by Dani Collins
Emotion threatened to swamp her afresh as she absorbed what Gabriel had given her with a few legal documents. Options. Possibility. The gift of existence was greater than any haute couture dress or designer handbag or limitless credit card.
It was a miracle.
She did have a more recent memory of happiness, she realized. This. As she snapped the clutch closed and turned its tiny lock, she let the glow of gratitude toward him seep through her until joy shone from her smile and radiated from her demeanor.
With every ounce of grace she had ever possessed, she walked to the reception lounge.
* * *
Gabriel turned from instructing the couturier to box up as much as possible by morning so they could take it on the jet with them—and all the air was punched from his lungs.
A goddess approached in an unhurried gait that rocked her hips. Her skirt wafted back from her mile-long legs and her breasts bounced lightly above a long, slender waist. Her hair slithered in loose ribbons of caramel with glints of cool platinum against the warm gold of her bare shoulders and upper chest.
Her face was an angel’s, luminous and pure. Aside from the dramatic lines that accented her eyes and gave them a hint of tilt, she wore little makeup. Or wore it so well, it was barely noticeable. Her lashes were naturally long and thick. He’d studied them while she had slept on the plane. Her succulent lips were accentuated with a delicate pink and shone with gloss. Her smile was one of exultation. Whatever she was celebrating, he decided she was entitled to it.
He couldn’t fault her in that moment for one damned thing.
She halted before she reached him, struck a pose, pivoted to show the back of the dress. It lifted and floated back down before she pivoted again and continued toward him with a playful sparkle in her eye.
The entire move had been executed so smoothly, he chuckled with enjoyment.
“Maximum points for first impression, I hope. Otherwise we start again.” She met his gaze without shyness, smiling, utterly composed.
She was sexy as hell.
Virgin, he reminded himself, yet the only thing that kept him from ravishing her on the spot was their rapt audience.
She was waiting for his judgment, he realized, as she continued looking at him and he noted tension creep in around her smile. The flutter of her pulse in her throat grew more rapid, exactly as it had been when she had quietly challenged him in his grandmother’s office.
“You broke the scale.” He brought her hand to his mouth, wanting to place his lips in far more intimate places than her soft knuckle. “And good thing because I’m too hungry to wait while you start again. This is for you.”
He gently splayed out her hand and threaded the ring onto her finger.
It was a performance for their audience and she gasped with appropriate amazement at the fifteen-carat marquise-cut blue diamond. Its split shank was coated in white diamonds to set off the rare color of the center stone.
The women around them squealed with excitement.
“I don’t know what to say,” Luli said faintly.
“Thank you?” he suggested dryly, and did what was expected, taking her into his arms for a kiss.
Her arms went around his neck and her heart pounded so hard he felt it against his chest, teasing his own to come race with hers. He kept the kiss light, not wanting to ruin her lipstick, but her lips clung shyly to his and she slid her lashes down with awareness as he released her.
He groaned inwardly. Virgin she might be, but her response to his touch was the most erotic thing he’d ever experienced.
“Good night, ladies. Your extra effort won’t go unrewarded,” he said with a nod.
Voices wished them a lovely evening and he escorted her to the car, for once anticipating the entrance they would make. Women invariably wanted to be seen with him, whether it was an innocent business meeting or a lengthy, more intimate association. He found the quest for attention tiresome, but accepted it.
With Luli, however, he was already smiling inwardly at the stir she would cause. He usually only felt this sense of excitement when one of his personal projects went to market—a niche app or something else he had poured himself into developing.
He was swelling with pride, he realized, but not of ownership. He didn’t take credit for this transformation or even for the discovery of her.
No, he was simply proud to be with a woman who shone brighter than the midday sun.
CHAPTER SIX
THE RESTAURANT WAS a converted house in the Sixth Arrondissement, once owned by an art dealer. It brimmed with impressionist paintings and priceless objets d’art. A murmur went through the diners in the main lounge and piano bar as they were shown through to an atrium with only one table that was obviously reserved for the most illustrious customers.
A small fountain and an abundance of ferns provided a modicum of privacy, but the glass walls and ceiling provided none. Luli didn’t care who looked at them. She was too busy taking in the fat moon above the glittering Eiffel Tower.
“I’ve wanted to come to Paris since I first understood what it was. I can’t believe I’m here,” Luli said, trying not to betray her complete awe.
“We’ll come back soon. I have to get back to some meetings I left when you texted about my grandmother.”
“Was that a flash?” She looked toward the fountain.
“Outside? Yes.”
“No, from—”
A jewel-bedecked customer had crept to the fountain and held a smartphone in the air space behind the streaming water, aiming it at them. One of the servers in a black vest and long white apron hurried to draw the woman away.
“Ignore it,” Gabriel said. “My security team will address it.”
She couldn’t. Glints of light were popping against the wall of shrubbery beyond the atrium’s walls and on the rooftop of the adjacent building.
