Real life was sewing up people in an ER and keeping them alive through the night.
Real life was working hard and putting money away in her savings account for a rainy day.
He said, “I seem to know quite a bit about you, despite the lying.”
“That was all lies,” Dree lied. “I’m really a person of ill repute who works for the IRS.”
Augustine chuckled again. “Fine. As you wish. After we’re done eating, pack your things. We’re going to my hotel.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said.
He fixed his dark eyes on her. “Yes, you will, because you’ll do everything I tell you, or else it’s ‘butt stuff’ tonight.”
Chapter Six
Shopping
Maxence
No one had ever argued with Maxence so much in all his life.
Dree Clark was absolutely infuriating.
He liked it.
Maxence was aware that he was playing Galahad again, rescuing yet another damsel in distress, and that he was on the verge of descending into a hedonistic spiral that might kill him this time.
It would also provoke new and yet-more in-depth conversations with Father Moses, and he was dreading those.
Why didn’t he just stop one or the other?
Why, indeed.
And yet, as Max stretched his long legs in the back of a ride-share SUV while the curvy little blonde clutched her gym bag on her lap, he was also enjoying himself and anticipating showing her Paris during the day and exploring her body at night.
That was the problem. He shouldn’t even be thinking such things, let alone plotting to do them.
But if Maxence didn’t take this pretty woman back to his hotel and initiate her into the various proclivities he was too fond of, he would end up hunting the bars of Paris and taking home a different woman each night for precisely the same thing or possibly worse.
It had happened too many times, both the descent and the remorse afterward.
Dree—if that was truly her real name, but Max suspected it was—bounced her knee as they drove toward the center of Paris.
As they passed the Arc de Triomphe, her face and hands were plastered to the car window as they drove through the traffic circle surrounding it.
Seeing Paris through her eyes would be fascinating. Maxence didn’t remember his first time in Paris. Some school trip, probably.
The car turned on a street leading away from the enormous edifice, and Dree settled back in her seat.
She caught his eye. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She checked her clothes. “Do I have a boob hanging out or something?”
He laughed. “What? No.”
“Okay. I’m kind of terrified to ask why you’re grinning like that, Auggie.”
Oh, Lord, that nickname, and he chuckled. “You’re just cute. Where shall we go for lunch?”
“We just ate breakfast.”
“I’m starving. Get a snack if you want, or a salad or some fruit.”
“I guess I can’t exist entirely on croissants. I should eat some plants.”
“Where do you want to eat?”
Her hand moved to her slim purse. She tapped it, a nervous gesture. “I don’t know.”
She must be worried about money again. How could he get through to her that he wanted to pay for everything and get her back on her feet? It would take more arguing, he suspected. “My treat. Everything is my treat. Let me see your list.”
“Are you sure?” She fished the napkin out of her purse and handed it to him.
He perused the spidery writing on the fragile paper. “Le Cinq is the easiest. They should be open by now. We’ll go there.”
“You said all the restaurants on that list were expensive.”
“Expensive is relevant. You should try Le Cinq.”
“But if it’s out of our way—”
The car slid to a stop in front of his hotel, the Four Seasons Hotel George V. Le Cinq was inside. Indeed, as cinq means five in French, he was pretty sure the restaurant was named after the hotel where it was located, George the Fifth. “Here we are.”
Max stepped out of the SUV into the soft Paris sunlight and strolled around the back of the vehicle, watching for other cars or pedestrians that might have an unhealthy interest in him.
He didn’t see anyone.
Excellent.
Dree emerged from the other side of the vehicle before he could get around to hand her out, and she refused to let him carry her small duffel bag. Maxence did manage to lead her inside and signal a concierge to take the bag up to his room while they ate.
“Are you staying here?” she asked, looking around the lobby festooned with orchids and white winter roses.
He nodded. “It’s a small suite. What else do you want to see today in Paris?”
They discussed their options as they were seated by a whisper-thin hostess.
Dree took the offered menu and examined it.
“Do you read French?” he asked.
“A little,” she said. “French was my language in school. But this is in English.”
He leaned and looked at her menu, which was in English. His was in French.
The hostess winked at him and walked away.
Dree’s eyelashes fluttered as she blinked rapidly. An alarming amount of white glowed around her blue irises.
“Problem?” Maxence asked, taking stock of his menu though he practically had it memorized. He’d probably have the turbot again. He’d grown up eating a lot of seafood.
She leaned across the table and whispered, “The soft-boiled egg is eighty-five euros!”
“Right. Do you want a soft-boiled egg?” He was still looking at the menu because you never know.
Dree’s eyes widened until Maxence half-rose in his chair, concerned that she was choking and in imminent need of the Heimlich maneuver.
She said, “Everything else is more!”
He sat back in his chair and went back to the menu. “I hadn’t noticed the prices.” The lamb looked interesting.
“We have to leave,” she said, her whisper more intense. Tears hovered in her lower lids. “There’s no way I can afford this.”
Maxence laid his menu on the table setting. “Chérie, I told you that I am paying for everything. Please sit down and order what you want to eat.”
