Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire)

by Rosalind James

  I wasn’t listening. It was a second vase of roses, just as many, just as big, but these were yellow. And there was another bag, too. A heavy bag.

  I set them down on the dining-room table with everything else. Between the two vases, Hemi’s earlier gift, and the bags, there wasn’t a bit of room to do any eating there at this point, and I almost laughed.

  I reached for my purse, and the guy looked at me and sighed. “No tip. You have no idea how much that hurts me to say. But if he finds out you tipped, there goes my fifty bucks, and I got plans for that money. Who is this dude?”

  “He’s somebody very…nice,” I said lamely. And completely untruthfully. Whatever Hemi was, I didn’t think nice described it.

  “No shit,” the guy said. “Hang onto him, will ya? I can use the extra change. Especially since I didn’t tell my wife about it.”

  I laughed, and he left. I locked the door behind him, then turned to Karen, who was off the couch and checking out the flowers.

  “Hey,” she said. “These yellow ones are for me.”

  Oh, no. Total dirty play.

  She was opening the envelope and pulling out the card, then reading it aloud. “Yellow’s for good health, and for friendship. Hope you’re feeling better. Hemi.” Huh. That’s pretty cool. What does yours say?”

  “Um…” I was still trying to get over that, but I took my own card and opened it. And didn’t read it aloud.

  Can’t wait for Paris. Can’t wait for you.

  “So…what?” Karen asked, and made to grab it from my hand.

  I snatched it back and held it high. “Oh, no. Nope.”

  She sighed. “How am I going to be prepared for my future romantic career if you don’t share?”

  “I do share. I share all the time.”

  “Never the good stuff. And I bet Hemi’s got majorly good stuff. So what did he do yesterday, when I was asleep? Did you guys make out?”

  “No. We talked, and then he went home.” I wouldn’t share what we’d talked about.

  “What?” She looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head. “Why? Did you tell him off again? Man, Hope, you’ve got to stop doing that. I mean, Vinnie Delmonico from the neighborhood takes us to a Steven Seagal movie for your first date, and then grabs your boob while all the explosions are happening? Like you won’t notice, because it’s all loud and everything? I totally get that. I totally got that.”

  “Yes, you did. And he got it, too, after you pointed it out. I hardly had to say a thing.”

  “Face it, Hope,” she said, one hand on her hip. “You always date losers. And now you finally get a totally smokin’, filthy-rich guy who lets me puke on him, and you bore him to death talking about global warming or the endangered African elephant and the ivory trade or something, so he leaves? I hate to remind you, but I don’t have a college fund.”

  “Hemi is not going to send you to college. You are dreaming.” Ooh. He’d sent wine again. Pinot Noir this time. Completely sneaky and unfair.

  “Well, he sent us some pretty good lunch, anyway.” She was pulling containers out of the plastic bag and peeking inside. “Thai chicken noodle soup. Score.”

  I caught the sweet, spicy aroma of fresh ginger, saw gorgeously clear broth, fat noodles, and chunks of chicken that hadn’t come out of any can, and my mouth watered. The other containers, I found, held more Thai food. Vegetables, chicken, beef, and rice. Perfect. And so much of it, we’d make dinner out of it, too.

  My phone rang, and Karen looked at me, her expression stern. “If that’s him, do not tell him he shouldn’t have.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her, and she laughed and went to the cupboard for dishes.

  I punched the button to answer, but I didn’t say “Hello.” Instead, I said, “Karen says I’m not supposed to say you shouldn’t have. But I’m still going to say it. You shouldn’t have. How’d you find the exact right roses? On Sunday? And how’d you know chicken noodle soup would be almost the only thing she could eat right now?”

  “I could tell you how,” he said, “but I’m scared to.”

  If there’d been a cord to twine around my finger while I talked to him, I’d have done it. Instead, I leaned against the table and fingered the frilled edge of a lavender petal. “Mm. Because I’ll give you another lecture about how I’m not for sale. Regrettably, roses and lunch seem to be my weak spot. But sending them to Karen, too? That’s below the belt, don’t you think?”

