A Perfect Man: International Billionaires IV: The Greeks (13 page)

His cock didn’t focus on any of this.

Instead, his cock demanded he notice the flush of rose on her ivory skin. And the way her dark hair, pinned into a tousled mess, looked so fine and silky along her cheek. Or how her eyes were rich and warm, a lovely light burning deep inside.

“That is the best bathroom I’ve ever been in.” She gave him an inviting smile and his heart began to beat. Hard.

Speaking of hard…

“Would you enjoy a glass of wine?” He moved back to the stove, intent on hiding his reaction to her. No more slaps.

“Yes, please.” She walked behind him and perched herself on one of the three stools standing along the end of the counter. The edge of her robe slipped down, giving him a flash of dimpled knee and curvy calf.

He tore his gaze away and busied himself by pouring some wine into one of the Baccarat glasses his mother prized.

She stared at the glass when he presented it to her. “Gosh,” she said, her eyes dazed. “Even the glasses are beautiful.”

Sophia did see beauty.

If he hadn’t gotten her riled up before stepping into the market a couple of hours ago, she would have liked everything about it. She would have enjoyed the crowds with him and loved the ambiance and shared the beauty with him. She would have appreciated the market as much as he did.

The recognition of this plunked inside of him, right by the affection.

Her fingers touched his as she took the glass, and he yanked away from the touch.

One delicate brow lifted. “You okay?”

“
Oui
.” He returned his focus to the fish. The fish was safe.

“You’ve gotten all French since you got here.”

Shrugging, he turned the sole. “Paris is my second home.”

Then, she did it. She hummed again.

Trouble whispered its seductive call. Without thinking, he glanced over and everything inside him stilled.

Sophia’s robe had now slipped past her calves, showing him the beginning of creamy thighs. To add to his discomfort, the robe’s neckline had fallen, exposing her abundant cleavage to his gaze. The last glisten of water pearled on her skin making it dance before his eyes.

“This wine is…” she hummed one more time.

The blood in his cock heated and choked, beating a heavy surge of desire through his body.

One more hum.

Alex knew suddenly, with a bright, hot slide of a spear into his side, that trouble had not only arrived, she planned on taking up residence in his dreams for the foreseeable future.

S
he was good
.

Very good.

Alex leaned on the old brick wall of the ancient bakery. The tiny basement was filled with hot lights, sweaty people, and cameras. In the center stood Sophia. All her attention was focused on an older gentlemen with a shock of silver hair and glinting brown eyes wearing the typical white coat of a master pastry chef.

The man looked dazzled.

As well he should be.

In the hour Alex had been observing, his fake fiancée had cooed and cajoled as one of the most prominent pastry chefs in Paris fell under her spell. In the process, the man had shared far more secret tips than he’d been willing to share at first. He knew this by the daze in the man’s eyes.

Dazzled
and
dazed.

That took talent and hard work.

Alex knew this because he did much the same thing when figuring out what his newest client desired before being willing to sign on the dotted line. It was his job to figure that out and then design a building that fulfilled every dream the client had.

You needed to dazzle in order to make the sale.

Apparently, in Sophia’s work, you needed to dazzle in order to find the secrets.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

He ignored it because he knew it was Henry.

And he didn’t want to talk to Henry.

“
Monsieur
Desfontaines. You are a marvel.” Sophia smiled, a smile he had never seen on her face. Not the sarcastic smile she gave him when he annoyed her. Nor the gritted grin she granted him when he teased her into a rage. Not even the slow smile she gave when sipping a fine glass of wine. No, this smile was filled with pure pleasure and approval.

A nasty spurt of what could only be labeled as envy ran through him.

He wanted that smile directed at him.

“
Mademoiselle
Sophie.” The old man hadn’t lost any of his masculine panache. His eyes sparkled while a grin split his mouth showing very white teeth. “You inspire me.”

“Okay, Soph.” Her cameraman, Will, broke into the mutual love fest. “We’re ready to take the last shot.”

Her face went serious and she bent over the marble-topped table where trays of brightly colored circles of baked pastry were cooling. “Have you aimed the camera down, so the viewer can see the fillings?” she asked. “I want to make sure they can see the ganache and butter cream.”

“Right-o, Soph.” Jake, the producer, waved her concern away. “We’re ready to go.”

“I am going to let my son discuss the fillings for the macarons,” the old man announced. “Dominique.”

“Oh?” Sophia’s brown eyes widened as a younger version of French charisma came from around the wood-fired brick oven. “This is a surprise.”

“Charmed.” The son had inherited the flair of his father. He took her hand in his and bestowed a suave kiss on it. “I am at your service.”

Her hand. The hand that should have had the Stravoudas family ring on it.

Anger and envy were not the words he would use to describe what ran through Alex’s blood at this moment. The feeling was far hotter, far more violent.

