‘She’s a very pretty girl,’ he accepts as his attention returns. ‘And Remy, I saw her first.’
It’s an assertion I’ll allow him to keep on believing. For all of us.
‘I’m not interested in making a conquest of a new hire. Have her sent to my office. Let me get to the bottom of this.’
Ben frowns, then consents with a perfectly Gallic shrug. The door is no sooner closed behind him when Rhett speaks again.
‘Must be the only bit of her you haven’t had.’
‘Ta gueule.’ Shut it. ‘Also, leave.’
‘What, and miss the fireworks?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I answer, my tone bored.
There will be no fireworks. The plan mustn’t change. Rose might not be the woman I thought she was, but whatever has passed between us, she’s here at my behest. And here she’ll stay until I discover why my father sought to involve her in our family politics.
‘You think you’re confused?’ Rhett answers with a bark of a laugh. ‘That woman out there has travelled six thousand miles for a job to find she’s fucked her new boss, the same boss who’s been sending her creepy gifts—’
‘A coffee machine isn’t creepy.’ This is possibly not what I should’ve responded with. But I also suppose I should not be surprised he knows exactly what gifts I’ve sent. The why he can’t possibly understand because I’m not sure I understand it myself.
‘A coffee machine isn’t very sexy either.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be sexy.’ Especially now. ‘I was just showing my appreciation.’
‘Appreciation? Well, she’s out there now wondering if you’ve brought her here to gift her something else.’ As though there might be the slightest possibility I mistake his meaning, he palms his crotch.
‘I thought your right hand was your girlfriend, not your left.’
‘Better to fuck my hand than fuck my—’
‘I did not fuck Róisín Ryan,’ I retort angrily.
‘What do you call it? Keeping it in the family?’
11
Rose
‘Why do I need to see him?’
‘I do not ask.’ Alice throws this terse reply over her shoulder as she steps from the elevator onto, what is, I understand, the executive floor. ‘I only know, he says leap, I ask how high.’
‘And why did you call him petite loup?’ I ask, trying to keep up with her as she darts along the hallway as though escaping the police. ‘Loup is wolf, right?’ Remy wasn’t predatory, not as I recall. It can’t have been a cute name for his dick, not the size of that thing. Unless she means it ironically. I glance her way, and I decide she has no knowledge of Remy Durrand’s mighty baguette because if she did, she wouldn’t be looking so disconcerted.
‘His father was the wolf; he is the wolf cub. He is, la ruse . . . what is the word in English?’ she muses as we turn a corner. ‘Cunning! Le petite loup, the young wolf is cunning.’
Was it charm or cunning that led him to my bed?
I know which I’d like to think it was. I’m also not sure I’d be right, not after this morning.
We enter an airy reception, a verbal exchange taking place between Alice and a woman acting as sentry behind an imposing industrial design desk. With the hauteur of a queen, she gestures us to a butter-soft leather sofa where we wait. And wait.
An older man is admitted to the double doors, exiting a few minutes later without the paperwork he’d carried in. Another man leaves, but not before perching his ass on the corner of the older administrator’s desk and beginning to speak to her in French—French with a clearly British accent. A one-sided conversation too, as the woman just swats his arm with a folder, turning her attention back to her computer screen.
‘We won’t be long here, will we?’ I whisper to Alice.
‘Have you got somewhere to be?’ the man asks, amused.
My cheeks begin to sting, and I begin to stammer an answer as the older woman seems to take pity on me, gesturing us toward the imposing double doors.
One quick rap and Alice gingerly pushes the door open.
‘Entre,’ comes the commanding reply in a voice I still seem to summon in my dreams.
She pushes the door wider as I consider her earlier words about his bark being worse than his bite. If that’s the case, why does she look like she’s entering the wolf’s den and worried she’s about to have her head bitten off? Whatever, she might be the appetiser, but something tells me I’m about