That was a really stupid joke, but I laughed because I was so fucking relieved, I could hardly contain myself. “Wh—what are you doing here?”
Why was it hard to breathe? Someone had to have called him. This wasn’t just random. It couldn’t have been…
“Hope called.” He held up his phone. “Asked me to come get you, that you’d be arriving in a taxi you couldn’t pay for.”
My sister had saved me. “Why didn’t the card work? What is going on?”
“Seems that your brother has taken off with some diamonds that you gave him. He and Kit took the money and ran, so to speak.” He shook his head. “Stupid idiots. At least he sent you here. I happened to be here. I don’t know that I’d have crossed town to save you somewhere else.”
Okay. I was cooked. Fried. The dress that had earlier felt like a coffin was now like a noose. There was nothing around my neck, and yet it felt like someone choked me to death. Had all the air been sucked out around us?
Zeke placed his hand on my shoulder. “Layla. Do us both a favor and don’t pass out. I’m really not in the mood to play any bigger role in your drama today than the one I’ve just been forced to manage.”
My panic shifted from anxiety to anger in two seconds flat. “In my what?”
“Don’t shout either. The entire world doesn’t need to hear our conversation.”
My day really couldn’t get much worse. I’d run from Kit and left him at the altar. My father hated me, my brother stranded me at a hotel with no money, and despite his promises to come, he was obviously not going to do so. And Hope had sent Zeke Scott to get me—the man of my teenage fantasies—and he was proving himself to be just another asshole in the long line of men that I knew in this world.
I took a long breath. It didn’t really steady me, but I was going to pretend that it had. “Where is Hope?”
He looked away for a second before practically glaring at me. “On an airplane with Bridget and your father. They weren’t given the opportunity to get your stuff.”
That wasn’t possible. Justin, yes, he would abandon me, but not Hope. She and Bridget never would. I was one hundred percent sure about that.
“Hope said to tell you,” he pulled out his phone and stared down at it, “that she had no choice but to get on the plane. They drove straight to it, and if she doesn’t get on it, things will be worse for you. She will explain when you two next talk.”
I was fucked. I closed my eyes. I was in Paris. I couldn’t speak or understand a word being said to me, and I had almost no money in the account that was mine. My brother had stranded me at this hotel. What was I going to do? I counted to ten. It didn’t help. I was going to have to fake my way through this.
When I lifted my lids, I’d pulled it together at least well enough that I wasn’t going to cry. I hoped. “Zeke.” I didn’t know that I’d ever said his name aloud before. I’d said it plenty in the dark when I was all alone and imagining things I’d want done to my body. Asshole he might be, but gorgeous nonetheless. Besides, if today showed anything, it was that I had no sense whatsoever when it came to choosing men. Even my fantasies proved to be bad for me.
He lifted his eyebrows. We stood under a covering that led into the hotel. If we turned left, we’d be inside, right would take us back to the street. “Layla?”
That was twice now he’d said my name. It was a new record. “I need a minute. I…I don’t know what to do, and I have to think. My mind…it doesn’t want to work at the moment.”
“Does it work at other times?” He shook his head.
That was it. My father had been done with me, and I was officially done with this conversation. What had I done to Zeke to deserve this? I’d not even asked him to come and rescue me from the cab. Had I hit his dog with my car and didn’t remember? Injured him in some way that earned me his disdain?
“What is your problem?” He didn’t want me to yell, but that was what I was doing now. “I’m sorry you were inconvenienced. I realize this whole morning has probably been a lot of boring for you, but my life is falling apart, and I would appreciate it, given that you are a family friend, if you could try to be a little less rude.”
My lower lip trembled. It was a telltale sign I was going to lose it. Full on sobs were on their way if I didn’t suck this back in. I hated crying. Not that anyone ever liked it. But it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of experience with anyone taking care of me when I cried. I was mostly told to knock it off.