“You can’t afford this. No one can.”
Maxence had been accused on many occasions of having too soft of a heart and on even more occasions of having a demon for a soul. These warred in him. He finally explained, gently, “Dree, I can afford this.”
She sat down, but her body was tense like she might spring up and flee.
That would be too bad. Max would hate to lose that Patek Philippe watch if she ran. It had been a Christmas gift from Arthur on a lark.
Her eyes were still so worried as she read the menu.
Well, he’d convince her eventually.
The plates at the table had a wide taupe and gray band around the rim encircled with gold. The settings matched the décor, of course, with soft gray draperies around the bright windows stretching to the ceiling far above. Maxence had always liked the sunlight in here, but Parisian sunshine was truly a thing unto itself. The two wardrobes on the side of the dining room were Louis XIV, and he wondered how many of his friends could trace their ancestry to the Sun King. Probably quite a few.
Maxence couldn’t. He had ancestors in a noble French house, the Polignac family, but no royal blood.
The waiter stopped at their table and asked, “May I take your order?”
Max said, “I’ll have the turbot and a salad to start. Dree?”
She looked up at the waiter, her eyes still expanded too much. “I’d like the green side salad, please. That’s all.”
It was the cheapest thing on the menu at twenty-four euros. “No, eat lunch,” he told her.
She rolled her eyes. “I just ate two croissants. That’s more than I usually eat for breakfast. I�
�m still full. I don’t actually want anything at all. I’m just humoring you.”
He raised one eyebrow at her.
“That’s a neat trick,” she said. “Did you learn it on Vulcan, Auggie?”
Maxence told the waiter, “In addition to the salad, she’ll have the lamb.”
“Not the lamb,” she said quickly. “I’ve eaten enough lamb for my whole life.”
Oh, the sheep ranch. “Do you like fish?”
“Yeah, most fish.”
“Another order of the turbot, then,” Max handed his menu to the waiter.
When the waiter left, Dree told him, “I’m really fine. I can get something later, somewhere cheaper.”
“We are not stopping anywhere else. We’ll shop for clothes for you until supper.”
“You don’t have to buy me a coat.”
“I promised.”
She insisted, “We need to at least call the Buddha Bar to see if they found mine.”
“It was just a light jacket. You’ll need a nice coat for the time you’re with me and a proper coat for the cold. You seem to feel the chill quite a bit. And some clothes for sight-seeing. And some formal clothes for when we go out.”
“You don’t need to buy me all these things,” Dree said, glancing at the empty tables around them. “I can find a laundromat and wash my gym clothes and scrubs.”
That was not how Max lived when he was between assignments. “You can send those things to the hotel laundry in case you want to visit the gym, but you’ll need proper clothes for Paris. I’ll call a friend of mine and arrange for showings.”
No, Flicka was still in Geneva, probably. She wasn’t available to mediate.
No matter. The hotel concierge could probably arrange appointments.
Maxence needed to check with his contact in Flicka’s brother’s security staff to make sure events were proceeding.
“What do you mean, showings?” Dree asked him.
Max was confused. “You know, showings. You go to the designer’s shop, and models wear the clothes so you can select them. They’re tailored and delivered a few days later.”
Her face screwed up into some approximation of dismay or disgust. “I—what?”
Max mused, “Yes, you’re right. We don’t have a few days. We’ll have to pick up a few things ready-to-wear and put a rush on the others to get them sooner. And considering that it’s Sunday, we will need to convince them to open the shops for us.”
“Or we can go to any one of the enormous department stores we saw on the way here! Quite a few of them on the Champs street were open, despite it being a Sunday.”
He was confused. “Why would we want to do that?”
“Because I can be in and out of there with clothes in a couple of hours.”
“But they won’t fit properly,” Max said.
“So? I need them today.”
“We could ask the hotel to send someone over for alterations. But the fabric is cheap.”
“I’m fine with it. Really. I’m appreciative as heck. You don’t have to do this.”
“I told you I’d take care of you. Now, no more quibbling. We’ll go to those shops to find a few things for the time being, but we’ll have proper fittings, too.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
Maxence smiled and leaned across the table. He’d been holding back ever since he’d met her, but he wanted more from her now.
He looked directly into her eyes and smiled. He drew one finger under her jaw, lifting her chin as if he was going to reach across the table and kiss her. “Say yes.”
She was watching him like she was fascinated. “Yes.”
He blinked sleepily and felt his heart expand. “Say yes, Sir.”
“Yes.” She watched him like a mouse stares at a snake. “Sir.”
“That’s better,” Max said, settling back.
“Who are you?” she asked him. Her voice was still breathless.
“My name is Augustine,” Maxence said, smiling at her and relishing the moment. “With you, I’m just Augustine, your friend. Your benefactor, if you will. But I like it when you call me Sir.”
“All right,” Dree said. “Sir.”
“Excellent. I think we’re going to have a lovely few days together, pet.”
