face again. Yeah, super smooth. I pressed my hands out on my thighs.

  He nodded and went back to conversing with his friends.

  Uh, had I just agreed to something?

  No. No, of course not, considering we didn’t actually exchange words.

  I mean, he probably doesn’t speak English. Why else would he not bother to be friendly? I wished, ruefully, for a chance to impress him with the Fleur-flirt experience, and in my fantasy, allowed myself to deliver it in super elegant French.

  At some point, shortly thereafter, my breathing steadied and I focused on Alain fully, tipsy on adrenaline and Beaujolais. I kept hoping Louis would interject, but he didn’t. Soon, the bill was paid—no one would let us chip in for our meal—and my heart sank.

  I couldn’t help it. The evening was almost over. Louis was speaking some new language based on proximity and energy alone. And I wanted to hear more, but, it was clearly not going to happen.

  As the tables were shoved aside, and groups rose and milled near the door, someone else grabbed our table and stacked it on another. Alain smiled at me and headed toward the washroom. Louis was shifting beside me.

  I beat him to standing. Something in me just couldn’t let him walk away first. Then I didn’t know what to say. Anxiety pulsed in me. Rolling my eyes inward at myself, I dashed over to Jess, my mind a blur. Yes, yes, it was rude and immature and embarrassing, but I needed to check on her, or so I rationalized.

  She was staring sexily up at one of the men she’d been seated beside. Yup. She’s more than good, I thought, relieved. I didn’t want our last night here together to be tragic and tearful. We could save that for the morning.

  As I stepped back to let someone pass, my heel caught in a rubber door mat. My tipsy brain informed me,
You’re going down, when a vice clasped around my arm and a hard, warm thigh steadied me. I peered around, and up, to thank whoever had come to my rescue.

  Louis.

  Staring down at me with those intensely expressive eyes.

  He let go of my arm, but remained standing behind me close enough I could feel his body heat. There was lots of it.

  Delighted that he was back by my side, yet confused, because he still hadn’t said anything, I watched him stare above me stonily, like a bodyguard, or, my heart began racing again, or like a man marking his territory. I balked, and flapped like a baby bird inside my heady brain. I mean he’d barely spoken two words to me.

  “Fleurrr,” said Jess, with a slur. She’d stepped over to me and was sandwiched between two men. “I was thinking we could pop up to the apartment for a drink or two. I want to bring François”—I smiled because she pronounced the s—“and Philippe over, to see the view.”

  Marie’s apartment did have a nice view of the Toulon port. But, had she lost her mind? I would not want Marie to come home from work to an orgy scene from the Spartacus TV series.

  “Marie might come home,” I protested.

  “Text her,” barked Jess. “It’s France for God’s sake, Fleur. We’re not in Texas anymore. She won’t mind.”

  I stared at Jess. This is when she would be telling me, “Cut ’em loose, baby.” But that wouldn’t work on her. If I tried that, she’d flip a lid.

  I pulled my phone out of my bag. Besides, I had no grounds to deny her her pleasure.

  Are you home yet? I texted Marie.

  No. Why? Are you okay?

  Yes. I bit my lip and typed: Jess has invited a man up to see the view.

  I waited three extremely long seconds staring at my phone.

  And you?

  I breathed out. No one.

  Have fun, ma belle. I will not be home until tomorrow.

  My eyes opened wide. Maybe Jess was right. All of my life, my mom had pretty rigid ideas about sex before marriage. That Marie was so encouraging was . . . bloody terrifying.

  Jess grabbed my phone out of my hand before I could lie.

  Dammit. She read the text.

  “Let’s go, boys,” she said, winking at me, passing me back my phone.

  I reminded myself that Jess was a big girl, certainly bigger than me. She’d lost her virginity at sixteen. Regretful I’d not anticipated her determination, I turned around and hit a wall of chest.

  As my eyes roamed up, heart thudding loudly—more danger, more danger—Louis glanced behind my shoulder, presumably at Jess’s entourage, pointedly, and back down at me.

  Those eyes were smoldering field fires, igniting my insides.

  “Invite me up,” he said, in clear, perfectly enunciated English.

  Chapter 2

  My mouth popped open, and it took me a second of concentrated effort to shut it.

  He spoke English, with only a slight accent.

  So . . . why hadn’t he chatted me up?

  My brows knit so hard together they threatened to cramp.

  I mean, I like to be wooed.

  Chatting up a woman is part of the game. And he hadn’t even tried to flirt with me. Now there he stood, demanding to be invited back to the apartment. Enough was enough.

  A glint in his eye, a hint of smile, made my stomach drop.

  He wasn’t going to take the “no” about to come of my mouth. But I got the sense he might like me to say it anyway, just so he could show me who was boss, when Jess announced, loudly, “The more the merrier.”

  I tore away from him to shut her down with a stare, but Louis deftly maneuvered me out the door, his giant mitt on my elbow, the shouts of another guy who thought he had been invited, too, making me panic. I couldn’t host a party!

  I was about to say so when Louis let go of my arm. I watched him push the tag-alongs backward, friendly but firm, murmuring in fast, hushed French.

  Whatever! I bolted across the street. A car honked its horn but it had plenty of time to stop. I stepped over the cobblestones and onto the newly-paved section.

  Maybe I could shake him.

