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A gruesome graphic image flashed through Stacy’s mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced it away. “She…died when I was nineteen.”

  “And she left you enough money to attend college?”

  “No. I co-oped.”

  “What is that?”

  “I worked part-time in my field with sponsoring companies and that meant I had to take a lighter load of classes. It took six years of going to school year-round, but I finished.”

  “Vincent did not tell me that.”

  “You asked Vincent about me? What did he say?”

  “That he had not met you, but that you had…how did he put it? You saved Candace’s bacon in a tax audit.”

  Stacy laughed and Franco’s gaze whipped in her direction. He acted as if he’d never heard her laugh. Come to think of it, he probably hadn’t. “Candace’s was my first audit, and I went a little overboard in her defense. I think the IRS agent was glad to get rid of us by the time I finished pointing out all the deductions Candace could have taken but hadn’t.”

  Franco pulled the car into the hotel parking area, but not into the valet lane and stopped. He turned in his seat and studied her face in the dim light. “You enjoy your work.”

  “I love—um, my job.” She’d barely caught herself before using past tense. Being laid off had been like moving to a new school and being rejected all over again. It had hurt—especially since she hadn’t done anything wrong. “Numbers make sense. People often don’t.”

  He pinned her with another one of his intense inspections that made her want to squirm. “I will be out of town this weekend. A car will pick you up at quarter to six Monday evening and deliver you to my house. My housekeeper will let you in before she leaves. Wait for me. We will have dinner.”

  And then sex? Her shameless pulse quickened. “I look forward to it.”

  And the sad thing was, that wasn’t a lie, and Monday seemed a very long way away.

  Seven

  “I have found her,” Franco said upon entering the chateau’s study.

  His father looked up sharply, set his book aside and rose from the sofa to embrace him. “Franco, I was not expecting you this weekend. If you had called I could have delayed lunch.”

  He hadn’t known he was coming. This morning’s urge to put some distance between him and Stacy had been both sudden and imperative. She had clouded his thinking with incredible sex and contradictory behavior. He needed distance and objectivity to decipher her actions.

  “No problem. I will raid the kitchen later. Where is Angeline?”

  “Shopping in Marseille.”

  Ah, yes. Exactly why he was here. To remind himself that a mercenary, self-indulgent heart beat at the core of every woman.

  Take his mother, for example. Although his father had never spoken a negative word against her, Franco had been curious enough about the woman who had given birth to him to investigate her death. During one of his university vacations he had researched the police reports and the newspaper stories and discovered that his mother had enjoyed her status as a rich, older man’s wife. She had often attended weekend house parties without her husband, and there she’d indulged. In booze. In cocaine. And who knew what else? At one such party, a chemical overdose had killed her at age twenty-six.

  His father passed him a glass of wine. “So tell me about this young lady.”

  “She is an American accountant, a friend of Vincent’s fiancée, and she claims she counsels troubled teens in her spare time.”

  “And?”

  “I offered her a million euros to be my mistress for a month. She accepted.” But she would not accept all his gifts. That did not make sense. Her honesty had to be a ruse. Who would report a million euros windfall to the tax man and forfeit almost half in taxes?

  “She is attractive? Desirable?”

  An image of Stacy rising like Venus from the churning waters of the spa flashed in his mind. Droplets had streamed down her ivory skin, clung to her puckered nipples and glistened in the dark curls concealing her sex. Before he had removed the first condom he had been ready to reach for a second. He’d had to dunk beneath the cooling waterfall to regain control. “That was our agreement.”

  “And yet you’re here and she’s…where?”

  “Monaco. Vincent is pampering his bride-to-be and her attendants with an all-expenses-paid month at Hôtel Reynard while they plan the wedding. Stacy is a bridesmaid.”

  “Ah, yes. Vincent is another one making his papa wait for grandbabies. Has he recovered from the accident?”

  Vincent had come home with Franco several times during school vacations. Franco had also visited the Reynard home in Boca Raton, Florida. It had been Vincent who had suggested Franco relocate to Monaco for the tax advantages the principality could offer Midas Chocolates. “He is completely mobile now, and through surgeries and physical therapy, has regained 80 percent use of his right hand.”

  “And his fiancée does not mind the scars or the handicap?”

  “She was his nurse in the burn unit. She has seen him look worse.” And she had stood by him. Probably because Reynard Hotels was a multi-billion dollar corporation with ninety luxury hotels spread across the globe.

  “I look forward to seeing him again and to meeting his bride. I also want to meet your…Stacy, you said? You’ll bring her here.”

  The idea repulsed him. “I do not see the need.”

  “I do. And is she the kind of woman you would be willing to marry if she refused the money?”

  Franco cursed the wording of his agreement with his father, but it would not become an issue. “It will not happen. She has already accepted.”

  “You seem very certain of that.”

  “I am.”

  “When is the money to be paid?”

  “The day after Vincent’s wedding.”

  His father turned away, but not before Franco caught a glimpse of a smile. “Just remember our agreement, son.”

  “How could I forget?”

  How indeed? When he returned to Monaco, he would show Stacy the benefits of being a rich man’s plaything. Before long she would greedily beg for his gifts instead of refusing them.

  And then she would take the money and run.

  Alone in Franco’s house.

  Stacy stood in the foyer after the housekeeper left. Uncertain. Uncomfortable. Undecided. She could be a polite guest and wait in the living room as directed or she could search for signs of obsession. Being a snoop wasn’t honorable, but after what she’d learned about her father… She shuddered.

  Knowledge was power and she needed all the knowledge she could get about Franco Constantine. Her safety depended on it.

  She turned down the hall toward the master-bedroom wing. A twinge of guilt made her pause on the threshold, but she took a deep breath and marched in. The furniture surfaces were clear of clutter. No photographs or knickknacks gave a clue to the room’s owner other than big, bold wooden furniture and luxurious linens. The classic landscapes on the wall also revealed little. She would not stoop to pawing through his drawers.

  The view of Larvotto through the open drapes lured her, but she ignored it and cautiously opened a door to reveal a closet as large as her apartment bedroom. It looked like a GQ man’s dream with clothing and shoes neatly aligned on the racks and shelves. There was no sign of a woman anywhere…except for the dress Stacy had left behind the other night hanging alone on an otherwise empty rod with the shoebox beneath it.

  She closed the door, returned to the foyer and looked out the window, but there was no sign of Franco’s car. The opposite hallway beckoned. Just past the stairs to the basement she found an open door and looked inside. Franco’s study. A large dark-wooden desk dominated the space and tall bookshelves lined the walls on either side of the double French doors opening onto the back patio.

  A pair of photographs on one shelf drew her across the room. She lifted one of Franco and another man about the same age standing in front of a picturesque castle. Vincent Reynard. Stacy re