“You’re too thin,” she says to me as I set out of the back doors and shield my eyes from the blazing sun. To my relief, the table settings are for two, and there’s a simple caprese salad and bread on the table, just enough for both of us. The backyard is teeming with flowers and birdsong and the buzz of insects, but none of the Dumonts is in sight.
“I am not too thin,” I tell her. In NYC I got into the American mentality of working out. I did it a lot, boot camps and self-defense and the like, but I’ve also put on a few extra pounds. The weight—and bigger ass and boobs—doesn’t bother me as long as I feel strong.
“I guess I’m just not used to seeing you as a woman,” she says, dishing salad onto my plate. When I was younger, I was more on the pudgy side, a rarity in France. “You’ve changed so much.”
Have I? I thought I became a different person when I moved, but I never put any of this behind me. Coming back here just proves it. I’m back to feeling lost and hopeless and scared. In some ways, it’s like I never left at all.
Except this time you have a plan, I remind myself. All you need is time and patience.
Too bad it feels like I’m running out of both.
We eat lunch under the midday sun. My mother seems completely at ease, but I’m shouldering the feeling that a net is going to drop from above at any moment. I never saw Gautier again after he found me in Pascal’s room yesterday. I did everything I could to make sure of that.
But he’s mentioned twice now about wanting to take me for a drive today, and I refuse to get in any car with him alone. I’m just not sure how long I’ll be able to avoid him or what I’ll say.
“Where is everyone?” I ask my mother as I finish up the last bit of burrata cheese, olive oil dripping off it and onto the plate.
“Mrs. Dumont is out for Sunday brunch. Mr. Dumont is somewhere in the house. Maybe in his study. He was looking for you earlier, but you were sleeping.” She gives me an annoyed look.
Fuck.
“And there’s Pascal right now,” my mother says, and I follow her gaze to the side of the house where his private entrance is. He’s just opening the door, about to step inside.
“Excuse me,” I tell her, and I bolt, dropping the fork in a clatter and running across the lawn in my bare feet until I reach him.
“Pascal,” I call out quietly as he’s about to close the door.
He pauses and peers around at me while I stop in front of him.
He’s wearing aviator sunglasses that make him look like a model, though I rather prefer it when I can see his eyes instead of my own reflection. I feel I can read him so much better.
“I was wondering if I’d see you at all today,” he says, leaning against the door with his arm propped up, all casual-like. “You enjoying your day off? You look relaxed.”
I can’t see his eyes, but I can definitely feel them as they coast up and down my body, causing heat to coil in my stomach. I’m wearing cutoff jean shorts and a demure tank top, something I threw on when I thought it would just be for lunch with my mother.
“I have something I’d like to discuss with you,” I tell him, even though I didn’t give it much thought, and the words are just tumbling out of my mouth.
He waves his hand at the door.
I shake my head. “I don’t feel like having a conversation in your bathroom again.”
He stills at that, and I know he’s probably feeling bad about what happened.
“Where would you like to talk, then?” he asks, looking around.
“We could go for a drive,” I tell him. He frowns, looking put out. I fumble on. “I know you just were out somewhere, but . . .”
But please take me far away from this house.
“My father said something about taking you for a ride,” he says stiffly. “Is that not happening?”
I shake my head, giving him a tight smile.
He keeps frowning, and I know he’s studying my face, chewing slightly on his bottom lip. “Okay. Sure. Wherever you want to go.” He glances at my bare feet. “How about you grab some shoes.”
How do I say the next thing without sounding pathetic? Come with me, please? I don’t want to go back to the house alone?
But I don’t say anything, because I can’t tip him off that anything ever happened between his father and me. If he knew, he’d only question why I’m here.
I’m surprised Gautier isn’t questioning me on that, either, but I guess that’s what this Sunday drive was supposed to be. I have a feeling if he takes me away in his car like he wants, I might not come back.
So I just nod and turn around, running back over the lawn toward my mother, who is still drinking her mineral water outside. So far so good.
“What was that about?” she asks as I run inside. I grab some paper, an envelope, and a few euros I had kept between the pages of The Jungle Book, folding them over and slipping them in my bra; then I grab a pair of slides by the door, quickly slipping them on my feet, not wanting to spend an extra second in here in case Gautier shows up.
“I’m going out with Pascal,” I tell her when I run back out. When she looks disapproving, I add, “We’re talking business.”
“Aren’t you supposed to go with Mr. Dumont?” she asks. “He told me this morning that was your plan.”
Well, it’s better than ever that I thought of a new one.
“Duty calls,” I tell her and blow her a kiss before running back across the lawn to Pascal, who is still waiting by his door.
I made it.
His glasses are pushed up on his head now, his dark hair flopping to the sides, and I can see his striking eyes as they take me in, his smile amused.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he muses thoughtfully, still looking me up and down, and now I can really feel the heat in his gaze. “It’s kind of nice seeing you like this. You looked so free and happy running toward me, I must have let it go to my head for a second.”
