by Lula Baxter
“What is it?” I say staring at the box as he brings it in to set on the table in my room. I have an inkling, based on the long, flat size of it. I also have an idea who it’s from.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he says, shrugging.
After tipping him and closing the door I return to the box to satisfy my curiosity. The card is first and I rip the envelope open to read it.
For tonight.
A. R.
I set the card aside and open the lid to the box. Inside, is a stunning black dress. I lift it up to take a better look. It’s the little black dress to put all other little black dresses to shame. It’s sleeveless and fitted, with a beaded front and a nice-sized slit up the side. Sophisticated meets sexy.
Perfect for a night of seduction.
“So much for that promise,” I say aloud. I actually laugh as I stare at it. It’s beautiful and my body craves trying it on if only to feel like a princess for one moment.
Or a queen.
Flashbacks to that ruinous interview with the Boston Register hit me and lend a sour note to my thoughts. Maybe the dress is nothing more than a nice present, but I can’t help but feel the manipulation behind it.
And I’m done being manipulated.
I promised Alexandre dinner, and dinner is what he’ll get.
I resist the urge to smirk when I see the look on his face as I walk into the lobby. I hadn’t packed anything special for this trip. I certainly didn’t expect to run into Alexandre Richmont of all people. I did include a pretty sundress just in case my parents were thinking of a nice dinner somewhere.
Alexandre gets the cut-off denim shorts, Hard Rock t-shirt, and flip-flops.
He’s in a dark suit that has been tailored to perfection. It fits across the hard, lean muscles of his body like a second skin, showing off his best physical features. Any female in the vicinity who has functioning eyes has them firmly planted on him. He looks like James Bond, waiting for his female nemesis to slink up next to him in high heels and some sexy dress for a provocative game of cat and mouse.
“The dress wasn’t a suggestion, Astrid,” he says tersely. “I have reservations at Per Se.”
“You requested dinner, not me playing the role of your dress-up Barbie doll for tonight.”
A tiny part of me wonders if it’s wise to play coy like this, considering his not yet finalized his intentions with Dad’s company. But Alexandre did seem sincere in stating that dinner—or something else—had no influence over that decision.
A small, reluctant, and slightly impressed grin comes to his face, which puts me more at ease. “Very well then, a change of plans.”
Ten minutes later, we’re camped outside a pizzeria, eating two-dollar-a-slice cheese pizza and drinking Cokes. It’s the kind of greasy, horrible-for-me deliciousness that I gorge on in college. Other than with the dumplings earlier today, this is the first time I’m actually feeling ravenous in weeks.
Even though almost everyone who passes by us does a double-take when they see him dressed to the nines, Alexandre seems perfectly at ease. I wonder if there is anything that can actually make him ill at ease.
“So, is this the part where we finally get to know one another?” I ask between bites.
“What would you like to know?”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise, mostly because I have no idea what to ask. In many ways, Alexandre is still a perfect stranger to me. In just as many ways, I feel like I’ve known him forever.
“What was it like growing up in Monte Carlo?”
He finishes chewing and swallowing his bite of pizza as he seems to think that one over.
“It was…a transition at first. There was, of course, the culture shock, moving from Los Angeles to an entirely new country. My mother had taught me some French growing up, but I still had to learn quickly in order to fit in there, despite most people in Monaco speaking English.”
Alexander pauses and looks off to the side, focusing on nothing except what’s in his head. “The hardest part was missing my father,” he says quietly.
I stop chewing on the bite of pizza I’ve taken and watch him, feeling horrible. As common as divorce is these days, I still can’t imagine what it would be like to live with only one parent, especially if the other was halfway around the world.
“Why did they get divorced?” I ask, knowing how intrusive the question is. For some reason, I feel Alexandre is open to the intrusion. Something about this moment, standing here eating pizza in the middle of a busy New York street, feels ironically intimate.
Alexandre brings his head back to face me and there’s a small, cynical, yet sentimental smile on his face. “My parents aren’t divorced, Astrid. My father died when I was thirteen. He’s buried in Los Angeles.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alexandre
Astrid swallows so hard on the lump of pizza in her mouth, I’m afraid she might choke. Fortunately, a few sips of Coke help it go down and she recovers.
“I’m so sorry!” she says, staring at me in horror. “I thought maybe your parents were just….”
“I was deliberately vague before,” I reply. “It’s fine.”
I’m surprised to find myself feeling the truth of my words. I actually do feel fine discussing this with her. My father has always been a sensitive topic, one I’ve kept to myself, mostly for business purposes. If the people and corporations I usually targeted knew how he died, they’d rightfully be suspicious of my intentions.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she says softly, looking at me with a tenderness I haven’t seen from another person in a long time.
“Actually, this dinner reminds me of him more than anything. He’d be far more apt to choose something like this over Per Se.” I stare down at the last bit of pizza in my hand and laugh. “I can’t even remember the last time I had pizza, at least the kind that wasn’t covered in truffle shavings or caviar or some other ridiculous thing that shouldn’t even be in the same sentence as pizza, let alone on top of it.”
