She could not imagine why Rae and The Dom wanted her and Lizzy to go to Paris, but menage was not a stretch.
Georgie drove around to the back of the plantation house and parked in the employee’s parking lot, a perfectly safe lot with low walls around the perimeter and trees overhanging the walls, making those shaded spots prime parking real estate. With Lizzy cringing and trailing her, Georgie held her keycard above the card reader on the back door for an instant, sending prayers up to Mary that her card still worked, considering that she and everyone had been fired from The Devilhouse the week before, and she prayed that Mannix fucking Bonfils wasn’t inside there, waiting for them, watching them through the closed circuit cams as they walked in.
Sour bile rose in Georgie’s throat, and she swallowed it down and sliced her card through the reader.
The light flashed green, and a click of the lock opening echoed in the warm, spring air.
One thing had gone their way. Maybe it was a good omen.
She trotted through the office building-type hallways, nearly sprinting when Lizzy started yelling stuff to the black sphere-cameras embedded in the ceilings, and made her way through the ladies’ dressing and spa areas to the costume closet. Jasmine air freshener gave way to dust and leather conditioner fumes in the unfinished warehouse-type room where the dress racks stood in long rows.
Luckily, Georgie was a size four and five feet-eight, so she had lots and lots of dresses to choose from in the middle racks, in colors from sherbet to jewels to midnight.
Lizzy, poor thing, was down on one end, sorting through the shrimp-sized clothes.
Seriously, if Lizzy got any smaller, she was going to end up in a tree, baking cookies.
Georgie sneaked a peek at Lizzy with the practiced eye of the roommate of someone suspected of anorexia, and she did look smaller. Her arms, once defined with small muscles, looked thinner. She was wasting away.
Maybe Paris would take care of that, too. A memory of croissants rose in Georgie’s mind, just a brush of a childhood spent in luxury hotels in Europe and South America. At the George the Fifth Hotel, just off the Champs-Élysées in the heart of Paris, the staff had known her family by sight and had had croissants waiting for little Georgiana, no matter what time of day it was, and a double scotch for her mother, no matter what time of day it was. Georgie had called it the Georgie Vee when she was little.
Georgie found a couple dresses that didn’t seem too slutty, though she wasn’t entirely sure how sweet, sheltered Rae would define that.
Jeff Jackson, head of security for The Devilhouse, strutted in, looking stacked and put-together as always in a suit. Georgie had often stolen glances at him, but he was married. Georgie put a cool front between herself and all married men.
Georgie had ethical lines, very bright and hard ethical lines, that she did not cross. Married men were one.
Other people’s money was another.
If other people had such bright lines, if other people did the obvious and normal and decent things, the whole fucking world would be a better place.
Oh, Georgie wasn’t judgmental. If you wanted to do something, whether it was drugs or sexual proclivities with consenting adults or lifestyle choices like living off the grid in a bunker or whatever, Georgie had no quarrel with that. Leaving people alone to live their lives was a great good in her book.
But damn it, hurting people, damaging them, stealing, especially from people who couldn’t afford it, those were bright and hard lines that no one should fucking cross, ever.
She was obsessing about it when she should be making final decisions on the green cocktail dress or the scarlet one, just because Jeff Johnson the married man was in the room, and they were going to Paris, and Mannix fucking Bonfils had been mind-fucking Lizzy.
Georgie should chill.
Green. She should take the green cocktail-length dress, and the black one with the jewelry-weight silver chains around the waist and hanging from the banded neckline.
Good. Making decisions was better than letting her head spin around with crazy thoughts.
Lizzy finished talking to Jeff and they left The Devilhouse, probably for the last time, Georgie mused.
That was another problem, but it was a problem that she could think about in a few days. First, she had to get Lizzy somewhere safe and get herself away from the Russian mob.
If Georgie had to make herself disappear again, it wouldn’t matter if she had a job waiting for her at The Devilhouse or not.
