EXCERPT

Chapter One 

The evening sun glittered through the brilliant ruby liquid. Alec lifted the glass to catch as many of the fading rays as possible. The light danced and swooned within its dark, rich depths, struggling in vain to escape the seductive allure of the provocative French Merlot. He drew the glass to his lips and breathed deeply the delicate notes of lavender and vanilla before taking his first tentative sip.

The wine swirled across his tongue and caressed his senses. He allowed his eyes to drift closed, losing himself in the experience. He even imagined he could feel its healing touch on his tattered soul. Few things in life these days could give him as much pleasure as a truly refined glass of wine. He had spent the last several years educating his palette and perfecting his technique so he wouldn’t look the fool whenever the topic came up in casual conversation. Here in Bordeaux, one of the most renowned wine regions in France, that was a foregone conclusion. One could no more avoid discussing grapes and French oak than one could avoid water in the Seine. His education had begun as a work-related necessity but, somewhere along the way, he had fallen in love.

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the sultry figure who had coiled herself around a huge cushion on the expansive satin-sheathed mattress. “Je pense que tu préfères le vin à moi.”

“Speak English,” he said evenly, his eyes now riveted on the scenery outside the wide picture window. Row upon row of neatly trimmed vines, their limbs heavy with blossoms, stretched to the horizon. “That’s the only way you’ll learn.”

She quietly muttered a few unflattering names before sighing and speaking in halting English. “Mm…You like the wine…better than me, I think.”

“Perhaps.”

“I should fire you immediately for being so…so…” She struggled with her limited vocabulary.

“Insolent?”

“Oui! That’s it. You, sir, are a bastard.”

He chuckled quietly. He found it very interesting that that particular epithet had found its way into her repertoire. He took another leisurely sip before turning his gaze on his charge. A black silk peignoir encased her figure like a shimmering second skin. Her long, black mane flowed over her shoulders and spilled down her back. She watched him with enormous brown eyes fringed by a cloud of dark lashes. She was strikingly beautiful, and even more strikingly rich. She was intelligent and exciting, if occasionally petulant and moody. She was his employer and he was sleeping with her, but that didn’t mean he had to like her.

“Go right ahead,” he challenged. “I had at least three offers of employment last night at the party. Some of them were even richer than you.” And younger, he added silently.

She raised her hand and with a practiced arm threw her empty glass squarely at his head. He avoided it with a small step to the side and the glass shattered against the marble fireplace behind him.

“You really are a spoiled brat, ma chèrie.” He drained his glass and moved toward her. “I should make you clean that up. You overwork your staff mercilessly, and waste perfectly good Waterford in the process.” He shrugged out of his tux jacket and dropped it on the floor as he settled down beside her on the bed. It had been another tedious afternoon at the gallery.

She flushed crimson. “Y-you have no right to speak t-to me like that,” she finally sputtered. “You are merely hired muscle—a mindless brute that I pay to keep me safe and amuse me between the sheets. You are little more than a…a…gold-plated gigolo.” She tossed her hair back defiantly.

His hand lashed out and latched around her fragile wrist. “You may pay me to protect you from your imaginary enemies, but you do not pay me to sleep with you,” he hissed.

“Let go of me,” she commanded.

He ignored her. “I sleep with you because it amuses me. And because, if not for that little diversion, and the gallons of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that you provide for my entertainment, I would be bored stiff.”

She tried to wrench her wrist away, but it was a futile attempt. “You…” she whined.

He continued, the frustration and rage of the past few years bubbling up unexpectedly. Suddenly he needed to vent, and Sylvie Pierrot was vulnerable and handy. She also embodied everything about this damn country that he abhorred.

“Do you know how much I hate this country?” He didn’t wait for a response. “You people make me sick. I’ve never known such a group of arrogant, pompous snobs. You, who think your language is more pure and more eloquent than any other language on Earth. You, who think you are the only ones who know how to make fine wine or fine cheese. You, who must rely on immigrants to stabilize your population because the native French can’t be bothered with having children!” He finally dropped her wrist and wiped his hand on his trousers as if she carried the plague on her skin. “And you—you take the cake. You squander your family’s money on frivolities like a bodyguard that you have absolutely no use for other than to elevate your social status. You think of no one but yourself, barely take an interest in the business that puts clothes on your back and champagne in your bathtub. You treat your employees like dirt…and your friends no better.”

He tired of looking at her face with its gaping mouth and wide incredulous eyes. He stood and whirled away from her. He stalked to the bathroom and slammed the door behind him, amazed that he didn’t hear the crash of another wineglass shattering against the oak. He rolled up his sleeves and ran cold water into the sink. He splashed his face as if that could wash away the film that he had gradually been accumulating ever since he had come to this damn country.

He studied himself in the mirror as water dripped off his chin. Who was he? He didn’t know anymore. The crooked nose, jade green eyes and jutting jaw were familiar. The scar that made a jagged L beneath his left eye wasn’t strange. The unruly mane of auburn hair and fine spattering of freckles across his high cheekbones were just as they had been since he was twenty. The face in the mirror hadn’t changed in the past fifteen years. He still boasted the charming combination of boyish innocence and rugged austerity. Someone had once told him he was a quirky cross between Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood…with a French accent.

He was certainly no fashion model, but women seemed to find him appealing regardless. They seemed to be drawn to the enigma that was Alec Robert Frechette. He used to get a kick out of being an enigma. He used to get a kick out of a lot of things. He used to have a sense of humor. He used to have other things that were more important to him than a BMW and Brie. He used to feel like he mattered.

He heard the bathroom door ease open. Without looking at her he taunted, “Looking for more abuse? There’s lots more where that came from.”

“How can you judge us so harshly? Your grandmother was born right here in Bordeaux, non? You cannot deny the trickle of French blood in your own veins.” Trickle of French blood. He knew she had chosen the word deliberately as a slight to his lineage. However, she was surprisingly calm considering the torrent of insults that he had unleashed.

He snorted and grabbed a plush, monogrammed towel. “I most certainly can deny it. My grandmother abandoned her heritage, and while I may have been born in Québec that does not make me Québecois.” He scrubbed his face and hands dry. “And it certainly doesn’t make me French.” He sneered the word, relishing the opportunity to scorn the coveted French bloodlines, just as the French scorned their lowly Quebecois cousins. He tossed the towel in the tub and headed for the door, but she blocked his path.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m leaving. I assumed I was fired.”

“Mais non!” She shook her head in frustration, before correcting herself in English. “You assumed wrong.” She backed up the statement by reaching for the buttons on his shirt. She managed to undo four of them before he gathered his wits about him enough to respond.

“I just insulted you and your entire country, and you still want to keep me on?”

Her fingers were already caressing his chest. “Oui. You remind me of the…” Again she struggled. “…le loup.” She smiled seductively and he wanted to vomit.

He batted her hands away and shoved her roughly aside. “I’m no wolf,” he spat. “And if you’re not going to fire me, then I quit.”

Her eyes turned feral again. “You cannot quit. You signed a contract.”

“Just watch me.”

He had already wrenched open the door to the third floor bedroom suite when her voice reached him again. “Where will you go? I will make sure no one in Paris will touch you!”

He stopped and turned around, studying her silhouette in the evening sunlight that had now taken on a warm golden hue. He hadn’t thought about that until just that moment, but the answer was all too obvious. In fact, it was long overdue. He had been running long enough.

“Home,” he said simply. “I’m going home.”

He slammed the door behind him.

BOOKS