She finishes the bottle of water and ignores the crackers in favor of interrogating me.
“Why don’t I have a room? I saw it in the trip packet that I would be by myself. Are they overbooked?”
“It’s inconvenient to me to have you floors away. This is the penthouse, and it’s where I prefer you to be, so I can reach you more easily when I need you. This trip has already proved challenging, and I’m going to need every second of cunt therapy I can get. It would be inefficient to have to come looking for you or someone else to fuck.”
Her mouth is already open to no doubt sass me, but I won’t hear it.
“Everyone on this trip who’s booked in this hotel is discreet, the same people from the plane. You’ll be more comfortable here, anyway. The bathtub is huge, which we’ll be taking full advantage of, of course.”
I’m thinking of how much time I have to punish her when there’s a knock on the door.
“Sinclair, it’s me. I need to talk to you and…to you both.” Carter’s voice is not what I was expecting since he was supposed to be having brunch with one of the sons of the company we’re trying to take over.
After I let him in, he wastes no time cutting to the chase. “The McDaniels think you and Blanche are in a relationship, and they expect her at dinner tonight.”
Scoffing, I sit down on the end of the bed as Blanche slowly munches her crackers. “Why would they possibly think that?”
Carter rolls his eyes and sits down at the breakfast table opposite the bed. “Well, genius, one of their people spotted you carrying her bridal style toyoursuite when we arrived last night. I got to brunch this morning and the eldest McDaniel, David, told me that his parents were very excited to meet your woman.” He shifts uncomfortably, and I know that means I won’t enjoy whatever he says next.
“David told me that his parents had no idea how you had kept a serious relationship from them in all the discussions about families and legacies and all that bullshit they love so much.But, boss…I don’t think David believes it in the slightest. He was smirking the entire time, and I get the sense he thinks they’ve caught you with a whore—no offense, Blanche—”
Blanche rolls her eyes.
“And that you’ll have nobody who knows how to behave at a black tie dinner to show off tonight. Again, sorry.” Carter looks apologetically at Blanche as she flips him off.
Leaning back into my chair, I feel a headache threatening to form at my temples.Fucking McDaniel family.All about their grandkids, weekends at the lake, corn on the cob, andMidwestern bullshit.
“We’re fucked,” I admit. “Maybe we can try to find anyone we know in the area who could—”
“Maybe you could get in a car accident, just a minor injury, enough to postpone this all for a month—”
John and I are still bickering back and forth when Blanche finally interrupts us, shocking the hell out of me and causing his mouth to fall open.
“I’ll do it.”
Chapter fourteen
“Alexandre, do you have something special for us for dessert?” I whisper to the sommelier whom I’ve taken a particular shine to this evening. When he and the chef approached me upon arrival at the McDaniels’ estate, in a tizzy and hoping I didn’t have any allergies, I told him not unless he was planning to serve wine bottled this decade. The chef huffed off in a tizzy, muttering in French about “unserious Americans.” Alexandre laughed, and I ended up with a few pointers about the family before cocktail hour began. His help was immeasurable, as I knew that would be my first test of the evening.
“Just you wait, mademoiselle. C'est magnifique!”
As everyone at the table titters, waiting for dessert, I think back on the evening. Even if I was confident in my abilities, Henry certainly wasn’t. Before the dessert course arrives, I catch his gaze across the table and wink. Instead of returning it, he raises his glass to me in a salute and continues regarding me with the loaded curiosity he’s had since we arrived to enact our scheme.
“Don’t slouch. It’s incredibly middle class to slouch. Flatter the men, but don’t laugh too loudly. Remember our backstory. You came to work for me, and we fell madly in love. Father fully approves. Answer any questions as vaguely as possible.”
Henry looked at me as if trying to find a flaw in my appearance, but the heat in his eyes and his silence confirmed what I already knew. There wasn’t one. I looked the part, and I was perfectly ready to play it.
And play it, I did.
“Mr. and Mrs. McDaniel, thank you again for hosting us for such a cozy evening. Allow me to introduce my girlfriend, Miss Blanche Bedford.”
With that, I’m thrust into the spotlight. Mr. McDaniel, or Richard as he immediately asks me to call him, is a short, stout man who eyes me shrewdly. It seems his son may have caught his ear and cast disbelief on Henry’s and my“serious relationship.”He’ll take some charming, but older men love me. You just have to know how to gently flatter them, that’s all. Mrs. McDaniel, Jackie, is warmer in her greeting, and the slight accent I hear as we mingle with her daughters-in-law gives me an immediate in.
“Vous parlez français, madame?”
Her eyes light up when I ask if she speaks French, and we spend the next hour chitchatting over hors d'oeuvres about her childhood near Bordeaux. As it turns out, she met Mr. McDaniel when he was there on vacation, and the rest was history. Myown travels during summers with my parents were to the same area, and to her delight, we knew a few of the same families.
“Have you managed to sneak Henry off to show him the beauty of the French countryside yet, dear?”
