Designing Emma
Volume 4
You Had me at Bonjour
Clarissa Carlyle
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
DESIGNING EMMA (VOLUME 4)
First edition. June 10, 2016.
Copyright © 2016 Clarissa Carlyle.
ISBN: 978-1533720443
Written by Clarissa Carlyle.
Also by Clarissa Carlyle
Designing Emma
Designing Emma (Volume 1)
Designing Emma (Volume 2)
Designing Emma (Volume 3)
Designing Emma (Volume 4)
Designing Emma (Volume 5)
Designing Emma (Volume 6)
Designing Emma Boxed Set Bundle (Includes all 6 Volumes in the Designing Emma Series)
Designing Emma Boxed Set (Includes all 6 Volumes in the Designing Emma Series)
Entertainment with Jem
Jemma 1
Jemma 2
Jemma 3
Jemma 4
Jemma 5
Jemma Boxed Set (Includes all 5 books in the Entertainment with Jem New Adult Romance Series)
Jemma Boxed Set Bundle
Lessons in Love
Lessons in Love
Letters of Love
Living with Love
Lessons in Love Boxed Set
Lessons in Love Boxed Set Bundle
Managed
Managed 1: A Rock Star Romance
Managed 2: A Rock Star Romance
Managed 3: A Rock Star Romance
Managed 4: A Rock Star Romance
Managed: A Rock Star Romance, Boxed Set (Includes All 4 Books in the Managed Series)
The Playgirls
The Playgirls 1: Catch and Release
The Playgirls 2: Growing Up
The Playgirls 3: The Big Leagues
The Playgirls Boxed Set
The Playgirls Boxed Set Bundle
Standalone
Just Like Heaven
Hollywood Heartthrob
Fresh Beginnings: Michael and Delaney
The Day the Siren Stopped
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Clarissa Carlyle
Find out how to get 3 FREE books!
You Had me at Bonjour
Author Info
Sign up for Clarissa Carlyle's Mailing List
Also By Clarissa Carlyle
Find out how to get 3 FREE books!
HTTP://CLARISSACARLYLE.com/newsletter
You Had me at Bonjour
DANIEL RICHMOND LOOKED absently around his minimalist apartment. Nothing had changed since he’d left several months ago. The air still smelled of stale coffee, and his wall-mounted flat-screen TV remained on standby, waiting to be reawakened.
Sighing, he stretched out on his black leather sofa and gently rotated the glass in his hand, allowing the ice to dance around in the dark pool of scotch. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes for a moment and tried desperately not to think of her.
But his efforts were in vain. Visions of Emma danced through his mind. He remembered how she’d tease him about his apartment being soulless. How they’d sit and watch movies together on his giant television, curled up on the very sofa he was currently sitting on. They’d made love on the sofa, gentle, tender love that lasted all through the night.
“Dammit.” Daniel pressed a hand to his temple and cursed. He’d placed an ocean between them; why couldn’t he stop thinking about her?
He’d been there. At the café, at the meetings. He’d wormed his way into Delacourt Designs. The man who was supposed to become Emma’s partner in marriage was now her business associate. The thought sickened him. He’d loathed Nick Cardelinni the moment he’d heard about his existence. He just didn’t understand why the guy continued to linger around like a bad smell. Maybe they were still getting married. Daniel had no idea. It wasn’t as if they’d tell him anything; he’d been frozen out since his departure to London.
Taking a sip of his scotch, Daniel savored the warming sensation as it slid down the back of his throat and thought of his old friend Damion, who continued to watch and desire Emma without having the impetus to actually tell her. Daniel almost pitied him. He saw the despair in Damion’s eyes when Emma agreed to go to Paris with him. You could taste the bitterness in the air of the meeting room.
But it was Daniel who deserved to be pitied. He drained the last of his drink, stood up, and wandered through the open-plan living space towards the kitchen area. Like everything else in his apartment, it was chrome and black, sleek in style.
Daniel didn’t want to go to Paris with a woman he pretended not to love. His ego stopped him letting her back in. She had agreed to marry someone else while she was with him. He knew he could never get past that. It left him conflicted, leaving him hating and loving her in sometimes equal measure.
“I shouldn’t have come back.” Daniel sighed, leaning against his countertop. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion, but he also didn’t want to be alone. Drinking alone was sad and desperate; drinking with someone else was a night out. But he’d burned so many of his bridges.
With no one else left to turn to, he texted Damion, hoping that some semblance of their friendship still existed and that Damion would join him for some drinks out of a deep-seeded feeling of loyalty.
“HE TEXTED ME.” DAMION looked up at Emma, who paused from packing the open box placed on top of her unmade bed. She was currently in the process of emptying out her house to get ready for the renovations.
She raised an eyebrow, not needing to ask who ‘he’ was.
“He wants to go out,” Damion added.
“I bet he does,” Emma stated. “Can you pass me that?” She gestured to a pink table lamp behind Damion.
