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"I really think you are going to want to hear what I have to say," Adele said, the French lilt to her voice no mask for the malice in her eyes. "More to the point, you will want to see what your mother has to show you."
"I doubt it."
"Rowan, please," her mother pleaded, appearing, and sounding genuinely distressed. "I'm only trying to look out for your best interests."
Whatever her mother's reasons for setting up this lunch, Rowan had no doubts that whatever drove Adele Fournier's presence, it was not altruism on the model's part.
The woman had stalked them to Mexico. Now she was going to…what? It was thatwhatthat had Rowan pausing. Forewarned was forearmed.
As much as she had no desire to spend a single minute in the other woman's company, Rowan cared too much about Lysander not to at least try to figure out what game the supermodel was playing.
While Rowan wouldn't believe Adele if she said the sky was blue, that didn't mean others wouldn’t and Rowan wanted to protect her lover from being blindsided by the media if she could.
Her phone buzzed with a text. "Excuse me," she said to her mother and turned away before she swiped to see the message.
Sander:I miss you.
Love fluttered in her chest. They were going to video call in less than an hour, but he missed her because it was going to be thirty minutes later than usual. Or maybe he just missed her. Full. Stop. Like she missed him.
Smiling, she typed a reply telling him so before sending a second text to her bodyguard. She tapped on another app and then slid back into her seat before setting her phone on the table, face down.
Rowan looked at Adele with all the skepticism she felt. "You have something you want to say?"
"It's not going to be easy to hear." Rowan's mother patted her arm. She frowned. "Or to see."
Rowan wanted information, so she tamped down her immediate inclination to tell her mother she would never believe a word spoken against Lysander. Especially if it was said by Adele, a bunny boiler, if there ever was one.
"Adele is here as a favor to…" Her mother's voice trailed off. "To our family," she finally said. "But before she says anything, I need you to look at some photos."
Vanessa pulled out her phone. "These were taken this last week in Tokyo."
Tension stiffened Rowan's spine. This was going to be some kind of claim about Adele and Lysander in Tokyo. Someone had done their homework or had access to privileged information they shouldn't.
Yes, sometimes Lysander's trips were made public, but there had been nothing in the media, much less his company's social media alluding to his current visit to Japan.
Lysander wasn't just going to be annoyed; he was going to be raging.
"I admit I was surprised Lys asked me to join him on such short notice, but I had a break in my schedule." Adele's gallic shrug was perfectly executed to imply a lack of tension.
Maybe the woman should try acting as well as modeling.
Too bad she was playing to a wholly unreceptive audience. Even if Rowan and Lysander had still been arguing, she wouldn't have believed the narrative the supermodel was trying to create.
He had said no other women as long as they were together, and she had believed him.
She still did.
The calculating gleam in the model's eyes was subtle, but she was watching Rowan with unmistakable interest to see how she reacted to the story. Rowandid notroll her eyes, but it was hard.
"Let me see the pictures." She put her hand out for her mother's phone.
With a sad, almost pitying expression her mother handed over her smartphone. "Swipe right for additional photos."
The first one was a picture taken from a distance of Adele and Lysander looking very chummy while the model took a selfie with her phone.
"That's the café on the ground floor of the hotel we stayed in. The next picture is the hotel."
Rowan swiped right. Sure enough the next photo was a picture of the two of them in front of the hotel, again taken from a distance. There was a picture of them at dinner and one of the model coming out of a hotel suite Rowan assumed was the one Lysander was staying in.
