Page 26

After the text I’d received from Rosa, my mood was far from celebratory, but there was nothing I could do about my predicament tonight, and the last thing I wanted to do was go home early and risk facing Tyson.

So, I downed my wine and painted on a smile as we tripped down the boardwalk toward La Petite Plage, hoping to be numbed by the alcohol and buoyed by the exuberance of the group.

A yacht was docked in front of the club, the group of people on board singing along with the French pop song that emanated from its speakers.

Men with their shirts partially unbuttoned and women in dresses as short as mine sat at tables on the sidewalk, smoking and laughing, moving to the music that emanated through the windows.

I wished I felt nearly as carefree as they seemed to.

Laurent spoke to one of the bouncers, who ushered us inside, the bass booming as a guy in a black vest over a white button-down led us into a room with a high slatted wooden ceiling lit by dangling wicker-caged lights.

At one end of the room was a bar where the waitstaff danced in unison, colored lights sliding over their skin, and two full sides of the space were lined with giant windows through which the harbor was visible.

As soon as we arrived at our booth, our waiter brought over a magnum of Dom Pérignon with fizzing sparklers and a glowing green label, holding the bases of two flutes in his mouth as he poured champagne into them.

I gratefully accepted one as the music grew louder and Samira and Gisèle clambered onto the table, hips swaying to the music, beckoning for me to join them.

What the hell, I thought. I checked my phone one last time to see that the photos Rosa sent still hadn’t populated, then dropped my purse to the banquette as I climbed up, my worries alleviated by the effervescence of champagne bubbles in my blood.

I felt him behind me before I saw him, his body moving with mine. I didn’t need to ask where he’d come from. He was here. I glanced over my shoulder, our faces close in the rotating lights. He had that look again, his changeable eyes glinting in the dark.

The room around us disappeared as he brushed my hair away from my neck, and we were alone in the crowd, his breath hot on my skin.

My body buzzed pleasantly as he placed his hand on my hip, his fingers gently pressing into my pelvis low enough to be suggestive, dancing so seamlessly with me that it was like magic.

I knew I should break the spell. Walk away. This wasn’t what I was here for, wasn’t what I needed…

But damned if it wasn’t what I wanted.

It had been such a long time since I’d had that spark of connection with anyone that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Before this trip, I’d almost convinced myself that that part of my life was over. I was thrilled to find that not only was I wrong, but he clearly felt it too.

And then the gentle pressure of him behind me was gone. I turned to see him on the banquette, holding his hand out to me. I took it, gripping his strong biceps with my other hand as he helped me down.

His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “I’m going for a smoke.”

“Are you asking me to come?”

He held my eye. “Do you smoke?”

I shook my head without breaking eye contact, the champagne making me bold. “Does that mean you don’t want me to come?”

His lips tugged into a wicked whisper of a smile. “I wouldn’t say that.”

His eyes snapped to the window behind me, and a shadow passed over his face.

“What?” I asked, turning in search of what he’d seen.

“Tyson’s here.”

I spotted him as he said it, striding up the walk to the door like a storm appearing suddenly on the horizon. My buzz faltered. “He wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“Come on.” The rest of our party were lost in the music, paying no attention to us as he slipped his fingers through mine and tugged me into the crowd.

We threaded our way around the far side of the bar, through a door guarded by a bouncer that Laurent traded fist bumps with.

The alley behind the restaurant was empty, save for the cleanest-looking dumpster I’d ever laid eyes on.

As the door closed behind us, the music quieted to a pulsing bass line, and suddenly we were alone in the shadows cast by the streetlights.

We took a few steps down the alley away from the dumpster and he released my hand, setting his whisky on the ledge that ran around the building as he reached into his pocket to extract a pack of hand-rolled smokes.

He lit a cigarette and leaned against the brick wall, evaluating me as he exhaled. The smoke hung in the night air.

“What?” I asked.

When he didn’t answer, I reached for his cigarette, and he let me have it. “It has hash in it,” he warned.

I took a drag as he watched, amused. The smoke was sharp in my throat, and I coughed, handing it back to him.

“Been a while?” he asked.

I nodded, the hash tingling as I leaned my shoulder against the wall, facing him. “How do you stand working for Tyson?” I asked.

“I don’t take it personally.” He took a drag of the spliff.

