“Hello there!” He shook his hand. “So glad you could meet me here. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”
“Ah, no—”
“Excellent.” Chisolm addressed the host, who hovered behind them. “Baxter, get my friend a drink.” Then he turned to Lucien. “You’ll have one, won’t you?”
“Yes—”
“Whatever he wants,” Chisolm announced with a lordly wave of his hand.
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
“Good lad,” he said with a wink. “A whiskey for Mr. Taylor and another for me. Quickly now, Baxter.”
“Of course, sir.” The host scraped a bow and scurried off, but not before casting one last look of disapproval at Lucien.
“Sit, sit.” Chisolm gestured to the chair opposite his own. “I must say, I’m very excited to hear your proposal. I’ve mostly been involved in industrial endeavors. But the future is entertainment, or so I’m told. Especially for the middle classes, now that they have a bit of extra money to spend.”
Lucien nodded. “Yes, that is one of the groups I hope to aimfor.” Indeed, that was what had made the club such a success in Paris. It was designed to be accessible to more than only the very wealthy. “When the artists started coming, that was when things really took off.”
Chisolm grinned. “I love it. You must have enjoyed some raucous nights with that crowd, I imagine,” he added, waggling his eyebrows.
Lucien managed a smile. “A few.” He hadn’t expected such a blunt comment during a business meeting. “But for me it was work, you know. I never forgot that.”
Some of his clients treated his stoic refusal to participate in the festivities as a kind of game and took turns dangling all sorts of temptations before him: liquor, women—men. But Lucien never broke. Though he had desperately wanted to a time or two.
Chisolm gave him a sly look. “Of course.Work.”
Before the man could press him further, their drinks arrived. Chisolm made a toast and then gestured to Lucien. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
As Lucien launched into his little spiel, Chisolm asked him a number of pointed questions. He had come prepared. Luckily, so had Lucien. They spent close to an hour discussing his vision for the business and what he would need to get it started before Chisolm settled back in his chair.
“You’ve given me much to think about, Taylor. Now we can get down to therealbusiness,” he said. “Are the rumors true, then? That you’re courting Alex—I mean, Miss Atkinson,” Chisolm finished with a sheepish grin that Lucien didn’t believe for a second.
“Yes. I am.”
Chisolm nodded sagely. “Good. Poor girl’s a waste sitting on theshelf. Someone should be able to enjoy those charms of hers,” he added quietly before taking a sip.
Lucien narrowed his eyes. Chisolm sounded awfully certain about that. “And yet, you turned her down.”
He let out a dry laugh. “Well, not at first. But then I found that we weren’t…” He paused, as if searching for the right word. “Compatible.”
Did this manreallyhave the audacity to make such an insinuation? Lucien recalled Alex lifting her chin and boldly pronouncing her lack of virginity. Chisolm had to have been her partner. And the bastard looked damned proud of it.
“I beg your pardon,” Lucien demanded. Despite his lingering anger over Alex’s invasion of his privacy, he very much wanted to punch this man in his smug face.
“Don’t tell me I’ve shocked you,” Chisolm said with genuine surprise. “I took you for a man of the world. And you certainly know Miss Atkinson can fend for herself. No one could coerce her into doing anything she didn’t want to do.”
Lucien’s jaw tightened even while he privately acknowledged this. “Nevertheless, I trust you don’t make it a habit of discussing this with people.”
Chisolm had the decency to look chastened. “No, of course not.”
“Let’s move on, then.”
The man seemed all too happy to oblige, and as they discussed how Paris compared to London, their conversation moved along with much of its earlier breeziness. But in Lucien’s case it was all for show. He left a short while later determined that under no circumstances would he partner with that man. Ever.
Nineteen
Alex rubbed her bleary eyes and glanced at the clock. Approximately two minutes had passed since she’d last looked. She let out a frustrated sigh and leaned back in her chair. Workdays never dragged on like this. It was only a little past three o’clock and she was ready to climb out of her skin. Is this how her colleagues felt? No wonder everyone clambered for the doors at the stroke of five. But there was no reason why she should be so distracted.
