She texted again, hoping to pique his interest rather than tip him off:You’ve really got to see these,and dropped her phone in her purse. It rattled on the flash drive in the bottom of the clutch.
A few minutes later, the card reader on the suite’s door whirred. The door opened, and Pierre walked in.
Quentin Sault and another Secret Service guy strode in behind him and took up residence along the wall.
Flicka had had security guys around her whole life. She didn’t even notice them half the time.
For just a moment, through her whiskey fog, Flicka saw her husband as other people saw him, how she used to see him. His dark hair and eyes were glamorous and dramatic, and he was spectacularly tall. The tuxedo he wore fit his lean, muscular body beautifully, clinging to his wide shoulders and long legs. His straight posture looked regal.
When he turned to her, when he smiled at seeing her sitting on the couch and cradling a glass of whiskey, he could have been seeing and greeting anyone. She had taken his natural good humor as affection, and she had been wrong.
No, looking back at when they had been dating, Pierre had been affectionate and sweet, carefully paying attention to her. It hadn’t been just his natural pleasantness that he gave everyone. He had seduced her, and Flicka had fallen for it.
Pierre smiled at her as he crossed the room. “What is it that can’t wait even an hour?”
The whiskey glass cooled Flicka’s hand where she gripped it. “Who’s Abigai Caillemotte?”
Pierre’s smile remained steady and reflected amusement in his dark eyes. “Just some woman I slept with.”
“She’s pretty.” Abigai Caillemotte was pretty. Her driver’s license picture had long, brown hair that curled at the ends. Her lively eyes exuded mischief, even in the government photo. She was two years younger than Pierre, eight years older than Flicka.
Pierre said, “I don’t sleep with ugly women.”
Flicka gestured to the official copies of the birth certificates strewn across the coffee table. She’d taken off her wedding rings, too. “You have four children with her.”
“Not at all. I had a short screw with her years ago. She must have become a crazed stalker and written my name on the documents.”
“You signed the birth certificates.”
Pierre stood on the other side of the coffee table, looking down at the documents. “She forged my signature.”
She nudged a birth certificate aside, revealing a photo of Pierre holding a baby. He wore a tremendous smile, and his eyes shimmered with tears. The timestamp on the pic was six months before, a few months before his and Flicka’s wedding.
Flicka said, “Doesn’t look like she forged your signature.”
Pierre slid his hands into his pockets and regarded the documents on the table.
Flicka said, “There’s the hotel bill for the George V Hotel in her name, during our wedding. You paid with your credit card. She attended our wedding.”
“Flicka—” he said, his voice pitched low.
“And here’s the one for this very hotel, the Montreux Palace. You haven’t paid yet, but you put your card down for incidentals. She’s here. She’s here right now. Isn’t she?”
Pierre’s voice was perfectly even. “We have a mature, sophisticated relationship, Flicka. We agreed. We’re not bound by outdated morals. She’s just some woman I’m screwing.”
Flicka pushed the birth certificate of another one of their children aside. Pierre was dancing with Abigai Caillemotte, their hands clasped, and the gentle and exultant look in his dark eyes was utterly foreign. “This was at our wedding. She was at our reception, and you danced with her. You can see the orchestra in the background, and there’s the spiral staircase in the lobby of the Louvre. The timestamp is the date of our wedding.”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Pierre said. “We have an arrangement.”
“That’s why you didn’t come home on our wedding night, isn’t it? You were withheronourwedding night.”
“We agreed about boundaries. You shouldn’t be asking me this.”
“We have an arrangement about youscrewingother women,” Flicka said, blinking so that she wouldn’t cry. Her eyes burned. “This is not just screwing another woman.”
“It’s just a casual screw.”
“No, it’s not,” Flicka said, swallowing hard because her throat kept closing up. “Don’t lie to me. You love this woman. You’ve been in love with her for years, and you have four children together.” She looked up at him. “What does Abigai think about you marrying me?”
