A Tiara Under the Tree

Elana jerked away from him and sent him a blistering glare. “What the hell? That hurt, Jarrod!”

“I think you need to see this.” Jarrod lifted the remote and pointed it to the flat-screen television across the room.

The man was insatiable. “God, Jarrod, enough with the porn, okay? I’m wiped!”

“Not porn, Elana.”

A strange note in Jarrod’s voice made her look across the room. Jarrod had the flat screen tuned to his favorite channel, TMZ, and Elana rolled her eyes at the sight of two dudes brawling outside what looked like St. Aloysius Hospital. If her brain wasn’t fried from too much sex, she’d assume that the two guys duking it out were her brothers. Nah, it couldn’t be—her brothers were Marshalls, America’s favorite sons, and Marshalls didn’t fight in public.

“And we interrupt our ongoing coverage on Harrison Marshall’s car accident to bring you this breaking news. It seems like tensions are running high in the Marshall family at the moment. Shortly after an impromptu press conference with Mariella Santiago-Marshall, a hospital employee filmed Luc and Rafe Marshall coming to blows. The hospital worker was on the walkway linking the two building when she heard shouting and, looking down, she immediately recognized the Marshall brothers. Thinking that she’d snap a picture of the brothers consoling each other, she was shocked when their argument turned physical.”

Elana stared at the images flickering on the set, trying to process what she was seeing and hearing. Hospital? An accident? What the hell was going on?

Launching herself away from Jarrod, she scrambled across him, ignoring his grunt as her knee came quite close to his balls. She reached for the handle of the drawer and pulled it open, looking for her cell phone. Pulling it out, her heart pumping at a mile a minute, she groaned when she saw seventeen missed calls and dozens of text messages.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Elana let out a whimper of despair and scrambled to her feet, looking around the bedroom for her clothes. Snatching her new Agent Provocateur bra off the floor, she pulled it on and quickly hooked it.

“Jeez, slow down, Elana,” Jarrod drawled, stretching like a lion basking in the sun.

Elana tossed him a scorching look. “My father has been in an accident, and my brothers are fighting! I’m not moving fast enough! Where the hell is my thong?”

“Go without,” Jarrod suggested. “That being said, that miniskirt I ripped off you was almost indecent, so you might give the press more of a show than you might want to.”

“You are such a jerk,” Elana snapped, thankful to see her tiny thong partly under the bed. She picked it up and pulled it up and over her legs.

“I’m the jerk that made you come four times last night alone.”

Five, but she wasn’t about to correct him. God, why was she thinking about sex when her father—Elana glanced at the rolling headlines at the bottom of the screen—was in the ICU with what were reported to be severe injuries? Elana felt tears slide down her cheeks as she tucked her fitted white shirt into the waistband of her asymmetrical denim Saint Laurent miniskirt. She slipped her feet into her cork Chloe platform sandals and picked up her Gucci bag. Were her keys in her bag? God, she hoped so. If not, she’d just get Jarrod’s doorman to call her a taxi.

“When will I see you again?” Jarrod asked as she headed to the door. Elana turned and looked at him, long and lean, his hand holding his sack, supremely confident and utterly selfish. God, she wished he didn’t turn her on.

“I don’t know, Jarrod,” she replied, her tone pointed. She gestured to the television and saw that they were running the footage of Luc and Rafe fighting again. Had Rafe really connected with Luc’s face? Jeez, she didn’t know he had in him. Returning her attention to her lover, she shrugged. “My family has gone into a spiral, my father could be dead for all I know, and you’re asking me when you are going to get screwed again?”

Jarrod shrugged and tried to look innocent. “Well, yeah.”

“You are such a prick,” Elana muttered before walking out of his bedroom.

Unfortunately she was the female equivalent, because, dammit, there was a part of her that was always thinking about when she could return, how soon she could sneak away to see him again.

* * *

Trans-Atlantic calls were always difficult, and when one tried to speak English in a French accent to a busy and stressed nurse, the process was slow and frustrating. She tapped her fingers against her eighteenth-century drop-legged table and imagined throwing the blue-and-white dragon jar against the closest wall. Ming Dynasty, she reminded herself, Jiajing period, late sixteenth century. Priceless. Extraordinarily expensive.

“You said you are calling from Paris?” the nurse clarified, her nasal twang hurting her ears.

“Oui. Yes,” she corrected. “I’m a friend of Monsieur Marshall. How is he, s’il vous plaît?”

“I am sorry, ma’am, I am not allowed to divulge any information about Mr. Marshall’s condition to anyone outside his direct family. That’s his wife or children.”

I’m Parisian, not a moron, she thought, annoyed at the explanation. She forced herself to breathe deeply and maintain control of her temper, remembering her last explosion, when she threw an engraved Dutch champagne glass, circa early eighteenth century, out of the window onto the terrace. The owner of this magnificent apartment on Boulevard Saint-Germain had not appreciated the way she expressed her disappointment with him and called her volatile Gallic temperament childish. She’d punished him for that, and he’d enjoyed every minute of it.

In fact, he’d begged for more.

Banging the receiver back into its cradle, Nora turned away, deeply frustrated. She wasn’t used to being thwarted, and when it did happen, it had the power to ruin the rest of her day.

She had her wants and needs, and she was very used to having both fulfilled in the shortest time possible. And, right now, it was crucial that she discover the extent of Harrison’s injuries and what that meant for her. Oh, she was sad for him, worried even, but her future would be determined by whether Harrison lived or died.