Honeymoon in Paris

by Juliette Sobanet

  Underneath, I was wearing my favorite black bra from Chez Isabelle just for that extra boost of confidence.

  With my résumé in tow, I jetted down the skinny, winding staircase in my apartment building, being careful not to take a nosedive in my tall heels, then ran out to the corner to hail a cab. After three available taxis passed by without a second glance, I jutted my hip out to the side and showed a little leg. Within seconds, a cab swooped across two lanes to pick me up.

  Sometimes it paid to be a woman.

  The new offices of Bella France were located in the only skyscraper in Lyon, nicknamed le crayon, or the pencil, because of its sharp pencil-like point at the top. This was my first time inside le crayon, and as the elevator shot me up to the eighteenth floor, I hoped I would be spending a lot more time here.

  Inside the lobby, a glossy black sign reading Bella France hung high above the receptionist’s smooth white desk.

  “Mademoiselle Summers, I presume?” she asked in French.

  “Yes, I’m here to see Beth Harding and Mireille Charbonneau,” I responded, noting the strong scent of perfume wafting from her side of the desk.

  She nodded, giving me a curt smile. “Beth is in a meeting at the moment, but Mireille is expecting you. Follow me, please.” Standing, she revealed a lanky, rail-thin body propped up on the tallest set of black stilettos I’d ever seen. I wondered if she modeled for the magazine on the side.

  I also wondered if she had ever eaten in her life.

  I followed the thinnest girl alive through a set of glass double doors, the scent of fresh paint swirling underneath my nose as we walked down a long hallway. Two women dressed in chic black dresses and four-inch heels showed off their perfectly accessorized outfits as they rolled a rack of wispy scarves, short skirts, and skimpy tops toward us.

  A man dressed in skinny jeans and pointy black boots trailed the girls. “Move it,” he squealed in French. “She’ll be here in ten minutes!”

  I smashed myself against the wall as the girls broke into a wobbly stiletto jog and Monsieur Skinny Jeans snapped at them to move even faster.

  If I landed this job, I would definitely need to spice up my wardrobe—and practice running in four-inch heels.

  We passed by the art department and several smaller, bustling offices where writers were tapping away on their computers, making calls, and prepping for Bella France’s first issue.

  Squeezing past two more sets of moving racks of designer clothing being hurled down the hallway, we finally reached the editor-in-chief’s office.

  My heart sped up as I took in the excitement buzzing in the air. The receptionist-slash-model who led the way knocked on Mireille Charbonneau’s door. She waited a moment, then knocked a second time, and finally a third.

  A shrill voice sounded from inside the office, prompting her to open the door and announce my arrival. “Charlotte Summers is here for her ten o’clock appointment.”

  “Send her in.”

  The girl ushered me ahead of her, then swiftly closed the door at my back.

  Mireille Charbonneau sat at a long glass desk in the center of her pristine, chicly decorated office. The impressive floor-to-ceiling windows behind her looked out over the entire city, while colorful Bella Magazine covers splashed the other three walls.

  Mireille sat back in her chair, crossed her thin legs, and lowered her stylish black glasses as she gave me the once-over. Her dirty blond hair was pulled up halfway, creating that disheveled but sexy look only French women could pull off. Her full lips pursed in a near frown as she waited for me to speak.

  “Bonjour, Madame Charbonneau. Je suis Charl—”

  “I know who you are,” she responded in English, her thick accent strangely full of suspicion. “Please, have a seat.” She nodded toward the two stiff white chairs that faced her desk.

  “Thank you.” I smoothed down my skirt, taking note of her impossibly thin body with curves in all the right places. God, sometimes French women were such a mystery. Would I ever truly fit in here?

  “I received your CV from your editor in New York, Beth Harding,” Mireille said, switching into French. “She has spoken very highly of you, so I took a look at the pieces you wrote for Bella Magazine.”