“Well, don’t,” I tell him, but I can’t help but smile back at him. “Your head would fall off.”
He doesn’t need to know that I was literally running away from something.
I follow him to his Audi, noticing that he’s in his weekend clothes as well. Not exactly relaxed—just dark jeans and a black dress shirt—but at least it’s not a damn suit. It also shows off his ass in a way that his suit jackets never let happen.
Stop staring at his ass, I tell myself, but then I decide, why the hell not? He’s looking at my ass all the time. I actually like looking at him, just not when he can see me.
He’s almost at the car when he stops suddenly, almost causing me to collide with his back.
“Why do I have the feeling you were staring at my ass?” he muses, turning around and taking a step toward me, staring down at me with a sort of lazy curiosity. Gosh, his eyes are pretty in the sunlight and on a Sunday. Must be a different Pascal than I’m used to.
“I would never be so disrespectful,” I tell him, straight-faced.
His arched brows raise. “I wouldn’t mind if you were.”
“Staring at your ass or being disrespectful?”
He runs his hand along his strong chin in mock contemplation. “Both.”
“Where are you going?” Gautier’s voice bellows across the driveway, and my stomach sinks in response.
I look over my shoulder to see him stepping out of the house, walking toward us.
I glance up at Pascal, and he stares down at me, and there’s something in his eyes that warns me, like he can read the fear inside me, like he’ll handle it.
“I’m taking her to Paris,” Pascal says casually, putting his hands in his pockets and striding toward his father with a casual ease that I know is a front.
Gautier stops and waves his arm at me. “Well, you’re going to have to cancel. I told Gabrielle I needed to talk to her.”
“You can come along,” Pascal says, and even though it’s a horrible idea, it at least means I won’t be alone with him. “You ca
n talk to her all you want.”
“I wanted to talk to her in private,” Gautier says, and the icy quality to his voice tells me that he does not want to elaborate.
Pascal glances at me. I give him nothing; I just hope he stays stubborn.
“Whatever you have to say to her, you can say in front of me,” Pascal says, crossing his arms in a wide stance.
I was afraid to make eye contact with Gautier before, but now that Pascal is effectively between us and he’s not backing down, I look him dead in the eye. Lift my chin, raise my brow, daring him. If he wants to take me, he’s going to have to do it physically and with my mother and his wife home. That won’t go over very well.
I don’t even know if Pascal is being protective of me, or if he’s just trying to rebel against his father, like he forgot to do it in his teenage years, but either way, I’m grateful.
“Fine,” Gautier says, breaking away from my stare. “It’s not important anyway. It would probably go over her head.”
He gives me one last sharp look, a look that makes my blood pressure rise, and then he heads back to the house, shaking his head.
Pascal watches him until he disappears and then turns to face me.
“I think you and I definitely need to talk,” he says carefully.
I just press my lips together and nod, my heart rate slowing.
I get in the passenger side as he gets in the driver’s seat, and I’m barely buckled in before he’s peeling out of the driveway and screaming past the trees down to the main road.
“Jesus,” I swear as he whips the car around onto the country road, causing me to brace myself on the dashboard before he guns it from zero to sixty in about a second.
He’s laughing as he does this, gleeful, his tongue sticking out like a crazy person. The glasses are slipping back down over his eyes, and he’s rolling down the windows so the wind is blowing in and messing up both our hair.
“I take it that driving is your stress relief,” I say, transferring my grip to the handle above the door.
“I’m probably the only person who enjoys their commute,” he says. “Everyone wants to live in Paris and take the métro, but why would I want to cram my body among countless others and breathe in the stink and sweat when I could be doing this?”
He guns it again for emphasis, and I let out a little squeal, followed by laughter. I can’t remember the last time I felt a thrill like this. Maybe never.
“You have a driver too,” I remind him.
“Exactly. But I only use him when I’m drinking. It’s not worth getting caught over, not for me.”
“Hmm,” I say, gazing at him. “I thought you’d flourish on all scandals.”
“No, not all of them,” he says, and at that his voice drops, and his expression becomes grim. “Especially a scandal that implicated my family in anything they couldn’t run from.” He licks his lips and shoots me a quick glance. “Or at least a scandal that implicated me in something I couldn’t run from. Especially if it’s something that I didn’t do.”
“You’re talking about Ludovic’s murder,” I say. “I know you didn’t do it.”
His smile disappears as quickly as it appeared. “But someone out there might think that.” He palms the steering wheel, switching his focus back to the narrow two-lane road that skirts along farms and clusters of oak trees. “Did you mean it when you said you wanted to talk business, or did you just want to get away from my father?”
“The first thing.”
His brows knit together, and I know his eyes under his glasses are picking me apart for the truth. “You promise me?”
“Promise you what?” My throat feels parched at the way the conversation is going. I need it to go in the opposite direction, far away.
“My father seems to think he owns you.”
I manage to swallow, but it’s still like my mouth is packed with sawdust. “What makes you say that?”