“Do you want me to pat your head and tell you it’s all going to be okay? You ran out on your wedding and pissed off your father, little girl. What did you think was going to happen?”
I boiled over. He’d done me the favor of igniting my temper. It at least made the tears vanish. “I’m not a little girl. I am obviously a grown up, and I don’t want you to pat me on the head. All I asked you to do was to give me a fucking minute to think.”
He shook his head. “You’re a grown up? You could have fooled me. The most immature twenty-two-year-old I’ve ever met. Went from living off your father to being ready to live off your husband. The bravest thing you ever did was run from your wedding, and now here you are, a sniveling toddler. I thought you might finally have grown a backbone when you booked it away from Kit, but here you are, still pathetic. You disgust me, Layla.”
I smacked him, hard. Nothing had ever felt better.
But reality quickly rushed back in. I’d just hit my father’s business partner, and he was the only person who could possibly help me, given my situation.
There was no rule book for what to do here, no articles I’d ever read on how to handle a man I’d just whacked for being rude to me on the worst day of my life. I lifted up my chin. Yes, at some point, I was going to fall apart. No, it wouldn’t be in front of him.
“Apologies.” I nodded. “We can be done with whatever this moment is and never see each other again.”
For his part, Zeke was beautiful in his anger. Men shouldn’t be so completely beautiful to look at. Tall, broad shouldered. He wore his perfectly tailored blue pinstriped suit. It didn’t wear him. He’d been using the same watch for as long as I remembered, and he never took it off, no matter what the rest of his outfit happened to be. When I needed to catalog people, I always did it by starting with their accessories. I’d done it since I was a young child. Small details and then outward.
His face was sculpted like he’d been made to be photographed. These days, he wore a neatly trimmed brown beard and the hair was thick on top of his head, begging to be touched. His eyes were dark, brown, and endless in their depths, even though they were so angry. I couldn’t blame him. One side of his face was bright red from where I’d struck him. I’d not been gentle about it.
“Thank you for saving me with the cab.”
There I’d officially said everything I should say, and now I was going to hightail it out of here and try to find my way back to my hotel, where I presumably had a room until tomorrow and where my stuff was currently stored. Unless my brother had ransacked that, too, although I wasn’t sure how he could in the time we’d been away from each other. Considering traffic, it was amazing my father had gotten to the airport so fast. But then again, he did seem to make the world move to his liking.
Goosebumps broke out on my arms. I could do this. Somehow.
“Layla.” Zeke’s voice was lower this time when he spoke. I’d struck him, and I knew very little about him. Was he going to be the kind of guy who hit me back? I’d never had that happen. But I’d hit him and…
He nodded towards the hotel. “Let’s get you a drink at the bar. And then we’ll go get your stuff from wherever it is.”
I blinked. What had he just said? “A drink?”
“That’s right. You’ve had a long day and it’s only lunchtime. Well, almost lunchtime. It seems like the kind of day that deserves a drink, even as early as this.”
I rubbed my arms. “I just hit you.”
“I’m aware.” He still hadn’t rubbed h
is cheek. “Come on. Drink.”
I walked toward him. My feet were starting to ache. I had no shoes, and I was pretty sure when I looked at my feet later, they were going to be cut to pieces. Every step shot agony up my legs. The good news was my dress was so long, no one could see I was shoeless. Small wins, I supposed. “Why are you taking me for a drink when I just hit you?”
“Because I deserved it, and I can’t remember the last time someone so perfectly gave me what I deserved.” He walked ahead of me, letting the doorman open the doors for us as we entered. I was getting a lot of looks from bystanders and pedestrians. A wedding dress now covered in dirt and mud with my hair half falling in my face was naturally getting me a lot of second glances. If they happened to know who I was, then it was going to garner me even more attention.
Zeke took my elbow, drawing me to him. “But don’t make a habit of it, Layla. One hit, yes. Two, and I might think you’re telling me you want me to hit you back,” he whispered in my ear. “On your ass.” I almost stumbled, and he stopped me from falling. “Maybe you do.”
