“At least the urine was an honest scent. True.”
She looked at her bottle a second. “You know, if you’re not careful, I really am going to spray you with this stuff.”
“Jesus.” He shuddered. “It probably doesn’t wash off for days. The molecules you used in that thing.”
She gazed at it another moment and then at him, a scary look in her eye. He backed up a step. “Seriously. Don’t.”
She gave a slow, wicked, lopsided smile that was so exactly what he’d
hoped
to wake up to that morning after, instead of an empty apartment, that he got caught by it. “It will make it easier for them to find the culprit if my dead body turns up.”
He got ready to drop behind the counter. “What are the police going to do, sniff the wrists of all the suspects?”
“They’d have to call in your own cousin as an expert witness against you,” Jess agreed mournfully. “One Rosier pitted against another. Imagine the scandal.”
No prosecutor around Grasse would be idiot enough to expect one Rosier to testify against another. “If you inflict that thing on me, I’m going to grab it from you and spray you all over with it.”
And
that
, maybe, would convince his heart to go back into that damn, dark hole. At least then, she’d smell like what she wanted him to think she was—spoiled and hard and careless, of her own heart and everyone else’s.
She lifted the bottle, narrowed her eyes. “
Are
you going to leave quietly?”
He resigned himself to the torture and put on his game face. “No.”
Show your true colors now.
Spray me.
She stood there, stuck, for a long moment. And then she frowned in something close to a sulk and looked down at the little bottle. “Damn it.” She set it down. “All those self-defense lessons are right. Never draw a weapon unless you’d be willing to fire it.”
His hand snaked out to snag the bottle and pocket it, so he didn’t have to run
that
risk again. Spoiled Brat. Hell.
“Hey. I just spent a hundred dollars on that thing.”
He removed one of his cufflinks and set it on the counter where the bottle had been. “I’ll trade.”
She stared not at the cufflink but at his wrist where it had been. Color appeared suddenly on her cheeks, and with it a slow heat swept up through his body. He wanted to lose another cufflink. He wanted to find an excuse to trade away every single item of clothing he wore, one by one, in this slow, deliberate striptease until she was blushing all over her body.
That night, he’d stopped with his shirt off so that she didn’t catch fire. And he’d loved it, loved the flame and fascination in her, loved pulling her into his bare chest and kissing her in little toying kisses, seducing her, until she forgot to be unnerved.
He fingered his second cufflink. “Not good enough? You want the full set?” She could pawn the pair of cufflinks for ten times the cost of that tiny bottle of Spoiled Brat, but who cared about the bottom line? Their value was in the blush on her cheeks.
She swallowed and took a step back, color deepening.
Well…
well.
He removed that second cufflink and set it beside the other with a little click.
She stared at his wrist. Then her gaze tracked up his torso helplessly until she reached the open collar, when she closed her eyes tightly. She swallowed again.
At this point, that night, he’d abandoned his cufflinks on the dresser and moved toward her, running his hands down her arms.
I’ve got you, you know. Thank you. Thank you for trusting me with your wishing.
Now he fingered his watch. She could pawn
that
to buy a car. A nice car. His father had given it to him when he orchestrated his first smooth takeover of a dangerous Rosier SA rival.
He unfastened the band.
“Don’t!” she said, strangled.
“I don’t want to cheat you.” His voice came out silky and a little mean.
You’re always the mean one, Damien.
Matt, pissed off and growling carelessly that way he did, as if his damn temper bounced off his cousins.
Machiavellian.
“Are you kidding me?” Her breasts were shifting in beautiful little pants, her face flushed and panicked. “That’s worth way more than a bottle of Spoiled Brat! For something like that, I’d have to make you your own custom perfume.”
His fingers froze on the watch, as the fantasy of it caught him—her making a scent for him, testing it on his skin to see how it blended with his natural scents. The time it took to do something like that properly, as she tested it through top notes, middle notes, bottom notes to make sure it was perfect for him all the way through…time in this shop, under her hands, fulfilling whatever fantasy she made of him.
And then his gut clenched around the reality. God knew what perfume she’d make to represent
him.
