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“What is your name, mademoiselle?”
“Charlotte Conroy.”
“And I am Lucien Caron.” He bowed smartly. “What time are you finished with your work today, if I might enquire?”
I blinked. A come on? Impossible. He was too nice, too refined to try to pick up girls more than forty years younger than he was. Still, I couldn’t imagine why on earth he was asking me that.
“I’m off at two o’clock.” I glanced at the back office where Annabelle was waiting for me. “If I don’t get fired first, that is.”
Lucien smiled and took the to-go bag. “If I may, I’d like to return at that time and perhaps have a coffee?”
“Uh…sure?”
He gave me another short nod of his head. “At two then, Miss Conroy.”
“Yeah, see you then,” I said, wondering what it was I just agreed to.
Annabelle laid a long lecture on me about company property and how it was to be distributed (spoiler alert: not to homeless people), but she didn’t fire me. She was close, though. I could practically see her thinking of how the calendar would look with her nephew’s name written next to all my shifts.
And to add insult to poverty-stricken injury, the restaurant was busy all day. Had I been working my regular station, I would have been in the clear, tip-wise. As it was, I made less than half that with piddling to-go tips. I planned to get out of there as soon as two o’clock rolled around, and then Lucien Caron strolled back into the now near-empty restaurant.
Oh right. My hot date.
But I liked Lucien, and when he offered me a polite smile in greeting, I smiled back. He took a table near the window and waited.
“Who’s Vincent Price over there?” Anthony murmured as I started over.
“I just met him this afternoon,” I muttered back. “He works for Lake and wants to talk to me about something. Seems nice enough.”
Anthony grinned. “All serial killers do. It’s how they keep their cover. Cough three times if you need rescuing.”
I laughed and elbowed him in the ribs. There wasn’t anything creepy about Lucien Caron, though he did look a bit like Vincent Price: old-world charm from a bygone era. He also reminded me of my favorite grandfather who had passed away when I was ten. Grandpa Harold was always pulling quarters out of my ear. Lucien looked like he could drop a fifty and never notice.
I joined him at the window-side table and Anthony took our order. “I have an employee discount,” I told Lucien.
The older man waved his hand. A pinky ring with a sapphire the size of a dime glinted in the afternoon sun. “Given this restaurant’s policies on such things, safer that I pay, don’t you think?”
I shifted in my seat. “You’re probably right.”
“Besides, it hardly seems fair to this establishment to take more from them than perhaps I already will.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve asked you to meet with me, Miss Conroy, to talk a bit with you about some…possibilities.”
He fell silent as Anthony returned with a black coffee for me and a cappuccino. When he’d gone, Lucien sat back in his chair and stirred his drink with a small spoon.
“I am starting at the end when I should be starting at the beginning. I’d like to get to know you and tell you something of my situation. Then we shall go from there, yes?”
“Uh, sure.”
“So.” Lucien sipped his cappuccino. “Tell me about yourself, Charlotte. What brings you to New York? Or perhaps you’re a native?”
“Oh, no. Montana transplant. I came here for school.”
“NYU?”
“Juilliard.”
