The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) Read online

  “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 card
s 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.

  “Yes,” I said, and then I proceeded to chat and chat and chat. I asked him about what he’d done that day, how his week at work was. He talked about his apartment, how he wanted to move because it was too small. I told him there were some fabulous-looking spaces for rent above Sylvie’s studio, how I was thinking of starting to eat meat to boost my food blog. I told him about the French language class I’d signed up for, and that I was thinking of taking cooking school in my free time since it was France after all. By the time we arrived at the restaurant, a lovely, dark romantic eatery on the edge of the waterfront (about a fifteen-minute drive from the apartment), I was exhausted—with myself.

  He grabbed my hand on the front steps, and waited until I met and held his stare.

  “Détendez-vous.”

  I stared at him, confused.

  “You be calm?”

  Ah. I nodded, glancing over his shoulder, embarrassed. He lifted my chin and smiled encouragingly. “We have fun, oui?” he offered, taking the pressure off. I nodded again and smiled sincerely this time.

  I could be too earnest. I needed to work on that.

  After that, and a bottle of wine, I relaxed. He told me a couple of hilarious cop stories, including one about Marie. Back when he was her partner, he’d set her up thinking she was busting a robber, and it turned out to be a surprise birthday party.

  “Did she like it? The surprise party?”

  “Mm,” he waffled. “No,” he admitted. “Marie does not like, how do you say, sudden.”

  I nodded, thinking the word he probably meant was “spontaneous.”

  We had that in common.

  “She is different around you,” he added.

  “Really? How?”

  He seemed to search for the word. “Not hard, soft, oui? You are having a good time?” he added, changing the subject, holding my eyes. We’d both just shared a piece of chocolate cake with the most intense cocoa flavor I’d ever tasted, and my chocolate blogs made the shortlist at Saveur magazine’s 2011 Best Food Blog Awards.

  I thought about his question. Was my world on fire? No. Did I feel the need to check my texts or tweet? No.

  “Oui, merci,” I said.

  He kept looking up at me, from under his brow, and moving his jaw slightly.

  “You like music?” he asked. My face flushed. He knew I did. On our way here, I had done what I always did when I heard a great song on the radio. I clapped my hands together and reached for the volume, before I remembered it wasn’t Jess’s car. He had graciously encouraged me to turn it up.

  “I would like to take you dancing. To a boîte de nuit.”

  Oh. My eyebrows popped up. I didn’t expect a cop to want to go to a nightclub. But, they have fun, too. I nodded. Why not? It was only midnight.

  I was beyond disapproving when he got behind the wheel of his car. We’d finished a bottle of wine together. I hedged, but with a hand on my shoulder he commandeered me into the passenger seat of his Peugeot. “You are safe with me. I am an officer of the law,” he answered my silent protests, emphatically, charmingly, closing the door.

  When we arrived ten minutes later, safely, outside a set of buildings tucked in from the port, I was certain he had lost his way. Creeping along slowly, up ahead, I made out people waiting in a long line.

  He stopped right in front of the line and got out. A doorman opened my door. Another man was walking around the back. Was it a valet car service? Bastien didn’t pay them anything. Instead, he helped me out of my side and tugged me along, gaping, after him, up a dark five-hundred-year-old (or so I guessed) stairwell. I could feel the beat in the soles of my feet, and my adrenaline jacked up. I decided Bastien must be a regular—which struck me as odd. What kind of detective goes to a club regularly? Then I thought: it’s France. What do I know?

  Another doorman opened a set of doors at the top of the stairs for us. My eyes struggled to take it all in. Dimly lit crystal chandeliers hung down at different heights. Scattered throughout the two levels were at least six balustered staircases. It was like Gone with the Wind meets Parisian Goth. And the music: it was stuff I’d never heard before. “What’s this place called?” I shouted in his ear.

  “Noir.”

  After that, Bastien’s hand always seemed to be on me. On my arm at the bar, as we ordered champagne, on my back as we wove around groups, around my waist on the dance floor. He tried to make eye contact as we danced in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. He’d grown bolder in the dark.

  Ever aware of the gawkers leaning over railings watching the dance floor, I downed my entire glass of champagne. I could make this work, I told myself, because I wanted to dance. And I did make it work, sort of, with one more glass of champagne. But Bastien kept shifting in, trying to dance against my body. He wasn’t getting the message every time I subtly inched away.

  I just wasn’t into him. He was forcing the issue, so I had my answer. And that was a let-down, mostly because of the Marie connection.

  After five or six songs, I motioned I was in need of a break and suggested this, loudly, in his ear. He pulled me right into his body to hear better, which was unnecessary. I eye-rolled inwardly. He nodded and ushered me through the dance floor and up one of the sets of winding stairs.

  After he planted me at an empty spot against the bar, he spread his hand, gesturing, “Back in five.” I nodded and leaned in, hoping to get the bartender’s attention. I checked out my reflection in the mirrored bar. Flushed. Eye makeup holding up. My barrette had slipped down slightly. The big curls had fallen, and I smoothed a few blond strays. The bartender came over and I ordered a mineral water.

  “Not another champagne?” someone said in my ear. My stomach flipped.

  His voice.

  Panicked, I glanced in the mirror at the man who had just spoken to me, and
my pulse quickened.

  Impossible.

  I turned sideways and looked up.

  Yes. It was him.

  My heart was in my throat.

  It was Louis. Towering over me.

  Our eyes met. His expression was . . . a dark force. A stormy, violent, dark force.

  What in the—?

  I swallowed.

  What was he doing here? How, how did he know I had been drinking champagne? Had he been watching me? I faced forward, uncertain how to deal with the man behind me. I mean, why was he even talking to me?

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked snidely, stepping in so close I couldn’t turn around if I wanted to. My breath hitched. He was barely touching me with his body, but he was touching me. I was reeling in his presence, his aggressive presence.

  I recalled him storming out of Marie’s bedroom. And the two women he’d had a few days ago. I pursed my lips. The music’s beat pounded inside me, and I called on restraint from all the Sunday school I had had to teach in my youth.

  “Not as much as you enjoyed yourself the other night, I’m sure,” I practically shouted. Then I squared him up in the mirror.

  Good, Fleur. Show him how jealous you are.

  His eyebrows raised, and his face, formerly so fierce, warmed, gratified. He’d understood perfectly that I was referring to the two women, and that I was hurt.

  As much as I wanted to deny the truth, or hide it, to protect myself, I wasn’t capable.

  He leaned in, and both his arms trapped me in place. “I sent them home. Without supper. Join me for a drink,” he said in my right ear, his lips just grazing it, creating an erotic sensation. Join him for a drink? Wait, so he didn’t do the bimbettes? Without supper? Maybe they’d still been appetizers.

  “I’m here with someone,” I proudly informed him in the mirror.

  Yeah, that’s right! I added silently with my face.

  “I know,” he answered, deflating the effect I was going for.

  So he had been watching me.

  How long?

  He did that whole silent conversation thing with his eyes. I wanted to shout, “I have no idea what you’re saying!”