Astrid gurgles out some sound that indicates her revulsion and we both laugh.
“So, he was a pizza guy,” Astrid muses before going to work on the crust of her pizza. That tiny little characteristic—she’s the type to eat the crust rather than leave it on the plate—for some reason makes her that much more appealing.
“Well, in L.A. it was more likely to be In-n-Out Burgers. He took me all the time, which drove my mother crazy. He said it was an excuse for us to bond, but I think he just liked the burgers. In all fairness, they are pretty great and we did actually talk a lot.”
I feel that wave of emotion hit me as the surprisingly vivid picture of my dad and I sitting at one of the the outdoor tables, enjoying the California sun, hits me. We’d talk about the flag football team I was on in middle school, or how much I hated algebra, or how to get Amber Carson from social studies to notice me, or….
Usually, these memories cause a bitter stew of resentment to simmer inside of me. Tonight, for some reason, that resentment is gone, leaving nothing but a feeling I haven’t felt since Mom and I packed up Dad’s belongings to give away: nostalgia.
The added cherry on top is standing right here next to me, dressed like a damn hippie.
“In-n-Out? Everyone keeps going on and on about that place. I can’t believe it’s that good,” Astrid says, giving me a skeptical look, pulling me out of my memories. “I’ve had some pretty good burgers in Boston.”
“Listen here, Astrid, In-n-Out isn’t just a ‘pretty good burger,’ it’s…an experience. The toasted bun. The fresh lettuce and tomatoes. The grilled burger. The crisp onions. Damn you, woman! First, you fill my gut with this heartburn-waiting-to-happen,” I wave my own pizza crust in the air, “then you make my mouth water over something I haven’t had in almost twenty years.”
She’s been giggling and nibbling on the last part of her crust during my diatribe, but stops to give me a look of surprise when I finish. “You hav
en’t been back to Los Angeles in twenty years?”
The air around us becomes slightly more somber as that sobering thought sinks in.
“I suppose I haven’t,” I say thoughtfully.
There’s a silence that follows it, heavy with the questions I know Astrid wants to ask. She’s dug this deeply into my psyche, I might as well open the floodgates.
“His death was…difficult to watch. I think that’s the main reason my mother shipped us back to her home country. All that was left behind here were bittersweet memories…and debt.”
Astrid sips on her Coke, eyeing me nervously as her lips clamp down on the straw. I see the thirst for more information in her eyes.
“Cancer, specifically leukemia,” I say, answering the most obvious question. “This was back when insurance companies could still fuck you over. While the cancer ate away at him, the prescription medicine, hospital bills, and a next-to-useless insurance company ate away at our finances.” Now, I feel the bitterness setting in again. I can hear it in my voice, scribbling all over the picture of near perfection tonight has been, thus far.
“That’s terrible, Alexandre,” Astrid says. “These people, these companies they can be so ruthless. I’m glad Dad hasn’t become like that.”
“So long as he has ethical investors,” I reply purely by reflex. My gaze sharpens in the wake of it, realizing that I’ve given too much away.
Astrid, completely guileless, returns nothing more than a hopeful smile. “Like you?”
I give her a soft smile, envious of her naiveté and optimism. She has a grease stain from the pizza still on the left side of her mouth. I reach out my hand to cup her chin and run my thumb over it, wiping it clean.
“Like me,” I say softly, before bringing the thumb to my mouth to suck away the grease.
“Have a drink with me in the bar.”
The walk back to the hotel helped defuse some of the heaviness that our pizza dinner ended with. The conversation deliberately shifted to lighter fare that had little consequence to anything. Now we’re back at the hotel and, oddly enough, I find myself wanting to talk with Astrid more than I want to lure her up to my hotel room.
“Ohh…just when I thought he was going to be a gentleman,” Astrid croons. “Are you planning on ordering me another French 75?”
“Your poison is my pleasure,” I say with a grin, then soften it so she doesn’t think I have any ulterior motive. “Would you believe I just want to keep talking?”
“No,” she sasses, giving me a pert look. Then her expression softens and she sighs. “But I don’t want this to be over either.”
“So let’s have a drink and…see what dinner turns into.”
She laughs and nods.
I reach out to take her hand and lead her up the stairs to the bar. It’s nicer than expected, and Astrid definitely stands out in her t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. My own tailored suit has the contrasting effect of making our twosome one of those eccentricities that’s more interesting than inappropriate. We still get the same looks we garnered while eating pizza, but this is New York and odd couplings like ours are common enough to draw only passing interest. The two of us settle down at an intimate table for two with a single candle between us, and pick up the bar menus.
“I’ll just have a glass of any…Chardonnay,” Astrid says to the waitress who approaches us.
“And I’ll have the Brooklyn Lager,” I say.
“Beer?” Astrid comments, after our waitress leaves. “I wouldn’t have figured you for a beer drinker.”
“When in America…,” I say with a smile. “I actually happen to like beer. Not all Europeans are wine purists.”
“Ah, but you’re only half-European.”
“Correct.”
