Page 33 of Rogue

Maxence couldn’t. He had ancestors in a noble French house, the Polignac family, but no royal blood.

The waiter stopped at their table and asked, “May I take your order?”

Max said, “I’ll have the turbot and a salad to start. Dree?”

She looked up at the waiter, her eyes still expanded too much. “I’d like the green side salad, please. That’s all.”

It was the cheapest thing on the menu at twenty-four euros. “No, eat lunch,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes. “I just ate two croissants. That’s more than I usually eat for breakfast. I’m still full. I don’t actually want anything at all. I’m just humoring you.”

He raised one eyebrow at her.

“That’s a neat trick,” she said. “Did you learn it on Vulcan, Auggie?”

Maxence told the waiter, “In addition to the salad, she’ll have the lamb.”

“Not the lamb,” she said quickly. “I’ve eaten enough lamb for my whole life.”

Oh, the sheep ranch.“Do you like fish?”

“Yeah, most fish.”

“Another order of the turbot, then,” Max handed his menu to the waiter.

When the waiter left, Dree told him, “I’m really fine. I can get something later, somewhere cheaper.”

“We are not stopping anywhere else. We’ll shop for clothes for you until supper.”

“You don’t have to buy me a coat.”

“I promised.”

She insisted, “We need to at least call the Buddha Bar to see if they found mine.”

“It was just a light jacket. You’ll need a nice coat for the time you’re with me and a proper coat for the cold. You seem to feel the chill quite a bit. And some clothes for sight-seeing. And some formal clothes for when we go out.”

“You don’t need to buy me all these things,” Dree said, glancing at the empty tables around them. “I can find a laundromat and wash my gym clothes and scrubs.”

That was not how Max lived when he was between assignments. “You can send those things to the hotel laundry in case you want to visit the gym, but you’ll need proper clothes for Paris. I’ll call a friend of mine and arrange for showings.”

No, Flicka was still in Geneva, probably. She wasn’t available to mediate.

No matter. The hotel concierge could probably arrange appointments.

Maxence needed to check with his contact in Flicka’s brother’s security staff to make sure events were proceeding.

“What do you mean, showings?” Dree asked him.

Max was confused. “You know, showings. You go to the designer’s shop, and models wear the clothes so you can select them. They’re tailored and delivered a few days later.”

Her face screwed up into some approximation of dismay or disgust. “I—what?”

Max mused, “Yes, you’re right. We don’t have a few days. We’ll have to pick up a few things ready-to-wear and put a rush on the others to get them sooner. And considering that it’s Sunday, we will need to convince them to open the shops for us.”

“Or we can go to any one of the enormous department stores we saw on the way here! Quite a few of them on the Champs street were open, despite it being a Sunday.”

He was confused. “Why would we want to do that?”