A gruesome graphic image flashed through Stacy’s mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced it away. “She…died when I was nineteen.”
“And she left you enough money to attend college?”
“No. I co-oped.”
“What is that?”
“I worked part-time in my field with sponsoring companies and that meant I had to take a lighter load of classes. It took six years of going to school year-round, but I finished.”
“Vincent did not tell me that.”
“You asked Vincent about me? What did he say?”
“That he had not met you, but that you had…how did he put it? You saved Candace’s bacon in a tax audit.”
Stacy laughed and Franco’s gaze whipped in her direction. He acted as if he’d never heard her laugh. Come to think of it, he probably hadn’t. “Candace’s was my first audit, and I went a little overboard in her defense. I think the IRS agent was glad to get rid of us by the time I finished pointing out all the deductions Candace could have taken but hadn’t.”
Franco pulled the car into the hotel parking area, but not into the valet lane and stopped. He turned in his seat and studied her face in the dim light. “You enjoy your work.”
“I love—um, my job.” She’d barely caught herself before using past tense. Being laid off had been like moving to a new school and being rejected all over again. It had hurt—especially since she hadn’t done anything wrong. “Numbers make sense. People often don’t.”
He pinned her with another one of his intense inspections that made her want to squirm. “I will be out of town this weekend. A car will pick you up at quarter to six Monday evening and deliver you to my house. My housekeeper will let you in before she leaves. Wait for me. We will have dinner.”
And then sex? Her shameless pulse quickened. “I look forward to it.”
And the sad thing was, that wasn’t a lie, and Monday seemed a very long way away.
Seven
“I have found her,” Franco said upon entering the chateau’s study.
His father looked up sharply, set his book aside and rose from the sofa to embrace him. “Franco, I was not expecting you this weekend. If you had called I could have delayed lunch.”
He hadn’t known he was coming. This morning’s urge to put some distance between him and Stacy had been both sudden and imperative. She had clouded his thinking with incredible sex and contradictory behavior. He needed distance and objectivity to decipher her actions.
“No problem. I will raid the kitchen later. Where is Angeline?”
“Shopping in Marseille.”
Ah, yes. Exactly why he was here. To remind himself that a mercenary, self-indulgent heart beat at the core of every woman.
Take his mother, for example. Although his father had never spoken a negative word against her, Franco had been curious enough about the woman who had given birth to him to investigate her death. During one of his university vacations he had researched the police reports and the newspaper stories and discovered that his mother had enjoyed her status as a rich, older man’s wife. She had often attended weekend house parties without her husband, and there she’d indulged. In booze. In cocaine. And who knew what else? At one such party, a chemical overdose had killed her at age twenty-six.
His father passed him a glass of wine. “So tell me about this young lady.”
“She is an American accountant, a friend of Vincent’s fiancée, and she claims she counsels troubled teens in her spare time.”
“And?”
“I offered her a million euros to be my mistress for a month. She accepted.” But she would not accept all his gifts. That did not make sense. Her honesty had to be a ruse. Who would report a million euros windfall to the tax man and forfeit almost half in taxes?
“She is attractive? Desirable?”
An image of Stacy rising like Venus from the churning waters of the spa flashed in his mind. Droplets had streamed down her ivory skin, clung to her puckered nipples and glistened in the dark curls concealing her sex. Before he had removed the first condom he had been ready to reach for a second. He’d had to dunk beneath the cooling waterfall to regain control. “That was our agreement.”
“And yet you’re here and she’s…where?”
“Monaco. Vincent is pampering his bride-to-be and her attendants with an all-expenses-paid month at Hôtel Reynard while they plan the wedding. Stacy is a bridesmaid.”
“Ah, yes. Vincent is another one making his papa wait for grandbabies. Has he recovered from the accident?”
Vincent had come home with Franco several times during school vacations. Franco had also visited the Reynard home in Boca Raton, Florida. It had been Vincent who had suggested Franco relocate to Monaco for the tax advantages the principality could offer Midas Chocolates. “He is completely mobile now, and through surgeries and physical therapy, has regained 80 percent use of his right hand.”
“And his fiancée does not mind the scars or the handicap?”
“She was his nurse in the burn unit. She has seen him look worse.” And she had stood by him. Probably because Reynard Hotels was a multi-billion dollar corporation with ninety luxury hotels spread across the globe.
“I look forward to seeing him again and to meeting his bride. I also want to meet your…Stacy, you said? You’ll bring her here.”
The idea repulsed him. “I do not see the need.”
“I do. And is she the kind of woman you would be willing to marry if she refused the money?”
Franco cursed the wording of his agreement with his father, but it would not become an issue. “It will not happen. She has already accepted.”
“You seem very certain of that.”
“I am.”
“When is the money to be paid?”
“The day after Vincent’s wedding.”
His father turned away, but not before Franco caught a glimpse of a smile. “Just remember our agreement, son.”
“How could I forget?”
How indeed? When he returned to Monaco, he would show Stacy the benefits of being a rich man’s plaything. Before long she would greedily beg for his gifts instead of refusing them.
And then she would take the money and run.
Alone in Franco’s house.
