Revenant paris mob book.., p.2
Revenant (Paris Mob Book 2), page 2
Think of them and their short but beautiful moment in the sun.
3
Charlotte lowered the binoculars and rubbed her arms. It was late summer, but it was already growing colder at night. She thought about rolling up the windows, then thought better of it. She would enjoy the breeze while she could, before it got too cold to have the windows down.
The thought took her by surprise. Was she planning to be in Spain over the winter? She hadn’t considered it until now. She had enough money tucked aside to sustain her modest lifestyle: the small room with the private bath in the house near the water, the tapas she ate for dinner with local wine, gas for the old car she’d bought when she’d arrived. And there was work if she wanted it. She could apply for a part time job as an assistant at one of the many small galleries in Miravet or Tarragona. She had the education and experience.
But if she stayed, it wouldn’t be because she was still casing Graciela Perez’s house. She could only lurk alongside the winding road for so long before she was noticed. She needed to find a way to approach the other woman and ask about the cross. Then if she stayed in Tarragona, it would be because she didn’t want to go back to L.A., not because she was dragging out her hunt for the cross that more than likely had already been sold.
She thought about Galerie Duval, her father’s antique shop in Paris. She’d kept it after all, giving Joelle a raise to take over its management. It was waiting for her if she chose to return to the City of Light — if she chose her father’s life over the one she’d thought she was building for herself in California. Their differences couldn’t be more dramatic: the dim, dusty shop in Paris overrun with old objects requiring a tender hand and the world-renowned museum in L.A. that contained some of the finest, most meticulously restored pieces in the world.
Of course, Christophe was in Paris, and she didn’t know if she trusted herself to be in the same city. If she trusted herself not to go to him in a moment of weakness when he’d made his choice clear.
Her eyes were drawn to movement in the rearview mirror. The sun had set half an hour earlier, and the approaching car’s headlights momentarily blinded her. She had a cover story if it was one of Graciela Perez’s security guards — although it didn’t seem like the she had many of them — but her stomach still tightened as she slipped the binoculars under the seat and pulled her camera from the back. She would tell anyone who asked that she was a freelance photographer trying to capture the moon over the Mediterranean. It was as good a story as any.
She watched as the headlights came closer and breathed a sigh of relief when the black car eased slowly past her on the road. But she’d let her guard down too soon; the car had barely pulled in front of her when it suddenly stopped, then pulled to the side of the road.
Her heart beat wildly in her chest as the car’s engine cut off, the headlights turning dark. She’d anticipated Graciela’s guards. Had considered local law enforcement should the actress notice Charlotte’s car and call the police. But she hadn’t thought about criminals. About the kind of men who might do her harm under the cover of night.
She realized suddenly that not a single soul knew where she was. She could disappear off the face of the earth, and no one would notice until she missed her weekly call to her mother in five days.
A dark figure emerged from the car in front of her. She was still trying to get a glimpse of the person’s face when a flashlight turned on, the glare blocking her view of everything behind it.
She looked frantically around the car for a weapon, something she could use to defend herself if necessary. Then she slipped her phone in her pocket, her hands on the speed dial button for her mother. At the very least, her mother would know something had happened if Charlotte went missing.
The figure drew closer, passing the bumper of her car, coming closer to the open window, which Charlotte realized too late she should have closed. Her finger hovered over the button on her phone as the figure bent down, peering into the car.
But it wasn’t a stranger. Not the police or a bodyguard or an unknown criminal.
It was him. The man who still held her heart.
“Charlotte… what are you doing here?”
4
She was stunned into silence. She had been prepared for anything.
Anything except this. Except Christophe.
He looked just the way she remembered him, his dark hair tousled by the wind, the mossy eyes pulling her under the cool, clear water. His scent — the fine wool of his suit, the tang of good coffee — drifted through the open window and almost brought her to her knees.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
She had seen his surprise in the moment before he covered it with the impassive expression she knew well. The one reserved for strangers. The one he used when he didn’t want someone to know him.
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to compose herself. “What are you doing here?”
He opened her car door and bent down to look into her eyes. “I just asked you same thing.”
She stepped out of the car. She didn’t want him hovering, looking down on her. He already had too much power over her. She crossed her arms over her chest, telling herself it was because of the chill in the air and not to put a barrier between them.
“I’m sure you know why I’m here,” she said.
His expression hardened. “You shouldn’t be.” He looked around, and she saw him taking in the darkness, the shadows cast by the brush on the cliffs, the isolation. “Dammit, Charlotte. How long have you been here like this?”
“Tonight?” she asked.
“Tonight?” He shook his head, wiped a hand over his face. “How long have you been in Miravet?”
She lifted her chin. She didn’t have to defend herself. “About two months.”