The muscles lining his spine tightened into knots.

“This is wonderful.” His firecracker beamed in delight. “I didn’t think you were available.”

“I postponed an appointment.” The smooth-talking Frenchman beamed right back. “I knew I wouldn’t want to miss such a wonderful time.”

Everyone was having a wonderful time. Except for Alex Stravoudas.

“Okay, Soph. Ready?” The cameraman ducked behind his camera. “Cue.”

Another hour passed as the ass of a Frenchman tried to coo and cajole Sophia into…what? Taking her clothes off? Falling into a puddle of love at his feet? Whatever his aim, all his attempts were in vain.

His
krotída mou
was made of stern stuff.

She smiled. She laughed.

And she kept working. More French secrets were spilled.

“That’s a wrap.”

In a flash, the lights went dim except for the bakery’s overhead line of bulbs.

“I can show you the best restaurant in Paris tonight, Sophie.” Dominique had not given up, Alex had to give him that.

Actually. No. He didn’t. “Sophia.”

Everyone swung to stare at him.

All right. Perhaps his voice had been a bit stinging. Maybe violent on the edge.

His fake fiancée’s face went blank.

“Who is this?” The Frenchman looked him over with barely veiled disgust.

“This is her fiancé.” He moved through the throng of baking assistants and TV assistants. He didn’t smile because he didn’t feel like smiling or charming. Rather, he felt like shouting or rampaging.

You are being an idiot
, his brain snarled at him.

She’s mine
, his gut shouted in reply.

The last thought stopped him cold.

She’s mine?

“What are you doing here?” Sophia’s round face screwed into consternation along with a heavy dose of fluster.

For the first time in two hours, his fierce firecracker didn’t seem to know what to do.

Why?

“I finished work early.” In reality, he’d walked out long before the work had been completed, much to Henry’s aggravation. “I thought I’d come by and watch you work.”

“How did you get in here,
Monsieur
?” The fool of a Frenchman demanded as if this was his family’s kingdom.

Which it was.

Alex had no intention of getting the blushing clerk, who’d let him into the back room of the bakery and showed him the stairs going down to the kingdom, into trouble. Her sellout wasn’t her fault. Not many women could deny him when he had his charm on full throttle. “I found my own way.”

Dominique frowned and opened his mouth. “I don’t—”

“
Merci
, Dom.” Sophia cut him off by grabbing his cheeks. Rolling onto her tiptoes, she gave him a big kiss on his instantly smiling lips. “You were wonderful.”

“
Enchanté
.” The man grabbed her waist and appeared to be ready to carry on with the kiss, but right before Alex leaned across the table to punch him, she moved aside with an easy smile.

“Okay, Soph.” Will stepped forward and smoothly extracted her from behind the table. “We’ll do some clean-up here.”

“Thanks.” She slipped the long white apron she wore over her head, the spill of dark, red-tinged curls, caught into her usual ponytail, bounced and then slid back on her shoulder. “I’ll meet you tomorrow at Stroher’s.”

“At three a.m.” Jake chimed in with a laugh.

She made a face. “Right.”

Tonight, he and Sophia were scheduled to attend a lavish dinner at the emir’s fabulous mansion in the center of Paris. If experience told him anything, there would be quite a lot of dining and dealing. There would be a series of long conversations circling around the contract where he would have to perform to the emir’s satisfaction. Then there would be the endless round of chatting that merely concealed a bunch of selling.

He felt tired just thinking about it.

Sophia would be exhausted tomorrow morning.

A heavy layer of unexpected guilt settled on his shoulders.

She looked at him, a guarded glance. “I’m ready to go.”

Taking her arm, he gave the Frenchman a smug grin and headed for the spindly stairs.

They walked through the busy bakery, filled with gawking tourists and bustling clerks. The smell of yeasty baguettes permeated the air and he took a deep, appreciative breath in. The Frenchman could bake, he’d give him that. Not much else, though. Certainly not —

“You don’t have to hold on to me with a death grip,” his fake fiancée muttered. “I’m coming with you, aren’t I?”

Alex dropped her rounded elbow and grabbed onto the glass door handle instead.

He wanted her out of here. The feeling might be unreasonable, but sue him.

Stepping out on the wide sidewalk, they were confronted with the usual mix of tourists and locals. The crowds strolled along the Champs-Élysées
,
peering into shop windows, oohing and aahing about Cartier diamond jewelry and Vuitton leather handbags. The weather had turned warm and sunny overnight. Coats and scarves had been replaced with T-shirts and bare legs.

“I’ll need to get back to the apartment.” She waved a plump,
naked
hand in the direction of his family’s home.

Immediately, his irritation returned, mixing in with the frustration and confusion already running through him. “To retrieve your forgotten ring, perhaps?” His words were barbed with threat.

