Roulette (4 page)

He hands me a huge, hot coffee. “I thought you would be the type to work all night and might be in need of a little pick-me-up.” He speaks in a slangy French, and it sounds delectable.

“You just flew here from Paris to bring me a coffee?” I ask in the same language. I bring the hot container to my lips and let my eyes drift nearly closed when the smell reaches me.

“What can I say?” He shrugs with a guilty smile. “I am impatient and spoiled. What’s the point of having my own plane if I can’t get on it in the middle of the night to bring you coffee?”

Of course—that makes perfect sense
, the not-awake, coffee-loving part of my psyche nods enthusiastically.
He wanted to bring you coffee.

Rome takes the liberty of sitting in one of the comfortable chairs across from my father’s desk. I hesitate for a minute, not knowing whether I want the desk as a barrier between us or if I want to sit in the matching chair a few inches from his.

He pats that chair. “Just sit here. You must be exhausted from working straight through since our phone call.”

I move very carefully from the door to the chair by him. I am not going to let him think I am afraid of him, or intimidated by that predatory kindness of his.

“I fell asleep for most of it, actually.” Before I sit down, I realize my shirt has come untucked from my skirt in the back, and I make a halfhearted effort to reach one hand around to tuck it in. I am torn between wanting to appear professional and not wanting him to think I give a damn about what he thinks of my appearance. Because I don’t give a damn. Except I totally do. And I probably look like a wreck.

Oh, well. He can’t expect perfection when he barges in on someone at six in the morning after an all-nighter.

I sigh when I sit down, then stare at him for as long as I can. His eyes are dark blue around the edges, until they turn into these gorgeous Mediterranean turquoise things with tiny spindles of yellow shooting around the pupils. Almost painfully beautiful. And then the bastard has the audacity to smile the most insanely sexy, suggestive smile I’ve ever seen.

“Does that usually work for you, too?” I ask.

“What? The smile?”

I have to give him credit. Even as he is making fun of himself and his sexy-as-all-hell pirate smile, he keeps smiling.

I wave a hand in his general direction. “Yeah, the smile.”

“Pretty good odds, to tell you the truth.” He looks down at his lap for a second, and when he looks back up, he is still smiling but with complicity this time, as if I am now in on the secret, because I am so much smarter than all the other women who fall for the first smile.

“And that?” I point. “The second-round complicit smile? Does that work with the women who question the first?”

“Definitely. I have a more pensive look that I reserve for the really serious women. But that might be too powerful for you.”

“I think I can take it. Try me.”

He contorts his face into some weird approximation of a deranged male model’s, and I burst out laughing.

Because he is hilarious. And ridiculous. And I have to stick with ridiculous, because he is so damned attractive that if I consider him for even a nanosecond as a smoldering, real man alone in the same office with me, half a world away from my dependable boyfriend, I just might do something really insane and make a pass at him.

And then the damnedest thing happens. Instead of being put off by the full, snorting Miki laugh and the puffy eyes and the untucked shirt and the general mess of me at the moment, he smiles in a way that appears to be entirely unrehearsed and shows his gorgeous white teeth and crinkles the skin around his eyes and makes him look boyish and delighted and makes my heart pretty much . . . stop.

I stop laughing. I try to make it a gradual wearing-down of my mirth, but really it is more of a terrified halt. But he keeps smiling. The real one.

CHAPTER FIVE

S
o,” I say in English. For some reason, English feels safer. It creates a barrier with him. I pick at something invisible on my beige pencil skirt. Unfortunately, the fabric has scooted up just enough to show the top of my lacy thigh-high. I quickly tug it down, and just like that we’ve left ridiculous and headed back into smolder territory. I’ve dealt with men staring at my legs before, and I’m reluctant to admit the truth: his eyes on me feel far more welcome than some leer from one of my pervy colleagues.

He keeps staring at that part of my leg, even after the lacy bit is covered.

“So?” he asks, looking up at me finally.

“So, what the heck are you doing here?”

“To be with you, of course. To ask you out to lunch or dinner.” He pulls out a cigarette pack and holds it aloft to see if I mind if he smokes in my father’s office. “Do you mind?” The ten-pound crystal ashtray sits empty on the desk in front of us. My father smoked without ceasing from the time he was a twelve-year-old boy. I can’t very well pretend smoking isn’t allowed in the office.

“You still smoke?” I ask.

“You say it like . . .” His voice peters out.

“Like someone from California?” I fill in.

“
Exactemen
t
!” he exclaims, then raises the pack a little higher. “
Oui ou non
?”

“Oh, fine,” I wave my hand in front of my face. We are back to sexy French. “It just seems so antiquated. I mean, look at the pack. You can barely see the brand because the warning label is so huge.
Fumer tue
. It doesn’t really get any clearer than that, does it?”

