Roxanne and Gen met them in the lobby. Both of them were giggly.
Casimir asked Rox, “Did you have a good time?”
“Oh, yeah,” Roxanne said. “We went to the Buddha Bar and had a great time. I had sushi, and Gen had eggplant and tofu. It was fantastic. And the cocktails weregreat.”
Arthur raised one eyebrow at Gen.
She mock-frowned at him. “I had mocktails, you worrywart. Raspberry puree and soda water. It probably had vitamin C and antioxidants.”
“The Buddha Bar,” Maxence mused. “I haven’t been there in ages. Maybe I’ll have a drink there before I crawl into bed.”
God, Casimir hoped Maxence was going to be all right.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Buddha Bar, Paris
Dree
Strobe lights flashed, revealing the walls and dark ceiling far above the dancing crowd. The bright bursts glared on the enormous, gilded Buddha looming over the nightclub.
Syncopated dance music blared from speakers bolted to the walls around the DJ’s loft on the second floor. Decadent scents filled the air: ginger and roasting meats from the restaurant, fresh wine and liquor, smoke that clung to clothes, and the faint zing of horny adults flirting with each other, trying to get laid.
Andrea “Dree” Clark stepped around and between people as she made her way through the crowd. Someone’s foot caught hers, and she stumbled. She grabbed a tall chair to steady herself and began apologizing to everyone around her and the universe in general.
A pretty woman patted Dree’s arm and said something in a language Dree didn’t know, so Dree smiled back and said, “Okay, okay.” The woman turned back to the man she was talking to, who grinned at her.
The long plane flight and lack of real sleep for almost two days were weighing on Dree’s legs and making her woozy. The music’s beat thumped in her chest.
Dree sat on a tall bar chair and ordered a bottom-shelf gin and tonic, the cheapest drink on the menu. The bartender slid the squat glass over the polished wood to her and smiled as he took her few euros before he turned to the other customers who were shouting drink orders at him.
After yesterday’s panicked dash to the Phoenix airport, she’d wound up in Paris, France for the first time in her life.
Paris.
Dree had never visited anywhere in Europe or even been outside the United States, but she’d always wanted to have a drink at the famous Buddha Bar ever since she’d seen it onSex and the City.She’d watched a few episodes of the show at a friend’s house in high school. Dree’s parents wouldneverhave allowed her to watch anything like that, and they hadn’t been able to afford cable, anyway. Nobody gets rich in subsistence sheep ranching.
Truth be told, as Dree glanced at the dark walls and clusters of booths, the Buddha Bar looked like a high-end P.F. Chang’s, right down to the red and gold upholstery, black-lacquered wood, and horse statues. That two-story Buddha idol was a lot bigger than the ones at the mall, though.
The similarity to the mall restaurant was just the smallest letdown, but Dree was in Paris. No matter what else was happening in her life, no matter what would happen tomorrow or next week or how she was going to survive in Paris with almost no money, she was going to sit in the Buddha Bar and savor this drink tonight.
This five-day trip to France was supposed to have been her boyfriend’s grand, romantic gesture. Francis had booked the plane tickets and the B&B a month ago with her credit card, told her to get her passport ready, and winked at her.
He’d asked whether she liked square-cut or princess-cut diamond rings better and tied a string around her ring finger of her left hand, judging its size.
Instead, she was alone in France, broke and pissed as hell that Francis fucking-asshole Senft had stolen every last cent she’d ever had. He had emptied her bank accounts and even secretly sold her car that she’d paid off before she’d ever met him.
She refused to think about it. She refused to think abouthim.Every time Francis’s blue eyes and handsome face rose in her mind, she wanted to bash herself in her forehead with her gin and tonic because she was stupid, stupid,stupid.
Her stupid body vibrated with anger.
She’d been a trusting little hick, and he’d swindled her of everything she owned.
The acrid gin numbed her tongue and scorched her throat.
Dammit, she was going to sit here and have her Buddha-Bar drink.
And then, well, Dree might do something crazy.
