Page 16 of A Royally Fake French Menage (Rippton U Creatives #3)

GENIE

I stood before my mother who wept crocodile tears across a debtor’s desk and sighed.

This is why she blindsided me the first time.

Grace Lockwood, my mother, already knew about my trip to Europe before I told her because she had me followed. She already knew, because she was in panic mode. And she was on my case to launch my lines because her business— hers, not mine —had failed. Again.

This was not the first time my mother’s choices didn’t work for her. It simply was another chink in her perfect armor the world never saw. All the lies. The bullshit.

Tonight looked like a last ditch effort to keep it all afloat. Beau Bennett found out about that and for reasons still known only to his own interests, decided to stick his nose where I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

So I stood in the debtor’s dingy office in a part of London where I’d never been and probably never wanted to be ever again.

My mother’s hair stood on frazzled ends as she stared at me through lashes clumped together.

Her makeup had run and her clothes were torn.

The entire building, a warehouse on the edge of Westminster's industrial sector, stank of stale urine.

Mom’s skirt was in taters, and she sobbed openly, grasping at my feet as I skittered backward into a hard body. One arm wrapped reassuringly around my waist. I didn't have to glance backward to know it was Jacques.

A pudgy, sweaty looking man leaned across his desk, and leered at me. I half expected a burnt out cigar to hang from his fleshy lips. The whole set up had a noir type feel to it, like something out of a nineties gangster fast talking flick.

Because that’s what this whole thing was.

A set up.

Because not only would my mother not only die before her treasured wardrobe was torn or ruined, she didn’t have a bruise on her. The whole building and its scents—for the daughter of a luxury brand magnate—was overkill.

And the real tell? Those clumpy lashes and smeared makeup. My mother could be in a multi person porn film as the final event, the money shot mayhem, and her makeup would be perfect.

Not a run in sight.

I sighed. “Is this really what you’ve been reduced to?

An act so pathetic you’ll wear dime store makeup to con me into whatever it is you’re asking for?

I said I'd go to the party. You didn’t have to pull this charade off to get me to go, Grace.

” I flicked a hand in Mom’s direction. The paid actor on the other side of the desk smirked, and leaned back.

A half smoked cigar emerged from his pocket. He lit the thing, obscuring some of the stale piss that tainted the air. “Told you she wouldn't go for it. I brought in the toy boy, though.”

My blood ran cold. “What?”

Beau frowned. “What deal did you make, you pathetic excuse for a maternal unit.”

I snorted, and even Jacques laughed, tugging me tighter against his chest. Somewhere in the background, Barclay moved around, exploring. Jacques wouldn’t allow him closer to the action than that, and so he was relegated to the distance while we renegotiated my mother’s “freedom.”

“Don’t take her seriously,” I scoffed. “Whatever trouble she’s gotten herself into, it’s not here, Beau.”

He turned his frown on me. “Genie, I don't think this is quite the farce you think?—”

A soft gasp from behind us broke the pervasive stench that choked us all. I twisted around in Jacques arms in time to see Barclay crumple, but not without taking the shadow behind him to the floor.

Twin flashes lit the space. Both shots were silenced, and all the louder for it.

I stood between the two men with their raised weapons as beau swore softly, striding forward to check on my sobbing mother.

“What do you need?” he asked softly, though his voice had an edge to it.

I suspected this wasn’t how he wanted the night to go, but he foresaw the outcome much clearer than I had. I shook my head, ignoring him as I took off at a run, heading for Barclay where he crouched on the floor over the figure all dressed in black.

His white shirt was dotted in the blood of another man.

I reached him, the flashlight app on my phone illuminating his face that also bore several dark splattered spots.

Fuck. He’d freak out if he knew. Barclay was so pedantic about his personal hygiene.

I’d seen it in how fastidiously he washed his hands, how often he showered.

How disgusted he’d been with himself the night after he spent hours asleep in the garden, passed out drunk.

Tentatively, I raised a hand and slid my thumb nail beneath the largest dot of blood. The man at his feet didn’t moan and I doubted he would miss it any time soon. “You’re not hurt, are you?” I offered it up as a distraction.

“No,” Barclay said softly, watching me with all the patience in the world.

With another careful nail I caught the next drop, and the next, until I almost had them all. His face nearly clean, I admired my work, and him. At least, his demeanor. He didn’t shake or break down like I might have expected.

“Your bodyguard does an excellent job,” I said softly.

“I know,” he whispered back. His voice shook, though I wasn't sure if that was from fear or pride. Maybe a mix of both.

“Maybe you should listen to Beau.” Jacques stood tall behind me. I didn’t need to look back at him to know that he mirrored Beau Bennett's imposing stature, his unyielding stance.

Perhaps we have our own gangster noir stage after all.

Barclay leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. “I’m proud of you. Not a single tear. And you never bought into her bullshit.”

