It was precisely the type of thing her mother might do to take advantage of a man—seduce him while he was sleeping.
He’d tightened his arm around her in an instinctive gesture after she’d shut off the alarm. Elise had had to use every ounce of her will to leave his embrace.
Now here she was with him again and he was fully awake, and she was the one who experienced acute vulnerability.
He looked up suddenly from his cell phone screen, pinning her with his light eyes. A small smile took the place of the scowl he’d been wearing.
“What are you doing sitting back there watching me, quiet as a mouse,” he murmured, coming toward her.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, feeling a strange mixture of contentment and anxiety at hearing his familiar rich voice in the hushed room. He wore a European-cut, sharp-looking black suit today with a tailored, cuffed shirt and a silvery-blue tie. He looked crisp and exotic and so masculine, it made her ache. He briskly removed his jacket, loosened his tie, and unfastened several buttons before he sat on the cushion where her feet rested. She smiled when he picked up her feet and placed them in his lap. She moaned appreciatively when he began to rub them.
“Oh, that feels good,” she said, watching his large hands on her feet, mesmerized by the sight. He looked so masculine in comparison to her, so strong, his veined hands striking in contrast next to her smooth, pale feet. “Why were you scowling?”
“Was I?” he asked, pausing momentarily to meet her stare.
She nodded, noticing his slight distraction in addition to his desire to hide it from her. “Bad news?” she asked, nodding at the phone he’d placed on the coffee table a moment ago.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said after a moment.
“Lucien?” she prompted, concerned by his worried expression when he didn’t continue.
“I’ve discovered that the executive I hired to manage the Three Kings Corporation has been embezzling money,” he said tersely, referring to the three luxurious hotels in Paris that had come under his reluctant control when his father had been sent to prison.
“Oh no,” she said sympathetically. “What will you have to do?”
“Deal with it,” he said brusquely after a pause. “Monsieur Leboeuf will be arrested as soon as I get there to provide concrete evidence of the embezzlement. But I’d rather not think about it at the moment. I’d rather hear from you why you were waiting up for me.”
Her heartbeat began to throb in her ears. “Are . . . are you sure you don’t need to leave for Paris . . . book a flight right now?” she asked nervously.
His eyes ran over her face. “Yes. I will have to leave. Very soon. It’s my fault, what’s happened to the Three Kings.”
“How can you say that? You hired that man because you trusted him. You had no idea he was going to steal from you.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “My father’s property was not a responsibility I wanted. But it is mine nonetheless. I’ve let hundreds of employees down because of my refusal to take part in his businesses . . . because of my stubbornness.”
“Lucien, that’s not being fair. You know it’s not. It’s a complicated situation. You being repulsed by your father’s fortune and properties, by his legacy to you, is very understandable.”
“Understandable, yes. Forgivable? Given the possible consequences, perhaps not,” he said, meeting her stare levelly. “Why were you waiting up for me?”
Something about his tone told her the topic of the embezzlement and his guilt at what had occurred was closed.
“I . . . I wanted to talk to you about something, but that was before all this happened,” she said, waving at his phone. “I don’t want to bother you with unimportant things.”
His hands enclosed both of her feet at once, his thumbs pressing gently into her arches. “You’re not bothering me, and I consider what you have to say very important. What did you want to talk to me about?”
She swallowed thickly. He seemed so calm, so expectant . . . as if he knew precisely how difficult this was for her. How did one begin talking about their hopes . . . their desires? She felt naked, despite the summer dress she’d donned upon arriving at the penthouse.
“I . . . um . . . I was talking to Francesca this morning and . . . she encouraged me to talk to you about this idea that I have.”
“Idea?” he asked. As he spoke, he began massaging her feet again. Did he instinctively sense her anxiety and was trying to relax her? She’d never known anyone who could read her the way Lucien could. “Elise?” he prompted when her words got clogged in her throat. A shadow fell across his face as he studied her closely. “Just tell me,” he insisted gently.
It all spilled out of her. Everything she’d told Francesca about Michael, about their friendship . . . the trauma of losing such a unique man. She told him her idea about the restaurant she wanted to open, the words coming out of her in a pressured fashion. She couldn’t meet his eyes the whole time.
“And so that’s all of it, I guess,” she said after several uninterrupted minutes. Lucien still held her feet in his warm hands. Through the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling windows, she could see that his head was turned, and that he stared at her face. “Francesca said something about mentioning the idea to you because you know so many people in the industry. I thought maybe you could . . .”
“What?” he asked gently when she faded off.
“Help me,” she whispered.