As soon as he lights the rich tobacco of the Gitanes, I drop the antismoking tirade. I hate to admit it, but I still love the smell of cigarette smoke. Like everything about this guy, I know it is wrong wrong wrong, but knowing that only makes everything feel forbidden and sexy.

“You want one?” he asks, shaking out the pack to extend one cigarette a bit longer than the rest. He’s quite accustomed to offering a lady a smoke.

“No. I really shouldn’t.”

“Of course there are many things you
shouldn’t
do, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?”

I am looking at the strong turn of his fingers around the pack, but when he asks that tempting rhetorical question, I look up to see his gaze boring into mine.

“Is it?” I ask. I am genuinely curious. “I’m not really the type of person who takes pleasure in doing things I know I’ll regret later.”

“Who said anything about regret?”

“The way I see it, I have lots of outrageous friends who let me live vicariously. Friends who get arrested for having sex in a movie theater or who try creative bondage. I even have one girlfriend from high school who lives with a guy and a girl. You know,
lives with
.” I widen my eyes for effect, and he smiles, as if I’m some poor little match girl who doesn’t have tons of polyamorous friends. I shrug. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of it all, but really, it’s just too complicated.”

He smiles his encouragement. “Vicariously, eh?”

“Look. I know what you’re offering. Your reputation precedes you, all right? International playboy. All that . . .” I gesture at his face.

“So far I’ve only offered you a cigarette. Did you have something else in mind?”

Bastard
. I turn bright red.

He taps the pack against his thigh to retract the offered cigarette, then slips it back into the breast pocket of his shirt.

“Not for everyone. Apparently.” He lights a cigarette for himself and inhales a deep draw.

He smokes. I drink coffee. Once my face cools off, it is surprisingly comfortable to simply be in the same room with him. After a few minutes, he puts the cigarette out in Mikhail’s big ashtray. “I gave him that,” he says, lifting his chin slightly.

“What? The ashtray?”

“Yeah. It was my grandfather’s, and Mikhail always admired it when he visited my office in Paris. He said it was
unapologetic
.”

I smile. “That sounds just like him.” My smile fades, and I feel the slash of misery like a sword across my chest. I exhale slowly to let the emotion flow around and out of me. Rome reaches over, to offer some sympathy, and I recoil. I draw the cardboard cup closer into my chest, both hands tight around the cuff, and pull my shoulder away from him. “Don’t do that.” I sound mean, even to my own ears.

He pulls his hand back slowly. “Got it. No sympathy.”

I stare at his profile while he stares out at the rooftops of Saint Petersburg. The sunrise colors everything peach and purple and golden caramel.

We sit quietly for a while longer. My shoulders relax finally, and I sigh again. “Sorry about that. I’m not particularly . . . warm.”

He turns and raises his eyebrow, then smiles.

I smile, too. “All right, I’ll grant you maybe sometimes I do get a bit . . . exercised, but I don’t like to get all emotional and mushy, okay?”

He makes that quintessentially Gallic expression, pursing his lips almost into a kiss and narrowing his eyes. He is weighing whether or not I am telling the truth. “Good,” he says at last, relieved. “I hate all that sentimental mumbo jumbo.”

He totally mispronounces the phrase—
moomboh joomboh
—and I laugh under my breath. He smiles again, the big one.

“I like when you’re happy,” he says. As if he knows me. It feels like he does, like we are old friends already. I kind of want to punch his upper arm to let him know I like him.

He takes out his cigarettes again and eyes me for permission.

“Oh, stop asking if it’s okay and just smoke, already. It’s gross, but you know I don’t mind.”

“I know you like it.”

The voice. The voice is the problem. He works it like an instrument. “Okay, see that right there? All the suggestive sexiness and double-entendre-ing? Enough with that.”
I try to sound full of conviction.

“Why? It’s fun. And I knew it would be even more fun in person.”

“Fun?”

“Yeah. Fun. Remember your long-lost friend
Fun
?”

He kind of has a point. Fun and I haven’t been spending a lot of time together lately. Ambition and Responsibility do visit, though, and I have also been hanging out a lot with the resolute spinster Ms. Long-Term Planning.

“Perhaps you might reintroduce us?” I suggest, barely recognizing myself. Miki the Flirt is new to me. Growing up, I was much more the math-geek, late-bloomer type.

“That’s better.”

Can I do this? Can I just flirt with this ridiculously handsome man? Why not? I’m a big girl. It’s only flirting.

“I have a boyfriend,” I blurt. Apparently, I am not the flirting kind.

He blows out a narrow stream of smoke, assessing me. “Do you live together?”

