“But you acted like you were old friends,” I said. “You were relaxed. And when he offered to buy us a bottle of champagne, I just assumed—”
“Hold that thought,” Nick said. “We’ll talk about it in the room.”
We reached our room in silence. I barely noticed the touches of France the hotel designers had incorporated throughout the interior. I did notice the smell of baking bread. As soon as we straightened out this Marc Rico situation, I was going to find the location of that bakery.
Our luggage was already in the room when we arrived. The curtains had been left open. We were in one of the highest floors of the casino and our view looked out at the top of the smaller-than-expected Eiffel Tower. I felt like Alice in Wonderland after she eats the cake that made her big.
The room was huge. It held a king-sized bed that was dressed in eight-hundred thread count sheets and draped with a flaming red throw blanket. The headboard was tufted with the same shade of red. An oval ottoman sat at the foot of the bed, and a sofa shaped like taupe lips was positioned to the right of the floor-to-ceiling windows. There was enough unused space in the room for side by side games of Twister or Tae Bo, depending on your preference.
Nick whistled. “This hotel was on Tradava’s approved list?”
“Our original room wasn’t quite this spacious, but it’s a moot point now.”
“Kidd—”
“Taylor.” I was used to Nick calling me by my last name. When he said it, it was a term of endearment. And back when I was a shoe buyer for a luxury department store and he was one of my vendors, the familiarity of it had held a flirtatious note. “Tradava gave me a budget and I stuck to it. Now, do you want to stand here and talk about room rates, or do you want to tell me about your friend?”
“I wouldn’t call us friends.”
“Paying for our room isn’t something you do for a stranger,” I said. “I want to know what I agreed to when I accepted this room.” I led Nick to the lips sofa and sat down. He joined me. “What’s the deal with Marc Rico?”
Nick stared at me as intensely as Marc had when we first met. I was used to having Nick stare at me—well, maybe I’d never get used to it, but I liked it. When Nick looked at me like that, I felt like I was the only person in the room. Which right now I was. (Unless someone was under the bed.) But even in a crowd, it felt like just me and him.
My heartbeat picked up and my palms grew prickly. I could probably wait until a little later to find out what the deal was with the billionaire whose name I temporarily forgot. I traced my finger over Nick’s hand and tried to remember if I was wearing good panties when there was a knock on the door.
“The luggage is already here,” Nick said. His voice was husky.
I cleared my throat. “Champagne,” I said. “It’s probably room service.”
The knocking resumed. We stood. I crossed the room and peered through the peephole. It wasn’t room service. It was Marc. Already I was wondering how different things would have been if I’d stayed at the convention hotel instead of insisting on staying in fake France.
I opened the door and Marc grinned at me. “Hey, Sammie,” he said. “How’s the room?”
“It’s Samantha,” I corrected, this time to his face. I smiled back. “The room is fine.”
“Just fine?” He looked over my shoulder. “I hope it’s better than fine.”
“It’s better than fine,” I relented. “Thank you for helping us out. I’ll make sure the bill is squared away at check out.”
“Honey, there’s not going to be a bill. This is a celebration and you’re officially a part of it. You and Nick both.”
While we stood in the doorway, the elevator bell sounded. A man in a burgundy jacket with gold buttons over black trousers pushed a cart our direction. Before he reached us, I saw a bottle of champagne on ice and plate of chocolate dipped strawberries. The man slowed outside of our room. Marc pulled out a wad of bills and handed the man a twenty. “Thanks, Fred. I’ll take it from here,” Marc said. He moved behind the cart and pushed it into our room.
“What are you doing?” Nick asked. He glanced at me quickly, and I sensed he was as unhappy about Marc’s poor timing as I was.
“Delivering your champagne,” Marc said. He pulled the bottle out of the ice, wrapped it in a red and white checked towel and popped the cork. “How about a toast?”
Was this guy for real? I glanced back at Nick, wondering if he was thinking what I was.
I needn’t have worried. Nick took the bottle from Marc. “Thanks for the champagne. Samantha and I would rather enjoy it alone.”
Marc looked at Nick and at me and at Nick again. He took two steps back and held up his hands. “You’re still mad. It’s been almost twenty years, man. I thought—you and Sammie here, together, in Las Vegas—I thought you moved on.”
“It’s Samantha,” Nick and I said at the same time.
Marc held both hands up in an I-surrender gesture, turned around, and left.
“Nick? What did he mean, he thought you’d moved on? Moved on from what?”
“It was a long time ago.” He poured himself a flute of champagne and downed it. Immediately he refilled his glass.
I took the glass from him and set it on the cart. “No,” I said. “You don’t get to shut me out. Not while we’re in Paris.”
“I wouldn’t bring up Paris. It’s poor salesmanship.”
“Don’t try to make me laugh. What’s the deal with that guy?”
Nick picked up the champagne flute and seemed to consider it, then returned it to the cart. “I didn’t think things could get much worse after I lost the company,” he said. “But this—this is worse.”
My skin felt like it was on fire for completely different reasons than before. Nick lost his shoe company after his assistant had been murdered. Her death had exposed all sorts of secrets about his family. Last year, before my birthday, I’d found myself wondering how well I knew Nick. We’d been through so much since then that I believed to the center of my being that we could get through anything. Mafia. Threats against family members. Being held at gunpoint. Twice.
What could possibly be worse than all that?
“What could possibly be worse than what you’ve been through?” (It seemed worth asking out loud.)
He hung his head, giving me a view of his thick, curly brown hair. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked up at me. “A woman is dead because of Marc Rico—”
My anger quickly melted into surprise, and then fear. I looked at the door Marc had left through and considered the ramifications of accepting his generosity and then turned back to Nick. “We’ll go to another hotel. We never have to talk to him again. But I don’t understand—what does that have to do with you?”
“Let me finish. A woman is dead because of Marc Rico, but she’s also dead because of me.”