So Now You're Back

Pain exploded.

‘Shit!’ He touched the developing knot on his forehead and his own temper ignited. ‘Right, that’s enough.’ He marched forward, grabbed hold of one hundred pounds of fuming French womanhood and wedged her against the wall, trapping her throwing arm. ‘Quit acting like the Madwoman of Chaillot and get a clue. We’ve been over since March and you know it.’

He’d tried to do this gently, tried to explain to her that their ‘relationship’ had never been more than a couple of dirty weekends. But she’d refused to let it go. Refused to get the message. And finally refused to leave him alone while his daughter had been over for her eighteenth birthday.

And that had been the last straw. The nuisance texts and the hung-up phone calls whenever Lizzie answered his phone had been stalkerish enough, but Chantelle’s sudden appearance at his place yesterday morning, wearing nothing but a coat, a thong and skyscraper heels, had made him see he had to sort this situation out.

He’d bundled the half-naked woman out of the building before Lizzie woke up, promising to trek over to Chantelle’s apartment in the thirteenth arrondissement and ‘discuss their relationship’ this morning, once Lizzie was safely back in the UK. So here he was, giving it to Chantelle straight, with no sugar-coating and no more avoidance tactics. And what did he get for his straight talking? A bloody head injury, that was what.

‘This is over, OK? C’est fini.’ He gave her a slight shake to get the message across. ‘I don’t want to see you around my place any more. No calls, no emails, no texts. If I don’t answer them, it’s because I don’t have anything to say to you.’ He’d hoped that might be a clue, but apparently Chantelle wasn’t good at processing subtle.

‘You tell me this now, when we had sex like dogs all weekend?’ She meant rabbits, he thought, but he didn’t correct her, suddenly weary at the memory of how he’d originally thought the way she mangled all his British expressions was so cute and sexy.

‘That was months ago,’ he said, his temper dissipating as quickly as it had come.

‘Be reasonable, cherie,’ he said as gently as he could manage while his brow was throbbing from her unprovoked assault. Chantelle was only twenty-five and hopelessly immature from the few actual conversations he could remember them having. ‘I told you right from the start I wasn’t interested in anything big. This is going nowhere. You need to grow up and figure that out.’

And it was way past time his dick grew up, too, and stopped making stupid decisions that got him into these sorts of fixes.

Ever since Halle, he’d stuck to casual flings, because his life was complicated enough without inviting any more drama into it. But even with casual hook-ups you had to watch your step.

And with Chantelle he’d obviously missed a step.

He’d picked her up in a bar near his apartment in the Marais the night he’d put Lizzie on the plane home to London after their week-long pre-Christmas holiday in St Moritz. And an hour after Chantelle had served him his first drink, they’d been going for it in the bar’s stockroom.

Why not admit it? He’d been feeling down, maybe even a little lonely. So he’d jumped on Chantelle and her come-hither looks. And used her for sex.

But he’d already known in that stockroom that Chantelle was needier than the women he usually dated. And while he couldn’t have known then she was this unhinged, he still shouldn’t have allowed himself to drift into a two-month affair with her.

He soon realised he hadn’t picked the best moment to consider where he’d gone wrong with Chantelle, though, when she sucked in a breath and spat in his face. ‘Salaud. Imbécile.’

He flinched, the spittle dripping off his nose and making the cut above his eye sting. ‘Yeah, I know, that’s where I came in.’

He wiped his face with his shirtsleeve, ignoring the insults being hurled at him as he headed for the door. Better than getting sticks and stones and Asterix ashtrays lobbed at him.

‘You’re not the only man in Paris,’ Chantelle cried, her voice breaking, her sobbing breaths making a headache bloom under his injured brow. ‘I will find another.’

Standing in the doorway, he looked back at her. She was stunning in her fury, her thick dark hair rioting around her head, her eyes a rich caramel, glaring daggers at him like the Angel of Death, and her negligee falling off one shoulder and threatening to expose one full breast.

Thank Christ, she’d finally got the message.

‘Bonne chance avec ça.’ He sent her a mocking salute, before he slammed the door.

The sound of something crashing against the wood echoed in the stairwell, making him flinch as he jogged down the steps.

The chilly afternoon air in the apartment building’s courtyard made the dent in his forehead sting some more. He hunched his shoulders against the pain, writing off the injury as collateral damage.

No more hook-ups with crazy ladies, especially if they have a better throwing arm than Shane Warne.

He headed for the metro station at Les Gobelins, resolving to stay celibate for a while. He had a perfectly good hand that had seen him through his horniest teenage years. And, if nothing else, he needed to conserve his energy to navigate the perfect storm he had headed his way with Halle. Which he’d set into motion on Saturday night at La Coupole, when he’d told Lizzie about his book deal while they’d been celebrating her eighteenth at the legendary brasserie on Montparnasse.

She’d been excited and enthusiastic about the project, as he’d known she would be—enough to go home and blab all about it to her mother.