After lunch, Maxence took Dree shopping for a few hours, first to the prêt-à-porter shops where she kept asking him if it was okay if she got something until he lowered his voice and told her to stop asking. He did enjoy that she showed him the clothes she wanted him to buy, modeling fuzzy sweaters that clung to her hourglass figure while he reclined in a chair and watched, whetting his appetite. He wished it were summer so she could wear sundresses with swishy skirts that would allow him glimpses of her thighs at opportune moments.
He received more texts from family and friends at home while they were shopping.
Uncle Jules is going to try to steal the council from Pierre. You should come. Pierre needs you, or we need you to save us from both of them.
You shouldn’t have left. Things are getting tense. This isn’t going to end well.
Jules said someone threatened him, suggested it was Pierre. I don’t know WTF is going on with those two. They’re both planning to fight for it.
These things were no longer Max’s problem, and he had made it clear to all of them that he was out. This constant haranguing had to stop.
After buying casual clothes at the shops, Maxence took Dree to the designers that were more his taste. The hotel concierge had indeed been able to arrange showings and fittings on short notice.
At the Alexander McQueen boutique, he’d dressed her like a voluptuous little doll. First, he selected a gray and black silk dress that the brand called a “dancing dress” for its fluttering hemline that bore a visual reference to Parisian can-can dancers, and then he chose a black and scarlet sheath that hugged and tugged her curves in all the ways his hands hungered to.
When they emerged from the designer’s shop with a promise that the two dresses would be delivered to the hotel within hours, Dree was nearly hyperventilating. “Those prices are obscene.”
He laughed. “The gray dress isn’t even couture.” The black and red one was.
She said, “I don’t know where I would even wear those!”
“Tomorrow, we’ll attend a ballet at the Palais Garnier, thus crossing two items off your napkin. That’s the gray dress. Wednesday, we’ll attend a charity ball I’ve been invited to. That’s the gown.”
“Wow! Are you sure? I thought you were just going to lock me in a room and screw me six ways to Sunday.”
That was also on the agenda.
He said, “We’ll go to the Louvre on one of those days for a few hours in the morning.” The Louvre was closed on Tuesday. He’d have to work around that and find something for that day.
“You sure know a lot about women’s fashion,” she said.
“It was very important to an old friend of mine. I listened to her guidance.”
“Yeah,” Dree said, taking his hand. “I can see that. You’re a good listener.”
He stopped her and turned her to face him. “Am I?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, little lines of confusion between her eyes. “I mean, I was a mess this morning. No, I was a hot mess fried in bacon fat, and you listened to all of it. I was absolutely mortified, but you didn’t judge. I appreciated it.”
“I’m never sure. I know I’m good at talking.” Too good. “But the career field I’m looking at requires listening skills.”
She smiled up at him. “You listened really well. I feel better.”
Maxence nodded. “All right. Back to the hotel.”
“What’s the schedule for tonight?”
“Is that how you ask that?”
Her coquettish smile made him tingle in all the right ways. She asked, “What’s tonight, Sir?”
“Something special.”
When they got back to the hotel, Maxence was ready to order room
service, do something depraved to his little sub, and collapse. He’d slept five hours the night before in her hovel of a rented room and only two hours the night before that on that cursed boat.
Maxence hated boats.
Indeed, it wasn’t quite five o’clock in the evening. He’d arranged a room service supper for eight o’clock and after that had planned a stroll to see the Eiffel Tower lit for the night.
And then the evening’s festivities would begin.
Maxence could crawl into that vast, glorious bed for half an hour.
Just a little nap.
Just a tiny, short, minuscule snooze to refresh before supper.
A siesta.
The beds at the George V hotel were so comfortable.
Chapter Seven
Sister Annunciata
Dree
After the world’s most expensive lunch and shopping, Augustine told Dree they had a few hours before a room service supper would be delivered. He wandered into the bedroom and reclined on the bed.
Dree hung up the new clothes that Augustine had bought her in the closet and stewed in guilt.
He’d even bought her five pairs of shoes: two pairs of horribly expensive pumps with red soles that she knew she’d seen on TV somewhere, two casual pairs, and sneakers for exercise.
When she’d joked that all these clothes wouldn’t fit in her gym bag when she left on Thursday, he’d bought her a suitcase more sturdily constructed than the walls of her apartment back home.
And all the clothes were brand-new.
Brand-new clothes were for special occasions or were work scrubs because they had to buy them new from the official hospital uniform supplier. Buying brand-new clothes for herself was frivolous and wasteful when the clothes at Savers or Goodwill were just as good. She didn’t know where the secondhand shops were in Paris, but she bet they were closer to her FlyBNB rented room than to Augustine’s grand hotel.
And this place was grand.
The living room set—a whole separate living room with a couch, chairs, a desk, and TV—was upholstered in dusty blue and pale gold, and there were columns on the walls and vases of pastel-toned roses. The bed in the bedroom was dressed in brighter pinks and greens and looked like springtime in Paris. The wall behind the bed was mirrored, which she thought was for kink until she saw the cityscape with the Eiffel Tower reflected in the glowing sunlight.
Rogue Page 8
