Alana fidgeted with the strap of her dress and glanced around La Mer d’Or. Dressed in a body skimming Versace cocktail dress and wearing her favorite Prada stiletto sandals should’ve made her feel glamorous and strong. La Mer d’Or was her favorite restaurant in San Francisco. There’d been a time when just the prospect of a delicious night of wine and perfectly prepared French cuisine would shake her out of any blue mood, but tonight nothing could soothe her. How had she landed in such a mire?
Marcel smiled at her across the table. He covered her hand with his.
“You are so quiet,” he said. “What demon has stolen my Alana and sent a silent nymph to take her place?”
She opened her lips to say that she wasn’t his, maybe wouldn’t ever be anyone’s, but the denial didn’t seem worth the effort. It wasn’t Marcel’s fault that she wasn’t enjoying their evening out.
He called the sommelier to the table and ordered a bottle of his family’s best Champagne. The sommelier suggested the Dom Perignon.
“I prefer the Montaudelle Reserve,” he said without explanation. “And with dinner we will have the Chateau Petrus 1989.”
Alana barely tasted the Champagne as the bubbles prickled her throat. Marcel’s insensitive behavior at the ranch—was it just yesterday?—still rankled. Maybe she wasn’t so good at forgiveness after all.
A draft blew into the restaurant and sent goose bumps marching up her arms. Marcel noticed and glared toward the door. He was a man used to having his way and to having conditions as near perfect as possible. A wry smile and a lifted brow took the place of his glare.
“We may have an interesting evening after all,” he said.
Alana followed his gaze to the door. Matt was walking through the entryway, escorting a tall, exquisitely beautiful blonde toward the maître d’. The woman moved with the grace of a dancer. Matt laughed at something she said. Alana wanted to look away but couldn’t. Marcel took her hand in his and held it firmly.
“You waste your time on such a man. He is looking for something that he will not find because he does not see.”
But Matt turned just then, and he saw her all right. His eyes stopped on hers for an instant, and then he looked away. He put a hand to the small of the woman’s back and murmured to her. She looked at him and shook her head. From their stances, Alana presumed that Matt was trying to get her to leave, but she raised her hands in a defiant gesture, and they followed the maître d’ to a table directly in Alana’s line of sight.
Perfect. His retaliation couldn’t have been better planned. That it hadn’t been planned at all was even harder to take. When she’d mentioned La Mer d’Or to Matt, recommending it, she’d expected that she’d be the one with him when he first tried it. She’d wanted to share her favorite places with him, not try to ignore him while he entertained another woman.
Alana picked up her menu, thankful that it was a massive one. With it she blocked Matt and his date from her sight. But she couldn’t resist a peek around the edge. Her stomach tumbled when Matt held the chair for the woman and tucked her shawl along the back with a familiar gesture.
“Do you want to leave?” Marcel asked.
“No.” Alana lowered her menu. “You’re hungry and we’re here. It’s no problem, really.”
She gulped down the rest of her Champagne and felt the alcohol ease a bit of her tension. Eight or ten glasses more and she’d not feel a thing. But the irony was, she wasn’t a drinker. She’d have to settle for feeling just okay.
Marcel made conversation as their first course, quenelles, was served. She ate, but tasted nothing. She tried to focus on Marcel’s honey-smooth voice and charming chatter, but her attention, whether she looked their way or not, was on Matt and the beautiful woman sitting ever so close to him.
Their meat course was served, and Marcel poured a swirl of ruby-colored wine into her glass and then glanced over to where Matt sat with his date.
“A ballplayer,” he said with a hint of disdain. “You could make a scent based on the image of an athlete.” He sipped his wine. “So many movie stars and models are the focus of new scent lines. It could be a lucrative marketing angle for you.”
“You’re talking about him as if he were a commodity.”
“Darling, we are all commodities.”
He took her hand in his. Which was fine since she didn’t need it for eating; nothing on the table held any appeal.
“It simply matters who is doing the consuming.”
She pulled her hand away and picked up her fork.
Marcel took another long sip of his wine, swirled it in his mouth and swallowed. “You know we are very compatible, you and I.”
His accent made the word compatible sound like something delectable and delicious. Almost desirable.
“We like the same things,” he went on. “The delights of the cities and the nightlife, languid afternoons and parties by the sea.”
Those things used to define Alana’s whole world. What shook her was that the prospect of enjoying them had lost some of its glamor. Yet that wasn’t a negative, not a bad thing. Instead she felt like she was waking from a lifelong trance, only now seeing what she’d been missing for years.
“You should plan to stay in France for a while when you come for the Versailles gala. We can go down to my place in Provence,” Marcel said. “You won’t be bothered by all this. It is wearing on you, I can see it.” He squeezed her forearm. “The Duc de Bourbon and the Marquis D’Aramon will be staying at my place in the country. We will have a house party.” He withdrew his hand and sat back in his chair. “Or not,” he added in a matter-of-fact tone. “I know you have details to attend to.”
He made those details sound like so much overblown flotsam. Marcel had the instincts of a seasoned seducer. Move in close, then pull away. She had once enjoyed the dynamic push and pull of his alluring games. But now...
Matt’s date leaned in close to him and said something that made him laugh heartily.
She was dying, for God’s sake, and he was laughing. Did she need any more proof of her folly?
“Provence,” she said absently.
“You are coming?”
There was nothing to keep her away. Nothing to keep her in California. A month or two in France might salve her wounded heart.
“Of course.”
He leaned over and kissed her, one of his lingering, expert kisses. A kiss most women would swoon for.
She didn’t swoon.
She did look up to see Matt staring at her, his face impassive. Then he turned and put an arm around his date’s shoulder, and Alana’s heart broke just a little bit more.