Page 5 of The Carver

I rose on my heels, slightly disappointed that he was about to run off again. He’d never done that before. Whenever he came to me, he always stuck around for at least the night. But the last thing I wanted to do was be clingy.

“My driver will pick you up at eight thirty.”

“He will?”

“We’ll have dinner. I’ll meet you there.”

He’d never done that before. “Why don’t you just pick me up?”

“Because I have a meeting at the restaurant. Once that’s done, we’ll have dinner.”

He seemed to have this all planned in his head, so I went with it. “If you’re busy, we can have dinner tomorrow.”

“You’re doing it again.”

My mouth shut so fast.

“I’m never too busy for you.” He moved into me and gave me a quick kiss before he walked out without another word. His heavy footsteps were audible on the rug in the hallway. Then they were gone, and so was he.

His driver picked me up at eight thirty on the dot, pulling up to the curb where I stood in my dress, heels, and coat. He opened the back door for me and drove me toward the Eiffel Tower. As the structure loomed larger, I realized we were close to Bastien’s apartment, but then we passed it and went straight to the tower.

I didn’t know where we were going.

When the driver pulled straight up to the tower, a group of men was waiting there dressed in all black, looking like a SWAT team even though they carried no visible weapons. The driver opened the door for me, and I joined the four men, who welcomed me in silence.

“This way.” One guy took the lead while the other three formed a perimeter around me, escorting me like I was the president with my own security detail. We approached the base of the tower, bypassed the security everyone else was required to undergo, and I was taken into a private elevator. The three guys stayed behind, while the one in the lead rode in the elevator with me, the box dangling in midair as the cables pulled us up sideways.

I knew there were two restaurants in the Eiffel Tower, so I assumed we were dining at one of them, something I’d never done even though I’d been born and raised in Paris. When we came to a stop and the doors opened, I expected the loud chatter of guests talking while they dined, but it was quiet—like no one was there.

The guy stepped out first and motioned for me to follow him.

We passed the hostess desk and turned toward the main room, a large window against the back wall that showed Paris below. Dozens of tables were covered in white tablecloths, but only one table was in use.

Bastien sat at a table for four, surrounded by three other men while they smoked and drank, the only people inside the restaurant. Bastien’s back was to me, so he didn’t see me enter the dining room. “London is a fucking joke. After Brian lost his head, it’s been pandemonium over there, and I’m too fucking busy to dabble into that shit. If you want to take it, so be it. But the tariff still applies.”

I didn’t belong here.

The man who had escorted me into the tower guided me to the other side of the room, where a table for two was positioned against the window. He was gone the second I sat down. A waitress appeared a moment later, bringing me a glass of water along with a bottle of wine. She uncorked it and filled my glass before she left it on the table and disappeared.

The guys kept talking on the other side of the room, the specifics of the deal unclear to me because of the distance between the tables. But it was obvious that Bastien was the one running the show, and the guys took his lead.

A couple minutes later, the meeting seemed to have finished because all the men rose to their feet, shook hands, and they departed, while Bastien remained behind. He put out his cigar in the ashtray before he turned to me and crossed the room, his eyes lit up and playful at the sight of me.

When he reached the table, he leaned down to kiss me before he took the seat across from me. “I’m fucking hungry.”

“How come no one else is here?”

“Because I booked the whole place.” He looked at the menu the waitress had brought earlier. He turned over his shoulder and called toward the kitchen, “Let’s get this going.” He faced me again and poured himself a glass of wine. “How’d today go?”

I was still overwhelmed by everything that had just happened, that I was dining in Jules Verne, one of the most iconic restaurants in Paris, because the man I was seeing had booked it for a meeting. The divorce hearing felt like a week ago. “You didn’t have to get me a lawyer.”

“You should never represent yourself in a trial.”

“It’s not like I’m on trial for murder.”

“It’s still a legal matter.”

“But he was under the impression that I wanted half of the estate when I don’t want anything. So, he must have gotten that information from you.”

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