by Mia Caldwell
He rolled back to kiss her. “I’m nothing without you.”
Zoe seriously doubted that, but it was nice to hear.
The day was fast passing, breakfast was not being served for much longer and sharing a shower seemed like the most efficient way of getting there quickly. Of course that did not prove to be the case.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” breathed Zoe, noticing Nick’s renewed arousal.
“It’s not my fault,” said Nick, drawing her wet body to him beneath the shower. “You just look so damn good.”
By the time they got out of the shower an early lunch was a better option than breakfast, and both badly needed food to replenish their strength.
“The second part of the wine-tasting course starts at three,” said Nick, checking the day’s schedule. “You know what that means?”
Zoe grinned. “We can go back to my room for a few hours?”
“You read my mind.”
“Of course,” Zoe pretended to be having second thoughts. “I do still have a lot to learn about food and wine and French stuff.”
“What did you have in mind?” asked Nick, eagerly playing along.
“Well, you know the game with the rewards for right answers and forfeits for wrong ones?”
Nick nodded, unable to suppress the huge grin that was spreading across his face. “Yes.”
“I’ve got some ideas for new rewards and forfeits that I think would really motivate me.”
If Nick’s grin had spread any wider then the top of his head would have come off. “Good. Cause it’s not just food and wine that the French are known for. There is some French stuff that I really think we should cover. Preferably in detail. Several times.”
Zoe finished her coffee and stood. “Come on, we’ve only got two and a half hours.”
Chapter Nine
On the one hand, Zoe’s training on how to be Vanessa Reese, did take something of a backseat in the final week before the meeting with Jacques Jourdan. On the other hand, she had never been more motivated and never been happier, and both those things, she was sure, helped her to learn.
Your mind is never more receptive to facts than when it is relaxed, you can’t properly absorb information if you are stressed and worrying about other stuff. Zoe was a natural stresser and worrier, if there was something to be tense and worried about, then she would be tense and worried about it.
But not right now.
There was nothing like frequent, luxurious and mind-blowing sex to really relax a body.
These days Zoe found herself laid back, chilled and satisfied. If she had been any more relaxed she would have slipped into a coma. She really didn’t have the energy for anxiety. Nick could barely keep his hands off her and she felt the same way about him. Their week at the vineyard had turned into the most self-indulgent holiday of her life. By day they alternated wine-tasting lessons with sexually-charged games that tested Zoe’s knowledge of everything she had learned so far from opera to sailing (and which tested the limits of Nick’s stamina and self-control almost as much), and by night they made love into the small hours.
Zoe had never had what you could call a ‘dirty weekend’. She did not believe that sex should be the be all and end all of a relationship and so had never enjoyed that purely sexual indulgence. The great thing about being with Nick was that he was the best of both worlds. While their relationship might have seemed to an observer to be defined by epic amounts of bedroom gymnastics, as the days passed they also got to know each other better as people, and the more Zoe got to know Nick, the more she got to like him. She loved his sense of humor, she loved that his favorite films were Laurence of Arabia and Airplane!, she loved that he opened doors for her wherever they went without even thinking about it – an old-fashioned gentleman.
With each passing day it became more and more clear that he was exactly the sort of man that she had always looked for and never found.
And since he was a man in whom she had a genuine and heartfelt interest (would she say ‘love’? The thought scared and startled her,) then the amount of wild, headboard-busting sex they were having was not shallow, it was an expression of their admiration for each other. A sweaty, exhausting, X-rated expression of their…love. And as it turned out, their love needed to be expressed a lot, as many times a day as they had the energy for. They expressed their love until they were sore.
There was a sliver of irrational guilt in Zoe still. Not because she didn’t have real feelings for Nick – she absolutely did – but because… sex between two people in love was not supposed to be like this. It sounded stupid to say, especially as everyone always told you that sex was best with someone you cared about. But, although people said that, it was tacitly acknowledged that that was just something people said, and that sex was really best in wild and frequently regretted one-night-stands. What Zoe and Nick had was a genuine relationship that happened to include ferocious, wild, animalistic sex that would have put teenage lust to shame. It was no reason to be guilty, in fact it was a reason to be proud, and yet Zoe could not help it – what had she done to get this lucky?
The week flew by in a delicious haze of wine and adult situations. It was unsettling to leave the little vineyard in which they had been so happy (although some of the other guests were probably glad to see them go), because it meant that the time had come for the final part of Nick’s plan. Everything that Zoe had spent the last three weeks learning (had it really only been three weeks?) was to be put into practice, and from what Nick had told her, a big part of the future of RothCo seemed to hang on it.
That was a lot of pressure.
If she was honest with herself, then there was a further reason that Zoe was uneasy about leaving the vineyard. It was here that she and Nick had realized their feelings for each other, but how much had those feelings been bolstered by their seclusion?
Was their attraction purely situational?
They had found themselves in the most romantic setting in the world, with huge amounts of wine, a lot of spare time and some very comfortable beds.
