by Alix Nichols
“Why?”
She spins around. “We’re in a fake relationship that’s soon to become a fake marriage. That’s hard enough to handle. But if we start having sex…”
My thoughts exactly.
Until last night.
“Won’t it be easier?” I sit up and stare into her eyes. “It’ll actually make our fake love look more natural.”
“I can’t.” She shakes her head. “It’ll be too fucked up, even for me.”
I think I know what the real issue is here. “You’re afraid you’ll fall in love.”
“With you?” Her face contorts into a grimace. “You’re the last man in the world I could ever fall in love with.”
The vehemence of her denial would’ve been suspicious if the horror on her face were less sincere. I know Diane well enough by now to conclude she’s truly appalled at the notion of falling in love with me.
That rattles my ego somewhat.
But I remind myself that I, too, would find the prospect of falling in love with her unpalatable. Diane is a radical leftist and an undereducated have-not. When I identified and hired her, she was lower in the societal food chain than most every person in my employ. Her father tried to elevate his family to a better life. But he failed due to poor business skills.
And yes, I’m aware that part of the reason he failed was me—the highborn have who crushed him like an annoying bug. And who believes that the best social order is when the elites are at the helm and the masses are at the oars.
“Excellent,” I say. “I have no intention of falling in love with you, either. But I don’t see why we can’t have some fun while we’re contractually bound to each other.”
“My mind is made up.” Diane gives me a hard stare. “I don’t want this to happen again, and you have to respect that.”
“Of course.” I nod. “Not a problem.”
An image of her face, flushed with arousal and pleasure as I stroke her core, pops into my head. Then another image of her moaning as I push into her. Ah, the sweetness of being inside her! I’m not prepared to give that up just yet. The desire will get stale, as it usually does, in just a few weeks. As for feelings, I’m perfectly safe from them. Even with Ingrid, whom I intended to marry, I never experienced that all-consuming emotion they call love. By the time my contract with Diane expires, I’ll surely be through with her.
But not yet.
At this point in time, I want more of her sweet body, her pretty face and even her sharp tongue. She arouses me as much as she entertains me. And I know I arouse her as much as I repulse her.
Anyway, arguing now is pointless. She says she doesn’t want to have sex with me again. Fine. So be it. I’m not going to beg her. Instead, I’m going to lie low and wait. Starting next Saturday and for the rest of the summer, Diane will live under my roof and sleep in my bedroom.
Who knows what will happen?
“When I move in with you,” Diane says as if reading my mind, “do I absolutely have to share your bedroom?”
“It’s in the contract.”
“I know that. It’s just… If I sneak out and sleep next door, no one will know.” She gives me a pleading look.
“Let me ask you something. Have you ever slept in a house with live-in help?”
She shakes her head.
I sigh. “I thought so.”
She smirks, and I realize my remark sounded more arrogant than I’d intended. But hey, Diane considers me an arrogant ass anyway, so I guess I’m just living up to her expectations. Anyway, I was trying to make a point.
“You see,” I say. “You can fool your family—parents, children, siblings, cousins, grandparents… Grandmas can be perceptive, but even they can be duped. Who you can’t fool is the people who serve you breakfast in the morning, make your bed, and clean your bathroom. They know everything.”
“Do they?”
“Trust me, they do.”
She turns away and stares out the window.
I’m sure she understands, but I want to make myself crystal clear.
“In addition to me,” I say, “there are five other people living in my town house. Some of them you’ve met already, others you will the day you move in.”
Diane gives me a sidelong glance, her expression wary.
“If we don’t sleep in the same room,” I say, “they’ll know. I can’t risk that.”
“OK,” she says. “Not a problem.”
The next second, she picks up my boxers from the top of the pile and sets them on the bed. I watch, forgetting to breathe. She pulls my jeans from the bottom of the pile and places them next to my boxers. Then she grabs the rest of the pile, without sorting it, and heads to the bathroom.
“Sorry I borrowed your shirt,” she calls from the hallway. “It won’t happen again.”
Chapter 20
Diane
The majordome opens the door and bows his head. “Welcome to Darcy House, mademoiselle. Everyone is thrilled about your arrival.”
“Thank you, Octave.” I clench my fists to stop myself from giving him a hug and a cheek kiss. “I’m thrilled to be here.”
On my first couple of visits, I cheek kissed him. Then Darcy explained to me it was inappropriate and it made them uncomfortable. So, I’ve learned to keep my body language in check, hoping that my friendliness shows in the smile and the tone of my voice.
And that’s how I greet the rest of the inhabitants of the mansion on rue Vieille du Temple—Lynette, a dynamic woman in her late fifties who helps Octave run the house; Michel, the cook with a proud beer belly that he calls his professional deformation; the shy maid, Lou; and Samir, the smiley gardener/handyman.
Samir carries my suitcases inside.
“Mademoiselle. Monsieur.” Lynette hands Darcy and me a glass of bubbly. “This calls for a celebration.”
Darcy touches his glass to mine. “It certainly does. Welcome to your future home, my dear.”
I produce a saccharine smile. Someone, give me a Légion d’Honneur medal for not rolling my eyes.
