CHAPTER 1
Gloria
The Present
I couldn’t believe I was in Paris confined in a cabin on the top of the Grande Roue Ferris wheel with Jaime Zander, staring wide-eyed at a magnificent diamond ring he’d just presented to me. I was in shock. We’d known each other for less than a week. My heart was fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Seated pantiless on his lap with my legs draped over his muscular thighs, I was waiting for him to answer my question: “Are you asking me to marry you?”
Jaime’s reaction was as intense as my own. He visibly jerked and blinked his eyes several times. And then he just stared at me. A long second passed. My heart still pounding, I waited with baited breath for his response. The silence of the night air was numbing.
“Gloria…no,” he finally stammered.
His words hit me with a blow. My face turned fifty shades of red. I felt foolishly embarrassed. It was time to mentally hit the “reset” button.
Except I didn’t know what to say. And it appeared that he didn’t either. After a few moments, he regained his composure and broke the awkward stretch of silence. “It’s a toi et moi ring.”
A “you and me” ring, I said to myself. The lyrics of the Charles Aznavour song that had been playing when we’d arrived at the Ferris wheel floated in my head…you and me, two hearts merge. Except he wasn’t giving me his heart. My emotions were a jumble of pain, self-loathing, and confusion.
He lifted the ring from the velvet box. “I found it in an antiques shop that my client told me about. The dealer told me it’s almost a hundred years old. An old soul like you. Do you like it?”
I gazed at the intricate, sparkling ring. “It’s beautiful,” I murmured. It truly was. A dazzling art-nouveau work of art, the two perfect heart-shaped diamonds kissing each other like lovers.
He grasped my right hand. “Gloria, why are you shaking so much?”
“I’m just a little chilled,” I lied, flinging my pashmina shawl across my right shoulder with my free hand. Inside, I was falling apart like a glacier-struck cruise ship. Confession: At this very moment, I hated this man—this man who I thought I loved—for how fucked up he could make me feel.
Without a blink, I watched as he slipped the ring onto my middle finger. It fit perfectly. I should have been thrilled that this man I’d known for not even a week was giving me such an extravagant gift, but instead I found myself battling angry tears.
“Thank you,” I managed. Truthfully, I wanted to tear if off my finger and toss it into the Seine.
He planted a warm kiss on my lips. The kiss sent another chill through me, not the good kind.
I pulled away. My thumb rubbed across the smooth surface of the two entwining diamonds. “What is this ring for?”
Jaime coiled a lock of my loose hair around his hand. “Working together. The two of us are going to make a great team, Gloria.”
So that’s what I was—a client with benefits. A good fuck who could make him money. A knife sliced through my heart. I may have foolishly thought I was in love with him, but he was clearly not in love with me.
The big wheel started spinning again, and as it spun back to earth, my emotions spun out of control. Over the past twenty-four hours, he had fucked my brains out. I had enjoyed every minute. Now, he was fucking with my brain. And I didn’t like it one bit. There was a fine line between losing control and being out of control, and I had just crossed it.
Stupid, stupid me.