Page 76 of Pleasure Games

Jasmine shook her finger at the camera. “Don’t you have a baby to go birth?”

Ashley lowered the camera to show off her stomach. “Yep, overdue by three days.” She groaned. “I’m about ready to explode.” She raised the camera again. “Now, stop changing the subject. When are you heading back to France to snatch up that smoking-hot Neanderthal?” She tapped something on her phone and suddenly a meme popped up on Jasmine’s messenger app. It was the picture of Luca carrying her over his shoulder, but instead of clothes they were dressed in hides like cavemen, with the caption Why Luca Legrand’s dating profile says Old-Fashioned.

“Very funny,” Jasmine said. “I don’t think I want to be your friend anymore.”

“You have to. You’re going to be my baby’s godmother. Now answer the question.”

“I’m not going back to Paris. I’ve got a very good job here in Denver and I don’t need a man to take care of me.”

“Uh-huh. But he did take care of you, right? Like all of your nasty lady needs were well taken care of?”

“Okay, horny pregnant person, some of us have to go to work now. Bye!”

She ended the call before Ashley delved any deeper into how she really felt. Which was...confused.

During Jasmine’s break she went to the deli next door to buy a sub, and when she got back, the receptionist stopped her. “Package for you, Jazz.” The woman gave her a curious smile.

Jasmine took the package into the staff room and opened it while she ate her lunch. It was a rectangular wooden box about the size of a small toaster with a sliding lid. There were no markings on the box, nothing. Inside was something shiny and heavy. She pulled it out. It was a silver oil lamp, like the one she’d seen in the shop in Paris that fateful day. She dumped the box to see if there was a note. Nothing.

After finishing her sandwich, she washed up and went back to her station. A man with shoulder-length hair wearing a leather jacket sat in her chair with his back to her. She stopped in shock. She recognized that jacket.

Luca.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, a mixture of relief, rage, surprise and pleasure making her voice sound weird.

He turned in the chair. She’d forgotten how startlingly blue his eyes were. Well, she hadn’t forgotten, they were just so much more striking in real life than in her imagination.

“I need a haircut. Obviously.”

She took a couple of steps closer and pulled her scissors out of the jar of disinfectant. “And you trust me to be near you with a sharp object?”

“I absolutely trust you,” he said with a soberness that made her cheeks tingle.

“Okay. I’ll cut your hair. But that’s it.”

“That’s all I asked for.”

It took her twenty minutes to do the job, and she couldn’t decide if it was the longest or the shortest twenty minutes of her life. He smelled so good and he was so close, and with every snip of her scissors, memories flickered in and out of her mind’s eye, making it difficult to keep her lines straight.

“There,” she said as she dusted hair off his shoulders. Oh, she’d forgotten how lovely and broad his shoulders were.

The bastard.

“You look a little less like a Neanderthal now.” The meme that Ashley sent her that morning flashed behind her lids and she suppressed a smile.

“Did you get my package?”

“The lamp? Yes. Are you here to grant me more wishes? Because I don’t want any more.”

He stood. Another thing she’d forgotten. How tall he was. He was imposing and...gorgeous.

It took her breath away.

“No. I’m not here to grant wishes. I’m here to ask you to grant me three wishes.”

“Why on earth would I—”

He stopped her with a quick kiss. It was nothing compared to the searing ones he’d bestowed often during her stay at the villa, but it still resulted in her knees turning to pudding.

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