Napoleon

I could’ve discovered Hope’s address easily enough. It was right there in her employee file. 

I’d wanted to do just that. The thought of her taking the subway to meet me drove me mad. But she’d aroused something in me besides the obvious. Who knows, maybe a desire to play fair after all. I suspected that it would’ve been easier to win her if I’d been…less. That she didn’t want strength, or power, or money. Or at least that she didn’t want as much of any of them as I had. 

I’d contented myself with her telephone number, obtained through a series of emails. First from me. 

Napoleon. 7:30 Sunday. And by the way—we’ll be arranging for a lovely woman to stay with your sister while you’re in Paris. I’ll be giving you the details.

Then from her. Is that a trade?

From me. No. That’s information.

Several hours during which I heard nothing, and did my best not to notice that, or let it affect me. Then, at last, Do you want to see the shoes?

I may have risen from my chair at that one, have had to take a turn in front of the windows to cope with relief that was more than a bit alarming. I sat down with an irresistible image of her feet in those shoes propped against the rear window of the car while I pushed her narrow skirt slowly up her slim thighs, and the whole thing lost me several precious minutes of concentration on the Italian acquisition I’d been working on for months.

Yes, I managed to type back. Wear the shoes. Phone number please.

I gave her mine, too, which was something I never did. If a woman needed to get in touch with me, she rang Josh. But if Hope heard from Josh, this would be over before it began, and I needed it to begin. For that to happen, I had to pretend that this was a date. Even though I didn’t do dates. 

It was a long weekend. I could’ve called somebody to drop by and give me what I needed to ease the ache, but I didn’t. Instead, I rang my trainer and put in two grueling hours with him on Saturday night in my home gym.

“You’re all over the place tonight,” Eugene told me as I stepped back from pounding the heavy bag. “Focus.”

“I’m focused.” And breathing harder than normal, sweating more than normal. Focused, and frustrated, too.

He released his hold on the bag and stepped aside. “No. You’re not. You got the energy, but you’re not directing it right. Whoever she is, let her go.”

I glared at him. “I don’t focus on women.”

“Man, everybody focuses on women. What’s she like?”

Eugene was the only person I allowed to talk to me like this. It could have been his seamed, weathered brown face, the battered, sinewy body that made up in toughness what he lacked in height, or the total lack of deference he showed me. From the start, he’d reminded me of one of the uncles, taking me aside in the marae for a word, insisting that I could do better. As much as I’d tried to put New Zealand and my disastrous family life behind me, there were some parts of your upbringing you couldn’t leave behind, and respect for the elders was one of them.

I said, surprising myself, “Blonde. Tiny. Bloody aggravating.”

“Mm-hmm. She won’t sleep with you.” 

I shot a hard look at him, and he grinned, showing off a couple of missing teeth. He could’ve had them replaced, but when I’d offered, he’d said, “Nah. That’s my street cred.”

“We going to work out?” I growled. “Or hang about having a gabfest?”

“Hey. I’m not the one without my mind on the job. Sometimes the little ones are the toughest. And sometimes you need a woman to push you where you need to go.” 

“She’s not that tough.” I got a flash of big eyes, a soft mouth, and my hands around her ankles. “And I can get where I need to go by myself.”

“You say so, man. That don’t mean she’ll go there with you.” He sighed and shook his head. “You going to have a hard head like that—going to have to learn the hard way, too.” He braced himself against the bag again. “Put it right here. Focus. Go.”

Not my most satisfactory Saturday night, but at least I’d worked off a bit of the physical tension. Until I saw her again the following evening, and it all came flooding straight back.

I was sitting in one corner of the bar sipping a glass of sparkling water when she walked in. The bloke next to me muttered, “Hel-lo, baby,” and I turned my head.

She was wearing a blue cocktail dress with a sleeveless bodice of sheer chiffon. A few silver beads punctuated the mesh over her collarbones and upper chest, then coalesced to trace the shape of her small breasts and dip down to her waist in the most delicious silver heart shape a man could hope to see. A short, full chiffon skirt made of layers of delicate fabric swayed around her pale thighs. Exactly the kind of skirt I most enjoyed flipping up. 