  “Ah. But you see, below the belt is where I do my best work. She feeling better today?” he asked before I could respond to that one. “The ginger’s meant to be for the nausea, eh.”

  “Such a good idea, and she really appreciates it. So do I.” There. That was gracious for once, and I meant it, too. I did appreciate it. “She’s feeling much better, thanks. I guess the medicine did the trick. So it looks like I’m going to Paris next week after all. But I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty busy there, and I know you will be. I put the schedule together.”

  “You forget one thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m the boss.”

  So I left Karen and went to Paris.

  A woman named Debra called me and introduced herself, and after a thorough conversation, in the course of which I realized I couldn’t do better and had no excuse for refusing her, came over on Tuesday night. She didn’t seem one bit fazed at the prospect of sleeping on the couch, and was, as Hemi had promised, thoroughly competent. In fact, she was so sure of herself, she scared me. And I’d bet she didn’t come cheap, because it turned out that she was a nurse.

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Karen had said when she’d heard the plan. “Besides, how can you afford it?”

  “The company’s paying for it,” I’d said, although I was pretty sure “the company” wasn’t.

  “But I still don’t need one. Anyway, I didn’t know they did stuff like that.”

  Of course she needed one, and of course they didn’t do stuff like that. And of course I shouldn’t have accepted it. And of course I had.

  I flew to Paris on the redeye, and after that, it seemed like I hardly slept for a week. It was exciting, and hectic, and crazy. Full-on, running from dawn until dark, but not so very different, really, from working with Vincent. I just had a new person snapping at me. But there was one important difference. I was in Paris, not in a photography studio or Central Park. All right, I was in a conference room in Paris, and only occasionally at a show or an event, but still. It was Paris. People were speaking French around me and smoking too much. The real deal.

  All the same, I didn’t see Hemi to speak to until Tuesday night, at the reception following his show. I was wandering around, checking off the journalists in attendance, when I turned to find him at my elbow instead of in the distance.

  “You’re wearing the right shoes tonight,” were his first words to me. “Unfortunately.”

  It was the blue and silver dress again, despite Martine’s dismissive glance when I’d appeared in it four long hours ago to help supervise the setup. I knew it was last year’s, but I couldn’t help that, because it was the only cocktail dress I owned. But I was wearing silver sandals with it tonight, because Hemi was right—they were what the dress needed.

  I wasn’t feeling very glamorous, though. My feet were aching, my smile felt pasted on, and my hair was going limp. Hair I was resolutely not touching right now, lips I was being careful not to lick, no matter how much Hemi inspired the age-old need to draw attention to myself, to send out those female attraction-markers.

  But, yes. Seven A.M. had been a very long time ago. Hemi’s day, I was sure, had been as long as mine, but since he never looked anything but cool and perfectly pulled together, you’d never have known it.

  “That’s right,” I said, kicking up one foot behind me and going for perky, since I didn’t have “elegant” at my disposal. “See how I match? But I’ve been wearing your shoes all week, and they’ve been great. No chance I’m giving the
m back now, no matter how mad you make me. Congratulations on today, too. Everybody said it was amazing.”

  “Everybody said?” His gaze was searching, as always. “What did you think?”

  “That it was amazing, of course.”

  “No. The truth.”

  “How do you know that wasn’t the truth?”

  “Because I know you. Come on.” His hand beckoned, his eyes compelled. “The truth.”

  “Well, then.” I took a breath and went for it. “I thought most of the clothes were beautiful. And I don’t think you should use anorexic models.”

  He sighed. “I should’ve known.”

  I shrugged, feeling better. “You asked.”

  “I did, didn’t I. And at least you liked the collection. Most of it. Go on.”

  I shouldn’t have, but I did anyway. Maybe the day had just been too long, or maybe there were places I was willing to contemplate being a butterfly, and places I wasn’t. “You know the arguments as well as I do. That the girls themselves are dangerously thin. That most of them have eating disorders by definition, and some of them abuse drugs to stay at a weight their bodies never intended. That it sets an unhealthy standard of beauty for women, and especially for young girls. Girls like Karen,” I added. Hah. Two could be sneaky. If he had a soft spot for my sardonic little sister, I’d play on it.