Stacy stood in the foyer after the housekeeper left. Uncertain. Uncomfortable. Undecided. She could be a polite guest and wait in the living room as directed or she could search for signs of obsession. Being a snoop wasn’t honorable, but after what she’d learned about her father… She shuddered.
Knowledge was power and she needed all the knowledge she could get about Franco Constantine. Her safety depended on it.
She turned down the hall toward the master-bedroom wing. A twinge of guilt made her pause on the threshold, but she took a deep breath and marched in. The furniture surfaces were clear of clutter. No photographs or knickknacks gave a clue to the room’s owner other than big, bold wooden furniture and luxurious linens. The classic landscapes on the wall also revealed little. She would not stoop to pawing through his drawers.
The view of Larvotto through the open drapes lured her, but she ignored it and cautiously opened a door to reveal a closet as large as her apartment bedroom. It looked like a GQ man’s dream with clothing and shoes neatly aligned on the racks and shelves. There was no sign of a woman anywhere…except for the dress Stacy had left behind the other night hanging alone on an otherwise empty rod with the shoebox beneath it.
She closed the door, returned to the foyer and looked out the window, but there was no sign of Franco’s car. The opposite hallway beckoned. Just past the stairs to the basement she found an open door and looked inside. Franco’s study. A large dark-wooden desk dominated the space and tall bookshelves lined the walls on either side of the double French doors opening onto the back patio.
A pair of photographs on one shelf drew her across the room. She lifted one of Franco and another man about the same age standing in front of a picturesque castle. Vincent Reynard. Stacy re
cognized him from the picture Candace had shown her, but the photo had been taken before the accident that had marred half of Vincent’s face. Franco looked at least a decade younger than the man she knew, and his smile was genuine and devastatingly handsome instead of twisted and cynical. Fewer lines fanned from his eyes and none bracketed his chiseled lips. Had this been taken during their grad-school days? But the setting looked European instead of American.
Stacy returned the frame to the shelf. An older man stared out at her from the second photograph. His heavily lined face couldn’t conceal the same classic bone structure and cleft chin as Franco. He had Franco’s thick hair and straight brows, but his were snowy white instead of coffee-bean dark, and his eyes weren’t nearly as guarded as Franco’s. Was this Franco’s father? She’d never know. And she was okay with that. Really.
Turning slowly, she scanned the tables, sofa and bar cart, but she found no sign of Franco’s ex-wife. She returned to the entrance hall and eyed the staircase. Did she dare? What if Franco came home while she was upstairs? How would she explain her snooping without revealing that she’d visited her father’s house after her mother’s death and what she’d discovered had given her the willies? Franco didn’t need to know her tragic past or that her father most likely had been mentally unbalanced. No one needed to know. It was hard enough to make friends without people wondering if she carried her father’s defective genes.
Her futile search supported Franco’s claim that he was over his wife and his marriage and that he’d moved here after the divorce…unless there was something upstairs. Not that Stacy really cared about his wife, but she wanted to make sure Franco wasn’t the type to use his money and power in dangerous ways.
It’s not as if you’re the kind of woman a man can’t forget, especially a man like Franco who must have far more glamorous women than you at his beck and call all the time.
That again raised the question of why he had chosen her?
The sound of a car in the drive made her heart stutter. She hustled to the window, looked out as Franco’s black sedan rolled to a stop. Her mouth dried and something resembling anticipation shot through her.
How could she be eager to see him? He was using her.
And you’re using him, so don’t get sanctimonious.
He climbed from the vehicle. His gaze searched the front of the house and found her in the window. For a moment he paused with one arm braced on the top of the car and just stared at her. A lump rose in her throat and her heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings. He bent and reached inside. When he emerged again and started toward the villa he carried a small white bag with pink ribbon handles that looked too feminine in his big hand.
Another gift she’d have to refuse?
And why did she keep refusing? The diamond bracelet alone could be pawned to pay off her car. But they’d agreed on a price for a service and to keep tacking on extras seemed unethical…. As if there could be anything more unethical than their current agreement. The irony of her situation didn’t escape her. But she had to be able to live with herself after this affair ended, and that meant setting standards and sticking to them. It wasn’t easy. There had been precious few gifts in her past. And she’d lost the most important one.
She rubbed her bare wrist and then wiped her palms over her pencil-slim skirt and opened the front door. If they were truly lovers this was the point where she’d rush down the walkway to embrace him and welcome him home. Instead, as he approached she stood frozen inside the door unsure exactly what he expected of her.
The closer he came the more shallow her breathing became. While her gaze fed on his lean dark-suited form, he inventoried her lavender blouse, navy skirt and sensible low-heeled pumps. Suddenly she felt dowdy, and she wished she’d slipped into the flirty and feminine sundress hanging in his closet. That she’d even consider dressing to please him rattled her. “Hi.”
“Bonsoir, Stacy.” His arm encircled her waist. He snatched her close, taking her mouth in a ravenous kiss that bent her backward. She clutched his lapels and held tight. Their thighs spliced and the heat of his arousal nudged her belly. His tongue stroked hers and hunger suffused her with embarrassing swiftness.