While she drove to the airport, Georgie listened to Rachmaninoff playing a wintry piano concerto and drummed along with her fingers on the sun-warmed steering wheel. The freeways slipping away outside seemed alien again, barren rocks and gravel filling the median and lonely stretches of marred concrete stretching up the sides. Georgiana Oelrichs would have expected lush East Coast trees and moist grass lining the highway, but Georgie Johnson shouldn’t. She was still Georgie Johnson, and she needed to hold onto that as long as she could.
Georgie shook her head as she drove, trying to clear all the crazy-buzzing up there, while Lizzy talked to someone on the phone. Rachmaninoff played on the stereo, trilling notes on the piano.
The desert sun poured down over the freeways, flashing off the other cars’ mirrors and chrome, blinding her so that she couldn’t tell whether they were being followed. Other cars’ tailpipe smoke poured through the vents, making her throat itch and taste like she had been smoking.
They arrived at the airport too soon and parked in the long-term parking garage to shield her car from the harsh desert sun while they were gone.
After a perfectly cursory security screening and examination of her passport that bore her legal name, Georgiana Johnson, they reclined in first-class seats on the plane, and the plane lifted into the air.
On the flight, Georgie put most of her energy into calming Lizzy and getting her to sleep so she wouldn’t have to think about what they were flying away from and flying towards.
The hours passed. Lizzy slept some. Georgie fell into a dark place where she didn’t obsess for a few hours.
Breakfast arrived. Pancakes.
Georgiana Oelrichs had liked pancakes as well as croissants.
Georgie Johnson preferred fruit and black coffee before she went for a long run in the mornings, but she was strapped into a plane, so that wasn’t happening.
The plane’s engines whined a long, slow scream around them, and the aluminum walls shuddered with turbulence jitters.
Georgie rebraided her long hair in the tiny airplane lavatory before she could bring herself to fork into the pancakes, which she shredded with her knife.
Lizzy leaned over, her tiny fingers alighting on Georgie’s arm, and she asked,“You all right?”
Georgie sighed. “Yeah. Paris is a big city.”
Lizzy frowned at her, her blond eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle. “Um, yeah?”
She sliced the pancakes to mush and pondered how to say this, if she should say anything at all. “Someone I know is in Paris, an old friend from a long time ago. I’m just hoping that I won’t run into her.”
“Someone from The Devilhouse?” Lizzy asked.
“God, no.” The Prinzessin von Hannover und Cumberland in The Devilhouse? What horrors. Oh, the humanity.
Lizzy sat back in her over-sized chair. “There’s no chance you’ll run into her.”
“I keep telling myself that, but I think The Dom knows her.” Georgie sampled the pathetic pancake mush, but the maple syrup was so much sweeter than the food that she chose to eat as Georgie Johnson that she set down the fork.
Lizzy picked up her hand and held it, a moment of comfort from the present, and Georgie squeezed her fingers.
“If I saw her on the street or something,” Georgie said, “she probably wouldn’t recognize me. It’s been almost six years.”
Ah, the sound of whistling in the wind.
To Paris
Georgie
Georgie led Lizzy down the hollo
w tube of jetway from the intercontinental plane and through the queued hubbub of customs. The other tired passengers disembarked from their many intercontinental flights, blustering and dashing from the snarl of the line to the next free window and scraping the dirty floor with their battered luggage.
Lizzy pouted that the bored passport control guy didn’t stamp her passport.
On the other side of the glass barrier, through the crowd that eddied and swirled like a flood studded with luggage debris, Georgie saw a sign with their names on it, and then she saw what was holding it.
His dark blond hair was cut almost military style, but a little too long, like he was beginning to break bad. His black suit must have been tailored, because normal sizes would never cling to his broad shoulders and trim waist like that. His dove gray eyes cut through her.
Paris might be looking up.
You know, this was exactly what Georgie needed to get a handle on everything: a tumble on a hotel bed with a man with a jawline so sharp that she would have to be careful not to cut her thighs.
He leaned down and asked her in low growl, “Lizbeth Pajari? Georgiana Johnson?”
