Instead Emily said, “He doesn’t work, I don’t think.”
Rosie’s mouth was hanging open. “He doesn’twork?”
At this point, Layla felt more hungry for information than she did for the dessert she’d ordered. It was chocolate mousse, so that was really saying something.
“I think he has passive income, maybe? A…patent or something?”
Layla put a little mental check mark next to her nuclear weapons idea, but then Em waved her hand again.
“I’m honestly not sure. I know he doesn’t leave his house that much. Like I said, he isreallyprivate. Michael protects that.”
Layla wondered if she was imagining the slightly irritated note in Emily’s voice.
“Passive income,” Rosie said, her voice awed. “Let me get my vibrator.”
Emily snorted a laugh, but then her face grew serious again as she shifted her gaze to Layla.
“I am sorry,” she said, “that he was so rude to you in the lobby earlier.”
“He wasn’t,” Layla said smoothly. It didn’t really feel like a lie, because he’d been ruder in the elevator, though Layla was not going to mention that.
“I’d let him be rude to me,” Rosie said, gesturing vaguely to her face. “He’s got a real beast-in-the-castle vibe.”
Layla grimaced. It was cruel to bring up someone’s scars.
“That’s unkind,” she said, trying to gentle her voice so it didn’t sound too much like a scolding.
But Rosie seemed unfazed. “I don’t really mean because of his—” This time, she simply pointed at her face before continuing. “Just, you know, the being filthy rich and nontraditionally hot and also not leaving the house part.”
Strangely, the only part of that Layla seemed to be able to focus on wasnontraditionally hot. She guessed Rosie meant the scars, buthonestly, if the man didn’t have some kind of apparent fetish for cutting Layla down to size, she probably would have been willing to argue that he was completely, entirely,traditionallyhot. All that thick, dark hair, those cheekbones. In that soft-looking black shirt he’d been wearing, Layla could admit she’d noticed his build: lean and muscled, like a distance runner, or maybe a swimmer.
“You’re such a little dirtbag, Ro,” Emily said affectionately, and they laughed and then oohed as the server set down their various desserts.
For a second, Layla left her spoon sitting on the table, her brain curiously unable to let go of everything she’d learned over the course of the day. A man in black with some kind of medical condition. Griffin Testa.Notafraid of flying. Rich and private and homebound.
Traditionally hot.
“You okay?” Em said, snapping Layla out of her reverie, and she hoped the pink in her cheeks read like a wine flush.
She smiled and shoved Griffin Testa out of her mind and suggested that they get champagne with dessert.
And Layla thought it turned out to be her best idea, that champagne, because for the rest of the night—two more hours at the table, lingering like real Parisians—she and Rosie and Emily laughed and talked and drank until there was no chance of wandering into any more awkward topics, all of them giddy and silly, Layla just drunk enough not to worry about whether they all seemed too American to everyone around them.
When they spilled out onto the narrow sidewalk, Layla continued to absolutely nail it in her heels, a moral victory. Around her, this corner of Paris at night practically sang with life: lights on, doors open, tables crowded. Even the plumes of cigarette smoke didn’t annoy her. She steadied her two companions andconfidently led them back to the hotel, barely needing an assist from her maps app.
Fuck Griffin Testa, she thought when she got into the elevator to go back to her room, and she thought it again when she crawled, a little drunkenly, into her hotel bed.
She was not just the brother’s ex-wife. She was full of good food and good drink and she and Emily were okay, she and Jamie and the whole family would be okay, and this city was beautiful.
This wedding was going to be beautiful.
“C’est bon,” she whispered aloud to herself, having no idea that, the very next morning, she would wake up to find that she had apparently ruined everything.
Chapter Four
Outside her door, he hesitated.
Hand raised to knock. Mind racing, heart pounding. He had not thought of what he would say if she answered, which was—when it came to having to do anything in front of another person, at least—unlike him. Even on the plane, he had practiced his intervention in his mind before he stood up. He’d begun practicing basically as soon as he heard the man across the way barking out his displeasure over the sick girl.