I shrugged. “Sadly, this isn’t the first time she’s pulled something like this because her ploy didn’t work or she didn’t want to sue for bankruptcy.

That would be admitting to failure in public.

My mother hates letting the world know that her plans have failed.

” I grimaced. “I stopped falling for that sort of con when I was ten years old.”

“A ripe old age to attain wisdom," Barclay intoned solemnly.

“You bet your ass.” I kissed him back slowly as Beau snuffed out the still smoking cigar that was as cheap as the rest of the set. I broke away and glanced over my shoulder at him. “How did you know he wasn’t a paid actor?” I asked curiously, uncaring that he knew about my own mistake.

Beau paused in the act of grinding the cigar into ash beneath his patent heel. Barclay wasn’t the only one with a penchant for pretty things or a pedantic nature.

“Because he used to work for my father,” he said softly, his tone pensive. “I didn't like that he was involved with the mother of someone I used to date.”

Someone I cared about .

The unspoken words hung in the air between us.

I swallowed hard, hating that he put me in this placement, but grateful for the heads up all the same. “Th–”

“Genie says thank you.” Jacques stepped in front of me, placing his body between Beau and where Barclay and I crouched on the floor.

“She says you’ve paid your debt for any hurt that you may have inflicted on her before, and that you’re no longer required here.

” He folded his hands before himself, including the one holding his gun.

I stared at the back of my newest lover, only able to see his imposing silhouette, crouched on the floor of a dusty, urine scented warehouse, enfolded in the arms of another.

A sort of stillness fell over us all, the city alive everywhere but here.

“I like this shade on you.” Barclay broke into the void, the standoff between dominants above us where I feared to tread.

Breath whooshed from me as I looked down at my blood stained nails, and giggled.

“What should we call it? ‘ Inequity’s den at midnight’ ?

" The name and the whole situation left me giggling harder as Barclay kissed his way down my neck, edging his boot behind the dead man’s neck beside us and kicked his body out of the way.

“Call it ‘ Jacques’s Delight’ ,” Beau said suddenly from the same place where he hadn’t moved since ending the life of the cigar smoker opposite my mother.

He shot her a hard look. “Shall I take this away and get it ready for your event this evening?

It looks as though I'm attending while I’m here on my father's behalf.”

I stared, having no idea why Beau Bennett needed to represent the California mafia’s don at a London gala charity dinner. But if Beau Bennett said he had work to do, then I wasn’t one to fight him on it.

And besides, he was taking a particularly unpleasant job off my hands. Still…

“What will it cost me?” The tightness that had released from my chest a moment before zinged back along my spine. Jacques, with his hypersensitive attention to us, shifted a foot backward. I ran my fingertips along his calf muscle through his pants leg under Beau's watchful gaze.

Fuck it, I’d go down on both my lovers before him just to earn a reaction right now, and I think we both knew it. He might have Sylvie now, but I'd always been a soft spot for him, the girl who wouldn’t stay put no matter what he demanded of me. That I'd fallen for two Frenchmen must gall him.

They were both mine and no one else’s. Well, except between us, of course. All sharing gratefully permitted.

“I’ll take you home, if all this is accounted for?” Jacques caught my elbow at a quick glance to Barclay.

I shook my head. "We're still establishing details.” I knew Beau Bennett well. Well enough that his silence spoke louder than any shouted claim. I suspected both men knew as much, but I wanted to understand this debt I’d just walked into.

If all I had to do was pay my mother's debt out and dress her for the evening, then I'd manage.

“No,” Barclay said firmly. “Let me offer you this gift, my love.” he locked eyes with beau over my head, snatching me tight to his chest.

I was halfway through an objection to why that was a terrible idea when Barclay kissed me. And I realized that of all the times I’d been kissed in my life, that I’d never actually been kissed before at all.

Because Barclay Augustus Chesterfield could kiss .

Of the life changing variety.

Soft but firm lips moved over mine, warm and sweet as he encouraged me to open my mouth.

I flicked my tongue against his bottom lip, expecting him to dive in, but instead he offered me open mouthed kisses that left me weak kneed and aching as I clung to his ruined shirt, locked safely behind the hard embrace of his arms.

This was the man who demanded his lover take his desire the night before. The same man who I fell for, all twisted and torture, but at the same time fair and kind and so damn cute.

Barclay was all those things wrapped up in a bow tie, a blood stained shirt and perfectly pressed slacks.

When he pulled away, the room stood empty except for us. My mother, Beau Bennett and the bodies were gone, the only evidence of their passing a few blood splotches on the floor and my nails.

Jacques stood in the doorway. His angular, handsome face remained half obscured by shadow as he watched Barclay claim me in a room full of death and lies.

And he never said a word, just watched, his gun at his side, not until we were ready to leave. Then he followed us, shadowing every step. I knew we would be safe until we reached home beneath his gaze.