Something mean. Machiavellian. Some masculine variant of Spoiled Brat, maybe. Maybe she’d call it
Assassin.
The kind of perfume a woman made for a guy whose apartment she snuck out of while he was still asleep, and to whom she spoke with arch, light, flippant indifference ever after, to make sure he knew that nothing of value had been offered by her that night.
And nothing of value received by her either.
He swallowed down the tightness in his throat. And then just ripped the watch off, making himself do it.
He set the watch down in the middle of the counter by the cufflinks, dark, brushed titanium, a gauntlet thrown down.
You can’t break me
, that watch said.
Or did it say,
I yield.
***
The dark titanium band curled on top of the counter amid those bottles of scents. All the hair on Jess’s body lifted. She couldn’t breathe. Shallow sips of air got stuck in the top of her lungs.
“What are you doing?”
“Not enough?” His hands shifted to the lapels of his coat. “This is Dior, hand-tailored. Will that be enough?” He held her eyes, his glittering with…anger? Why would he be angry? “How much of me are you worth?”
All of you
, that stupid hope in its bottle tried to whisper
.
She shoved it back down. Of course he did not think she was worth all of him. That was her
fantasy. But she got to decide her own worth, and if he couldn’t pay it that didn’t mean she had to give herself to him cheaply. Not again. She firmed her chin. “More than that.”
He peeled off the coat, his eyes locked on hers. She couldn’t hold his gaze. Her own wanted to dart all over the place—his chest, his shoulders in that fine white shirt, the lean waist and flat stomach that she remembered touching—
The coat draped over the counter, beside the watch.
All the scents in the shop exploded in her brain like fireworks, leaving nothing but colors and longing. “Stop!”
He reached for his cuff. “Tell me,” that mean, velvet panther’s purr, “when I’ve bid high enough.”
“None of that’s worth any of me!”
Deft, tan, masculine fingers rolled up his cuff to reveal half his forearm.
“Then what’s worth you, Jess?” That dangerously sensual menace, like the soft pad of a panther’s feet as it backed a mouse into a corner.
“A heart!” she said wildly. His fingers stilled on his cuff. His eyes lifted suddenly to hers, the sea just before dawn.
Oh, God, what had she just admitted about her romantic, wistful insides? She yanked herself back from the counter. “Nothing
you
can give!”
He didn’t move a muscle. Not the fingers on his cuff, not the taut, strong forearm half-revealed, not even a shift of his chest to breathe. And then the fine muscles at the corners of his lips pressed down, revealing again the tiny lines he was too young for, and he dropped his left arm.
“Well, obviously not if you want a heart,” he said sardonically. “You’re sure you wouldn’t accept a more practical form of currency for one of your perfumes? Hard to deposit a heart in a business account.”
Oh.
Oh, they were talking about…a perfume. How had she gotten so confused as to think they were talking about her? About him? Her face flamed.
Daddy, make me a baby star.
Daddy, make me a dragon’s call.
“They are worth that, though,” she murmured wistfully.
“What?”
“Somebody’s heart,” she said, hopelessly. “A real perfume is.” A perfume made out of the perfumer’s own heart.
But that kind of exchange didn’t work, as her poet-perfumer of a father had learned, as work of his art after work of art got eaten up by accountants in the designer houses or floundered and failed to attract any but a niche group of buyers once released. Nobody wanted to give their hearts. They wanted Spoiled Brat—their own scent version of a selfie.
Look at me! It’s all about me! Love me, but don’t expect me to ever turn this camera around and point it at you.
“Well. Since I obviously don’t have one of those,” Damien said with a dark, vicious irony, “perhaps we could agree on some other price.”
“For…a perfume?”
“That’s right.”
“A custom perfume…from me?” She didn’t mean to put that incredulous emphasis on
me
, but…well, Spoiled Brat had permanently condemned her in the eyes of most perfumers. Like a top chef who launched a frozen food line. The nose who had made Spoiled Brat was not exactly the kind of nose the financial elite of the world went to for their unique, classy, bespoke perfume. Heads of marketing, on the other hand, practically kissed the air every time her name was mentioned.