“And not all the guests are so terrible. There was a man who had been coming here since the sixties. An old hippie—he was in his eighties when I knew him, still smoking ganja every afternoon—but very wealthy, friends with the Rockefellers, who used to own a big estate here. I took him surfing and he treated me like a son, taught me everything he knew about business, and when he died, I found out he’d written me into his will . ”

Maybe that was how he could afford to live in this exclusive island paradise. “He’s the one that gave you the car?”

He nodded.

“He must have really cared about you.”

He exhaled a line of smoke, leaning his back against the wall. “I did for him as well.”

I reached for the spliff, our fingers brushing as he handed it to me. I didn’t cough this time when I exhaled. “It must be hard to maintain personal relationships, working as much as you do.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked, fixing my gaze on the burning cherry.

He laughed. “I would not be standing here with you if I had a girlfriend.”

“I don’t know,” I teased, relieved. “You are French.”

“And you’re Swiss. Do you take a neutral position on everything in your life?”

“I like to think I’m fair. But really, I’m American,” I countered. “And we both know I own a firearm, so I think I’m doing a pretty good job of living up to the stereotype.”

He laughed and dropped the smoke, stubbing it out with his heel, then took a sip of his whisky, coming to stand directly in front of me. “Nothing about you is a stereotype, Audrey.”

Damn if I wasn’t a fool for the way he said my name. I leaned back against the rough bricks, my breath shallow as he set his glass on the ledge and placed a hand on the wall behind me, his body tantalizingly close. His gaze dropped to my lips. “I don’t get involved with guests,” he whispered.

“No,” I returned, my heart hammering. “You shouldn’t.”

He raised his free hand and ran his smooth fingertips along the strip of skin exposed by the cutouts in my dress. “This dress…”

I shivered with desire, our faces inches apart as he looked at me from beneath his brow. There was no better word for what his eyes were doing than “smoldering.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I reached for him, burying my hand in his thick hair as I brought his mouth to mine.

The release was like a detonation inside me, sparks and smoke and hissing steam as he kissed me slowly, sensuously, his body lightly skimming mine, his hand stroking the skin of my rib cage.

It was even better than I had imagined it would be.

I pulled him closer, pressing the length of my body against him, relishing the warmth of his lips on mine, the feel of his muscles against my chest. His tongue caressed the roof of my mouth as his fingers brushed the hem of my dress, our breath coming fast.

However inconvenient and ill-fated our entanglement might be, God it felt good.

Suddenly, the door at the far end of the alley on the other side of the dumpster burst open.

“I hate him so much I wish he was dead!”

Laurent and I broke apart to see Samira and Gisèle stumble into the alley in their heels, clearly trashed. “That motherfucker!” Samira screamed through tears, throwing her champagne glass against the wall and balling her fists as it shattered into a million pieces.

They were so wrapped up in their anger, they didn’t seem to have spied Laurent and me, but it was only a matter of time if we continued to stand there slack-jawed. He sank to the ground, pulling me with him, the dumpster between us keeping us out of their line of sight.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Samira wailed.

“So leave him,” Gisèle said. “Fuck the money.”

“But then the time I’ve put in already is worth nothing,” Samira protested. “All this pain, worth nothing.”

One of the girls kicked something that went scuttling across the pavement. “He may get rid of you before you have the chance to leave,” Gisèle pointed out.

“If he does that, he has to pay me. Not as much, but something.”

“So force his hand,” Gisèle suggested.

Samira sniffed. “It’s like he gets off on torturing me.”

Gisèle grumbled something I couldn’t make out.

In Laurent’s pocket, his phone buzzed. He extracted it, frowning when he saw the number. “I have to take this. I’ll meet you inside. Okay?”

I nodded, watching as he skulked along the wall away from the sound of Samira’s tears until he rounded the corner out of sight.

I was still high from our kiss, yearning for the pressure of his body against mine, but the heat of our connection left me cold now that he was gone.

The reality of my situation once again weighed on me, his abrupt departure on the heels of Tyson’s arrival bringing back all my doubts about his intentions and making me second-guess our connection.

Tyson had mentioned that Laurent had secrets, had insinuated that these secrets gave him power over Laurent, then thrown us together. Was our immediate attraction serendipity, or something more sinister?