It must have been a petite size, too, because the length was right. Just short enough. Just perfect.

It wasn’t the right dress, of course. It was a cheap knockoff of last year’s style, and she should’ve been wearing silver sandals with it, not the pumps I’d bought her. She was holding an everyday jacket in one hand that wasn’t a bit right, either. 

And yet I wasn’t complaining. I was moving to the door as she hesitated, her gaze sweeping the crowded room and trying to penetrate the three-deep crowd at the bar, with far too many male eyes on her. 

“You know,” I said in her ear, “if you’d let me collect you, you wouldn’t have had to walk in alone.”

“Oh!” She jumped and put a fluttering hand to her breast. “You startled me.” She smiled, wide and glorious, and I realized I hadn’t seen her smile like that nearly enough. “You’re lucky I came at all. I’ve been going back and forth all weekend about it.”

It wasn’t how most women said hello to me, and I had to smile a little myself. “You’re right. I am.”

“You are what?” She was looking a bit distracted now. My hand rested lightly on her upper back, and I was still standing close in the noisy, crowded bar. As I looked down at her, I could see that beaded bodice rising and falling. 

I smiled a bit more. “Lucky.” 

I nodded to the maître d’, and he stepped out from behind his podium and said, “If Madame et Monsieur will come this way…”

Hope turned and followed the man, the chiffon skirt swaying. Her hair was pulled up, and the delicate skin of her neck, glimpsed between the blonde tendrils that danced around it, gleamed in the soft lighting. Her hips swung in an irresistible rhythm as she ascended the staircase behind the maître d’, and she put a light hand out to the banister. A hand with no rings. In fact, she wore no jewelry at all other than a pair of slim white-gold hoops in her small ears. 

She should have jewels. She’d been made to be adorned. And adored, my mind whispered, startling me, and I shoved the thought straight back again. I didn’t adore. That would have to be some other bloke.

No other bloke. Nobody but you. Not a whisper. A shout. The fierce voice of my ancestors telling me to hold hard to what was mine. 

This time, I was more than startled. I was rocked. 

The maître d’ opened a door and nodded her into the small room beyond, and she checked just inside and turned. 

“I thought…” I could see the slim column of her throat working as she swallowed. “That we were eating in a restaurant.”

“And we are.” 

“I mean—” The flush was mounting on her pale cheeks. “In a public area of a restaurant.”

“Louis will be with you immediately,” the maître d’ murmured, taking his hasty leave.

“Louis will be with us,” I told Hope as she continued to hesitate. “And I prefer privacy.”

I stood still and waited. I was better at waiting than most people. I was also blocking the door, but then, I said I’d thought about playing fair. I hadn’t said I’d do it. 

She hesitated a moment longer, her eyes searching my face. I put out a hand and said, “May I take your coat?”

“Oh!” She jumped again. “Oh.” She handed it over, glanced at the smaller table that had replaced the normal seating for eight in the private dining room. The walls were paneled with wood, the overhead lighting was soft, tall white candles burned on the table, and classical music played lightly in the background. There was even a gas fireplace in one corner. Unnecessary on this warm September evening, but lit all the same. 

“It’s dinner,” I told her, placing her coat on one of the hangers provided on a rack near the door. “It’s private, but it’s still dinner. And you’re very beautiful.”

She glanced from beneath her lashes at me. “Tell me you haven’t priced my dress.”

That made me smile again.

“And don’t tell me the shoes are wrong. I know they’re wrong. You said you wanted to see them.”

“I did.” I glanced down at them. Gleaming and elegant, pleasing my eye as the dress couldn’t.  

She cocked a hip, rose onto a toe, and turned, looking back over her shoulder. “Pretty, huh?” 

“Yeh,” I said, the Kiwi in me coming out under the influence of her smile. “Bloody pretty.”

“You aren’t looking at my shoes.”

“No. I’m not. I’m looking at you.”