“Two months…” He paced away from her, his hands in his hair. She’d never seen him so agitated. Not when they’d been chased in Vienna. Not even when he’d shot his brother in L.A. He turned back to her. “Are you insane?”
His words stoked the embers of anger that had been smoldering since his departure three months earlier. He’d left her in the middle of the night without a word, and now he had the nerve to insinuate that she was somehow crazy because she’d decided to follow up on the cross without him?
“No, I am not insane,” she said. “I’m finishing what we started. Just because you… just because you…”
She was embarrassed to feel tears sting her eyes. She’d been taught by both her parents to be composed. To conduct herself with dignity. She hadn’t cried when her father died. She hadn’t cried when she’d woken up to the empty house after Christophe left. She hadn’t cried when the ever-expanding vacuum in her heart seemed to grow bigger by the day.
She wasn’t going to start now.
She blinked and drew in a breath, forcing her voice steady. “Just because you decided you didn’t want to finish it doesn’t mean I agree.”
“And you think it’s safe for you to be out here in the middle of nowhere? Alone? In the dark?” He muttered something in exasperated French that she didn’t quite catch.
“I’ve felt perfectly safe here,” she said. “And you don’t have the right to comment on my choices. Not anymore.”
“I have every right,” he said, his voice cold. “Every right.”
“How do you figure?” She realized she was shouting.
He stalked toward her, stopping when he was so close she could feel the energy of his body reaching out to her. He was right there. All she had to do was slide her hands into the silky hair at the back of his head, pull his head down. Then his mouth would be on hers. She would be able to forget, at least for a moment, the last three months she’d been without him.
“I left to protect you,’” he said, raising his voice.
“It doesn’t matter! You left! That’s all that counts.”
“You’re wrong. But I’m not going to argue about it here.” He shut the car door and tipped his head at the waiting vehicle in front of her own. “Get in.”
“What if I say no?” she asked.
He held her gaze, and she knew she’d lost. Not because he could just as easily throw her over his shoulder — or because he might do just that — but because the battle had been lost the moment his face had been revealed to her.
“What about my car?” she asked.
“I’ll take care of it.”
She heard the familiar resolve in his voice. It was the resolve of a man for whom nothing was out of reach. A man who could see that everything was done to his specifications, any time of day, anywhere in the world.
She opened the door and reached over the driver’s seat for her bag.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She straightened, clutching her bag to her chest like a life vest in stormy seas. “Collecting my things.”
He nodded, then held out a hand to indicate that she should walk ahead of him. She made her way toward the car, feeling his eyes on her every step of the way.
5
He looked straight ahead as Julien drove, trying to ignore the fact that she was finally beside him. That after all these months of longing for her, of telling himself he had to stay away from her, she’d been dropped in front of him like an unexpected gift.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. That his feelings for her would dim with their separation? That it wouldn’t be as he remembered?
Those were fairy tales. He’d known the moment he’d seen her face. It had hit him like a earthquake, the brown eyes connecting to something in him that only she had been able to find. It had taken effort not to sweep her into his arms. He’d had to remind himself that nothing had changed. If anything the situation had only grown more dangerous as the threats against him and the Paris organization escalated.
But that was his head talking, and he was beginning to realize there was something more mysterious at work when it came to his feelings for Charlotte Duval.
The town of Miravet appeared in the distance, a small oasis of light in the darkness by the sea. Julien turned off the road before they reached it, and the SUV bumped up the winding dirt path leading to the house. Charlotte’s eyes showed a flicker of interest as the house came into view, but she didn’t speak. In fact, she hadn’t said anything since her brief greeting to Julien when she’d stepped into the back seat.
Julien pulled up next to the house’s front door. “I’ll wait,” he said without turning around.
Christophe fought against the urge to tell the other man to leave. He would keep Charlotte here with him. He would never let her leave his side again unless she wanted it.
But that wasn’t the wise thing to do, and circumstances required that he be wise.
He opened the door and got out of the car, then held it for Charlotte as she did the same. They walked in silence toward the house. He pulled the keys from his pocket and opened the door, waiting as she stepped through it to follow her inside.
He closed the door behind them and hit a switch on the wall. A soft glow illuminated the large, open living room, a wall of glass providing a view of the moon over the sea.
“Is this yours?” she asked, walking into the room.
“You might say that.” He set the keys on a console table near the door and followed her into the room. “Can I get you a drink?”
She nodded, and he went to the bar at one side of the room and poured them both a healthy dose of brandy. He moved slowly, using the time to summon his resolve, which had been slipping ever since they’d stepped into the house. She was here. Finally. And they were alone in the house, the ocean just beyond the windows, a bedroom upstairs, a large bed in which he could make her his again. In which he could kiss her lips, taste her skin, pillage her body.