  “Thanks so much for taking the time to read them,” I said with a smile. Even though Mireille had yet to show even a hint of kindness in her thickly lined eyes, it did seem like we were at least headed in the right direction. “What did you think?”

  “What I think is that it is quite pretentious of you to assume that writing two freelance articles for the US version of our magazine would qualify you for a staff-writing position at Bella France. I have personally hand-selected each of our writers, and all of them have years of experience writing fresh, relevant copy that will appeal to our readers.” Mireille snatched up a piece of paper from her desk. “From what I see here in your CV, you have been teaching French and English for the past several years. You have established a career as a teacher, not as a writer, Miss Summers, and your inquiry has been nothing but a waste of my time.”

  I wasn’t sure how long my mouth hung open as I stared back at Mireille in astonishment, but it was long enough for me to imagine pointy red horns growing from that messy mop of hair on her head.

  “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time,” I said, standing to leave.

  “I didn’t tell you to leave yet, Miss Summers.”

  “I wasn’t going to wait for your permission,” I snapped. I didn’t owe this woman anything, and I certainly didn’t owe her the courtesy of staying around for further humiliation.

  She raised a brow at me, seemingly intrigued by my attitude. “You didn’t think I’d call you in simply to tell you that your writing proposition is laughable, did you?”

  “That’s certainly what it seems like,” I said. “Do you have something else to say to me? Because if not, now you’re wasting my time.”

  A sadistic chuckle left her lips as she slipped off her glasses and stood to meet my gaze. “Beth Harding is quite insistent that we find something for you to do here, and as it turns out, our new publisher is in need of someone to translate outgoing and incoming correspondence from our sister magazine in the States. I noticed on your CV that you have some experience in this field, no?”

  “Yes, I was a translator for a publisher back in DC.”

  “At the request of both Beth Harding and our new publisher here at Bella France, I put in a call to your former employer. Contrary to what I thought I might hear, they informed me that you were quite competent. Our publisher would like to interview you himself, of course, but I wanted to get a first look. Make sure you had what it takes to deal with a man of his… stature.” She eyed me up and down once more, her judgmental gaze lingering on my outfit.

  “And?” I asked, trying to ignore the feeling that this chic, forty-something, bitchy woman was mentally undressing me with her eyes.

  “If he likes you, you’ll start today.” She tossed my résumé back onto her desk and strutted past me. “Follow me.”

  Mireille hauled some serious ass in her pointy heels while I struggled to keep up with her. I wondered if the magazine offered a stiletto speed-walking course during training. If they did, I’d be the first to sign up.

  Inside the publisher’s massive corner office, a tall black chair on the other side of the room faced a magnificent view of the city. As Mireille cleared her throat, the chair slowly swiveled around.

  With his jet-black hair and that slight peppering of gray making him look mysterious, distinguished, sexy, and sleazy all at the same time, there was no mistaking the infamous Vincent Boucher.

  “Vincent, this is Charlotte Summers,” Mireille said in French. “She’s interviewing for the translating position.”

  The right corner of Vincent’s mouth slid up into a sly grin. “Thank you, Mireille. I’ll take it from here.”

  A flash of apprehension appeared in Mireille’s cool eyes as she looked from Vincent back to me, and finall
y left us alone.

  Vincent didn’t even wait for the door to shut before he combed my body with his intense hazel gaze. “Charlotte Olivier, what a pleasant, beautiful surprise.”

  Suddenly Vincent’s words from that first meeting outside of our Paris honeymoon hotel rushed back to me. He’d said that he was opening up a new magazine which would be headquartered in Lyon. Then he’d asked Luc if he still had family down that way.

  How could I have forgotten?

  “I think there’s been a mistake.” I mentally shook off Vincent’s greasy stare and turned for the door.

  “There hasn’t been any mistake, Charlotte. You need a job, don’t you?” Vincent’s voice was smooth, strong, practiced.

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. Yes, I desperately needed a job, but not from the one man my husband hated with all his heart and soul.

