Page 17 of Fierce

Napoleon

I could’ve discovered Hope’s address easily enough. It was right there in her employee file.

I’d wanted to do just that. The thought of her taking the subway to meet me drove me mad. But she’d aroused something in me besides the obvious. Who knows, maybe a desire to play fair after all. I suspected that it would’ve been easier to win her if I’d been…less. That she didn’t want strength, or power, or money. Or at least that she didn’t want as much of any of them as I had.

I’d contented myself with her telephone number, obtained through a series of emails. First from me.

Napoleon. 7:30 Sunday. And by the way—we’ll be arranging for a lovely woman to stay with your sister while you’re in Paris. I’ll be giving you the details.

Then from her. Is that a trade?

From me. No. That’s information.

Several hours during which I heard nothing, and did my best not to notice that, or let it affect me. Then, at last, Do you want to see the shoes?

I may have risen from my chair at that one, have had to take a turn in front of the windows to cope with relief that was more than a bit alarming. I sat down with an irresistible image of her feet in those shoes propped against the rear window of the car while I pushed her narrow skirt slowly up her slim thighs, and the whole thing lost me several precious minutes of concentration on the Italian acquisition I’d been working on for months.

Yes,I managed to type back. Wear the shoes. Phone number please.

I gave her mine, too, which was something I never did. If a woman needed to get in touch with me, she rang Josh. But if Hope heard from Josh, this would be over before it began, and I needed it to begin. For that to happen, I had to pretend that this was a date. Even though I didn’t do dates.

It was a long weekend. I could’ve called somebody to drop by and give me what I needed to ease the ache, but I didn’t. Instead, I rang my trainer and put in two grueling hours with him on Saturday night in my home gym.

“You’re all over the place tonight,” Eugene told me as I stepped back from pounding the heavy bag. “Focus.”

“I’m focused.” And breathing harder than normal, sweating more than normal. Focused, and frustrated, too.

He released his hold on the bag and stepped aside. “No. You’re not. You got the energy, but you’re not directing it right. Whoever she is, let her go.”

I glared at him. “I don’t focus on women.”

“Man, everybody focuses on women. What’s she like?”

Eugene was the only person I allowed to talk to me like this. It could have been his seamed, weathered brown face, the battered, sinewy body that made up in toughness what he lacked in height, or the total lack of deference he showed me. From the start, he’d reminded me of one of the uncles, taking me aside in the marae for a word, insisting that I could do better. As much as I’d tried to put New Zealand and my disastrous family life behind me, there were some parts of your upbringing you couldn’t leave behind, and respect for the elders was one of them.

I said, surprising myself, “Blonde. Tiny. Bloody aggravating.”

“Mm-hmm. She won’t sleep with you.”

I shot a hard look at him, and he grinned, showing off a couple of missing teeth. He could’ve had them replaced, but when I’d offered, he’d said, “Nah. That’s my street cred.”

“We going to work out?” I growled. “Or hang about having a gabfest?”

“Hey. I’m not the one without my mind on the job. Sometimes the little ones are the toughest. And sometimes you need a woman to push you where you need to go.”

“She’s not that tough.” I got a flash of big eyes, a soft mouth, and my hands around her ankles. “And I can get where I need to go by myself.”

“You say so, man. That don’t mean she’ll go there with you.” He sighed and shook his head. “You going to have a hard head like that—going to have to learn the hard way, too.” He braced himself against the bag again. “Put it right here. Focus. Go.”

Not my most satisfactory Saturday night, but at least I’d worked off a bit of the physical tension. Until I saw her again the following evening, and it all came flooding straight back.

I was sitting in one corner of the bar sipping a glass of sparkling water when she walked in. The bloke next to me muttered, “Hel-lo, baby,” and I turned my head.

She was wearing a blue cocktail dress with a sleeveless bodice of sheer chiffon. A few silver beads punctuated the mesh over her collarbones and upper chest, then coalesced to trace the shape of her small breasts and dip down to her waist in the most delicious silver heart shape a man could hope to see. A short, full chiffon skirt made of layers of delicate fabric swayed around her pale thighs. Exactly the kind of skirt I most enjoyed flipping up.

It must have been a petite size, too, because the length was right. Just short enough. Just perfect.

It wasn’t the right dress, of course. It was a cheap knockoff of last year’s style, and she should’ve been wearing silver sandals with it, not the pumps I’d bought her. She was holding an everyday jacket in one hand that wasn’t a bit right, either.

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