Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 147966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 740(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 740(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
6
LUC
“Cancel the call with Nils Marchand and get Arturo to take the CEO of Villiers to dinner tonight.” As the front door closes, the hallway light dips. I drop my wallet on the console, my gaze meeting my assistant’s in the entrance antique Rococo mirror.
“You want your financial director to take Bernard & Marchand’s biggest competitor out to dinner?”
“Somewhere public,” I confirm. “Somewhere expensive. Gigi Rigalatto,” I suggest.
“But you hate that place.”
“I’m not eating there.” Because I neither want to see nor be seen.
“You’re looking to tank the deal.” Jacques’s brow furrows, and his tone carries more than a hint of accusation. I don’t bother to answer as I turn away, my footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. “I thought you wanted their brand under the du Beaumont umbrella?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” I reply. I’m just not ready to tell him so. Men reveal themselves remarkably quickly when they’re denied something they believe they’re owed. And Nils revealed enough last night to tank the deal himself.
The way he handled himself—the way he wouldn’t take no for an answer makes my blood boil. He made the girl, the woman, uncomfortable. And, apparently, that is where my capacity for compromise ends.
I force my mind way because I shouldn’t have been there. Then I wouldn’t have seen him, and I wouldn’t now be walking away from a hotel chain I’ve had in my sights for eighteen months.
For several years, I’d enjoyed the rare luxury of entering an Ardeo room without being du Beaumont—the acquisitions, the headlines, the money all coming before me. I’m not a father or a widower there. I’m not a target or a threat. I’m just a body, one that delivers and receives pleasure. After not visiting for so many months, of all the people I might have encountered there last night, Nils Marchand is the last I’d hoped to see. It was fucking inconvenient.
Nils knows precisely who I am, and worse, I know considerably more about him than I did a day ago. It feels personal, and I don’t enjoy admitting that.
My decision is nothing to do with the girl. The girl I’d gone to the basement looking for, but only to make sure she was safe. She looked so out of place. Beautiful and good. She might as well have been skipping through the place with a basket, asking for directions to her grandmother’s house.
And I hadn’t expected to find her so… enthralled. The catch in her breath. The delicate shiver that rippled through her and her whispered exclamation that dissolved into something perilously like a moan. The feel of her beneath my hands and the way her nails bit into my skin as though—
I tear my mind away. “Where are the children?”
“With the new nanny.”
My steps continue. “Her background check?”
“Preliminaries show she’s as clean as a whistle. Criminal, driving, credit, and employment history are all stellar. Emmy wasn’t kidding when she said they’d been friends forever because they were in kindergarten together. In fact, until they were eighteen, they went to the same school, with the exception of one term when—”
“I don’t need to know her life story.” Just that my children will be safe.
“—the girl, Primrose,” he continues regardless, “her family decided to pay Emmy’s private school fees. They also paid her Norland tuition fees.”
“The new girl is also a Norland graduate?”
“Nope, she didn’t graduate from a fancy London nanny college.” I halt and begin to turn at the unhappy news. “She graduated from UCL. Second time around at least, because her first undergrad degree was from Durham University where she earned a—”
“Excellent, a career student,” I retort.
His expression twists. “Turns out, becoming a doctor requires a lot of education.”
“What?”
He shrugs. “She just graduated.”
“Then why…”
“And she has a job at a prestigious London hospital starting in September.”
“Why would she agree to this?” I begin to move again. Down a half dozen marble steps, I make my way to the kitchen.
“Friendship,” Jacques says as though explaining an unfamiliar concept. “Respect. And because Emmy always puts the family first.”
“Except in this instance,” I bristle. Unfairly, I know.
“Cold, Luc. Stone fucking cold.”
“The timing is inconvenient,” I mutter.
“Not as inconvenient as it was to her dad, I’ll bet,” he responds.
I pivot with a glare.
“I mean, I can’t think of a time a heart attack would be convenient, can you?”
“I’m sure we all wish him a speedy recovery.” While I expect all of my employees to put their jobs first and pay them a premium to do so, I’m being an asshole. Worse, I can’t seem to stop myself.
The girl or the hotel chain? Or the fact that I didn’t get off last night?
A little from column A, B, and C most likely.
“That’s very true.”
“And a return to our status quo as soon as possible.”
“I never really liked their music.”
Disregarding that, I continue to the kitchen where Zoe stands at the stove stirring a pot of something that makes my stomach contract in hunger.