  “I’m offering quite a generous package for this position. With Luc being a meagerly paid university professor and Brigitte initiating custody hearings again, it would not be wise for you to turn your back so quickly on this opportunity—at least not until you hear what I can offer you.”

  I thought of Jean-Sébastien, my supervisor at the language school, and how distraught he’d been over the closing of classes. I thought of his wife Marie-Élise and their two small sons. I thought of my mom who’d had no interests of her own and no career to fall back on after years of being dependent on my father. I thought of Luc and his refusal to tell me the whole truth on what was really going on with the Boucher family. And I thought of my own dismal financial outlook.

  There were a million and one reasons why I should not dignify Vincent Boucher’s proposition with a response.

  But there were also just as many reasons why I needed this job right now.

  If I was going to do this, Vincent was going to have to play by my rules.

  I flipped around and marched up to Vincent’s desk. “I’m not oblivious to the fact that you seem to have a personal vendetta against my husband and his family… and that for some reason, you’re dead set on stealing all of the women in his life: his mother, his ex-wife, and now here you are offering me a translating job. Oh, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.”

  “Your point?” He leaned back in his chair and lifted a brow, completely unfazed.

  “I don’t want to know your reasons for wanting to hire me. I don’t care. What I do want is to secure a translating contract, but the only way this will work is if I’m dictating the terms.”

  Vincent plucked a pen and notepad from his desk. “And those terms would be?”

  “First, this is purely a business relationship. I’m in love with my husband, and nothing you say or do will turn me against him. So don’t try. Also, the contract will be with the language school I work for. They have other qualified translators on staff, so if at some point it’s time for me to move on, you’ll have your pick of some fantastic language specialists. Lastly, I would like to submit a few pieces for consideration for the magazine, and I want written confirmation from you that after this translating contract ends, I will be considered for a full-time staff writer position.”

  “Finished yet?” Vincent asked as he scribbled down the last of my demands.

  I sat down in the cushy black chair facing his desk and placed my hands in my lap. “Yes, I think that’s all.”

  He chuckled. “You’re quite the businesswoman, you know that?”

  “Well, if you really need a qualified translator that badly, I would hope you’d consider my small list of demands.”

  He glanced over the list once more. “The only request I will have a hard time meeting is number one. Beautiful women have always been my weakness, as you well know.”

  “Must be tough for you working in this estrogen-dominated environment every day.”

  He laughed. “You have no idea, Charlotte. You have no idea.”

  “I’d like to know a little bit more about what this translating position will involve, what types of hours you’ll need me for, and how much money we’re talking.” I wanted to show Vincent that I was serious about keeping things all business.

  Okay, there may have been a tiny part of me hoping that in working for Vincent, I would find out what was really going on between Luc and the Bouchers, and that I could actually help Luc, so that whatever he was facing, he wouldn’t be facing it alone.

  “Since we’re opening up as the sister magazine to Bella’s US version, there is quite a bit of correspondence between my office and theirs, and as you probably noticed the first time we met, my English is terrible,” Vincent said with a charming grin.

  I’d never understood the phenomenon of twenty-something girls going for much older men, and I hated to admit it, but with Vincent, I understood. Just one intriguing gaze from him screamed power, charm, sex, and mystery. Not that a man like him was my cup of tea—but I understood why a woman like Brigitte would fall prey to Vincent’s charms.

  “I’ll need you to translate incoming and outgoing e-mails, sit in on conference calls with me and, occasionally, accompany me to events and photo shoots,” Vincent said. “Working for a magazine can be very glamorous at times, but it is also a business. And with the amount of money we have at stake with this new venture, there isn’t much room for error. You’ll need to be extremely accurate—and discreet. Can you handle that, Madame Olivier?”

  I nodded, wondering what exactly I would have to be discreet about. “Of course.”

  “There is one more thing, in addition to your translating and interpreting duties,” Vincent said.