“Nothing,” he says. He bites his lip for a moment, then admits, “He said so.”
“What? When?”
“After you left the room yesterday. He thought we were . . . a little too close for his comfort.”
“Why should that matter to him?”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that, because it shouldn’t matter to anyone.”
I stare at him to go on. That was not at all what I meant.
“But it got him started,” he continues. “He seems to think he owns you because what’s mine is actually his.”
Your father is a fucking monster. The words dance on my lips, and I have to bite down to keep them back.
“I’m not surprised, considering how you all operate.”
“But . . . he really means it. He said you had history.”
I give him a hard look. “In what way?”
He grimaces, looking uncomfortable, which is pretty rare for him. “I don’t really know. He said you were a troubled child. Unseated by some deep trauma that happened to you but you wouldn’t talk about.”
A sour laugh escapes my lips. I can’t help it. Oh, that is fucking rich. Of course he would spin it that way.
“What else did he tell you?” I ask once I’ve composed myself. I’m waiting to hear about the corkscrew stabbing.
“That’s it . . . Is there something more?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
I tilt my head as I stare at him. “Why does this matter to you?”
“Because I don’t share.”
My brows shoot up. Oh, of course he doesn’t.
And yet, for reasons I can’t explain, those words do something to me. They give me the same kind of thrill in my core as the reckless driving did.
“Because you’re mine,” he adds.
“I’m your employee,” I point out.
“And you’re mine. Whether you like it or not, you chose to work for me. You chose me, Gabrielle. You didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“We always have a choice. We lie to ourselves all the time and tell us that it’s fate or it’s destiny or it’s in our blood. That who we are is predetermined by someone else. But that’s not true. It’s all a lie. We always have a choice. And you chose me.”
I turn away and put my attention on the road. I don’t like the way he’s laid it out for me, though it seems he’s the one who should be following his own advice. “I work for you, Pascal. Nothing else.”
The lesser of two evils.
He just might be a lot less than I bargained for.
Regardless, I have to keep this a good relationship. I have to keep Pascal on my side because he’s the only ally I have in that house. So if he wants to claim me as his, then fine. And I’m fucking relieved that he doesn’t share.
“So what was the business, then?” he asks after a few minutes have rolled past. We’ve left the country roads behind and now are zipping along the highway heading into Paris, the smog getting thicker the closer we get. “What did you find out about the envelopes?”
I’m grateful to change the subject even though it feels a bit like walking on thin ice.
“Well, first I looked into the stamp and postmark,” I tell him. “Both postmarks were from Paris, in the eleventh arrondissement.”
That’s a lie, though. The first postmark was from Paris. The second postmark was from Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, the nearest town to the Dumont chateau.
“That doesn’t tell us much,” he says.
“No, it doesn’t,” I tell him. “And the ink and the paper are all pretty standard, and the stamps are of the new circulation. Which means if you really want to investigate this, you need to tell me why you think your ex-wife or cousin would be trying to blackmail you. I remember Olivier,” I add. “He’s a nice guy. Different side of the family, I suppose. I really don’t see him doing that, but you did tell me he’s your enemy, so let’s start with him. What happened?”
“I blackmailed him,” he says. He says it so simply, like
he just told me what he had for breakfast.
“You blackmailed your cousin? Why? When?”
He stares straight ahead for a moment, then changes lanes to speed ahead of someone. “I was young. I was . . . I don’t know. I followed orders, but I thought they came from me.” He frowns. “I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
“What orders?”
“My father had an idea. A long con, if you know the term.”
Do I ever.
He clears his throat and kneads the steering wheel lightly as he overtakes the vehicle and then cuts in front. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asks.
I shake my head and wait patiently as he lights up a cigarette, putting the window back down halfway. The air whips the smoke out of the car as he puffs back. I find myself focusing on his lips for a moment until I remember what I’m waiting for.
“My father wanted to make sure that we ended up with the majority of the company,” he says, smoke falling out of his mouth. “We had shares. My cousins, Renaud, Seraphine, and Olivier, had theirs. Olivier had the most. At the time, I was married to Marine, and my father thought it would work if we could get Marine to seduce Olivier.”
I blink a few times, not sure I’m hearing this right. “You got your wife to sleep with your cousin?”
He nods. “It was easier than we thought. Goes to show, huh? Olivier gave in to her, and they had an affair, and then my father caught them. It was a setup. All Olivier ever cared about was saving face and trying to live up to his father’s expectations, so we knew that he would never reveal what really happened. The shame it would bring him with his father. In some ways, I wish his father had known how imperfect his son really was. Besides, he didn’t want to work for the Dumont brand anyway. Back then he already had plans to be a hotelier.” He ashes out the window. “So we blackmailed him for the shares of the company. And it worked.”
“And Olivier knows?”
“Oh yes, he knows.” He shrugs. “That’s how we got control after Ludovic died. That’s why he fled with his tail between his legs to California.”
I’m trying hard not to be so appalled by him, but I am.
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