  I was scared. Not of him. But of how he’d made me feel. How he didn’t follow any of the rules.

  I gasped when a large figure appeared at my side just outside the building’s door.

  How—

  I exhaled and sucked in air but oxygen wasn’t reaching my brain fast enough.

  How could someone so large move that fast?

  Louis stared down at me sideways, intent. I was beginning to decipher the silent language: Need.

  Raw. Pulsing. Need.

  I could hear Jess and her two men closing in.

  My chest was fluttery and my fingers trembled over the lock.

  His large hand covered mine, sending electric shocks straight downtown, making me want to squeeze my legs together. He helped me slip the key in the slot and turn it. I was surprised to read confusion on his face as he roamed over my no-doubt frightened face.

  I swallowed, and he pushed open the door, holding it as I entered under his arm. The others followed us in.

  Jess had argued forever that I shouldn’t fumble my virginity (she loved college football). And by the knowing look she’d just given me as we waited for the elevator, where she checked him out and quietly mouthed “hawt,” she clearly thought he was the one to deliver the touchdown.

  With shock, it dawned on me just how much this Frenchman was not my type. I had always ended up flirting with guys who asked “How high?” when I’d said “Jump.”

  As Jess giggled like a schoolgirl with François and Philippe, I stilled in my head, unable to properly process anything with Louis’s large hand spanning the entire width of my lower back.

  Walking down the hall to Marie’s apartment, I felt distinctly like what my mom would call a brazen hussy on her way to sin, my foot hovering just over the brake pedal.

  Inside, Jess wasted no time pouring drinks, Louis declined, and, my mouth hanging open, I watched her vanish down the hall with her new friends to the room we’d been sharing.

  I turned back to Louis, closed my yap, and nervously tugged at the short side of my dress.

  Louis sat, poised on the edge of Marie’s sofa, like a giant silent panther, watching me.

  I had had enough. He needed to play the game or leave. “Are you really not going to say anything?” I challenged him, crossing my arms over my chest, unable to bear his silent, intense scrutiny a second longer.

  I was saucy with a dash of sass, as my mom liked to say.

  His eyebrows flickered ever so slightly.

  Was he deaf as well as rude?

  “Okay, well, I’m ready to hit the sack, er, go to bed, so . . .” I tilted sideways on the spot, suggesting the hall foyer might be the way for him to head. I was standing in front of the kitchen bar.

  “What do you want to speak of, Fleur?” he asked, quietly. I couldn’t get over how perfect his English was. His eyes traveled wherever they pleased over my body. He could at least try to be discrete.

  “Well, um . . .” Surely this Frenchman didn’t expect me to give him a lesson in small talk, or charming the pants off of a female? No. No, probably not. It hit me then that such a man existed: one who could lure women in on sex appeal alone. No compliments. No frivolousness. No beating around the bush (literally). This was a major problem because I’d only ever flirted with men.

  He raised his arm and flicked something off of his eyebrow.

  “Okay, well,” I tried to lower my voice back to normal. “Um, how long have you lived in Toulon?”

  “All of my life.”

  “Do you like it?” Lame.

  “Yes, very much.”

  I exhaled, frustrated, frowning at him. The only movement he gave me was a small smile forming on those lips. God, they were great lips, not too full but not too thin either. A slight hint of dimples formed on either side, and I longed to see him smile fully.

  I swallowed. Damm
it, why wouldn’t he play?

  “Okay, see, here’s when you ask something like, what’s your favorite part of living in Austin, Fleur?” I applied my cheeky-flirtatious tone, which I had perfected over the past year. His smile disappeared. He rose up to his full height and began to prowl toward me.

  “I know everything I need to know about you,” he said softly.

  My brows shot up. I stepped back. “Oh really—”

  “You study books and plays,” he spoke over me. “You don’t eat red meat. Fish is okay. You have a food blog. You have lived in Austin most of your life but, I think, there is a mystery about why you are here, non? And most important”—I loved how he said important—“you know nothing of my sport rugby or Toulon.”

  He’d moved into my space and was gazing down at my mouth, which was shaped in a perfect O. So he had been listening the whole time at the bistro.

  “I know all that I need to know about you, Fleur.” His pointed stare nailed me to the spot.

  Oh—meaning, he wasn’t interested in knowing more about me. “Well, just put all your cards on the table why don’t you. Who needs charm anyway,” I muttered, checking for the space available to dodge left and right: not much.

  “Non. I do not need charm.”

  I nearly choked on the air I sucked in. Holy cow, is he something. Staring up at his amused face, I gathered all at once: he likes shocking me.

  Even so, I believed he meant what he’d just said.

  Why would he have to work at getting women? Given his sporting popularity, my eyes scanned over his chest, his pants, his hugely expensive watch, I mean, he probably has women falling at his feet. He—

  Wait a minute. I glanced back down. Oh my God. A giant trouser-straining hard-on. Just as I looked back up, his tattooed forearm flashed by, and rough fingers clasped the back of my neck, tilting my face up. His nostrils flared, and his lips were wet where he’d just licked them.

  “I also know you want me to kiss you.”

  The way he pronounced “kiss,” it created a shocking throb in my girly bits that sent explicit instructions, “Clear for Entry.” I’d never, ever felt that kind of instant physical reaction before. My heart was pounding super fast. I did. I did want him to kiss me, very much. Très magnifique.