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“You really do belong in a straitjacket,” he growled, and slapped the cell phone to silence.
CHAPTER NINE
MATTHEW stood in the customs line at Orly Airport and told himself to calm down.
He’d been telling himself the same thing for the past twenty minutes. Unfortunately, the message didn’t seem to be getting through.
His plane was late, the line was long, there was an infant screaming somewhere up ahead..
It was fair to say he was not in a good mood.
Of all things for Joey to have done, he thought grimly. To have approved CHIC’s idiotically expensive, incredibly foolish scheme. What had his brother been thinking? CHIC, in Paris. Paris, of all places. From his brother’s description, half the damn staff had flown over. A makeup guy. A hairdresser. A writer, a photographer, a stylist…
“Of course, first class,” Joey had said, as if Matthew were crazy to ask. “What were we supposed to do? Fly Susannah and the four sexiest in first and the CHIC bunch in steerage?”
Susannah and the four sexiest. Matthew folded his arms and glowered. It sounded like a 1970s band, for heaven’s sake. What a ridiculous promotion. What a dumb idea. What a senseless, silly, sorry, super-expensive excuse for boosting sales.
“Bah,” Matthew muttered, as the line inched forward.
And he had nobody to blame but himself. He should have stayed with his gut instinct and shut CHIC down, or at the very least, he should have gone with what had made him as successful as he was. He was a man who knew how to delegate authority, but he also was known for keeping a close eye on new projects. That was what he should have done with CHIC, instead of handing its supervision to Joe, who probably knew as much about publishing as he knew about crocheting.
The bottom line was that Joey had let what should have been a simple promotion gimmick get out of hand. And now he’d have to pay the price for his brother’s carelessness.
The sexiest men alive. Matthew snorted. What nonsense! What drivel! Sexy restaurants, okay. Sexy hotels, sure But sexy males? Living, breathing, sexy males?
“Stupid,” he muttered, as the line shuffled forward.
Undeniably stupid. What had Joey been thinking of? Spending all that money. Sending Susannah to Paris with all those people.
Sending her there with four guys women all around the world probably dreamed of, when the only man Susannah ought to be dreaming of was—
“Monsieur?”
Matthew blinked. The French customs inspector was motioning him forward.
“Yes,” Matthew said briskly, and stepped to the counter.
The sooner he cleared customs, the sooner he could be in the city. Then it was simply a matter of going to Le Grand Palais, setting the overreaching Miss Madison back on her heels and firmly pointing her and her hangers-on in the direction of home.
If those guys were really sexy, they could damned well be sexy over the conference table at the CHIC offices in New York. And he’d be there, too, to keep an eye on things.
The customs agent flipped open Matthew’s passport.
“Welcome to France, monsieur. How long will you be with us?”
“No more than a day. Two, at the most.”
“And is your trip a matter of business or pleasure, monsieur?”
Matthew’s mouth thinned. “Business.”
What other reason could he possibly have?
“Enjoy your stay, monsieur.”
Matthew pocketed his passport. “I’m sure I will,” he said grimly.
And he would. In fact, the thought of clipping Susannah’s wings was enough to put a smile on his face for the first time in hours.
* * *
He made a brief stop at his hotel, a small, wonderfully old, quietly elegant place where the concierge knew him by name. A shower, a shave, a change of clothes, and he was on his way.
It was a perfect day—warm and sunny, with a soft breeze stirring the waters of the Seine. He decided to walk to Le Grand Palais. Paris was one of his favorite cities. Strolling the Champs Elysées and then l’Avenue Montaigne invariably soothed and refreshed his soul.
Not today.
The sights that usually made him smile—couples strolling arm in arm, lovers exchanging kisses—irritated the hell out of him. Couldn’t people curb their displays? Why be so damned public about these things? Behave yourself, he wanted to snarl at the boy and girl locked in passionate embrace on a park bench.
Sanity returned with a rush. There was no reason to take his bad mood out on strangers—a bad mood due entirely to Joe’s incompetence and Susannah’s extravagance. Well, he’d take the situation in hand. There was nothing like the boss showing up in person to teach an insolent employee a lesson.
He marched through the lobby of Le Grand Palais, oblivious to the magnificent nineteenth-century decor. He’d phoned Joey from the plane, and his brother had provided the details Susannah’s suite was on the eighth floor. The Sexiests had their suites there, too.
“That way, nobody has to wear out the carpet, going back and forth from one suite to the other,” Joey had said cheerfully.
“How thoughtful,” Matthew had said coldly.
All the way up in the elevator, he thought about the look he would see on Susannah’s face when she opened the door and found him standing there, the way she’d gasp when she realized that he wasn’t going to let her play at being a Parisian courtesan on his time and at his expense.
It was time to establish exactly who was boss.
He stepped from the elevator, walked to the door of Susannah’s suite and knocked Then he folded his arms, settled his expression into one of cool disdain, and waited.
* * *
Susannah heard the knock at the door and tried hard not to shout hallelujah.
Thank you, she said silently to fate in the form of room service.
“One minute,” she called gaily, and then she looked at her four companions. “Gentlemen? There’s someone at the door.”
Nobody heard her. Well, why would they? The underwear model, the rocker, the writer and the actor were all talking at once. They’d been doing that for the past two hours, and Susannah’s head was spinning—especially since the travel agent who’d booked CHIC into Le Grand Palais had omitted one word from his description of the suite.
Magnificent, he’d said. Exquisite. Rococo.
It was all that. Unfortunately, it was also…
“Cozy,” Claire had called it.
But the stylist deserved points for accuracy. “Whoa,” she’d said, “this place gives me claustrophobia.”
She was right.
Susannah was sharing a ten-by-twelve-foot sitting room with four impressively sized men, all of them handsome and all of them determined to stake a claim on her interest. She’d invited them for coffee so they could get to know each other and establish some sort of rapport.
It hadn’t worked. The Sexiests weren’t interested in rapport, they were interested in self-promotion, and that made them interested in her. She could almost read their minds.
If I can convince this woman that I’m the sexiest guy alive, each man was thinking, my asking price will go sky-high.
She’d been trying to look attentive and she supposed it was working, because the Sexiests were still babbling away, but she couldn’t help wondering what they’d say if they knew all she was thinking about was how she’d managed to get herself into this mess.
Four men, one weekend, one cramped but elegant sitting room.
If this was what it was like to be the center of so much masculine attention, she could definitely do without it.
Alejandro, the underwear model, told her she had beautiful eyes.
Bart, the actor, said she was his soul mate.
Zeke, the rocker, promised that she would be the inspiration for his next song.
Stefan, the writer, assured her that he was going to dedicate his next novel to her
And through it all, Susannah kept smiling, smiling and reminding herse
lf that a weekend was only two days long even if the past half hour had felt like half a century.
If only the room were larger. If only she’d suggested meeting in the hotel’s lounge. If only the sofa weren’t built for midgets.
She sat in its elegant center, tucked between Alejandro with his hot, dark, dangerous smile, and Bart, with his inch-long lashes At her feet sat Zeke, gazing at her soulfully and humming snatches of his newest hit. Stefan lounged against the wall, occasionally stroking his black, shoulder-length curls and throwing her sizzling glances.
The knock at the door had come just in time. All she had to do was manage to extricate herself from between Alejandro and Bart.
“The door,” she said again, and struggled to her feet
The Sexiests stood up, too, and purred her name in chorus.
