Page 138 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

Her face pales.

“Do you truly think so little of me? That I wouldn’t stand by our contract?”

“The story is the most important thing to you.”

She sets her coffee cup down with careful precision, stands and walks to the edge of the terrace. Her shoulders are tense, her chin lifted. But beneath the bravado is a painful sadness that pierces my anger and leaves me feeling like an ass. She looks away from me and out over the rooftops of Paris.

Damn it. I don’t know why she was reading the file. But it’s not like I walked in on her trying to break into a safe. She glanced at papers I left out on the breakfast table. Instead of asking like a sane person, I jumped to conclusions and lashed out.

I walk up next to her and stop a couple feet away. An apology doesn’t seem like enough.

I follow her gaze down to the road below us. A couple walks down the sidewalk, a blond man in a T-shirt and shorts with his arm wrapped about the waist of a red-haired woman. They stop on the corner. The man grabs her close and dips her back, kissing her laughing lips as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

My gaze moves back to her face. She’s still watching them, and in that moment I feel more like my father than I ever have before. I’m being cruel, pushing her away because for two minutes we had a conversation that stirred something more than lust or the casual apathy I’ve coasted on the past twenty-four years, and this made the sense of betrayal that much harsher.

“Perhaps the story is the most important thing.”

My gaze sharpens on her face. She continues to watch the couple below.

“But when I care about the story, I care about the people in it, too.” She whirls around suddenly, and jabs a finger toward my chest. “I don’t care about the payday or what I could buy. I care about justice, about giving a voice to those who have been silenced by people like your father.”

Frustration and anger wipe away most of my guilt. Does she think I’m blind? That I didn’t pay attention to the numerous bills crossing my desk, to what she’s been doing while she’s here in Paris?

“You don’t care about the payday, but you ask for two million, spend nearly double that on the wedding, and came back yesterday with a bag from Louboutin?”

Instead of dissolving into tears or slapping me across the face, she merely leans back and cocks an eyebrow in my direction, all traces of shyness gone. And damn it if that casual confidence doesn’t shoot straight down into my groin and make my blood pulse.

“Coming from the man worth billions and wearing a three-hundred-dollar Hermès tie to drink coffee on a terrace, that insult doesn’t carry the sting you want it to.”

Frustrated, I rake my fingers through my hair.

“I don’t want to insult you, Juliette. I told you before, you confuse me and I reacted—”

“Like a jerk?”

“I was going to saygáidaros, but close enough.”

She doesn’t back down. No, she tosses those shoulders back, the robe partially falling aside and giving me a glimpse of the swells of her breasts. Unlike that tantalizing neckline of her wedding dress, though, there are no layers of lace, no buttons. Nothing but air between me and the woman I’m longing to possess.

The woman I need to touch, now, even if I’m damned for it.

I close the distance between us. She watches me, her body poised to flee. But she doesn’t. I reach out. She freezes but doesn’t pull away as I glide the back of my hand down the curve of her face.

“What are you doing?” she whispers, her chest rising and falling as a blush twines up her neck.

“Touching you.”

She inhales, her eyes burning into mine. “Why?”

“Because you make me hunger.” I wrap my arms around her waist and slowly pull her against my chest, savoring the anticipation. “Because no matter how much you confuse me, I can’t stop thinking of your lips beneath mine. Of how you felt in my arms.” I stop, hovering my lips just above hers. “Tell me to stop, Juliette.”

I wait for her to push me away, to remind me of her threat from our wedding day or call me a name and storm off.

But it’s Juliette, so she does the last thing I expect. She throws her arms around my neck and kisses me.

CHAPTER TEN

Juliette

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