She smiled at him. “Well, hello. I’m Georgiana Johnson. You can call me Georgie.”
He reached for Lizzy’s bag. “I am Dieter Schwarz. Ms. Reagan Stone sent me to collect you from the airport.”
It was like Rae knew just what Georgie liked: male.
And tall.
Dieter Schwarz turned sideways, and his profile slanted in and down from barrel chest to his tight waistline.
Oh, yeah. Georgie could just hole up in a hotel room with him for two days and never notice the world going by outside.
She glanced down at Lizzy, who had perked up a little in the presence of such a strapping specimen.
Lizzy said, “Thanks. Nice to meet you. I’m Lizzy. Have we met?”
Dieter tilted his head, and the sunlight from the skylight above them glinted on his golden hair. “I think not. I work for a mutual friend of ours in a private capacity.”
Georgie loved his accent, half the throaty growl of German, half the sexy sibilance of French.
Lizzy snapped her fingers and pointed at him. ‘You’re one of The Dom’s mysterious Men in Black that we all speculate about all the time.”
Dieter frowned, a lovely little crease between his intelligent gray eyes. “We had hoped to be less obtrusive. This way, please.”
He handed off their bags to another buff guy who was sandy-haired and dark-eyed, also built like an inverted pyramid and like he had ridges of muscle under that closely cut suit.
Dieter said, “This is my associate, Friedhelm Vonlanthen.”
Georgie looked between the two of them, trying to decide which one to hit on.
A smorgasbord of testosterone.
A buffet of male flesh.
Maybe Georgie could get both of them into her bed. She’d never done that before.
The manly men strode ahead of Lizzy and Georgie, their suit coats swaying just enough to occasionally reveal a glimpse of their strong butts in very nice suit trousers.
At least she wouldn’t be thinking about Russian mobs, lack of a job, or revelations of identity anymore.
Not until these guys sat down, anyway.
Sadly, they eventually reached a black SUV, and Dieter held the door for Georgie. She let her fingers linger on his warm, strong hand just a little as she clambered into the back seat.
Hans drove them through the streets of Paris, the window boxes a riot of springtime flowers, and the traffic careening through the lanes as they approached the Etoile, the starburst intersection that circled the Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs-Élysées.
Georgie gazed out the window a moment, images streaming through her head of the several times that she had taken this route, and nostalgia stole over her for her childhood, and her parents, and her brother, and innocence.
Dieter the Meatier turned to Hot-As-Fried-Ham Friedhelm (she was still working on that one,) and said, “When we get back to Schloss Southwestern, Gretchen and I will have you over for supper.”
“Yes, and how is your lovely wife?” Friedhelm asked.
“She is busy taking care of the incorrigible toddler-girl and very angry that I am traveling yet again this week. And how is your lovely friend?”
“Much the same,” Friedhelm said, shaking his head. “Vivienne is very angry at the proposed move, also.”
Dieter asked, “Who is the mysterious woman that Hans is spending his time with? He never brings her around to meet the Welfenlegion.”
“I couldn’t say,” Friedhelm said, “but he has managed to stay at Schloss Southwestern every time we travel.”
For Georgie, it was like a light bulb above their heads had blown out. Dieter’s hair flattened to dishwater dull, and Friedhelm’s features sharpened until his hawklike nose looked cruel.
Dieter turned to address them in the back seat, cranking himself like his overbulked muscles interfered with his flexibility. The sun caught in his eyes, and his gray irises turned eerily colorless. He said, “We will be at the hotel soon,” in a hoarse rasp.
“Thank you.” Georgie opened up her laptop and started typing a paper that was due next week at school.
So they would be at the hotel soon. She would be at least marginally safe there. She could just hide in her hotel room, evidently alone.
The SUV turned off the Champs-Élysées onto a smaller side street, one still lined with blooming windowboxes and planters along the side of the road..
A magnificent white building loomed behind the manicured trees. The SUV pulled over to the curb. The golden scrollwork on glass read, George V.