Sophia’s instant scowl should have ratcheted up the anger boiling inside. Instead, it inspired an immediate sweep of an entirely different emotion.

Affection. Again.

She was adorable. Staring at him with her dark brows scrunched into a frown, her bow lips twisted in a grimace, her brown eyes glaring.

Adorable.

Then she opened her mouth.

“Listen, Stravoudas.” Her tennis shoe tapped on the sidewalk. “I can’t bake with that big, clunky thing hanging on my finger.”

“Big, clunky thing?” Indignation swooped in to swamp the affection. “You’re calling the antique ring that’s been handed down in my mother’s family for generations a
big, clunky thing
?”

Her frowning brows shot upward in surprise. “What?”

He took a step into her personal space. A stream of tourists swirled around them, shooting them odd glances, but his entire focus was on the woman standing her stubborn ground in front of him. “You heard me.”

No stepping back for the firecracker. Not one inch. Her gaze met his, a glare as usual, yet something struck him. Something stopped his angry advancement.

Her eyes were not brown. Not merely brown.

The eyes looking at him were an exact match for the hot chocolate his
maman
served on every cold morning of his childhood. A rich blend of warmth and spark. A velvety brew that pinged his heart with memories of feeling safe, feeling accepted.

Cocoa eyes.

Something hard inside him melted as those eyes kept staring at him.

Then Sophia opened her mouth. Again. “You bought that bling for Melanie.”

All melting stopped. “The hell I did.”

“You had to have.” The childishness of her words made him want to laugh.

But he was too heated and too muddled to laugh. He didn’t want to let her off this hook because if he did, if he did, he might let her slide into somewhere he didn’t want her to go. “Fine. You don’t believe me.”

He marched off, not sure where he was going.

“Hey.” The slap of her sneakers followed him. “Hey!”

Alex quickened his gait, weaving his way through the French women in their classic black dresses, past the glittering shops filled with couture, around the bald trees and black lampposts. The stew of confusion about his work wound around the mix of anger and affection he felt for Sophia. The mix made for an ugly jumble inside him.

Everything had been perfect a couple of months ago.

Everything had been exactly as it should be.

Now, everything was blowing up around him. And inside him.

His love for his work. His sense of himself. His ideas for his future.

His taste in women.

“Hey.” She ran beside him, her short legs pumping to keep pace. “Okay. I believe you.”

He stopped. His thoughts and emotions were all twisted around this woman. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want her. He glanced to his side and met her gaze. The cocoa eyes looked back, filled with warm sincerity.

“I mean it.” She gave him a tentative smile. “I should have known from the box it came in.”

The silver, satin-lined box. He remembered his
grand-mère’s
expression as she’d given the box to him on his eighteenth birthday. He remembered his
maman’s
tears, tears that for once were happy ones after a year of grieving for his father.

Pour l’amour de l’amour.

For love’s sake.

He’d never understood what the term meant. Of course, being a man, even a young man, he’d never said that, never confessed his confusion. What eighteen-year-old boy even wanted to say the word love much less contemplate what it actually meant?

“
Pour l’amour de l’amour,”
Sophie said in a hushed voice.

Jerking away from her gaze and her voice, he turned to stride away.

“It’s a beautiful saying.”

He glanced over his shoulder, meeting her steady look with an instinctive sneer. “It’s pure nonsense.”

She made that unladylike noise in her throat and her eyes darkened with disgust.

Glad, he stomped off. What did it matter what she thought of him? He didn’t care. Alex stuck his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

Hell. He did care.

Why?

Why did he care what Sophia Feuer thought of him?

Pushing the turmoil and questions aside, he walked faster. He couldn’t return to the hotel where Henry and the team were staying. Working in this frame of mind was not doable. He didn’t want to go to the apartment with Sophia and have to spend more time lusting over a woman he liked, much to his disgust. So he’d walk. He’d walk the streets of Paris and hopefully everything inside him would calm down eventually.

“What does
krotída mou
mean?” Her annoying voice came from right beside him.

He clamped his mouth closed as the muscles along his jaw tightened. Out of habit, he tried to hold this awful hash of conflict inside. His childhood training demanded he act like a gentleman. But then he remembered who he was talking to. Who asked the question.

Sophia Feuer.

The woman who’d blasted his life into tatters. The woman who kept setting fires inside him. The woman who’d made everything wrong.

So he let her have it. All of it.

Snapping to a stop, he bent down and put his glaring, sneering face right in front of hers. “It means firecracker. As in, everything you touch, everything you say, blows up everybody’s plans. Everybody’s dreams.”

Her smooth, creamy skin whitened, highlighting the sprinkle of freckles.

He came closer, catching the light fragrance of sugar and vanilla that was such a contrast to her actions. “Do you ever think, Sophia, you might be wrong about a situation?”