Kiefer snorted. “You know what I mean.”
“Isabella Hudson. I’ve never even met her.”
Kiefer gaped at him. “
Like there would be another. “She is a member of the family.”
“You’re going to have Isabella Hudson staying at the Chateau Montcalm. Good God, Alec, why not just go ahead and murder someone? Even the Japanese tabloids will pick up you and Isabella Hudson.”
“I’m not going near Isabella Hudson. There’ll be no pictures, nothing whatsoever for them to report.”
But Kiefer wasn’t listening. He was inside his own head, obviously dreaming up one dire scenario after another. “You’re going to have to move out.”
“No,” said Alec.
“Go stay in Rome. Better still, go to Tokyo and work with Akiko on the prototype.”
“They don’t need me in the bike lab.” If the one he was riding was anything to go on, R & D had made great strides with the frame alloy.
“Well, I need you out of Provence.”
They crested the hill, and Alec grabbed a higher gear, putting his frustration into muscle power that produced speed. Let a film crew invade his house yet
“I am staying in my home,” he told Kiefer, bending his head into the wind.
“We need a mitigation strategy,” Kiefer called, falling slightly behind.
“Mitigate this!” Alec sent back a rude hand gesture.
“Don’t let the press catch you doing that.” Kiefer caught up. “Could you maybe get married?” he huffed.
Alec rolled his eyes. He’d yet to meet a woman who wasn’t after his money or his status-usually both.
“At least find a girlfriend? Not forever, just while Isabella is there. Somebody who’s a nobody, a plain Jane who won’t get you into any trouble.”
Alec didn’t want a plain Jane nobody. And he had zero interest in Isabella Hudson. He wanted Charlotte.
And then he realized he’d missed his big chance. “Damn,” he spat out.
“What?” Kiefer glanced from side to side.
He could have made that a condition of the movie location deal. What was he thinking? Charlotte could have played his girlfriend for a couple of months.
“What?” Kiefer repeated.
But it was too late now. She didn’t strike him as the kind of person who would renegotiate.
“I almost had a girl we could bribe,” Alec admitted.
“Who?”
Alec shook his head. “We missed the boat on that one.”
“Who is she?”
“Nobody.”
“Perfect,” said Kiefer with enthusiasm.
“I lost my leverage.” Alec slowed his bike, taking a right-hand turn into the pullout beside Crystal Lake.
“Well, what was your leverage?” Kiefer’s voice was eager.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Alec braked to a halt and put his feet down, taking in the view of the lake while they took a breather.
“Oh, no, I don’t what?”
“She’s smart, tough and unreasonable.”
“At least give me a shot.” Kiefer squirted a stream of water into his open mouth.
“There’s no real problem,” said Alec. “The Kana Hanako brass aren’t going to give up my Tour de France connection, no matter what the tabloids write.”
“Yeah, but they can make my life hell in the meantime. Do you know how much time I waste being yelled at by Takahiro’s translator?”
“Do you know how much I pay you to get yelled at by Takahiro’s translator?”
“Not nearly enough,” Kiefer grumbled. Then he recapped his water bottle and ran spread fingers through his short hair. “Who were you talking about?”
Alec shook his head.
“I swear I won’t even talk to her.”
Alec paused. “Charlotte Hudson. She’s the friend of Raine’s.”
“Ah.” Kiefer instantly caught on. “You could have bribed her with access to the chateau.”
Alec nodded.
“She’s not Isabella’s sister or something?”
“Maybe a cousin. I’m not sure. Raine says Charlotte grew up with her maternal grandparents, mostly in Europe. Her grandfather’s the U.S. ambassador to Monte Allegro. She works for him.”
“Sounds tame enough,” Kiefer mused.
“The plan’s off the table. I had a hard enough time getting her to stay at the chateau for the shoot.”
Kiefer came alert. “She’s staying at the chateau?”
“Don’t touch it.” Alec’s tone was flat.
“I’m just sayin’-”
“You are
“Well, somebody’s going to ‘leak’ something. Better it’s her than Isabella.”
“In whose opinion?”
“Mine.”
“You don’t count. You’re the hired help.” Alec snapped one foot back onto the pedal and pushed off.
Kiefer quickly followed suit. “Will you at least ask her?”
“I will not.”
“If she says no, she says no. But she might-”
“She’ll never agree.”
“How do you know?”
Alec pulled onto the rough road for the return trip. “It’s like this,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “You’re executive assistant to an ambassador. You like your job. In fact, the ambassador is your own grandfather. A man with a public reputation like mine asks you to pretend to date him in order to protect his reputation. You say…what, exactly?”
“Point taken,” Kiefer admitted.
They rode in silence to the crest of the hill, where Alec’s thoughts turned to the croissants his cook had been putting in the oven when they left the chateau.
“Still,” Kiefer continued, as their speed picked up and the morning air whipped past, “the worst she can do is say no.”
“No, no, no,” Charlotte emphasized into the cordless telephone. “You
The telephone handset was summarily tugged out of Charlotte’s hand.
“Hey!” She twisted her head to Raine, who was lying back in the next deck lounger.
“Charlotte has to go now, Emily,” Raine said into the handset. “She’s in the middle of a pedicure.”
“You can’t do that,” Charlotte protested.
But Raine calmly hit the off button.
“You need to hold still,” warned the esthetician working on Charlotte’s toes. “Or you’ll have purple passion streaked halfway to your ankle.”
“You listen to her.” Raine gestured with the phone.
“You hung up on Emily.”
“You’ve been on the phone with her for half an hour.”
“It’s the summit dinner. She was about to put Syria next to Bulgaria.”
“Will it cause a war?”
“Maybe,” said Charlotte, glancing down at her toes. The purple passion sparkled in the sunshine. She’d borrowed a sea-blue two-piece bathing suit from Raine, and they were lounging on thickly padded lounge chairs next to the Montcalm pool. An emerald lawn stretched out in front of them, while lush cypress trees and flowering