“I used to dream of being so famous everyone would want my photo. It’s quite intrusive, isn’t it? How do you stand it?”
“Honestly, I’m not of much interest to the paparazzi unless I’m with a woman. Even then, it very much depends on who she is. I met with a married actress a couple of times, years ago. She was researching a part. It was completely innocuous, but she was of a mind that any publicity was good publicity. She tipped off photographers every time and the entertainment sites made it into something it wasn’t. The movie did well at the box office and on the award circuit. Perhaps her strategy had some weight.” He told her whom it had been. She was quite famous, but old enough to be his mother.
Their wine was delivered and poured. Luli didn’t know where to look. Outside at the cameras? At the craning necks in the main part of the restaurant? Looking at Gabriel would only get her tangled up in his gaze.
“I suppose your connection to your grandmother makes you news right now,” she murmured, studying the ornate silver stem and the patterns etched into the tulip-shaped red bowl of her one-of-a-kind handcrafted wineglass—or so their server had informed her.
“My grandmother’s connection to me affects people who have business dealings with Chen Enterprises. I’m already so rich. No one could care less that I just got richer.”
“But you said the paparazzi only pay attention to you if the woman you’re with is famous. They don’t know who I am.”
“Exactly.” One corner of his mouth went up in a cynical curl. “The waitstaff is going to make a bundle in tips from people wanting your name. Joke’s on them. I didn’t offer it.”
“They wouldn’t recognize it anyway. I’m nobody.”
The waiter brought an amuse-bouche—a spoon that held a deviled quail’s egg on a mushroom cap with a glazed baby carrot next to it.
“It seems silly that anyone would care,” she continued. “I’m as guilty as the next person for following celebrity gossip. Your grandmother subscribed to overseas magazines
and I love royal wedding photos and the like, but—oh.”
“You’ve arrived. Welcome.” His lingering smile held gentle mockery. “Yes, everyone is trying to be the first to report on my marriage. More pointedly, to whom.”
“I suppose that is news.” She was. She sobered as she recalled how attentive the couturier and her staff had been. “Was there someone else they expected? Are you with someone?” She should have asked that several kisses ago.
“Only you,” he said dryly. “A press release goes out at midnight explaining I’ve been quietly courting my grandmother’s business manager and we’ve made it official.”
“No one is going to believe that. Or that I’m a business manager.” She thought of the butler trying to throw her out on her ear, first chance he got.
“It doesn’t matter what they believe, only what I know. While you were playing dress up, I accessed the backup files and ran some reports for my edification. You make a lot of small adjustments that make a big difference. You do, in fact, manage her business affairs.”
“Mae liked me to be vigilant.”
“But you did much of it electronically. I saw the scripts you inserted to alert you when something falls outside your parameter sets. You’ve been playing with my back end for a while.”
She had, but he didn’t need to make it sound so suggestive.
Their plates were exchanged. A light shell of something that might have been egg white had been quick fried into a lacy web and bent into a basket while warm. It held a leg of squab, a half dozen bright green peas and a dollop of what she learned was whipped turnip. A smear of chili sauce framed it and violets were sprinkled for decoration.
“If you’ve gone that far,” she said, hand going to the clutch in her lap. “You’re able to restore from backup and lock me out.”
“I could. But I refuse to take the easy way. I won’t let you get the better of me.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“I’m competitive, not sexist.”
“How did you learn to code?” She snapped a strand from the basket and discovered it was made of sharp cheese, rich and salty against her tongue.
“My grade school had three afterschool clubs—computers, arts and athletics. I didn’t want to go home, so I had to pick one. I can speak on a stage if I have to, but I have no talent for performing or other creative pursuits. I was decent in track and field, but have no interest in team sports. The isolation of a computer screen, however, was my dream habitat.”
“Why didn’t you want to go home?”
“My father was a drunk and not fun to be around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She couldn’t help noticing the strain of his shirt across his chest, as though his muscles had tensed despite the fact he sounded very indifferent and relaxed.
“I read that you’re a black belt in kung fu.”
“It’s a good workout and clears my mind.”
“When did you start?”
“When bullies started calling me Kung Fu Kid.” He pointed at the tiny overlap at the corner of his eye. “I went to the nearest dojo and offered my computer skills in exchange for lessons. It was another convenient way to avoid going home.”
“Did you teach those bullies a lesson?”
“My sifu taught me not to care what they said.”
“You never fought back?” What was the point in going all the way to black belt, then?
“I threw a boy to the ground once, when he tried to start something. His friends were right there, planning to help. Word got around and they stopped bothering me. Then I sold my app and everyone wanted to be my friend.”
“You were twelve? It was a game, wasn’t it?”
“This is why I never bother talking about myself. Anything of note has already been documented online.” He cleaned the meat off the delicate bone in one bite and set it aside.
