Red Hot Rebel - Olivia Hayle Page 0,27

the check. “You’re coming out with me.”

“We are?”

Rhys sighs. “We can’t be out late.”

“Oh, I know, I know… but there’s a great bar just around the corner. It’s not even midnight, no way you’re leaving yet.” He grins at me. “Let us show you the real Paris.”

And unlike with Paolo, I find myself nodding. “Okay. Yeah, let’s.”

He gets up and stretches, smiling at us both. “Restroom break, like you say.”

Rhys shakes his heads and reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. “We don’t have to go,” he says quietly.

“Do you not want to?”

Another beat of silence. And then, “I do want to see you dance again.”

We could be anywhere, surrounded by anyone, and I wouldn’t be able to look away from his eyes. They’re dark and unfathomable and tentative. Like he’s offering a tiny bit of truth, and it’s not cloaked in sarcasm or wit.

I swallow. “Okay, yeah. We’ll do that.”

Rhys pays the entire bill. When I try to stop him, he just shakes his head. “I invited you out,” he says, returning the black credit card to his wallet. “It’s only fair.”

But his eyes aren’t entirely clear, and I don’t know if it’s because of me or because of Baptiste’s convenient restroom excuse after asking for the bill.

There’s more here than meets the eye, but hasn’t that always been the case with Rhys Marchand?

9

Rhys

Baptiste monopolizes Ivy during the short walk to the nearby bar. It’s not surprising—I’m starting to understand the impulse—but I have to clench my teeth together to keep from interrupting him as he asks what it’s really like to be a model.

Like it’s a mode of being and not a profession.

I shouldn’t have accepted his text to go out to dinner. The possibility of an evening alone in Paris, perhaps showing Ivy around, drawing out the magic that Paris possesses but is so good at hiding… yeah, that would have been better. But the opportunity has passed.

I force my clenched fist to relax at my side as Baptiste loops back around to me. Nearly as tall as me, we’d once been thick as thieves growing up. Summers spent in the French countryside had seen us racing on bikes down to the ocean. He’d been someone to discuss French history with that my siblings weren’t interested in. If it wasn’t a painter, Lily wouldn’t listen—if it wasn’t an architect, Henry wouldn’t. Parker didn’t care about history at all.

But things had changed sometime in our teens, and irrevocably when I left Paris all those years ago.

“A model,” he whispers to me in French, clasping my shoulder. “You’re really living in the fast lane, Rhys!”

“She’s a person.”

“Of course, of course. And you’re not together?”

I consider lying. “No.”

“Excellent.” Baptiste’s smile is wide. “A model,” he repeats to himself before returning to Ivy’s side. Her hair flows softly down her back, and the dress she’s wearing fits her better than anything she’s worn so far on the trip. It’s more… her. Understated. Gorgeous.

Natural.

She gives us both a wide, blinding smile when we stop outside the bar. Music blasts through the open door. “Is this the place?”

“Yes. It’s not too loud, is it?”

“Not at all!”

I step past Baptiste as we enter and put a hand on her low back, bending to whisper.

“We can leave whenever you want,” I tell her. “Just let me know.”

She turns her face up, distractingly close. “All right. Dance with me?”

She smells like woman and warm skin and whatever sweet, floral shampoo she’s used. And there’s only one response. “If you want to.”

Her smile is a mischievous thing, reminding me that she’s more than I’d first thought she was. She disappears into the bar, nodding for us to continue. I shrug to Baptiste and follow her inside, with him on my heels.

Ivy weaves her way to the middle of the dance floor. I follow her less gracefully, using elbows and half-shouted pardons.

She finds the rhythm instantly, as if she’d been waiting to since she heard the song. Baptiste asks her what she’d like to drink, and shoots me an obnoxious smile as he heads to the bar to get it for her.

So he can pay for her drink but not his own dinner?

It’s such a small thing, but knowing what he would have asked me if Ivy wasn’t there, it grates.

She beckons me closer, holding on to my shoulders to reach my ear. “This place is amazing,” she tells me.

“It’s like every other bar back in New York,” I half-shout back.

Her smile then is breathtaking. She’s truly