  “Karen,” he said, “who’s as thin as any of them. And did we ever establish what you weigh? I’m thinking maybe 98 pounds soaking wet, eh. Maybe.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I weigh.” If I’d been uncertain about engaging him before, that uncertainty was long gone. “If I modeled, I’d have to lose ten percent of it, you can count on that. How good do you think I’d look to you if I weighed 90 pounds instead? I’m a 32B now.” Oh, boy. Reckless all the way. “Ten pounds less, and I’d be a 32A, and you’d really be excited about seeing me naked then.”

  He was getting his intense look again, the one that made my heart beat faster. “Have I ever made you feel that I thought you were anything less than beautiful?” he asked. “Ever given you the impression that I wasn’t more than ready to touch every bit of you, or that any part of you wasn’t enough for me?”

  “OK. Wait.” I put both hands to my forehead and breathed. “Whoa. I got us way off track. Give me a second here.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I took another breath, then lifted my head. “OK. I’m trying again. Setting myself aside—I’ve worked with models for years, you know. I know exactly how they maintain that weight. And it’s—it’s very nearly criminal, what you guys do to them.”

  “Could we go back to you being Cinderella again?” he complained, but I could tell he wasn’t really upset. “What was that you said? Going along with everything I want, doing whatever I say, in return for my rescuing you? I’ll have that, please.”

  I had to laugh, I was so surprised. “Yes, but I didn’t do it, remember?’

  “Too right I remember,” he muttered, and I laughed again and felt so much better.

  “But I’m right,” I told him, “and you must know it.”

  He shrugged. “It’s fashion. It’s the world we’re in.”

  “Yes. And you’re your own man.” If I was sure of anything, I was sure of that. “You set your own rules. Somebody has to stand up for what’s right.”

  “And I’m that man?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I looked at him, and he looked back at me, and there was that ping again. That connection.

  “Hope.” The voice beside me was sharp, and I whirled. Martine.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Hemi.

  “One minute,” he said calmly.

  Her head came around fast, and she stared at him. He didn’t say anything, just held her gaze and waited.

  Two beats, three, until she nodded at me and said, “Please come check in with me when you’re finished here,” and stalked across the room.

  I let go of the breath I’d been holding. “Uh-oh.”

  “Nah,” Hemi said. “Here’s your cheat sheet. I was asking you about the schedule for tomorrow. And you keep forgetting, don’t you.”

  “What? That you’re the boss? Trust me. I don’t forget. It must be the spider thing. Somehow, I keep remembering that.” I’d have blamed the wine, except that I hadn’t had any.

  “On that note,” he said, “when are you due to leave?”

  “Friday morning.” Two more days, and my Parisian adventure would be over.

  “Mm. And how much of Paris have you seen?”

  I was trembling a little, all of a sudden. Nerves, and fatigue, and uncertainty. What was he asking? What was I going to do? What was I willing to do? “Well, let’s see,” I said, going for breeziness and, I was sure, failing miserably. “This hotel, which is pretty nice. My hotel. Not quite as nice. The venues. And, um…the airport.”

  “We should do something about that, don’t you think?”

  “Uh…we should?”

  “Definitely. I’ll change your ticket so you fly home Sunday. Tell Martine you’re catching a later flight, and I’ll show you Paris.”

  “Unfair again,” I pointed out. “Kind of like the roses. Too dangerously tempting, so I can’t help but succumb.”

  “That would be the idea.” His voice was low, deceptively soft. “And as you know, I so rarely play fair when there’s something I really want.”

  No more humor. His eyes were burning into me, and the heat from them was spiraling down my body, entering through my parted lips and sliding down my throat. Setting up a delicious tingle in my breasts, then inching its treacherous way to my core, setting up a buzzing hum there, and I was shifting despite my aching feet. A shiver went straight down my spine, and I realized that I was biting off the bare remnants of my lipstick. He stood there and watched it all happen, and I could tell that he was enjoying watching.