“I don’t know much more than that, except that you won a national competition for young entrepreneurs and caught the attention of Silicon Valley. They paid you a million dollars?”
“Which caught my grandmother’s attention. She came to warn me not to let my father take control of my money. He cautioned me against trusting her. They had a heated discussion and I didn’t hear from her again until she came to his funeral.”
“She didn’t try to help you? Did she realize your father had a drinking problem?”
“Given how furious she was with my mother, I believe she probably did. I didn’t want her help.”
“Why not?”
“My own version of Stockholm syndrome, I suppose. The devil you know and all that.”
She absorbed that, thinking he was onto something. She had rationalized staying with Mae rather than taking the hard road of striking out on her own. Before that, she had tried relentlessly and earnestly to earn her mother’s regard.
“Did you keep control of your money?” she asked.
“More or less. I hired a certified advisor and talked my father into paying off our mortgage, which had been my grandmother’s advice.”
“Real estate has been very good to her.”
“And me. I invested heavily in property as I sold more apps. It came easily to me. Felt like a license to print money. When I was fifteen, I hired a private tutor so I had more flexibility with my education. I graduated high school early and completed a business degree before I turned twenty. I predicted the financial crash and was one of those select few who came up roses.”
“And your father...?”
“Drank himself to kidney failure, but lived comfortably until then. I supported him, put him in rehab several times. It never took.” He used a jagged corner of shell to stab a pea and ate it with a crunch.
“Did he have other family? Do you have cousins?”
“A handful of people who didn’t want to know him, but who crawl out of the woodwork periodically to ask me for start-up capital. Some ventures succeed, others have gone bust. It’s another reason I’ve kept my distance from my grandmother. It’s hard to say no to family, but it can be foolish to say yes. Do you have family besides your mother and father? Is he still alive?”
“I haven’t seen anything online about him since he went to prison for corruption a couple of years after I left for Singapore. I guess his sons are my half brothers, but I’ve never met them or tried to reach out.” She wrinkled her nose in dismay. “I presume they’re much like him. My mother’s family was very poor. She never spoke of them. I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for them and have no reason to.”
It was odd to talk about herself. No one had asked about her life or seemed interested in it for years.
Their plates were cleared and bowls of warm, scented water brought to rinse their hands.
“We should dance,” Gabriel said when she looked toward the drift of piano notes from the other side of the restaurant.
She shook her head. “I took ballet years ago, but only to help with grace and posture. I’ve never danced for real.”
“With a man, you mean? That’s a good reason to do it, then, isn’t it?” He rose and held out his hand. “Leave that here,” he said of the clutch she would have carried with her. “It’s perfectly safe.”
She nervously left it on the chair as she rose and placed her hand in his. An electric current seemed to run from the weave of their fingers up her arm to start an engine purring in her chest.
Eyes followed them, but she kept her gaze on the lobe of Gabriel’s ear as he wound through the tables ahead of her. Out of nowhere, she wondered what it would be like to nibble his ear. People did that, didn’t they? Would he like it? Tendrils of intrigue unfurled inside her at the thought of dabbling her tongue there and sucking. Of him doing it to her. She had to stifle a reflexive moan at the carnal fantasy.
Along with the p
ianist, there were a cellist and a violinist. It was like being in a movie as he turned when they reached the dance floor and drew her into his arms. She felt as though she floated when they began to move together.
“You’re perfect,” he said as he led with athletic grace.
Her light skirt lifted and fell against her bare legs in a sensual caress while she absorbed the strength of him, the surety of his touch moving her about so effortlessly. A pleasurable heat suffused her and she knew this would be her new memory for her stage smile. She didn’t know if she’d ever felt so light in her life. So carefree and purely, simply happy.
She suspected she was actually asleep and would wake in her plain room in the servants’ quarters of Mae’s mansion very soon.
“The entire place is spellbound,” he murmured, making her falter slightly.
“Was that the goal?”
“I can’t deny I wanted to see their reaction.”
“Why?” She became self-conscious and had to concentrate to ensure she didn’t misstep.
“A crowd like this is used to being surrounded by beauty. You’re above and beyond anything they will have ever seen.”
“Is that what I am? A piece of art you’ve acquired?” Was that why he hadn’t said anything about their kiss?
His mouth was no longer relaxed. “No.”
“What, then? A project? A percentage?”
“I have no idea. You’re unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.”
“But you want to twirl me around and say, Look what I found.”
“I want to feel you in my arms.” His voice was low and powerful enough to resonate through her.
Somehow he kept them moving without bumping into anyone while she tried to read his eyes. She didn’t know what she was seeing in those rocky ocean depths.
“You haven’t said anything since I told you,” she reminded him.
“Is it true?” he demanded.
“I’m looking to you for guidance because I have no idea what I’m doing.” She spoke with a thread of wildness in her voice. The sense of spinning beyond herself was growing as she realized exactly how much she was looking to him—because she was that far out of her depth in every single way.