She sat down and frowned at the plate. “That is not poultry. It looks like red meat, like steak or mutton or something.”
“It’s definitely duck.” He came over and sat down on his side of the table, where he had ordered the scallops for himself. His legs felt a tad weak because, damn, that woman could use her tongue. Her lipstick was smeared on one side of her mouth, a delightful sight. “I would have thought that you might have been duck hunting.”
“Not a lot of ducks in the New Mexican desert, at least not near us.” Dree sat in her chair and poked at her meal before gingerly taking a bite, and then her eyes rolled up in her head. “They do not make food like this in New Mexico.”
Maxence sawed one of his scallops into bite-size pieces and speared a chunk with his fork. “It seems that my ex-girlfriend got married within the last day or two. I wasn’t aware of this until now.”
Dree stopped chewing and then swallowed hard before she said, “Is this the one who you were worried that she’d been kidnapped or was in danger?”
He showed her the picture Marie-Therese had texted to him. “She does not appear to be in distress.”
Dree took his phone and stared at it, then handed it back. “I thought she was married to your brother.”
“There was a sketchy divorce in Las Vegas.”
“Who did she marry?” Dree was holding a bite of her risotto on her fork, but she was staring at him and not eating.
“Her bodyguard, the man she was in Switzerland with.”
Her eyes got a little bigger. “The one who looks like her father-figure big brother?”
“Yes,” Maxence admitted.
“Oh.”Dree ate the risotto and chewed thoughtfully.
Maxence waited, eating his food that seemed to have no taste, which was very odd for the Four Seasons, until he could stand it no longer. “Go ahead. Say what you’re thinking.”
Dree placed her fork on her plate. “Look, we’re just together for a few days, and I have no ulterior motive. I swear to God, there is nothing behind this. I mean, this is fun.” She motioned between the two of them, indicating their relationship or just the sex games for all Maxence knew. “But we know it’s just for another day or two. We’retemporary.”
“Acknowledged,” Maxence said.
“So, I’m saying this as your friend, or at least as someone from the outside. Or, maybe I’m saying it as someone who is so grateful to you for fixing my life—”
“It’s just money. I didn’t do anything,” Max demurred.
“—and who doesn’t want to see you get hurt. And you did fix my life. If I hadn’t met you, I don’t know what I would have done. My plan was to crash on my sister’s couch and bum money from her, money that she doesn’t have, for bus fare and ramen noodles, and then she would be even further in the hole for Victor’s therapy money. I’m one of those people for whom missing a paycheck could have destroyed my life, and this was so much worse. So, you saved me, and I just want to help you. Your happiness means a lot to me.”
Maxence nodded, acknowledging what she’d said, though the sum he’d given her was stillnothingto him. Guilt flooded him about that.
Dree bit her lower lip, and then she looked up and stared him straight in his eyes. “This girl never loved you,” she said. “I mean, she might have cared about you. I’m not saying she’s a psychopath or anything, but her heart was already taken.”
He stared at the chunk of scallop impaled by his fork tines.
“She’s married two different men,” Dree said, her voice quiet and gentle, “and neither one of them was you.”
The silver tines pierced the delicate, white meat of the scallop. A bead of broth slid down the side of the scallop’s flesh to the pool of cream sauce below it.
Dree said, “It’s not about you. It couldn’t have been about you because you’re exactly the type of maneverywoman should fall for. You’re kind and generous and fun, and damn, do you lookfine.It’s abouther.I don’t know what’s up with her, but she never loved you.”
Maxence nodded. He’d known that. Hearing it made it real, though.
“And she must be crazy, Augustine, because she doesn’t know what she had. You are amazing. Some perfect woman is going to come along for you, someone who’s in your social circle and who has money like you and who knows how to do all the things and what the red bottoms of the shoes mean, andshe’sgoing to fall in love with you. That’s who you’re supposed to be with, not this girl who’s been leading you on for so long. You’ve got to let her go. You’ve gotta live your life the way you were meant to.”
The way he was meant to.
Maxence nodded again, slowly surveying the lavish suite at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris. The pale blues and muted golds of the ridiculously ornate furnishings were how he had been raised but not what he had chosen.
Or tried to choose.