  Okay, if this was where he asked if I would give him a blow job under the desk every afternoon, the deal was off. “Yes?”

  “I would like for you to spend a couple of hours a week teaching me English.”

  I wondered how it was possible in all of his years of business that Vincent had never properly learned the English language, but now wasn’t the time for that question. At least he hadn’t asked me for the unthinkable.

  “Yes, for the right amount of money, of course I can,” I said.

  Vincent jotted something down on his notepad, then flipped it toward me.

  The amount staring back at me took my breath away. This contract would surely buy Jean-Sébastien a few more months with the language school, and it would encourage him to begin bringing in more outside translating and teaching contracts. This contract would also buy me at least a few more months of full-time pay before I had to figure something else out. Hopefully that something else would include a writing position at Bella France, which—if the stars aligned—would provide the perfect platform for me to complete and publish The Girl’s Guide to Tying the French Knot.

  I smiled up at Vincent. “I think we have a deal.”

  “Is Luc going to be a problem?” Vincent asked.

  As I imagined the uncomfortable task of telling my husband about my new job, a knock at the door interrupted us.

  Mireille strutted in, one hand on her hip. “She’s here, and she’s already flipping out at the photo shoot. The Bella US crew is trying to tell her what to do, and she can’t understand anything they’re saying. She’s requested to see you immediately.” Mireille shot Vincent a dramatic eye roll, then slammed the door behind her.

  “Oh là là… les femmes,” Vincent mumbled under his breath as he stood. “Do you have anywhere to be this afternoon?”

  “Not for a few hours anyway.”

  “Some of Bella Magazine’s English-speaking staff have flown over to help us get our first issue up and running, and to be sure we stay within the Bella brand. I haven’t understood a word these people have been saying all week. It will be nice to have you there to translate today if you’re ready to get started. Don’t worry, I’ll have my legal assistant draw up your contract as soon as we’re finished with this. We will, of course, be sure to include all of your terms.”

  “Thank you,” I said, standing to meet Vincent’s gaze. “Where are we headed?”

  “We
have a very high-profile actress posing as the cover model for our flagship issue, and we’re needed at the photo shoot.” Vincent headed for the door. “As Mireille said, this actress doesn’t speak much English either, so your services will be extremely useful today.”

  Excitement flooded through me as I followed Vincent down the long hallway. I just landed a job making more money than I’d ever made in my life! I was going to be able to help Jean-Sébastien keep the language school open, and I was going to have a shot at an exhilarating writing career when this was all over.

  Plus, in the meantime, I would be attending glamorous photo shoots!

  In the business sense, at least, Vincent Boucher suddenly didn’t seem that awful.

  Now the only thing I had to worry about was how I was going to break the news to Luc.

  Vincent opened the door to a massive room filled with lights and photographers. But when I spotted the actress posing in the middle of this cover-shoot frenzy, I realized that telling Luc about my new position wasn’t the only thing I had to worry about.

  Working with the rail-thin, gorgeous blonde who was shooting her pouty gaze at Vincent had not been part of our deal.

  Vincent leaned into my ear. “If you’re really serious about writing for the magazine one day, you were bound to cross paths with the lovely Brigitte at one point or another. I figured it might as well be today. Still in?”

  I pushed my shoulders back and held my chin up. “Of course I’m in.”

  But as Brigitte Beaumont’s cool green gaze landed on me, I wondered what in the hell I’d just gotten myself into.

  SEVENTEEN

  “What is she doing here?” Brigitte hissed into Vincent’s ear.

  Vincent motioned for me to join them, which was obviously the last thing I felt like doing. Bolting out the door and never looking back sounded like a much more viable option at this point.

  But I wouldn’t let her ruin this for me.

  More outrageously fashionable magazine staffers swirled frantically around the room as I walked toward my nemesis. Of all people to be posing for the cover shoot of Bella France’s first issue, why did it have to be Brigitte?