Would their burgeoning relationship survive in a real world in which there were no spreading vistas stretching off into the distance, in which they were not tipsy all the time, and in which they could not have sex multiple times a day. Had it been all about sex, and the veneer of relationship just a dream she had imposed over the top to make herself feel better about it? In short – would it still work between them, or would they now find they had nothing in common.
Perhaps Nick was wondering about those questions too, for he struck Zoe as being oddly quiet on their drive back to the city, as if there was something else on his mind.
“I’m starting to have doubts about this whole thing,” he confided, as they drove.
“What? Why?”
Nick seemed unwilling or unable to answer the question. “Just feels like… Wrong somehow. It’s a deception. It’s—a lie.”
Zoe nodded. “Well, yes. But that’s always been true. What changed?”
Nick shrugged. “Me? I don’t know. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, you know?”
Zoe frowned in puzzlement. “You think Jacques Jourdan will be hurt if he discovers that I’m not Vanessa? It’s just a business deal. I don’t think he was ever going to chat her up was he?”
Nick shook his head. “Well…. I don’t know. I mean, of course not, I… I just… Oh I don’t know. Forget I said anything.”
Zoe sat in silence a while before speaking again. “I will do my best. I mean, I know I’m not Vanessa, but I will do my best.”
Nick looked at her and forced a smile. “I know you will. You’ll be brilliant.”
They spent the night in Paris, back in the same hotel, but this time sharing a room. They had dinner together, they looked out across the nocturnal cityscape of Paris, and they made love long into the night – they were in Paris after all. There was, Zoe could not help feeling, still a tension in Nick, in the way he acted and spoke to her. It all dissolved awa
y when they slept together, but that did not make her feel any better, it just seemed to reinforce her fear that sex was all they had, and while it was great, it was not enough.
The following day was a blizzard of last minute preparations: clothes selections, quizzes and cramming.
“You know the business stuff inside out,” said Nick, admiringly. “Better than I do,” he admitted ruefully.
“It’s not that I’m worried about,” replied Zoe. The thing about culture that irked her when compared to business was that it all seemed so arbitrary. A good business deal had parameters – it could be complicated but if you knew what you were doing then you could look through the small print and see if it was an advantageous deal or not. Culture had no rules. The only way to know if something was ‘good’ or not was to be ‘in the know.’ There was no set of guidelines to determine which entrée to order, which color to wear, which wine vintage to select – you either knew this stuff or you did not. You didn’t need to be intelligent to understand culture, you just had to be able to parrot pre-determined information. You had to say what everybody else “knew” to be true, have the right opinions about the right art, have right taste about the right food. It was all about homogeneity.
And it was, Zoe had now decided, a pain in the ass.
Whether because of Nick’s tense mood or her own fear of making a mistake, a sense of foreboding hung over Zoe as they left the capital once more, this time heading for the Jourdan chateau and estate, not far outside the city. They arrived a few hours later and were met at the door by a long-faced and dignified butler, who showed them into a hall in which other bidders already milled around like nervous gazelles.
“May I take your coat, Mademoiselle Reese?”
Zoe inhaled sharply. This was it. The moment was now. There was no going back.
She settled a cool, distant smile on her face. “Yes. Thank you very much.”
Zoe felt a slight stiffening of people around her and a casual turning of eyes in her direction, and then realized what she had done: she had said ‘thank you’ to a servant! More than that, she had said ‘thank you very much’. She might just as well have thrown her arms around him and hugged him.
One of the first things Nick had taught was to forget all of her southern manners where ‘the help’ was concerned; they were to be treated as if they did not exist. She did not dare look at him now. Her first test and she had blown it. She felt herself starting to freeze up – she wasn’t sure she could go through with this.
And then she felt a light touch on her hand as Nick gently took it and squeezed. He could not make more of a show of comforting her than that in their present company, but that was enough. It let Zoe know that he understood, and he wasn’t angry. It was a small thing and if that was the worst thing to go wrong this weekend then they could consider themselves lucky.
“Ladies and Gentlemen.” The room was addressed by a smartly dressed woman with dark hair and an air of authority. “I regret to inform you that Monsieur Jourdan has been unavoidably detained on business in Paris. He craves your indulgence and he will join you later this weekend to hear your offers. In the meantime, we will make you very comfortable here. My name is Alice Guilbert, I am Monsieur Jourdan’s personal assistant, if there is anything you require, please do not hesitate to let me know.”
Zoe and Nick exchanged uncertain glances as the hum of suspicion rose around them. No one seemed to be happy about this turn of events but Zoe found herself conflicted. In a way it felt like a reprieve; she did not have to confront Jacques Jourdan today. But of course it was a very temporary reprieve and it just gave her more time to worry about that meeting. It also gave her more time and more opportunity to be found out by someone else. She had though that she only had to fool Jacques Jourdan himself – one meeting and she was done. Now she had to be around other people, other business leaders, some of whom might well be familiar with Vanessa’s work.
Everyone here was looking for some way to out-do the others, some way to trip up the competition. If she did something wrong then she could be certain that that information would find its way back to Jacques Jourdan himself. The more she thought about this, the less it felt like a reprieve and the more it felt like a whole other examination she had to pass.