“Sure.” He unplugged the lamp and passed it over, where it promptly disappeared into the box.
“I mean, we accepted his deal, what more does he want?” Emma was shoving objects into the box, no longer caring if they got damaged.
“And now I’ve got to go to Paris with him. Paris. Do you know how fucked up that is?” She didn’t look over at Damion, as she wasn’t expecting an answer. They were both painfully aware of how messed up their current situation was.
“It’s just business.” Damion tried to placate her.
“Please.” Emma seethed. “It’s just Daniel pulling all the strings like usual. He loathes not being in control of our lives.”
“Ems—”
“No. He thinks he can just waltz in and pretend as if everything is fine, like nothing happened. He’s even texting you to go out. The nerve of him.”
Damion looked down at his phone, at the message that seemed friendly and familiar in tone.
Hey, what are you doing tonight? How about grabbing a few drinks?
Exactly the sort of message Daniel would usually send, friendly, flippant, and straight to the point. Reading it made Damion realize how much he’d missed his old school friend. He enjoyed hanging out with Nick, but Nick was too observant. He was always insisting that Damion act on his feelings for Emma, while Daniel was happy to pretend that there was nothing going on, and sometimes Damion wanted to lose himself in denial. It was too painful to keep confronting the fact that he wanted her and couldn’t have her.
“Oh my God, you’re actually thinking of going out with him.” Emma was staring intently at Damion, her small hands placed upon her slender hips in a confrontational stance.
“What?”
“I can read you like a book, Damio
n Flores.”
“Look—”
“After all he’s done to you, you still want to hang out with him? You must be a glutton for punishment!”
“I’m not the one going to Paris with him,” Damion cried, suddenly angered by Emma’s vitriol. He watched Emma visibly shrink before him beneath the weight of his words.
“You could have said no, Ems,” he continued, his bitterness pouring out of him in an uncontainable wave. “You could have denied the deal, objected.”
“You and Nick both said it was a good deal, that we should take it,” Emma said.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to,” Damion roared at her. “You’re bitching at me for wanting to see the guy for one night when on Friday you’re jetting off to Paris with him. Don’t tell me I’m a glutton for punishment when you’re the one still in love with him even though he left you.”
Damion’s words darted sharply at Emma like daggers. Pierced by them, she lowered herself onto the bed and looked at her friend.
“You should go,” she told him, her voice small.
“Ems, look, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, and we’re both blowing off steam.” Damion moved to approach her, but she held him at bay with a steely gaze.
“Please, just go.”
“Ems, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Damion pleaded.
“You’re right,” Emma said. “Who am I to judge you having one night with Daniel when I’ll soon be stuck in Paris with him? He’s like a drug. He fucks us up, but we still can’t get enough.”
Damion clenched his jaw and looked down at his phone. He couldn’t help but read between the lines of Emma’s words. She hadn’t denied that she had feelings for Daniel; if anything she’d downright admitted as much. After how much he’d been there for her, stood by her side, held her when she cried, she still loved the man who had broken her heart. What more could Damion do to make her love him? His heart literally burned with the pain of it all. He needed a drink.
Swiftly, while still in the room with Emma, he replied to Daniel:
I’m not doing anything. Drinks sound good.
“Want me to ask Nick to come and help you finish up packing?” Damion asked awkwardly.
“No.” Emma shook her head, her body still stiff and rigid with tension. “My dad is here. He’ll come and lend me a hand.”
“Okay.” Damion turned to leave and hesitated. He knew that any window of opportunity he had was quickly disappearing. Once Emma was in Paris with Daniel, he wouldn’t have a chance to win her over.
“Go get fucked with your friend,” Emma said bitterly, her voice cold.
Damion sighed and left the room.
“DO YOU REMEMBER THIS?” Emma’s father held a framed photograph of the two of them and her mother, all of them smiling on a beach.
“I think you were seven in that picture,” Sebastian said as Emma took it from his grasp. The frame, once white, was now faded and chipped, but it looked deliberate, as though it were shabby chic in style rather than just old and neglected.
Even the photograph had faded slightly, though the joy in the trio’s faces beamed out brightly from the image. A young Emma was sandwiched between her parents. All of them looked tanned. Sebastian Delacourt was young and handsome, and beside him, his wife was beautiful in the timeless sense, with her long dark hair pulling away from her in a breeze. Between them, Emma was the perfect balance of their features, her own hair dark and free while she had her father’s smile and her mother’s slender frame.
“That was the summer we went to Florida,” Emma recalled.
“We took you to Disneyworld for the first time.” Sebastian smiled wistfully at the memory.
“Oh yeah, and Mom got terrified on Splash Mountain and wouldn’t stop screaming!”
“She never did like heights.”
Emma held the picture and continued to smile. It felt strange to think that the happy, carefree child in the photograph was the same woman holding it now. She felt worlds apart from the child she had once been. It was only her memories that connected her to her past self.