He sidestepped a kamikaze scooter as he crossed the busy boulevard and headed into the metro. The train barrelled into the station, its rubber tyres squealing on the rails. He scored a seat for the six-stop journey back to Châtelet before the metro car jostled into motion, the blank stares of the commuters endearing in their indifference.

He’d felt bad for manipulating Lizzie, but how else was he supposed to get Halle’s attention? Despite countless overtures in recent years, she was still insisting on communicating every damn thing through their respective legal representatives, which, apart from costing him an arm and a leg, had really begun to piss him off.

No way could she still be mad at him. She’d had a hugely successful career not to mention other relationships. She’d even had another child. So the only motivation for the silent treatment now, that he could see, was stubborn pride and a desire to see him suffer.

Well, sod that, he’d suffered enough.

Halle had limited his access to his child to six weeks a year right up until she’d turned sixteen. And that lack of quality time was still screwing up his relationship with Lizzie now.

Once upon a time it had been a nice little ego boost to have Lizzie dub him Super Dad, because he was the one she did all the fun stuff with. But ever since Lizzie had hit her teens, he’d begun to realise Super Dad was really just a euphemism for Superficial Dad. Then his daughter had let slip she’d been in therapy a year ago—and scared the shit out of him.

Emerging from the underground chaos of concrete and commuters at Châtelet–Les Halles, he crossed through the park situated above the huge interchange towards Rue Ram-buteau. Resentment simmered in his gut as he considered all the times he’d got his solicitor to contact Halle’s solicitor to set up a meeting with her to talk about their daughter. And all the times he’d been refused, or stonewalled, or rebuffed, or simply ignored.

The mild miasma of sewage, traffic fumes and rotting vegetables from the nearby market blended with tree sap and brick dust from the gravel that surrounded the trees in lieu of grass. Like most Parisian parks, the one at Châtelet was utilitarian, functional and elegant in an entirely prosaic way.

He took a deep breath of the comfortingly familiar scent.

This city had saved him when he’d been stranded here sixteen years ago, broken and bleeding from wounds he’d thought would never heal. The hectic pace of life, the brusqueness and pragmatism of its inhabitants and, best of all, the anonymity had given him space and time to put the shattered pieces back together. He’d built a life here, and a career that, while not as phenomenally successful as Halle’s, had given him everything he needed.

Or almost everything.

He touched his thumb to the bruise on his brow, the nagging headache starting to fade. Confrontations were not part of his DNA, he had never been a fan of unnecessary drama—occasional battery by Asterix ashtrays notwithstanding—but he was stronger, wiser and a lot more sorted than he’d been at twenty-one. He had a career he enjoyed, and he had worked hard to be a good dad, but he wanted to be a better one. A more involved one. And he wasn’t going to let Halle stand in the way of that any longer.

So he was getting off her naughty step, once and for all.

And the book deal was just his opening salvo.

He was through being treated as if his place in Lizzie’s life was as important as a cat flap in an elephant house. Which meant forcing Halle to talk to him about his daughter, at length and at his convenience, where there was no chance of any five-hundred-pound-an-hour dickwads running interference.

‘What do you mean he’s refusing to respond through his solicitor? How can he do that?’ The knot under Halle’s breastbone cinched tighter as she gaped at Jamie Harding, top City solicitor and the head of her legal team. ‘Surely if we threaten a court order to stop publication of his book, he has to respond?’

Jamie propped his forearms on his cherrywood desk, brushing the smooth wave of chestnut-brown hair back when it flopped over his brow. ‘I didn’t say he hasn’t responded. I said he’s refusing to respond through his solicitor.’

‘What’s the difference?’

Jamie let out a long-suffering sigh. ‘Look, Halle, I know you’ve always preferred to communicate with Best through us. And that makes sense when it’s a legal matter to do with Lizzie’s custody. But she’s been of age now for two years, and I’m not even sure this book’s been written yet. Or if he’s actually signed a contract. So if we start throwing our legal weight around, it could be counterproductive.’

‘How could it be counterproductive? I want this thing stopped. As quickly and cleanly as possible, before anyone finds out about it.’ The hideous thought that people would be able to read about her starry-eyed teenage self, that needy vulnerable girl who’d fallen for Luke Best’s dubious charms, made her feel nauseous. She hadn’t been able to think about anything else ever since Lizzie had broken the news about Luke’s book deal yesterday evening. She’d spent a long night going over all the things Luke could reveal in his memoirs that would humiliate her beyond bearing, and, worse, allow the tabloid press to feast on all the stupid mistakes she’d made where that man was concerned.

The Domestic Diva wasn’t just a bakery brand, it was a statement of purpose, a symbol of empowerment, that said to women everywhere, you can come from nothing and still make something of yourself. She didn’t want people to know that her whole empire had been built on the pain, the loss, of being ceremonially dumped by an arsehole like Luke Best.

Wasn’t it bad enough that the man had screwed her over once, without him wanting to do it again?

‘Halle, you need to think with your head here, not your heart,’ Jamie said in that patronising tone that reminded her once again why she should never have slept with the guy.