Page 8 of Bossing My Holiday
I study him. He’s a man at his end. “Yes, I can do that. What’s wrong?”
He walks over to the door, glances out, and stiffens. “Waverly, the Smithfield people are going to be another fifteen minutes. Can you make us some coffee, please?”
“Um…” She trails off, uncertainty in her voice likely because Tristan just asked that as a question instead of stating it like a demand and addedpleaseon the end. A word I didn’t know was in his vocabulary. “Sure. Are you okay?”
“Just do it and stop asking questions.”
His sharp retort must mollify her that he’s fine, and I hear her shoes click-clacking on the floor, growing distant as she heads toward the kitchen.
Tristan shuts the door and comes racing back over me. “I fucked up.”
“What did you do? Did you fuck the Smithfield?—”
“No, no, nothing like that. My mother and grandmother are trying to set me up when we come to Paris.”
I roll my eyes. “I know. They always do. I’m shocked they haven’t knocked you unconscious, had a doctor siphon your semen, and used it to impregnate a woman so you’ll be forced to marry her.”
He grimaces. “Don’t give them any ideas. She has three women scheduled as dates for me starting the moment I clear customs in Paris, and that’s only the beginning.”
“So either tell them no or go on the dates.”
“Except you know they’re not just dates. They’re marriage matches. Business arrangements. They’re determined this yearbecause evidently my grandmother is dying and my father wants to retire.”
“She’s been dying for years, and he’s not that old.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. This year is different, or they’re simply out of patience, which is my thinking.”
“Okay. I still don’t see how that means you fucked up.”
He glances back toward the door before he turns on me. “I told my mother not to set me up because I have a girlfriend.”
I snort out a laugh. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know!” he yells. “I was flustered and annoyed and Waverly walked by and I had just been listening to her talk about how hard things are for her and I don’t know what happened. It just came out.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “There are too many things there. What about Waverly having it hard?”
“Something about the nursing home her grandmother lives in increasing their rates and the debt she’s paying off for her. She’s been struggling, and I didn’t even know it.”
“Oh. I didn’t either.” A sour feeling hits my chest. “That’s awful. Hopefully the raise we’re giving her will help. Maybe we should increase it so it does. But what does that have to do with a girlfriend?”
“I saw her and she was wearing the new dress, and the idea of having a girlfriend sprang into my head, so I said it. But now my mother expects me to bring her home to Paris with me.”
I try to hold in my laugh. I really, seriously do. But it sneaks out anyway. “Yeah, you fucked up.”
He grunts and scrubs his hands up and down his face. “I knew this would happen eventually. I knew they’d come down hard and really push for me to get remarried. I can’t do that again. Not the way I did the first time. They shoved Dianna down my throat, and that ended so horribly. But I’m thirty-four and expected to marry and produce an heir and move back to Paris to take over Ouest Hotels, and that’s all there is to it.”
I think about this long and hard for a moment. But the truth is, I’m ridiculously giddy.
“So bring home a girlfriend,” I state, squeezing my fists so I don’t smile. Sometimes I get a bit overexcited like a puppy and have trouble reining it in. It comes from not having a lot of happiness as a kid, so when I do find happiness in things, they tend to overwhelm me, and I react a bit too strongly. It’s never bothered me before, but right now, I can’t show my hand too soon.
His hands drop to his sides, and his head tilts as his eyebrows take a nosedive. “A girlfriend? You want me to bring home a girlfriend to meet my parents? My grand-mère?”
I shrug. “Yeah.
He half-laughs and challenges me with, “Okay. Who?”
“You just said it, didn’t you? You saw Waverly and developed this whole plan.”