Of course, he
was
the moneyman. And Spoiled Brat made money.
“Yes.” He rolled up his right cuff.
God, she wished he would quit undressing. Or maybe just…start on the buttons running down his chest. Undo them, like he had that night, one…by one…by one…
“To sell?”
“Oh, no.” The danger and power of him filled the room like a scent that obscured all the others. “Only for me.”
She blinked down at the cufflinks, watch, and coat on the counter. She didn’t even know what they were worth. Twenty thousand? Probably a fair price for a custom, unique perfume from a top perfumer.
Which she of course
was.
Spoiled Brat had hit number two, no matter how much that infuriated the academy of good taste.
She’d had such a hope of breaking out of the Spoiled Brat role with the start-up niche perfume company she’d helped found with quixotic actress Tara Lee, but then…well, he’d happened to that dream. Just snatched it right up without a single person even needing to talk to her about it, leaving her with ten percent of the shares in a start-up that had just been swallowed whole by one of the major fragrance companies.
Exactly
what she’d been trying to get away from.
“Shall I write you a check?” Damien said.
“No.” She put her hand over the items. “No. I’ll take these.”
Exactly what she’d gotten from him the last time. The removal of a few items of clothing for the chance to touch him, while she, like an idiot, had thought they were reaching for each other’s hearts.
Her hand closed around the titanium watch, and she picked it up. Scratchproof sapphire crystal, a black sapphire for the crown, dark gray titanium case and band. Unbreakable. Impenetrable. Merciless.
It would be a good reminder to her, when dealing with him.
“Who gave you this?” she asked ironically. “Your last model girlfriend?” Good God, it was a Cartier. Had her guess for the worth of the items placed on the counter been a full zero too low?
“My father. On behalf of the family.” He held out his upturned wrist.
That bare wrist made jitters grow in her stomach and then stretch out in leaping pulses through her body as if she’d drunk far too much caffeine. She tried to breathe deep, but she couldn’t get the jitters to calm down. Strong wrist, upturned to offer its most vulnerable point to her. Strong masculine hand, closed against her, in a fist. White sleeve turned back.
The watch that would have made any attack bounce off that wrist now lay in her hand, abandoned armor.
He’d taken it off once before for her. Forgotten on his wrist, it had caught in her hair, and he’d disentangled it and tossed it to the side of the bed as if it was worthless, compared to the moment he was caught in. He’d stroked his fingers through her hair to ease the sting from the pull of the watch, and kissed her in this tender, intense apology that had felt so…precious…
She swallowed, setting her jaw against the urge to sink her head into her hands and cry. Exactly as she had done after she had seen him with that model, after she had learned of his takeover of her dream company, after she’d wanted to confide in her father that she’d met a guy but was afraid of getting hurt…and hadn’t been able to confide in him, because he was dying. Her wish had failed, and all the stars in all the world were winking out, leaving nothing but the harsh lights of the city and her standing looking down at them, all alone.
God, it had been such a bad time.
“What, do you expect me to come up with something perfect for you on the spot?” she demanded.
“You did before.”
Her gaze flew to his. Unbelievably, his lashes lowered, black veiling his eyes. His jaw was so hard.
He couldn’t possibly be talking about a perfume, since she’d never worked for Rosier SA.
She didn’t know what else he could be talking about. Not…well, not
her.
That didn’t make any sense at all.
Even if
he
had felt perfect to her. Utterly, vulnerably, heartbreakingly perfect, so perfect she’d been scared of how brutal the morning after might be and run away.
You didn’t want the prince to wake up and be, well…the vice president and official assassin of one of the major fragrance companies of the world, in charge of expanding empire and cutting down opposition at any cost, so entitled and so hardened that he hooked up with a new model or actress at every event he went to. In short, she definitely didn’t want to wake up to find out her night prince was him.
Leaving him sleeping had let her keep her illusions for, oh, nearly twelve hours more.
Like letting a doctor’s call go to voicemail because if she could just not answer, she could pretend for a few more hours that the world was what she wanted it to be.