Motionless cars surrounded the SUV, locking them in.
In the front seat, Dieter and Hans twitched like they always did in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
In the back seat of the SUV, Wulf had his arms wrapped around Rae but much more loosely while she texted her brother Zeke, her insane cousin Craigh, Hester, and Georgie.
I’ve gone away for a few days to think. If you need me, I’ll be at this cell number. ~Rae
She tapped the screen to close the text page and hoped no one would call. When you fly away for one last jaunt into fairyland, the real world should not intrude via your cell phone.
She looked out the window, staring at her first sight of honest-to-God, sharp-as-a-papercut Paris.
Now Rae knew why that blue color on china patterns was called French blue, because the sky soaring above Paris really shined that rich true blue.
At the end of the street, the trees converged toward an enormous white slab with an arch cut through the middle. Sky and sunlight blazed through the tall center and all around.
Even Rae recognized the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile from her French classes, where her Cajun TA had tried to instill a respect for everything French in a class of slacker undergraduates.
They drove toward it, and it got bigger, and it kept getting bigger. The white mammoth towered over the twelve streets that radiated from it. People strolled and sunned themselves in the paved courtyard around the base.
The SUV drove around the traffic circle, and the Arc revolved outside Rae’s window.
It looked half as thick as it was wide, and it was a lot bigger than in her TA’s pictures.
The SUVs circled, then drove down the Champs-Élysées, the most beautiful street in the world.
Wulf tugged his wallet from his suit jacket pocket, poked around inside, and handed a sheaf of multicolored Euros to Dieter, who took the hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars without comment. He tucked the money in a breast pocket inside his suit jacket.
Wulf handed Rae a credit card with her name on it.
“No. I can’t.” She tried to shove it back in his hand.
“Your credit cards will not be operational unless you’ve made prior arrangements with your bank.”
“I’ll be fine.” Rae poked his chest with the card, trying to shove it in his suit jacket. “I’ll just borrow some money from Dieter if I need to, but I’ll pay you back.”
“Keep it for emergencies. If we go our separate ways for an afternoon, you might want lunch. You can buy anything you want, of course. I only ask that if you buy a car, we should go together.” He smiled. “I enjoy shopping for cars.”
Yeah, Rae had figured that one out. “I am so not going to buy a car!”
“Anything else, don’t bother mentioning it.”
“Okay, but just for emergencies.” She tucked the card in her purse.
Trees lined the wide street, and stores that Rae had never heard of but also a bunch that were at her local mall near the university, like Nike and The Gap, stood behind the sidewalk, which caused her a moment of feeling like she had fallen back into her normal life. One last glance behind the SUV at the Arc made her head spin. White stone buildings towered above the stores, and the lack of signs above suggested they were apartments or offices. Fluttering flowers overflowed window boxes on every one of the hundreds of window railings, a riot of reds, pinks, and peaches among the green trees and white stone because it was springtime in Paris.
Wulf scooted over, wrapped his arms around her, and watched the city go by over her shoulder. She leaned her cheek against his smooth skin, and that rich scent of oranges and cinnamon and sex emanated from his clothes. She could lie against his body and just smell him for hours.
The SUV turned right, and the buildings got whiter and the stores’ signs got smaller. Most of these store names, Rae didn’t know: Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Givenchy.
The SUV rode up on the curb, and Hans and Dieter hopped out and surveyed the sidewalk and the road as they held the doors for Wulf and Rae.
She stepped out, and Dieter took her elbow and hustled her around the SUV to the sidewalk.
Three arched doorways opened from the street, and a bellman trotted to meet them. Black ironwork scrolled around glass panes that glittered with lights within. Above one door, gold laurels blazed behind gold letters that read George V, whom Rae assumed was yet another king somewhere.
Man, everything that Wulf did was somehow related to royalty. She really needed to read up on who all these guys were.
Dieter intercepted the hotel man crossing the sidewalk and said, “Herr von Hannover’s advance party checked in two days ago. He will take the suite.”
“Oui, Monsieur. La Suite Empire. S’il vous plait?” He led them below the George V engraving and into the lobby.
Rae smelled the rich perfume of roses before her brain registered that the dozens of fuchsia bursts around her were tied rose bouquets. The flowers were braced in clear crystal globes filled with yet more fuchsia rose petals. Tiered arrangements of those spherical vases flanked the front desk and filled the space of the lobby. Pale green hydrangea bouquets topped the displays like shooting stars, towering six feet over Rae’s head. She tried not to gawk, but the lush flowers assaulted her, crowding her from all sides. The roses’ fragrance overpowered her nose, and she could taste rose water on the back of her tongue.
Wulf took her elbow and nudged her toward the elevator over to the side.
The lobby staff inclined their heads to Wulf as they walked through, and Rae watched her ballet slipper flats stepping on a white marble floor so glistening that she felt guilty for walking on it.
Once they were all inside the elevator, the bellman pushed the button with a seven on it. They rose, and Rae held onto Wulf’s arm, trying not to look as insignificant as she felt.
