“Yes, and once you’re packed, we’re going to the airport where a private jet is waiting to take the two of us to one of my other properties, the Hotel de Rêve.”
Cecelia sat in shock beside him. It took a few moments before she could respond. “Deacon, your other hotel is in France.”
He pulled into her driveway and put the Corvette into Park. “Yes. Hence the need for your passport. Pack for the French Riviera in the spring.”
She shook her head, making her blond waves dance around her shoulders. Cecelia had really looked lovely tonight, in a beautiful and clingy gray lace dress that brought out the gray in her eyes, but he’d barely had time to appreciate it between the mingling and the drama.
“No, Deacon, this is crazy talk. I can’t go to France tonight even if I wanted to. The Bellamy opens in two weeks. I have so much to do—”
“Your staff has things to do,” he interrupted, “and they know what those things are. You’re not carrying furniture and wiring lamps into the wall. You’re the designer, and most of your work is handled. Shane will oversee everything else, I promise. You and I are getting out of this town for a few days to let this whole mess blow over. End of discussion.”
The way Cecelia looked at him, he could tell it wasn’t the end of the discussion yet. “Couldn’t we just go to Houston or something to get away? Maybe New Orleans? No one would know where we were. We don’t have to go all the way to France, do we?”
Deacon disagreed. He turned off the car and got out, opening her door. “Yes, we do.”
“Why?” she persisted as she stood to look at him.
“Because I don’t own a hotel in New Orleans. Now get inside and pack that bag. The plane leaves for Cannes in an hour.”
Eight
Cecelia woke up in a nest of soft, luxury linens with bright light streaming through the panoramic hotel room windows. Wincing from the light, she pushed herself up in bed and looked around the suite for Deacon. She could see him on the balcony reading a newspaper and drinking his café au lait at a tiny bistro table there.
She wrapped the blanket around her naked body and padded barefoot to the sliding glass door. The view from the owner’s suite of the Hotel de Rêve was spectacular. The hotel was almost directly on the beach, with only the famous Boulevard de la Croisette separating his property from the golden sands that lined the Mediterranean Sea. To the left of the hotel was a marina filled with some the largest and most luxurious yachts she’d ever seen. To the right, beautiful, tan tourists had already taken up residence on the beach.
The sea was a deep turquoise against the bright robin’s-egg blue of the sky. There wasn’t a cloud, a blemish, a single thing to ruin the perfection. It was almost as if the place wasn’t real. When they’d first arrived the day before, Cecelia wasn’t entirely certain that this wasn’t a delusion brought on by jet lag. But after a quick nap, Cannes was just as pretty as it had been earlier. Of course, enjoying it with the handsome—and partially clothed—hotel owner hadn’t hurt, either.
“Bonjour, belle,” he greeted her. He was sitting in a pair of black silk pajama pants, and thankfully, he seemed to have misplaced the top. His golden tan and chiseled chest and arms were on display, and now she knew how he had gotten that dark. If she spent every morning enjoying the sun here, she might actually get a little color for her porcelain complexion, as well.
Cecelia didn’t know why she was surprised to find that he was fluent in French, considering Deacon had lived here for several years and had to interact with guests, locals and staff, alike. She supposed it just didn’t align with the Deacon she had once known—covered in motor oil or rinsing cafeteria trays—although it suited Deacon perfectly as he was now.
It made her wish she had kept up with her French studies after high school. She’d quickly lost most of her vocabulary and conjugation, really being able to function now only as a tourist asking for directions to the nearest restroom. “Bonjour,” she replied in her most practiced accent. “That’s about all the French I have for today.”
Deacon laughed and folded his paper, which was also in French. “That’s okay,” he said, leaning forward to give her a good-morning kiss. “Perhaps later we can crawl back into bed and practice a little more French.”
Cecelia couldn’t suppress the girlish giggle at his innuendo. Deacon was smart to bring her to Cannes. There was just something about being here, thousands of miles away from Royal and all her worries, that made her feel like a completely different person. She liked this person a hell of a lot more than the woman who had very nearly married Chip Ashford. Apparently most of Royal hadn’t liked her, either, judging by their reaction to her being knocked down a peg or two by Maverick’s gossip.
Cecelia sat down at the table next to him, and he poured her a cup of coffee, passing her the pitcher of milk to add as much as she would like. He followed it with a plate of flaky, fresh croissants and preserves.
“Do you have anything in mind that you would like to do today?” he asked. “Yesterday we were too exhausted to do much more than change time zones, but I thought you might like to see a little bit of the town this afternoon. You haven’t been to Cannes if you haven’t strolled along la Croisette, sipped a beautiful rosé and watched the sunset. We could even take my yacht out for a spin.”
She took a large sip of her coffee and nodded into her delicate china teacup. “That sounds lovely. I’ve never been to the French Riviera, so I would be happy to see anything that you would like to show me. I mean,” she continued, “it’s not like this is a trip that I’ve planned for a long time. I basically just let you sweep me off my feet and I woke up in France. I would be perfectly content to just sit on this balcony and look out at the sea if that was all we had time to do.”
Deacon smiled. “Well, I figure there is no place on earth better suited to relax and forget about all your problems than the French Riviera. I’ve seen more than one tightly wound businessman completely transform in only a few days. After everything that has happened recently, I think it’s just what the doctor ordered, Miss Morgan.”
She couldn’t argue with that. He was absolutely right. Here, the drama of Maverick and the fallout of her exposed secret felt like a distant memory, or a dream that she’d nearly forgotten about as she’d awakened. She had gotten a couple texts from Simone and her mother yesterday morning after they’d landed, but Deacon had insisted she turn off her phone. Overage charges for international roaming were a good excuse, he’d said, and once again he had been right. She didn’t want talk to her mother or anyone else right now.
She just wanted to soak in the glorious rays of the sun, enjoy the beauty around her and relish her time alone with Deacon. They would return home soon enough to open the hotel, and she’d finally face everything she had been running from her whole life.
“I took the liberty of scheduling an appointment for you at our spa today. My talented ladies have been told to give you the works, so a massage, a mud bath, a facial... Whatever your little heart desires. That should take up a good chunk of your day, and then we can hit the shore later this afternoon, once you’ve been properly pampered.”
Cecelia could only shake her head and thank her lucky stars that she had Deacon here with her through all of this. How would she have coped alone? Just having him by her side would’ve been enough, but he always had to go the extra mile, and she appreciated it. She just wasn’t sure how she could ever repay him.
She idly slathered a bit of orange marmalade on a piece of croissant and popped it
into her mouth. “You’re too good to me, Deacon,” she said as she chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t deserve any of this VIP treatment. I’m beginning to think that maybe Adam Haskell was right, and all the negativity I’ve been breeding all these years was just coming back to haunt me. It had to eventually, right?”
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Deacon said. “The girl I fell in love with was sweet and caring and saw things in me that no one else saw. You might pretend now that you are a cold-as-ice businesswoman set to crush your competitors and anybody who gets in your way, but I don’t believe it for a second. That girl I know is still in there somewhere.”