Page 50 of Fierce

I could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “Am I playing dirty again?”

“You know you are.” I sat down on my velvet tufted boudoir couch and sighed with satisfaction. “I’m trying to keep my deeply held principles in mind, but it’s getting harder and harder. I’m just saying.”

“Nah,” he said, “I have faith in you. Don’t pike out on me now. I’m counting on a bit more resistance here.”

“Mm.” I leaned back and turned my head to the side so I could see out the window. “You’d better be spending some time with me, then, and being your most arrogant self, too. I’m sure you can manage to say something to annoy me if you put your mind to it. Do you have more to do, or do we really get to explore together?”

“We really get to explore together. I’ll come take you for a coffee first, shall I?”

I sighed. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll let you get settled, then, and meet you in twenty minutes in the lobby. That do you?”

“You know,” I said, “if I keep saying, ‘yes, please,’ it’s going to get to be a bad habit.”

I heard a soft chuckle as he hung up, and I unpacked and tried to think stern thoughts about being sure, and making rational decisions, and not being swayed by externals, and pretty much failed completely.

When I came out of the elevator and Hemi rose from another rose-patterned armchair set under a huge black marble column, I failed again. He was dressed in his usual tailored black jacket and trousers, but his white shirt was open an extra button to reveal a tantalizing triangle of bronzed flesh. And the gleam in his eyes as he came toward me told me that he liked how I looked, too.

I got a big hand on my shoulder, a kiss on my cheek, a subtle whiff of male cologne, and an impression of hard man, and that was all. And if I swayed into him a little to try to get more, I’m not telling.

“You look very beautiful,” he told me. “Very sweet and sexy. Very…” He smiled. “Young.”

“I could tell you how you look,” I told him, “but my room is so pink and red and velvety, I think I’d better get a little distance first, or I might embarrass myself.”

He took my hand, threaded his fingers through mine, and I enjoyed the feeling of being swallowed up in him. “Right,” he said. “We wouldn’t want that, eh. Coffee.”

He walked me around the corner to the Café Louise, and we sat at a little table on the sidewalk surrounded by twining archways of trained greenery, drank creamy café au lait and ate croissants that dissolved into a hundred buttery flakes as soon as we bit into them, and watched fashionable Paris walking by. One of those magical moments, and I experienced a pleasant sort of vertigo, of being so intensely here, and yet aware that I was here, as if I were watching myself from above.

“I’d think this would be a good place for ideas,” I said, taking another sip of coffee from a porcelain cup and nearly purring at the taste, at the perfection of the moment. “Paris, I mean. Wandering around here. Although I’m not sure I’d ever get any work done.”

“Mm. For ideas, I do better outdoors,” he said. “Near the sea, or in the bush. That’s where I see everything. Patterns. Textures. Color. Especially if there’s nobody around. In the quiet, when I can let my mind go.”

“Oh.” I considered. “I can imagine that. At least I think I can. I’ve never been anyplace where there’s nobody around.”

He looked a little startled. “Never?”

“Nope. The ocean? That would be Coney Island. The bush? I guess you mean, like the woods? I haven’t been anywhere much more remote than Central Park. Do you want to know something really embarrassing, since I’m pretty much the Little Match Girl here? This trip was the first time I’ve been in an airplane.”

“How can anyone not have been on an airplane?” He looked truly shocked at the thought.

I shrugged. “I’ll bet I’m not the only person in the world who hasn’t, though. Have I mentioned this sister of mine?”

“Karen, and your mum. Reckon I see why there haven’t been any flights in your life. First time in a suite as well?”

That one got a pretty good smile out of me. “You could say so, yes. I’m trying not to let you turn my head, but it’s a serious effort. If you buy me some more wine tonight…” I sighed. “And look at me the way you do? I could be in real trouble.”

“We’re meant to be conversing,” he said severely, “so I’m going to ignore that and just say that I’m considering myself lucky that you had a passport.”

“You should. You could conclude from that that I’m a hopeful dreamer, or you could suspect that I’m a realist whose boss was going to do a shoot in Mexico once, so I got all prepared and then didn’t get taken along after all. I’ll let you decide which option is more likely. And now here I am in Paris. It’s really very exciting. You could have put me up at the youth hostel and I’d probably have been plenty thrilled. Sure you don’t want to re-think? It’s still early in the day. You could get your money back.”

“Nah,” he said. “I’m too much of a Kiwi to sneer at youth hostels, but the way I remember it, they’ve got bunkrooms.”

“I suspect you’re right. And my bathtub has spa jets and red candles around the rim. Just mentioning, in case you didn’t know, which I suspect you did. In case you’re interested. So what are we doing today?”

He sighed. “Going to have to do something about you, aren’t I? Where did all this sauciness come from?”

“I can’t imagine.” It actually was a surprise. I was keyed up, yes, but in a good way. Feeling reckless and free so far from home, light years away from my real life. I was teetering on the edge, my wings spread, ready to take off and soar, and I was scared, but I couldn’t wait. And teasing Hemi? That, I was discovering, was a pure pleasure. “Maybe you made me feel too powerful, with my suite and all,” I suggested. “Maybe you’re being too nice to me.”

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