“Flicka has the top floor,” Wulf said. “We’ll freshen up first.”
Oh, Lord. They were going to meet his sister right away. Shouldn’t Rae take some etiquette classes before she met a princess? Wasn’t some sort of formality instructor supposed to show up and teach her how to not be an idiot and improve her pronunciation? That was how all the stories went, dang it.
She blurted, “What should I wear?” She had thrown her better clothes, some sundresses and the snug black suit, in the suitcase, but everything loomed larger here.
“I brought some clothes from the office.”
Surely an evening gown would be overdressing for a Saturday morning, but a gray business suit and a couple cocktail dresses had appeared on The Devilhouse racks in her size a week ago.
He must have bought them two or even three weeks ago. If he had bought them for her to wear here in Paris, he must have been planning this for weeks. She was annoyed at his presumption and frantically grateful that he had. “Did you have someone buy all these clothes for this trip?”
“Two weeks ago, I had no intention of being in France this week at all. There just weren’t enough clothes in your size.”
The bellman opened the suite door for them.
Yellow rose bundles were tied into bubbles of buds and propped in the same glass globes in this room, set off by more pale green hydrangeas. Violets sprawled from vases on the cherry dining table and the coffee table in the living room.
Rae’s mind verged on hysteria because the hot pink roses from the lobby would clash with this suite’s pale gold silk drapes and matching stuffed furniture and the dark blue carpeting with scrolling gold laurels and the alabaster busts of Napoleon and Josephine perched on a shining dark wood pedestals, so the yellow roses were in much better taste and oh, Lord, she wouldn’t know how to match flowers to a room like this ever at all.
Rae glanced back. Dieter handed the bellman some bills from the stash in his breast pocket.
Their luggage had beaten them to the room, and Rae’s purple backpack and dirty plaid suitcase huddled among the pile of matching black suitcases and garment bags. One of Wulf’s other security guys leaned over the balcony railing, surveying, while another one checked the other rooms. The traffic on the Champs-Élysées whirred in the distance.
A small, black, furry face peeked around the hill of luggage and meowed.
The knock at the door surprised her. Was there yet more luggage to bring up?
Instead, hotel waiters wheeled two room service food carts inside.
Wulf shot a look at Hans, who shrugged. The other three security guys watched the carts roll in.
Wulf inspected the carts and lifted the top off a silver teapot and sniffed. “They must have a file on me.”
He poured from the teapot into two delicate white cups and handed her one. The scent of chocolate mixed with the fragrance of the roses.
He snagged a pastry. “Rae, would you like some?”
Cinched-tight evening gowns and lumpy cocktail dresses rose in her memory. “I’d love some of those grapes.”
“Good. Fruit is very healthy.” He handed her a china plate with bunch of red grapes so plump with juice that Rae wasn’t going to be able to get a finger between them to pry them apart. “I usually take a vitamin in the mornings. Would you like one?”
“Sure.” She held out her plate.
Wulf rummaged in his carry-on and found a bottle of multi’s. He shook one out and set it on her plate. “Do you usually take a vitamin in the morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Goot.”
This solicitousness about her health was weird. “Thanks.”
“Are you sure you don’t want anything else to eat?”
“No. I just feel like eating lightly.”
“Perhaps a little sick from the plane?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Right.” He turned to his security guys, all of whom were displaying a classic Pavlovian response to the French pastries. “Then, Welfenlegion, you may attack.”
The security guys descended on the cart with destruction in their eyes.
Rae set the hot chocolate cup on a desk and ate a grape. The taut skin burst when she bit down, releasing a torrent of grape juice into her mouth. The taste was amplified, like it had more grapiness than any grape she had ever eaten. Rae slurped a sweet drip rather than let it run down her chin.
Brunhilde the cat clambered to the top of the luggage pile and perched there, her tail swishing, staring at Paris like the whole city was a French mouse she wanted to chase.
Rae really had to text Georgie and tell her that she could stop worrying about that cat.
The grapes and the hot chocolate calmed her, and the jitters were just leaving her legs enough that she thought she might be able to sit down, when Rae looked out the silk-framed window over Paris.
They were on the seventh floor, far enough into the blue French sky to afford them a clear view over the antique buildings all decorated like gothic cathedrals, all the way to the Parisian spire of the Eiffel Tower.
Rae’s trembling legs managed to stumble to a chair, and she sat, sipping rich chocolate, while she stared at the Eiffel Tower that dove upward into the sky. Sunlight danced on the side facing her.
Six weeks ago, when she had filled out The Devilhouse application that asked about all the countries she had never been to, she could not have imagined this.
Wulf sat beside her. “It’s beautiful, ja?”
“Yeah.” She ate some more grapes and was careful not to drip juice.
“I never tire of looking at it. You’re all right with the jet lag?”
“I’m okay. A little tired. I’ll sleep well tonight.”
Wulf gathered her under his arm, and the cinnamon and oranges of his cologne mixed with the roses warming in the spring morning.