Lizzy stuck her elbow in Georgie’s ribs and crowed, “Hey! The Georgie the Fifth! Get it? Georgie?”
She blinked hard. “They’re staying at the George Vee.” Her insane giggle caught in her throat. “Of course they are.”
Georgie closed her laptop, thanked the security men, and stepped out of the SUV into the unforgiving French sunshine.
Surely the staff had changed a couple times in the intervening six or seven years since she had been here, and they wouldn’t remember her if she kept her head down. Rae probably hadn’t put the room in Georgie’s name, and besides, they couldn’t have a record of a Georgiana Johnson.
Of course, if Rae was at the George Vee, Flicka was probably around, too.
Georgie tucked her chin to her chest, right above her thudding heart, and blazed through the lobby. Her rollie suitcase bounced behind her as she wove through a mist of the bright scent of thousands of white roses and green hydrangeas arranged in stacked vases until a bellhop accosted her, took her bag, handed her a keycard, and led her to the elevator.
She kept her face down, staring at the dark blue rug and the golden veins in the marble floor.
Georgiana Johnson and Wulfram von Hannover
Georgie
The concierge minced out of the plush elevator and led Georgie and Lizzy to the door of a huge suite, the Empire Suite, where Georgie and her parents had stayed when she was fourteen. A security man in a black suit, yet another one, opened the front door for them, and they walked into the foyer.
The rooms spread out before them, rolling all the way to the windows that overlooked the buildings of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. Flower-scented air billowed in the open windows, thrown wide over the rooftops and traffic far down below.
Georgie kept her eyes down, staring at the royal blue and gold carpeting under her feet until Rae emerged from the master bedroom, ran over, and hugged them both around the neck.
Okay, she had delivered Lizzy to safety. Georgie could go now.
Instead, she wound an arm around Rae’s waist and looked over her shoulder at the Empire Suite.
Her mother had held dinner and cocktail parties at the inlaid dining table that seated ten. The upholstery stitched on the chairs seemed a few shades of darker blue than it used to be. Maybe they had had to replace it after spills or som
eone was sick on it after too much to drink. The chandelier that caught the Parisian morning sunlight above it glittered with more diamond-like crystals than nine years ago, it seemed. Her father had almost knocked that alabaster bust of Napoleon off its pedestal when he staggered into it, drunk.
The buttery, baked-bread scent of croissants filled the whole room.
Rae leaned down to talk to Lizzy. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Lizzy told her. “I’m fine.”
Rae grabbed Lizzy’s hands, dropping Georgie’s, and said, “Georgie told me about what happened, and I’ve never forgiven myself for not hauling you out of The Devilhouse and out of the clutches of that Dommy-Dom guy. What happened?”
“Later,” Lizzy told her. “First things, first. Thanks for the free trip to Paris, Rae-Rae.”
“Yeah, well, about that. Um, breakfast?” She gestured to a table with food, lots of food, Parisian food like croissants and fruit and coffee.
Of course, there were croissants at the George Vee. Georgie wanted to sob, but she walked toward the breakfast table without moving a muscle on her face.
Lizzy dodged around Georgie and Rae and sprinted to the table like she was a scampering bunny rabbit. She was already buttering a croissant while Rae and Georgie were still walking over and tore into it. “Oh, miGod. So good,” she said, spraying flakes.
Rae and Georgie sat down at the other two spots.
“What, not watching your carbs?” Georgie asked, staring at the moon-shaped pastries.
Lizzy held out a croissant. French butter was smeared over the end. “Try this. It’s so good.”
Georgie snagged a red apple from the dish in the center of the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat pastry before.”
Lizzy stuffed the croissant tail in her mouth and said while chewing, “I like pizza now, too.”
Georgie was just cutting into her apple, but the knife dropped out of her hand. “I cannot count how many times I ordered a large pizza just to offer you a slice, and you never—”
[Billionaires in Disguise 01.0] Every Breath You Take Page 5