“No, but—”

“Was he here for your father’s funeral?”

“No. But I told him not to—”

“So you’re pretty much single?” he presses.

“No. I have a boyfriend. Look, I hardly know you.”

But he smiles and shakes his head like I have much to learn. “I’m doing my best to remedy that.”

“All right. Maybe we could just hang out.” My heart is pounding, but I try to act like this could be normal. “Like you said, lunch or dinner or something. I could use some company for the next few days.”

“Sounds perfect.”

I have a momentary vision of riding on the back of his scooter à la
Roman Holiday
. Unfortunately, within about a nanosecond, my traitorous imagination turns the innocent scooter down a quiet sun-dappled lane, and—in that only-in-the-movies way—Rome throws me to the ground in some frenzied passion (without sticks and rocks in my back).

Of course, when I look up I feel like he knows exactly what I am thinking. I look back down at my wrinkled skirt. “So. What kind of fun do you have in mind?”

“Mmmmm.”

Oh, god
. That
mmmmm
is sort of a growl and a promise all rolled into one. He is insanely alluring, no way around it. The guy exudes sex. And he probably does it in lots of nonbed locations without thinking twice about it.

Stop comparing him with Landon!
my rational self pleads.

“You know what? You should probably go.” The sensible part of me is finally coming up for air. I stand up and throw away my empty coffee cup.

“What? I just got here.” He sounds strangely crestfallen.

“I know, but . . .” I rest one hand on my hip and the other on the edge of the desk. His gaze is all over my body. I try to breathe normally. “You’re not just here to take me out to lunch. Seriously. I’m not a player or whatever you call yourself.”

He laughs at that. “I call myself Rome. That is all.”

“Quit being coy. You’re totally coming on to me, and you know it.”

“Guilty.”

“That’s it? Guilty?”

He shrugs but says nothing.

“Anything more specific?”

“I just want to get to know you. Honestly.”

I try not to smile.

“Okay, of course I want more. Look at you . . .” He shakes his head with blatant admiration, and I feel it like a kick in the head. “You’re phenomenal.”

“Stop it.”

“Fine. You’re mediocre at best.”

I give him a smile.

“Look.” He shrugs again, all innocence. “Let’s just go for lunch, go to the museums, have a few drinks. No big deal. I won’t push. I promise.”

The silence settles between us again. As electrifying and tempting as he is, there is something profoundly comforting about him, too. He knew my father. Maybe that’s it. He’s already gone through a lengthy business negotiation with me, brutally and honestly, so he knows how my mind works—my mathematical mind.

But there is this other thing that scares me. Standing there, looking at him, I feel the thing I’ve always dismissed as absurd: he feels like fate, like the ace to my queen has just been snapped onto the green baize table.

Everything about him screams risk. High risk. I am not a risk-taker. I abhor games of chance. The fact that my parents met over a roulette table in Monte Carlo pretty much says it all.

“What are you thinking?” he finally asks.

“Stupid thoughts about my parents.” I cross my arms and lean my hip against the desk.

He takes a deeper drag off his cigarette and contemplates a response.

“Well?” I prompt, feeling like I gave a small truth and now it’s his turn.

“Well what? Do I have stupid thoughts about my parents?
Bien sûr.
Because they were careless, stupid people, and that is the honest truth.”

Wow. Maybe I’m not prepared for that much truth. He looks at me to see if I’m going to scurry.

“And?” I ask.

He smiles again. He has so many smiles, it makes me feel a bit parsimonious with mine. I smile back.

“That’s better,” he whispers.

Oh, god
. No smiling back, then. Too dangerous. I widen my eyes to get him to talk more about his stupid parents. Alexei hinted that Rome’s father was a degenerate scoundrel, but for some reason I want to hear it straight from Rome.

“So tell me about your parents,” I push.

“Is this a shrink appointment?”

“No.” I keep staring at him, not letting him off the hook.

When he finally starts talking, I am barely able to process the words because there’s something sort of mesmerizing about how he looks at me while he speaks. “My mother was the eldest daughter from a prominent family . . .” It’s like sitting around the fire with Isak Dinesen—if Isak Dinesen were French and hot and beddable. And a dude.

I already know his mom is a Rothschild, from what I’ve culled on Google (along with the girlfriends of the week and the jet and the apartments in Paris and New York and the incessant partying).

“Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to,” I offer, suddenly feeling like I’m somewhere I don’t belong, prying into his feelings about his parents. Silly celebrity gossip is one thing; parents are another. “I was just continuing the conversation. I have plenty of stupid-parent anecdotes; I certainly don’t need yours to build up my repertoire.”

“My father sent me to boarding school in Switzerland when I was eight.” He throws it down like a challenge.