I didn’t know what to do with any of this. “I…”
Whatever I would have said, I didn’t manage because I was suddenly struck by the beauty of the hotel I’d just walked into with Zeke. My brother had said it was the hotel of the birds, and that was what it was. Marble representations of doves and some other representations I didn’t recognize were everywhere. It should have been cheesy, but it absolutely was not. It was beautiful. Someone had taken a lot of time to carve and display those birds. They were everywhere, and I couldn’t get enough of looking at them. The details were extraordinary. All-consuming and astoundingly beautiful.
“You like them?” Zeke stopped so I could look around.
“They’re… Yes, I like them. They’re beautiful.”
He smiled at me. The first time I’d ever seen him do that. “I do too. Some people don’t. Some people make fun of the birds, but I feel like there’s nowhere on Earth I could go other than Paris that I could see this.”
The rest of the hotel was equally as striking, or at least the bit I could see on our way to the bar, which was right off the lobby. The lighting changed immediately upon entering the space. It was darker inside, with burgundy walls that had gray panels all around the space. A fireplace wasn’t lit but evident in the corner, with a gold screen that contrasted with the silver everywhere else. A giant mirror showed the other side of the bar, displayed over the fireplace.
For the early part of the day, it was fairly busy inside of the bar. Three bartenders rushed up and down it, clearly busy, but all waved at Zeke as he entered like he was an old friend.
It begged the question, “Do you come here a lot?”
“Yes.” His answer didn’t give me a lot of information, but I supposed he’d told me what I’d asked.
We sat down, which was hard in my dress, and almost instantly, one of the bartenders was right by our side. He spoke to Zeke, and they conversed back and forth without me having a clue what was being said. Eventually, they both turned and stared at me. I had no idea what they wanted.
Zeke leaned back in his seat. “What do you want to drink?”
“I’m not much of a drinker. I don’t know…”
The bartender spoke again. I smiled but had no idea what he wanted from me. Eventually, Zeke looked back at me. “You don’t speak a word of French, do you?”
I shook my head. “Not one.”
“Okay. I’ll order for you. He speaks English, but he doesn’t like to. Might be easier if you don’t have a preference if I just did it.”
I nodded. “Sure. You order.”
That was the easiest choice I’d made today.
“How do you not speak French? I thought you four went to the best schools wherever you were living.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. We had. My father didn’t want us in boarding school, for whatever reason he’d never shared it, but we always attended really good private schools wherever we happened to have moved. He didn’t like to settle, or stay anywhere too long. Once we were astronomically wealthy, we seemed to up and go even more than we had when we’d been only extremely rich.
“I’m not very smart.” People, when they noticed the things I couldn’t do, and they did notice, didn’t tend to remark on them. It was the whole I was richer than they were thing. But when they did, that answer seemed to shut them up fast.
Zeke tilted his head just slightly. “That’s obviously not true. Despite a lack of judgment, maturity, and common sense, you are able to converse, seem to have a high vocabulary, and I’ve heard you speak on videos that our PR department sent me. You are obviously smart enough.”
I remembered those videos. I didn’t work for the company doing anything substantial, but I did have some title in the charitable giving department that Hope ran. That was how I got my health insurance taken care of. That was gone now, too. So much for my birth control. Another thing I was going to have to figure out. Or I’d just refrain from having sex. That would be the best idea. No sex, ever again. I didn’t like it that much anyway. Better to just take care of myself. Only I was capable of giving myself an orgasm.
“Layla? Still with me? Not going into some kind of dramatic shock where you’ll have to be locked away to heal from your ordeal?”
My attention was right back on him. The bartender returned with two drinks. A champagne looking cocktail for me and a whisky for Zeke. He took his straight up, not even ice to filter away any of the intensity of the drink. I’d never been able to stomach whisky, it was just too much, so I supposed I should feel lucky he hadn’t ordered that for me.