  “Um…” I cast about for something. Anything. “My hotel, though. I’m sharing a room with Kasey from Marketing. It’d be—she’d ask—I can’t—” I stopped and shook my head, tried to laugh. “I can’t finish a sentence, apparently.”

  “Ah, yes. Your hotel. Check out on Friday morning with the others, and I’ll have it sorted by then.”

  “Karen…”

  His expression softened, just that little bit around the eyes. “How’s she feeling?”

  “She says she’s fine.” Although I couldn’t help but worry. It was so hard to tell over the phone.

  “Ring Debra,” he instructed, “and tell her you’ll be gone till Sunday evening. I’m pretty sure she’ll be able to stay on.”

  “Because you checked that she could before you hired her.” This was going too fast, as usual. “I haven’t said I’ll stay, though.”

  “Haven’t you?” He looked at me for a long moment while I didn’t answer, then inclined his head in the direction of the door. “I reckon Martine’s about to burst a blood vessel. You may want to go do…whatever it is you’re meant to do.”

  Which I did. Of course I did. I needed my job. But I couldn’t kid myself that whether I went home on Friday or stayed in Paris would have anything at all to do with my job. It would have everything to do with me. And with Hemi.

  Scavenger Hunt

  I woke up on Friday morning in what was surely the smallest room the Best Western possessed, edged my way quietly around my bed to reach the tiny bathroom so I wouldn’t wake Kasey, and hurried to finish so she could get in there.

  She had a plane to catch, after all. And I didn’t.

  I dressed in low, tight gray jeans, soft low-heeled western ankle boots with tooled silver buttons, and a close-fitting, stretchy hoodie with a wide neckline in swirling blues and greens. If it tended to slip off to one side and show a ribbon of pale-blue bra strap, I could hardly help that. Suitable clothes for a student-budget visit to Paris, I hoped. My protective camouflage, and maybe just a little bit sexy, too. In case anybody was looking.

  “Cute outfit,” Kasey said when she came out of th
e bathroom. “Wish I could afford to stay here for two more nights. Do you have a secret sugar daddy or something?”

  I laughed, wishing it sounded more natural. “I wish.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll meet a cute French businessman and never come home, huh?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We can but dream.”

  I had breakfast with her and the rest of the marketing and publicity staff—except the important people, of course, who had breakfast meetings—then went to the front desk with the others and waited in a long, slow line to check out. And when the desk clerk handed me my receipt, he gave me a white envelope along with it.

  I didn’t open it, not in front of everybody. Instead, I gave Kasey a hug.

  “Bye, roomie,” she said. “See you back at the salt mines.”

  I said goodbye to the others, then escaped to the café in the corner of the lobby, where I sat down and opened my envelope with trembling fingers.

  A car is waiting for you outside, I read in a neat handwriting that I couldn’t imagine was Hemi’s. I turned the piece of paper over, but that was it.

  To take me where? It was like a scavenger hunt.

  I wheeled my black suitcase back through the lobby and peered cautiously outside. No Te Mana employees lurking about, so the airport bus had come and gone. I walked through the revolving door, then hesitated long enough that the doorman approached me.

  “Puis-je vous aider?” he asked me. “May I be of service? A taxi, perhaps?”

  Even as he spoke, a black car rolled to a stop in the middle of the semicircular drive, and a driver in a black suit emerged and approached us. “Madame Sinclair?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and he nodded and took my suitcase. “Thank you,” I said to the doorman, and followed the driver, feeling more excited—and more confused—than ever.

  The driver hoisted my bag into the trunk and shut the lid, then held the rear door for me, got back behind the wheel, and rolled out into Parisian traffic that nearly had me shutting my eyes.

  I considered asking him where we were going, but didn’t. It would certainly sound odd. In any case, I figured it out quickly enough. Most of the events during the week had been held at the Carousel du Louvre, the underground mall adjoining the huge museum, and that was the direction we were headed.