“But she went on the ride anyway,” Emma remembered, looking fondly at her mother as her heart ached in her chest. She missed her so terribly. “She knew how much I wanted us to all go on together.”
“So you could get the picture of us going down the big drop.” Sebastian nodded. “That picture must be around here somewhere. It’ll probably turn up while we’re packing.”
Emma took one last look at the framed picture and then carefully placed it within the open cardboard box. Then her eyes flicked up to her father. He was so present these days, so aware of all that had happened in their lives.
“I like you like this,” she admitted.
“Like what?” Sebastian asked, handing her some photo albums to pack. “Helping?”
“No, well, yes, but sober. It’s nice to, you know, talk about and remember stuff.”
“I know what you mean,” Sebastian agreed, smiling warmly at his daughter.
“I’m not looking forward to going to Paris.” Emma sighed.
“Why not? Your mother always loved Paris; it was one of her favorite cities in the world.”
Emma paused for a moment and bit her lip before dropping the bombshell.
“Daniel is going.”
“Wait, what? Daniel, Daniel? As in your ex, Daniel?”
“The one and only.”
“Ems, why is he going?”
“It’s part of the deal we signed for Delacourt Designs. It’s for the good of the company, but... I don’t want to go with him. It’ll be awkward.”
“Then don’t go,” Sebastian said, his paternal instincts kicking in.
“I’ve got to,” Emma said. “For the company. I just wanted to, you know, share with you how pissed off I am about it.”
The tension in Sebastian’s face eased a little upon hearing this. She wanted to share with him. That was a big deal.
“I’m trying this new thing where I think about what your mother would say in situations,” Sebastian admitted.
“Sounds... innovative,” Emma teased, sitting down on the bed as her father came and sat beside her.
“So... if your mother were here and you were telling her this, I think she’d tell you to go to Paris and show Daniel Richmond exactly what he’s missing.”
“Yeah.” Emma smiled and leaned her head against her father’s shoulder. “I think she’d say that too.”
THE MUSIC WAS PULSATING through Damion as he leaned forward and retrieved his almost empty glass of whiskey and Coke. Beside him, Daniel was nodding along to the familiar song, drumming his fingers against the plush fabric of the sofa on which they were sitting.
“I like this club.” Damion only had to raise his voice slightly to be heard, as they were in the VIP area, which was considerably quieter than the main area of the club.
“Oh?” There was a flicker of surprise in Daniel’s eyes. Damion didn’t usually favor such trendy venues.
“Yeah, I came here with Nick and Emma once.”
Disdain distorted Daniel’s features as he knocked back the remains of his own drink and hailed a nearby waiter.
“Same again.” He gestured to both his and Damion’s glasses. Damion considered protesting, citing that he’d had enough, but he was two drinks past the point where he could refuse further libations.
“Why are you two hanging around with that guy so much?” Daniel asked. “I mean, he’s trouble; he’s got mob connections.”
“He’s actually pretty nice.”
“I doubt that.” Daniel rolled his eyes.
“He was nice enough to stick around and help us out with the company,” Damion said tersely.
Daniel flinched at the comment but only for a second, quickly recovering from the verbal blow. “He’s only doing it because there’s something in it for him.”
“Like what? The guy’s got enough money.”
“Blood money,” Daniel remarked bitterly.
“Dani
el, you should give him a chance.”
“I bet he’s just after Emma, and this is all just a front because he still wants to marry her. Fucking psycho.”
Their fresh drinks arrived, and Daniel eagerly polished off almost half of his.
“He’s not after Emma,” Damion clarified. “He just wants to help.”
“Please, no one is that noble.”
“Maybe you’re not, but other guys are.”
Daniel turned away from his friend and looked down at the dance floor, where eager revelers were grinding the night away.
Damion flushed and downed some more of his own drink. He hadn’t wanted to spark an argument between them. He’d actually missed Daniel’s company. It felt good to be out again together, to be having fun. He didn’t want to taint the evening by discussing his absence.
“So what’s the scene like in London?”
Daniel turned back to him, a playful smile on his face. “Crazy,” he exclaimed. “Those guys sure know how to drink. They’d party until like four in the morning and then turn up for work at eight. I struggled to keep up.”
“Sounds intense.”
“It was.” Daniel swirled his drink, watching the ice chips dance around in the dark liquid.
“Were you sad you had to leave?”
“I guess.” Daniel shrugged. “But needs must and all that.”
“Yeah.” Damion pretended to understand even though he was still struggling with Daniel’s lack of loyalty towards both him and Delacourt Designs.
“Paris will be interesting.”
Damion felt himself stiffen. He was the one supposed to be going to Paris with Emma. Alone in the most romantic city in the world, perhaps he would have finally been able to tell her how he felt about her. Instead, Daniel had ridden in at the eleventh hour and stolen his romantic trip out from under him. Typical Daniel. Whatever he did, he always seemed to get the girl in the end. A routine he’d perfected since their time at prep school.
Designing Emma (Volume 4) Page 1
