her on this trip has loved her. René didn’t treat her with any respect, so why should she respect him?”
“His behavior and her behavior are two separate issues,” he said stubbornly. “I’m not defending what he did. Whether he meant harm or not, he shouldn’t have done it. I will make sure his father knows it was his actions that triggered the incident.”
“But?” I asked.
He shifted on his feet, glancing up at the yacht before looking at me with concern darkening his eyes. “I can’t defend her actions either. The way she reacted is completely contrary to who I thought she was and to who I need her to be for this campaign. I can’t ignore that.”
Before I could reply, Leah hurried past us to a car parking at the end of the dock. I recognized the man who climbed out to open her door as one of our drivers, and my tensed muscles relaxed when I saw her safely entering one of our vehicles.
Since I couldn’t think of where else she would go, I assumed she’d asked him to take her back to the hotel. Jefferson had turned back to the water, a thoughtful expression on his face as he stared out over the flat surface.
I wasn’t even sure if he knew she’d just blown past us, but I was worried she’d overheard what he’d said about her. No one wanted to know their boss thought they’d behaved like a fishwife, but Leah especially wouldn’t have wanted to hear that she’d reacted in a way that had caused him to question whether she was who he thought she was.
She’d been so worried about it as it was that hearing him confirm it might just shatter her self-confidence for this gig to a level even I couldn’t bring it back from. And if that happened, we were all fucked.
Chapter 29
LEAH
I’m not a quitter. It was a mantra I’d lived by for years, and yet it wasn’t helping me at all in this moment. Every ounce of belief that I’d been right to have taken this job had gone up in smoke, and all I wanted to do was quit.
It had been stupid to ever have thought that this was a good idea. I was a simple girl with simple needs who led a simple life and had always been perfectly happy with it. Why I’d thought that jetting to the other side of the world to play a game of pretend would work was beyond me.
It just wasn’t who I was. Fuck Jefferson, his money, and this persona he wants me to play.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this anymore, and if I decided against it, then all the money in Jefferson’s bank account and all the smooth talking in Dane’s repertoire wouldn’t change my mind. I’d already allowed their feelings, as well as Rick’s, to influence my decisions. I wouldn’t make that same mistake again.
My overnight bag was packed on my bed and my phone was pressed to my ear, but my brother wasn’t answering. Although I wouldn’t allow his opinions to make my decisions for me anymore, I still wanted to know what he thought about what happened tonight. I also needed to know if he’d give me a ride from the airport even if I walked away from half a million bucks for one year of work.
The hotel we’d checked into in Marseilles was beautiful. It had the most gorgeous sea views, and my room was spacious and decorated in mostly white. One of my walls was made entirely of glass, facing the water and showing me exactly what I would be missing if I walked out that door tonight.
I loved Texas. I loved my hometown and I loved my family. But we didn’t have views like this where I came from.
It wasn’t only the view I had to take into consideration either. It was seeing cities like Paris and God knew how many others after that. It was the experience of a lifetime and meeting people from cultures I never would’ve had the opportunity to interact with if not for this job.
Then, of course, there was the matter of the half a million bucks I would be getting paid. While I wasn’t super materialistic, only an idiot, a trust-fund kid, or a royal could’ve walked away from that kind of money on a whim.
It was a life-changing sum. An amount that would open many doors and pave many roads for me in the future. It