“Sip if you haven’t eaten anything. I’m not going to hold your hair for you. In fact, we should get you some food.” He spoke to the waiter again who ran off quickly.
I lifted my drink to my lips. It was sweet and obviously had champagne in it, as the bubbles tickled my tongue. Other than that, I wasn’t sure what I was drinking, and at the moment, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care.
“So, you don’t speak French because you’re not smart.” He lifted an eyebrow and set down his drink. “You left Kit at the altar for…reasons. I really don’t want to hear about them. Your father has cut you off. Your brother stole from you and abandoned you in a country where, as we’ve already determined, you can’t speak the language. Your sisters have left, for reasons I’m inclined to believe that they had no choice about because Hope seemed frantic. But in any case, you are alone.”
I took a longer sip of the drink. “Yep, that’s pretty much it.”
The waiter set down some peanuts in front of me. I supposed it was a good thing I wasn’t allergic. Still, my stomach turned at the idea of eating. I set my drink aside. If I couldn’t eat, I wasn’t going to continue with the alcohol. Justin used substances to not have to deal, I didn’t.
“After this drink, I’ll take you to get your stuff and then we’ll figure it out from there. I can put you on a plane to New York if that is what you want.”
That made the most sense. I should go home. I had an apartment that was paid for until the end of the month when I was supposed to move in to live with Kit. So, I’d lose that soon, but at least it could take care of me now while I figured out what to do next. Hope and Bridget both had rooms I’m sure they’d let me crash in until I…until I what? I had no earthly idea. But I just had to do the next right thing. One step after another. Then the future would show itself to me.
Fuck me, I sounded like a self-help book in my own head, and even I knew it was bullshit.
“Thanks.” I had no other choices, nowhere else to go currently.
He nodded. “You’re welcome.”
Zeke brought the glass to his mouth and sipped the whisky. I watched him, hoping he didn’t realize I was staring, but that action might have been the most sensual thing I’d ever seen. He met my gaze, and I had a feeling he knew exactly the direction of my thoughts. Zeke probably had women staring at him all the time, because he
was like a walking advertisement for sex. They could probably sell bottles of that whisky here if they just sat him in this chair and instructed him to sip it all day.
Well…a walking advertisement for what sex was supposed to be and not what it was. Movie sex. Imaginary sex.
“If it means anything, I think Kit and his entire family are crooks. I think they’re bad people. Maybe not Kit. I don’t know him. Why would I? But his parents? Yes, particularly the mother. You’re well rid of them.”
I ate a peanut. It was warm, salted, with some other spice on that. What was it? I loved it. I ate another. Then another. Food really was better in France. Not that I got to eat very much of it. I had to watch my weight, but I could eat the entire bowl of these peanuts. The thought made me push them away. Anything I liked too much I had to get rid of, at least when it came to things with caloric intake.
Did my run through the streets count as my daily cardio?
“Thank you.” I finally responded to his speech about the Allards. I couldn’t say I disagreed with him. “But my father may never forgive me. He needed the money they were going to give him the second we got married. Well, you know, you work with him.”
Instead of answering me, he took a long sip of his whisky. “Remind me how much it was?”
Shouldn’t he have known that? “Don’t you know?”
Warning bells were going off in my head. I tended to listen to them. When you grew up like we did, you learned when someone wanted something from you. I tended to know almost instantly, and I was really good at quickly figuring out exactly what that was. I was many things, but naïve wasn’t one of them.
He set down his drink. “No, I don’t unfortunately, because your father has been, for some time now, hiding money and information from me. Things I need to successfully and honestly put an end to a partnership we should long since have dissolved. But he’s hiding money. So, I can’t do that, because I’m not going to be cheated. Not by him. Not again.”
Redhead On The Run (RedHeads Book 1) Page 3