He drew in a breath and brought her the drink, avoiding her eyes, then walked to the windows and opened one of the glass doors. The sound of the surf crashing onto the rocks invaded the room, and he sucked in the chilly salt air, hoping it would clear his head.
“You could have said goodbye,” she said behind him.
He turned to face her. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not. But it would have been more… polite.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Polite?”
“For lack of a better word.” She took a drink of her brandy.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t tell her the rest. That it had taken physical effort to leave her. That he’d stayed long after he intended to leave, pushing the hair back from her sleeping face, trying to memorize the curves of her naked body splayed out on the bed. That he’d been pierced with pain that had only grown in the months they’d been apart.
That it had taken everything he had to walk out the door.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said.
He took a drink and cleared his throat, eager to get back to the point of their conversation, to stop thinking about Charlotte and the way her gentle hands caressed his body and the way her mouth felt made for his own and the way she had filled a hole in him he hadn’t known existed.
“What have you been hoping to accomplish outside Graciela Perez’s house all these months?”
“I haven’t been out there the whole time I’ve been in Miravet,” she said. “It took some time to find her address, to gain access to the building plans, to - ”
“You have the building plans?” he interrupted.
“Not the plans themselves. Just a photo of them.”
“And how did you get such a photo?”
She smiled and didn’t answer.
He lifted his eyebrows. “Trade secrets?”
“Something like that.”
He lifted his glass. “Touche. But you haven’t answered the question.”
“I was casing the place,” she said. “Trying to figure out what kind of security she has, whether it would be possible to make contact with her.”
“And?”
She studied him. “Why should I tell you?”
“We started the quest together,” he said.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But we didn’t end it together, did we?”
There was a challenge in her eyes, and he saw then the depth of her sadness.
Her anger.
He set down his drink and walked toward her, stopping when they were only inches apart. Her expression was unreadable, but her chest was visibly rising and falling. He felt the silken cord that had bound them from the beginning, and he tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear, let his hand trail down her exquisite jaw, stopped at her lips. When he ran his thumb over them, he had a flash of her in Vienna, the lights of the city on one side, the Danube glimmering on the other. He’d never wanted anyone the way he’d wanted her in that moment.
Had never wanted anyone the way he’d wanted her every day since.
Her eyes were locked with his. He saw the indecision in their depths and wished for a moment he felt the same way. That he wasn’t sure. That he was conflicted.
But all of his conflict had faded as soon as he’d touched her. This is what it was to be weak. The only evidence he needed — that he knew it and didn’t care.
“Charlotte…”
Her throat rippled as she swallowed, and for a split second, he thought she would lift her hands, place them flat on his chest, let them travel to his shoulders, twine around his neck the way they used to.
She dropped her hands, shaking her head. “I’m not doing this.”
She turned away, set the glass on the bar as she headed for the door. She was gone before he could think of something to say.
He waited in the vacuum left by her absence, the silence broken only by the ocean below the house, the waves going about their business as they had throughout time. Finally, he picked up his drink, downed it, walked to the bar and picked up the glass left by Charlotte. He ran a finger over the faint impression of her lips on the rim, fighting against the surge of rage and loss that was swelling under his skin.
He threw the glass against the wall before he was able to fully consider it. It shattered onto the floor in a satisfying crash, and he drew in a breath, steadied his nerves, walked to the kitchen to get a broom.
This is just clean up, he told himself. Always the result of any emotional entanglement.
He should have known better. He should have known better.
6
She was glad Julien didn’t try to talk to her on the way home. She was still shaking, rubbing her arms in an effort to soothe herself. In an effort to compensate for the touch of the one man whose hands she was desperate to feel on her skin.
He’d been right there. Standing in front of her. She’d seen his need for her in his eyes. Had known that if she’d reached for him, if she’d taken one step toward him, he would have swept her into his arms. He would have touched her, kissed her, made love to her. All things she’d dreamt about nearly every night since the day he’d left her bed for good.
But she’d learned something in the months that he’d been gone; it was the things you wanted most that had the power to destroy you.
And she’d never wanted anything the way she wanted Christophe Marchand.
She’d given Julien her address when they left the house, and she was relieved to see them approaching the tiny cottage by the sea.
“This the place?” he asked from the front.
She’d hated sitting in the back. It was so pretentious without Christophe. But she’d needed the space. Needed to know she could hide the feelings that threatened to pull her out into the riptide of her need for him.
“This is it,” she said.
“It’s very nice.”
She thought he might be joking. The cottage was minute compared to the houses owned by Christophe, her room almost monastic. But when she caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, she saw only appreciation.