We spend a few minutes in the foyer, sipping champagne and chatting with the staff. I insist that they call me by my first name. Lynette, Lou, Michel, and Samir promise they will. Octave says he can’t. He’ll call me mademoiselle and, once Darcy and I are married, he’ll switch to madame. He apologizes profusely for his refusal to comply with my request, but he’s just old-fashioned like that. It can’t be helped.
When our glasses are empty and Lynette carries them away, Darcy takes my hand. “Let me show you around properly.”
As we tour the airy hôtel particulier, Darcy explains that it was built almost four hundred years ago for a royal paramour. It changed hands many times and fell into disrepair in the nineteenth century when the aristocracy abandoned Le Marais. But his smart grandfather Bernard bought the mansion from a Swiss couple in the sixties, just before the neighborhood became hip again, and had it restored to combine the original grandeur with modern comforts.
“Have you always lived here?” I ask.
We’ve finished the tour, had a light dinner, and are now lounging in wicker armchairs in the most secluded and romantic spot in Darcy’s picture-perfect back garden. The air is filled with the incomparable sweetness of a summer evening, enhanced by the climbing roses that lace the vintage cast-iron gazebo we’re chilling in.
Top marks, Samir!
Darcy smiles.
I forget all about the roses.
Dammit, he’s becoming an ace at this formerly so un-Darcy-like facial expression. Must be thanks to all the practice he’s been getting lately, to my utter dismay. I’m determined not to slip again. Darcy hasn’t made any intentional attempts to derail me—I’ll grant him that. But he’s been in the best of moods all week, laughing at my witticisms and even attempting a few of his own.
Imagine that!
He stopped by La Bohème every night—just as I did—to watch customers look at my photos, and he celebrated with me every print I sold.
The problem is Darcy being sweet, supportive, and funny is just as bad as deliberate seduction. No, it’s worse. Much worse.
Give me the biblical serpent and his juicy apple any day over this.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ve lived in this house since I was born, with a hiatus of five years in my late teens and early twenties.”
“Don’t tell me you lived in a student dormitory during your hiatus.”
He shakes his head. “But I assure you, my accommodations were modest.”
“What made you return home?”
“It’s a long story.”
I stretch out my legs, cross my ankles, and lift the glass of homemade lemonade in my hand. “Do I look like I’m in a hurry?”
“OK,” Darcy says after a short hesitation. “I moved back here sometime after Maman left and before Papa passed.”
He sips his lemonade in silence, his expression somber. Whatever thoughts he’s thinking they aren’t happy.
Darcy sets his glass on the metal table and turns to me. “Both of my parents entered a delayed and severe midlife crisis when I was about nineteen. Papa turned into a compulsive bon vivant. When he wasn’t gambling in Monaco, he sailed in the Mediterranean or raced his Lamborghini around Tuscany. He’d come home only to see his boys and then be off again on his next adventure.”
“You and your brothers lived with your dad?”
He shakes his head. “I was renting an apartment in the 6th, and my brothers lived with Maman.”
“Who ran the company?”
“No one, really. It kind of ran itself—those were the good old days before the subprime mortgage crisis. Only at some point, the company started running downhill.”
“What about your mom?”
He sighs. “Papa tried really hard to win her back and persuade her to join him on his fun-in-the-sun trips, but she despised all of it. Her own midlife crisis led her in the opposite direction.”
“To the North Pole?”
He snorts. “Maman became very religious and passionate about charity work.”
“If you were nineteen, your brothers were…” I close my eyes, computing.
“Raphael was about fifteen and Noah eleven.” A shadow passes over his face. “They needed their parents. An older brother, a butler, tutors, cooks, maids, and extravagant amounts of pocket money can’t stand in for mom and dad.”
“I guess not.”
“One day I stopped by the house and caught Raph smoking pot with a couple of other kids like him.” Darcy’s lips compress into a hard line. “With too much money and too little supervision.”
“Did you tell your parents?”
He shakes his head. “There was no point. Papa would’ve freaked out and overreacted, and Maman… let’s just say we weren’t close.”
“What did you do?”
“I took measures.” He shrugs. “Someone had to.”
“Did your measures work?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gives me a smug smile. “And I didn’t stop there. Someone also had to convince the company’s employees and the staff here and in Burgundy that the d’Arcys weren’t on a path to self-destruction.”
“But you were only nineteen!”
“It’s not as if we had other candidates for the task.” He chews on his lip. “Besides, I was already twenty-one by the time Papa involved me in the business.”
It’s funny how his voice, tone, and eyes are neutral when he says Maman and filled with warmth when he says Papa.
“You loved him, didn’t you?” I ask.
He smiles. “Papa was the best. A great guy—kind, generous, incredibly charismatic—despite his poor judgement and mistakes. Yes, I loved him, even when he went through his personality yo-yo… I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
That’s how I feel about my dad, too.
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “You wanted to help him any way you could, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. But, as it turned out, I couldn’t save him from himself.” He shrugs. “So I resolved to at least save his name and his life’s work. His legacy.”
“I thought you didn’t care much for the family name.” I wink at him. “You did shorten it to Darcy, after all.”
