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He shook his head. “You’re a grown up? You could have fooled me. The most immature twenty-two-year-old I’ve ever met. Went from living off your father to being ready to live off your husband. The bravest thing you ever did was run from your wedding, and now here you are, a sniveling toddler. I thought you might finally have grown a backbone when you booked it away from Kit, but here you are, still pathetic. You disgust me, Layla.”
I smacked him, hard. Nothing had ever felt better.
But reality quickly rushed back in. I’d just hit my father’s business partner, and he was the only person who could possibly help me, given my situation.
There was no rule book for what to do here, no articles I’d ever read on how to handle a man I’d just whacked for beingrude to me on the worst day of my life. I lifted up my chin. Yes, at some point, I was going to fall apart. No, it wouldn’t be in front of him.
“Apologies.” I nodded. “We can be done with whatever this moment is and never see each other again.”
For his part, Zeke was beautiful in his anger. Men shouldn’t be so completely beautiful to look at. Tall, broad shouldered. He wore his perfectly tailored blue pinstriped suit. It didn’t wear him. He’d been using the same watch for as long as I remembered, and he never took it off, no matter what the rest of his outfit happened to be. When I needed to catalog people, I always did it by starting with their accessories. I’d done it since I was a young child. Small details and then outward.
His face was sculpted like he’d been made to be photographed. These days, he wore a neatly trimmed brown beard and the hair was thick on top of his head, begging to be touched. His eyes were dark, brown, and endless in their depths, even though they were so angry. I couldn’t blame him. One side of his face was bright red from where I’d struck him. I’d not been gentle about it.
“Thank you for saving me with the cab.”
There I’d officially said everything I should say, and now I was going to hightail it out of here and try to find my way back to my hotel, where I presumably had a room until tomorrow and where my stuff was currently stored. Unless my brother had ransacked that, too, although I wasn’t sure how he could in the time we’d been away from each other. Considering traffic, it was amazing my father had gotten to the airport so fast. But then again, he did seem to make the world move to his liking.
Goosebumps broke out on my arms. I could do this. Somehow.
“Layla.” Zeke’s voice was lower this time when he spoke. I’d struck him, and I knew very little about him. Was he going to bethe kind of guy who hit me back? I’d never had that happen. But I’d hit him and…
He nodded towards the hotel. “Let’s get you a drink at the bar. And then we’ll go get your stuff from wherever it is.”
I blinked. What had he just said? “A drink?”
“That’s right. You’ve had a long day and it’s only lunchtime. Well, almost lunchtime. It seems like the kind of day that deserves a drink, even as early as this.”
I rubbed my arms. “I just hit you.”
“I’m aware.” He still hadn’t rubbed his cheek. “Come on. Drink.”
I walked toward him. My feet were starting to ache. I had no shoes, and I was pretty sure when I looked at my feet later, they were going to be cut to pieces. Every step shot agony up my legs. The good news was my dress was so long, no one could see I was shoeless. Small wins, I supposed. “Why are you taking me for a drink when I just hit you?”
“Because I deserved it, and I can’t remember the last time someone so perfectly gave me what I deserved.” He walked ahead of me, letting the doorman open the doors for us as we entered. I was getting a lot of looks from bystanders and pedestrians. A wedding dress now covered in dirt and mud with my hair half falling in my face was naturally getting me a lot of second glances. If they happened to know who I was, then it was going to garner me even more attention.
Zeke took my elbow, drawing me to him. “But don’t make a habit of it, Layla. One hit, yes. Two, and I might think you’re telling me you want me to hit you back,” he whispered in my ear. “On your ass.” I almost stumbled, and he stopped me from falling. “Maybe you do.”
I didn’t know what to do with any of this. “I…”
Whatever I would have said, I didn’t manage because I was suddenly struck by the beauty of the hotel I’d just walked intowith Zeke. My brother had said it was the hotel of the birds, and that was what it was. Marble representations of doves and some other representations I didn’t recognize were everywhere. It should have been cheesy, but it absolutely was not. It was beautiful. Someone had taken a lot of time to carve and display those birds. They were everywhere, and I couldn’t get enough of looking at them. The details were extraordinary. All-consuming and astoundingly beautiful.
“You like them?” Zeke stopped so I could look around.
“They’re… Yes, I like them. They’re beautiful.”
He smiled at me. The first time I’d ever seen him do that. “I do too. Some people don’t. Some people make fun of the birds, but I feel like there’s nowhere on Earth I could go other than Paris that I could see this.”
The rest of the hotel was equally as striking, or at least the bit I could see on our way to the bar, which was right off the lobby. The lighting changed immediately upon entering the space. It was darker inside, with burgundy walls that had gray panels all around the space. A fireplace wasn’t lit but evident in the corner, with a gold screen that contrasted with the silver everywhere else. A giant mirror showed the other side of the bar, displayed over the fireplace.
For the early part of the day, it was fairly busy inside of the bar. Three bartenders rushed up and down it, clearly busy, but all waved at Zeke as he entered like he was an old friend.
It begged the question, “Do you come here a lot?”
“Yes.” His answer didn’t give me a lot of information, but I supposed he’d told me what I’d asked.
We sat down, which was hard in my dress, and almost instantly, one of the bartenders was right by our side. He spoke to Zeke, and they conversed back and forth without me having a clue what was being said. Eventually, they both turned and stared at me. I had no idea what they wanted.
Zeke leaned back in his seat. “What do you want to drink?”