By the time he released her she was breathless and dizzy, with her pulse galloping out of control. She unfurled her fingers from his suit coat and sagged against the door frame. He swept past her, set the gift bag on the credenza and continued through the living room and toward the kitchen.
Stacy stared at the bag, her curiosity piqued. Maybe it wasn’t for her. After taking a few moments to gather her composure—and to battle the urge to peek into the bag—she closed the front door on the balmy evening and followed him.
Franco had removed his suit coat and laid it over the end of the center island. He held a martini shaker in his hands. The flexing and shifting of his muscles beneath his white shirt as he mixed the sloshing liquid filled her mind with images of those bare muscles bunching and contracting beneath his supple skin as he braced himself above her. She plucked at her suddenly sticking blouse and exhaled slowly.
He poured the contents into a glass and set it on the counter in front of her. Her eyebrows rose.
“You are surprised I noticed you never drink more than one glass of wine at dinner and you ordered fruity drinks at the club?” he asked as he opened a bottle of red wine with practiced ease.
“I guess I am.”
He filled his wineglass and lifted it in a silent toast then nodded toward the martini. “Try it.”
Stacy lifted the glass and sipped. Chocolate, cherry and vanilla mingled on her tongue. “Very good.”
“It is made with Midas Chocolate liqueur.” He reached into his inside coat pocket and withdrew a handful of gilt-edged cards which he placed on the counter. “Le Bal de L’Eté is this Saturday. I have tickets.”
There were more than two tickets in the pile. “A summer ball?”
“Oui, it is an annual charity event to mark the opening of the summer season at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club. Europe’s l’aristocratie, including royalty, attend. You and your friends might even meet the prince.”
She gaped. “Of Monaco?”
“Oui.”
She’d heard it wasn’t uncommon to see members of the royal family on the street or at sporting events, but to meet them… “Will either of the two long dresses you’ve seen me wear work?”
He shook his head. “Non. I will arrange for you—”
“Then I can’t possibly go.”
“—and your friends to have appropriate gowns,” he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted.
She sighed. He had her cornered and he knew it. “And if I refuse then Candace, Madeline and Amelia will miss the ball.”
He shrugged. “Tout a un prix.”
Everything has a price. Yes, he did seem to live by that rule. But how could she deny the other women this opportunity to rub elbows with royalty? “You fight dirty.”
“I play to win.”
“Okay. On behalf of my friends, I accept.” Jeez. That had sounded ungracious. But she hated being manipulated.
“Bien. And while you are in an accepting mood…” He left the kitchen and returned moments later carrying the bag. “For you.” He held up a hand to stop her protest. “Open it before you refuse.”
She reluctantly accepted the bag, withdrew a small box, opened it and gasped. Her watch. Hugging it to her chest, she ducked her head, blinked her stinging eyes and struggled to contain the happy sob building in her chest. He couldn’t possibly know how much this meant to her. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. The limo driver found it. The band was broken. I had it replaced with a similar one.”
“My mother gave me this when I graduated high school. It was the last gift she gave me before she—” Her throat thickened, choking off her words.
Franco smoothed his hand from her brow to her nape. His fingers clenched in her hair and then stroked forward to lift her chin. “I am glad we found it. Now
finish your drink and then go downstairs and remove your clothing. The masseuse will be here in ten minutes.”
“Masseuse?” Stacy wasn’t wild about the idea of someone else seeing or touching her naked body. She hadn’t joined her suitemates in the hotel spa for sea-salt massages for that very reason. But she wouldn’t mind Franco’s hands on her. “You’re not going to, um…massage me?”
A slow naughty smile curved his lips. “I am going to watch. And after she has turned your muscles to butter and departed, I am going to take you on the massage table.”
The image he painted sent a shiver of arousal over her. Stacy realized she was beginning to like not only Franco, but this mistress stuff too.
And that was definitely not good news.
My God. He had almost hugged her.
Franco fisted his hands and watched the lights of Stacy’s taxi disappear into the night. What kind of fool was he to be swayed by eyes brimming with tears and gratitude? And yet when Stacy had looked at him earlier tonight, clutching that cheap watch to her breast and smiling through tear-filled eyes, he’d almost succumbed to the urge to embrace her.
He did not hug or cuddle or any of those other relationship things that would lead a woman to expect more from him than he could give. And he did not trust tears. Tears were nothing more than a weapon in a woman’s arsenal. How often had Lisette used tears to get her way during their marriage? After the abortion she’d tried to soften him by crying and claiming that he’d been spending more time at work than with her, and she’d been afraid he no longer loved her and would not wish to have a baby with her.
Regret crushed his chest in a vise. He had spent more time at work during that final year of his marriage. His father’s latest divorce settlement had forced him to borrow against the estate, and that meant finding new sources of revenue to cover the debt. Franco had not explained that to Lisette which meant if he were to believe her story, he would have to accept part of the blame for the loss of his child. And that was a burden he could not bear.
Much better to remember that Lisette, like his mother, had been selfish. She’d made a decision she had no right to make without his input, and then she’d tried to place the blame on a scapegoat—him. And of course, there had been more to her story, as he’d discovered the day the hospital released her and his replacement had arrived to carry her to her new home.
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