“It’s just to make the conduct of business easier. I didn’t want to put a certain type of people off with my long name and my title.”
People like me?
I narrow my eyes. “Fess up, Sebastian—you’re actually proud to be Count d’Arcy and so forth, aren’t you? You burn the midnight oil drawing your family’s coat of arms and reading up about the lives and deeds of your illustrious ancestors all the way back to Charlemagne.”
“We don’t descend from Charlemagne. The first recorded d’Arcy du Grand-Thouars de Saint-Maurice was a knight of Irish descent ennobled in the sixteenth century.”
He smiles.
Slowly, his smile stretches into a grin. A grin of the panty-dropping variety.
I focus on my lemonade.
“I suppose I am proud of my ancestry and most of their deeds,” Darcy says. “That pride was one of the things that kept me going all those times I was a hair from saying screw it all.”
I gaze at the white roses over my head. What I just heard explains a lot about Darcy. But not all. It doesn’t explain why he had to be so hard on my dad. The man was no threat to him. Dad’s artisanal workshop was a little mosquito to Darcy’s King Kong.
Couldn’t he just live and let live?
Why hadn’t he at least attempted to buy Dad’s fragrances before he “cloned” them and drove the man out of business?
I’ll never forgive myself if I forgive him for what he did.
“Why exactly did your mom leave your dad?” Darcy asks out of the blue.
“I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”
“I answered your questions,” he says. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Fine.”
“So?”
“Several reasons,” I say. “His drinking, of course. Dad can’t hold his liquor, and he’d sworn to quit when they got married. He kept his promise until… until you ruined him.”
“I see.”
“She tried to help him, she really did. She got a waitressing job and urged him to do the same.”
“Wait tables?”
“Get a job. Move on.” I shrug. “But he was stuck on saving his company—his baby—at any price. When Mom discovered he’d secretly taken a mortgage on the house, she went ballistic.”
“I can imagine.”
“He faked her signature!” I shake my head. “I think it was the last straw.”
Darcy nods. “She couldn’t forgive his lie.”
“Not just that. She loves that house. They bought it shortly after they married, and completely rebuilt it over the years. It’s where they raised Lionel, Chloe, and me. We still have our rooms there, always ready for an impromptu visit.”
His gives me a sympathetic look. “She kept Lionel’s room?”
“Yes.” I rake my hand through my hair. “I used to tell her she should empty it out, but now I’m glad she never did. When I go in there, I remember him and my childhood… It’s always bittersweet, but it’s more sweet than bitter.”
He reaches over and takes my hand. I tell myself it’s just to say he’s sorry for my loss. He’s trying to convey that he, too, knows what it feels like to lose a dear one.
He’ll let go of it in a moment.
Lynette comes out of the house, carrying a fragrant candle in an ancient chandelier. She sets it on the table between our armchairs.
I realize it’s dark. A quick glance at my watch confirms the lateness of the hour—a quarter past eleven.
“I’m off to bed, children,” she says, smiling. “Remember to blow out the candle when you go in.”
“Will do,” Darcy says.
He’s still holding my hand.
I’m still deluding myself he’ll release it any moment now.
Instead, he gives it a gentl
e squeeze and strokes the inside of my palm with his thumb.
Lynette’s steps fade away and a door clicks shut.
Darcy tugs on my arm. “Come here.”
In the candlelight, his eyes are two bottomless black wells, the pull from their depths almost irresistible.
I tip my head back and peer at the stars through the holes in the foliage. Dear Lord, I’m weak, so freaking weak. I’m about to let Darcy pull me toward him and have his way with me. My libido is taking control of my brain in a way I hadn’t anticipated. My lust has become the enemy within—a traitor only too happy to do the rival power’s bidding to the detriment of his homeland.
Darcy gives me another gentle tug, and I go to him, a slave to my baser needs. Without standing up, he leans toward me and runs his hands over my hips and thighs. He strokes them, down to my knees and up to my bottom, sliding his hands under the hem of my sundress.
I move closer and sit on his lap, facing him, my legs on either side of his. He nudges the straps of my dress and bra down my shoulders. Dying for the feel of his hands on my breasts, I pass my arms through the straps. The material slithers down and pools at my waist.
Sebastian reaches behind my back, unclasps my bra, and finally cups my breasts with his big hands. His touch is warm and snug and necessary.
Wait a sec!
Did I just call him “Sebastian”? Not because I had to, but of my own free will, inside my head where there are no witnesses?
Yes, I did.
This is so messed up.
I inch closer to his hard-on, debating if I should free it now or wait. When he puts his mouth to one of my breasts and begins to suckle, I forget what it was I couldn’t make up my mind about. The softness of his lips, the tightness of his latch around my areola and the sweet intimacy of his tongue on my nipple make me arch and whimper.
He grips the back of my neck, raking his fingers through my hair, and pulls me to him. When his kiss arrives, openmouthed and hot, I revel in every exquisite moment of it, in his heady taste. It occurs to me that extra hot has become our new normal when we’re alone. It also hits me that he no longer asks for permission to kiss me like that.
Thank God.
Who knew I’d love spice so much?