The chateau was better equipped for entertaining than most hotels, boasting more than enough rooms and staff to adequately take care of the needs of all the guests. Zoe found herself settled into yet another new room, finding that she missed her miniscule bedroom in New York, and really missed her bedroom back home with her Mom and Dad. There was a tap at the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and Zoe breathed a huge sigh of relief to see Nick. He was the only person in this building in front of whom she could be herself. They kissed, and she let her worries dissolve momentarily.
“How’s your room?” asked Zoe.
“Feels empty without you in it.”
Zoe smiled; this would be the first time in a week that they had slept apart. “A rest will probably do us both good.”
“I guess. You’re not getting tired of me are you?” He said it with a smile but Zoe wondered if he might be as insecure as she was deep down.
“Tired? Yes.” She kissed him. “Of you? Not yet.” The kiss deepened. “There’s still an hour till lunch,” murmured Zoe, hopefully.
But Nick pulled back. “We can’t. It’s just too risky.”
“You didn’t pack condoms?”
“Not what I meant.”
He meant that, for this charade to work, Vanessa Reese had to be single. Partly because, Vanessa Reese was single; partly because she was not the type to date a failed businessman like Nick; and partly because, while they might know there wasn’t the prospect of any romance between ‘Vanessa’ and Jacques Jourdan, they needed Jourdan to believe it was a possibility. He clearly liked her and men were different around single women. They could not risk one of their competitors finding out that ‘Vanessa’ was sleeping with Nick. They could try to be discrete of course, but if previous experience was anything to go by, they were not that quiet.
“We’d better go down,” sighed Zoe. If they stayed in her room any longer then, for all their good intentions, stuff was going to happen.
“Separately,” added Nick. “Vanessa is very independent. I’ll go. You follow in a few minutes.”
Zoe nodded. But she felt strangely empty as she watched Nick leave. It wasn’t that she had to be at his side all the time, nor that she disagreed with his analysis. She just wished that he hadn’t suggested it.
After a minute or two, with only the butterflies in her stomach for company, Zoe headed downstairs. As she entered the reception room (all these rooms had names!) the sleeve of her dress caught on the door, something Zoe only noticed when she heard the tearing sound.
“Fucking shit!”
Like the ‘thank you’ earlier, it was out of her mouth without her even thinking.
“Excuse me.” She nodded apology to the staring eyes of the room, trying not to look at Nick, and hurried back out and up to her room to change.
As she entered she found that she was fighting back tears – she was screwing this up! She hadn’t even started and she was ruining it. She fought down the urge to cry. Then, she tried to calm herself. Everyone swore when something like that happened, it wasn’t a big deal – right? She turned to take off the dress and caught sight of something in the mirror that made her spin back again.
When they had selected clothes for her to wear, Nick and Zoe had taken great pains to hide the heart-shaped tattoo on her left shoulder blade. Backless dresses were out, as was anything that hung decorously revealing that particular area. It had not been a problem. But now the torn sleeve clearly revealed the symbol as clear as day. Had anyone seen it? To Zoe, looking in the mirror now, it seemed glaringly obvious, as if it was lit up in neon, but was that just because she knew it was there and was looking for it.
Vanessa Reese did not have tattoos. And if
she did, they would not be little hearts (originally there was to have been a boyfriend’s name emblazoned beneath it, but the relationship had not lasted to the next tattoo session). Three times in as many hours, Zoe had dropped the ball. If only it had ended there.
At dinner Zoe, not only used the wrong cutlery (everything Nick had taught her going out of her head) but dropped a fork on the floor and accidentally catapulted a spoon across the table to land in another diner’s wine glass (she was still not sure how she had done that). Though she tried to stay out of the conversation she was roped into it by one particular man who seemed fascinated by everything she had to say. At first she had held her own on the subjects of Monsieur Jourdan’s art collection and his excellent wine, but then, and against all reasonable fairness, the subject turned to ballet.
Zoe floundered.
“What dancer am I thinking of,” the particular man (whose name was Goldman), asked the table in general before addressing Zoe specifically. “Miss Reese will know, of course. Miss Reese, who am I thinking of.”
Zoe felt an unpleasant wave of heat spread through her cheeks as she started to blush, the stress causing a physical reaction. “I dunno.”
It was a stupid response and she knew it. She could have said: ‘I can’t recall right now, isn’t it strange how names can just go out of your head like that?’ She could have said: ‘Oh it’s… oh what is the name? Oh how frustrating.’ Or any number of other variations on the theme of knowing the answer but it having slipped her mind, which happens to the best of us. If she had said ‘I don’t know’, that would have still be problematic but at least expressed correctly. But no, she had said the wrong thing, and she had said it wrongly. She had revealed both her ignorance and her lack of sophistication in two ill-chosen words.
And Mr. Goldman wasn’t letting it go yet. “Really? I was led to believe that you were a ballet aficionado, so to speak.”
“Then you were led wrong.” Zoe compounded the error. She couldn’t seem to help herself and across the table she felt Nick’s eyes on her. She couldn’t look at him.