There’s a lull after that, during which we just eye each other over the candlelight. I lean back in the armchair I’m in, feeling casual again. Astrid tucks her legs underneath her and falls back into the seat even more casually. After a moment, we both laugh, erasing any residual tension from before.
The waitress comes back with our drinks and we each take a sip.
“So, how’s the beer?” she asks with a teasing lift of one eyebrow.
“Another nostalgic reminder of my dad,” I say, with a smile. “It was his beverage of choice.”
Astrid bites her lower lip and shifts in her chair. I give her a reassuring smile, letting her know this is perfectly safe territory, and continue on. “Anything else was too ‘serious’ to work with, according to him. He was a songwriter, for commercials and TV shows.”
“Really,” She says, leaning in with piqued interest as she picks up her glass again.
I nod. “ ‘An easy feel-good drink creates easy feel-good music.’ That’s what he used to say, so often it might as well have been his own jingle. The wine my mother preferred was ‘too sophisticated.’ The hard liquor stored in the cabinet that never seemed to be touched was ‘too serious.’ But beer was just right.”
As I swallow, the bitter taste reminds me of the first time Dad actually let me have a sip after years of my pestering him. Back then, the harsh taste repulsed me, making him laugh harder than I’d ever seen as I twisted my face in disgust. It’s a memory that should sting, but instead, it fills me with a strange warmth.
“So, speaking of dads,…I have a question,” Astrid says, after taking a long, slow sip of wine. “Back in Monte Carlo you mentioned that you found biochemistry fascinating. Is that true or were you just bullshitting him?”
“I find it more interesting than you can imagine, Astrid,” I say in a tone ambiguous enough for her not to grasp my real meaning.
“Is it because of your father?” she asks gently.
I once again sharpen my focus, realizing I can’t be too lax with her. Astrid still has no idea how Bernard Financiers operated as a business, at least until now. She also has no idea that I’m secretly Lord Wilmore.
“Yes,” I reply cautiously, wondering where she’s going with this.
“And that’s why you want to invest in my dad’s company?”
“It happens to be a good investment at the moment.”
I see the slight wince in her face and regret my choice of words.
“Are you really going to invest the money he needs to expand?” she asks softly, pressing on despite that.
I take a long sip of beer and consider her. “Yes, if the terms are right.”
She nods, breathing a small sigh of relief.
“You know, we’ve spent all night talking about me and I still don’t know much about you,” I say, mostly to change the topic.
She smiles and takes a long sip of wine. “Well, you’ve no doubt read the most interesting tidbits in the press already.”
“The Campbells. Your broken engagement,” I say, nodding. “That doesn’t tell me anything about you, though.”
She inhales, her eyes going wide at the seeming enormity of the request I’ve made. Something that should be simple is somehow monumental.
Once again, I have to wonder what those people did to her.
“I don’t know…” she says, drawing it out as she thinks about it. “I—I feel kind of like a butterfly that’s just escaped some horrible cocoon, free to do whatever I want and…,” She laughs. “Now I’m more lost than ever.”
“Well let’s start simply, you said you start your final year of school in the fall?”
She takes a sip of wine and nods.
“If you could do anything until school starts, what would it be?”
She laughs again, shrugging. Then she gives me a pained look, wrinkling her face with a self-reproach. “I’m pathetic aren’t I?”
“No, not pathetic at all,” I say thoughtfully. “Sometimes it’s nice not to have any agenda in life.”
That makes me think of Bernard Financiers and the new direction I’ve taken it. All because of Astrid.
“Why not spend that time with me?” I say.
It was a thought that flew into my head so quic
kly, I didn’t have time to register it before it hit my lips. As soon as the words are spoken, I realize it’s what I’ve wanted all along. I don’t want this to be the end. I want more of what we experienced in Monte Carlo. I wan’t more of how we connected tonight. I want to fuck her silly, then stay in bed all night talking. I want to wake up smelling her on me.
I want Astrid Hawthorne.
“What?” she asks, looking at me critically, as though she isn’t sure she understands.
“You have, what, a month left before school starts? Spend it with me.”
She immediately starts shaking her head and laughing as though it’s the most absurd idea in the world. “That’s…crazy.”
“All the more reason.”
“I can’t just spend a whole month with you, Alexandre.”
“Why not?” I say leaning back in my chair and giving her a challenging look. “It would be a month of leisure, fun, good food, wine, swimming in the Riviera. What possible argument could you have against it?”
She blinks, as though she hadn’t expected me to press her on the matter. “Because…well, just because,” She says. The look on her face tells me even she isn’t convinced by that non-reason.
This could go all night. Ultimately, she has no reasons for not going, other than it’s something outside of her comfort zone. She’ll struggle until she’s comfortable enough to say yes.
I decide to fast forward through all of that by playing my trump card.
High risk. High reward.
I lean in and look her directly in the eye. “Spend the month with me, and I’ll guarantee you that I’ll invest the fifty-million-dollars in your father’s company.”
It’s only as the words leave my lips that I realize, I gambled…and lost.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
