Page 9 of Angel Eyes

My brows stitched together. “Oh yeah? What did he want?”

“He didn’t say exactly. Just said it was important.”

“Okay …” I took a long pull from my beer. “Well, what was his name?”

James blew air into one cheek. “Hmm, now that you mention it, I forgot to ask.”

“Wow,” I said dryly. “You really know how to gather all the pertinent details. Can you at least tell me what he looked like?”

He snapped his fingers. “Now that I can do. He was tall, blond, and appeared to be in his late twenties. Oh, and he was absolutely loaded. I mean, the guy steps out of a Mercedes and strolls in wearing a three-piece suit and monogrammed cufflinks in the middle of the bloody afternoon. I wasn’t sure whether he was here to buy a coffee or the entire building.” James scratched his chin. “Peculiar chap. When I asked him if he’d be interested in one of our bike tours, he looked at me like I’d asked him to scrub the floors or something.”

“And you say he was looking for me?” I kept a close-knit circle, and I was pretty sure no one I associated with made a habit of sporting monogrammed cufflinks.

James lifted a shoulder. “That’s what he said. Asked a lot of personal questions, come to think of it. I told him I couldn’t disclose employee details, but he could come back during your shift. But by the time I returned from checking the schedule, he was already gone.”

“Well, that’s not strange at all.” An uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. “What were his initials? On the cufflinks, I mean.”

James swirled the beer in his half-empty bottle. “Um, C.A., I think.”

C.A.?

“Someone you know?” He eyed me curiously. “Don’t tell me you’re secretly rich and are just posing as a commoner to get out from under your family’s thumb.”

The uneasy feeling spread to my esophagus. “What? No, definitely not.”

“Hmm, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.” He chuckled, turning to look out the window. “Well, maybe he’ll turn up again.”

I hummed noncommittally. I had no clue who this guy was or what he wanted with me, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t all that eager to find out.

“Yeah,” I said into my bottle before taking another sip. “Here’s hoping that he won’t.”

Four

Juliet

“Juliet, right?”

I looked up from my laptop to find the woman from Benoit’s class towering over me. Her tall form blocked out the sun as a breeze pushed through the courtyard of the student center where I sat curled up in a wicker chair.

“Um, yeah. Simone, right?”

“Yep.” She pushed her hair to one side, the long braids cascading over her smooth brown skin. “I’ve been meaning to introduce myself but haven’t gotten the chance. Nice save in class the other day. I thought for sure you were a goner, but you blew everyone else’s answer out of the water. I might have been jealous if I hadn’t been so impressed.”

“Oh, well, it was thanks to you.”

She hummed, watching me with interest. “So, you’re from New York?”

I nodded. “Yeah, you?”

“The City of Angels,” she said with a wink. “My dad’s a film producer.” She waved a hand casually as she said this as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. “He’s been hounding me about choosing a career, even promising to pay for the program of my choice so long as I ‘get serious.’” She used air quotes around the last bit. “Which is basically code for ‘cut back on the partying.’ I think he was hoping I would follow in his footsteps and go to film school. The joke’s on him, I guess. Paris is probably the last place he thought I’d end up.”

“Same here,” I said, then added, “about ending up in Paris, not about having a famous producer for a dad.”

“Yeah, I got that. So, anyway, some of the other students and I were heading out to grab a coffee. Want to join us?”

I glanced over her shoulder to where a group had congregated around a citrus tree at the far end of the courtyard. I recognized the female at the center of the group from class, her bronze skin glinting in the sun as she shifted atop four-inch stilettos. Marlena from Barcelona. She threw her head back and laughed, her red lips parting as a couple of guys crowded her personal space, pinning her with twin looks of fascination.

I wrinkled my nose.

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