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  “Oh,” Merrick said. “Party like a cock star, then. Breakfast in thirty.”

  Remi showered and brushed her teeth with a new toothbrush Salena had left for her. She then wrapped her wet hair into a loose bun and pulled on yesterday’s clothes. The entire time she rehearsed the speech she would have to give her father about where she’d disappeared to and why she hadn’t answered her phone. She was a terrible liar, especially to her parents. She was nineteen before she lost her virginity, because she couldn’t bear to lie to her parents about what she’d done on her dates. She’d had to wait until college. If they caught her with Julien Brite, plotting against both families, it would be a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

  “Croissant?” Merrick tossed a bag at her as she emerged into the living room.

  “Delivery. Nice,” she said, digging into the bag. Merrick sat in a large dark green armchair with Salena on his lap. He was feeding her bites of croissant.

  “Do you believe in hole ‘n’ stick medicine?” Merrick asked Salena.

  “Holistic medicine?”

  “No, this is a different thing.”

  Remi coughed loudly to get Merrick’s attention.

  “She must need more hole ‘n’ stick medicine,” Merrick stage-whispered to Salena.

  “Merrick,” Remi said and snapped her fingers. “You yelled at me to get out of the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in with the sexiest, most amazing guy I’ve ever met. Focus, please. What’s the situation?”

  “Seven missed calls now,” Merrick said. “Dad. Mom. Trainer. Mom. Dad. Trainer. Last one from your mother.”

  “Oh God, not my mother,” she groaned and collapsed onto the sofa. Julien emerged from his bedroom, fully dressed and looking adorably sheepish. Salena grinned at him, and he turned a becoming shade of scarlet.

  “What’s going on?” Julien asked, sitting next to Remi on the sofa.

  “Trying to figure out what to tell my parents about where I am. I can’t say I’m on vacation. That’s too suspicious. I’m not the whirlwind-vacation-taking type. At least I wasn’t,” Remi said.

  “You.” Merrick pointed at her. “You aren’t going to say anything to them. You’re a terrible liar. Just tell me when we’re going back to Kentucky, and I’ll handle it. When are we going back?”

  Remi shrugged. “I don’t know. We can’t stay here long.”

  “Yes, you can,” Julien said, giving her an almost pleading look. “At least stay as long as you can.”

  “Brilliant idea,” Merrick said, rolling his eyes. “I’ll just run out and get us two French citizenships and a bag of money so we don’t have to go back to our jobs, and we’ll move right in and eat croissants and fuck all the time. Wait. That’s actually an amazing idea.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Salena said, winking at him.

  “We can’t stay,” Remi said, smiling apologetically at Julien. It hurt to say the words, but it was better to say them now, get them out, and deal with the fact of them. “I have a job. So does Merrick. And while I might be furious at my parents for whatever they’re into, I can’t abandon the farm. I love the horses too much.”

  “You really love it there?” Julien asked.

  “I do,” she sighed. “I did. I liked being in charge. I liked being responsible for the well-being of the horses and the jockeys. I take really good care of them.” She was speaking in the past tense and it scared her. Something told her that her days as Arden Farm’s manager were numbered.

  “She does,” Merrick said. “Arden Farms has the lowest horse and jockey injury record of any Thoroughbred horse farm in the U.S.”

  She shook her head and exhaled through her teeth.

  “All this work I do,” she said, standing up. “Every safety measure we’ve implemented, all the progress we’ve made...if my family gets caught by the racing commission fixing races or taking kickbacks from the track? It’s all gone.”

  “I won’t let them fuck over your work, Boss,” Merrick said.

  Remi smiled at him, something she rarely did. “When I was a kid, I went to Keeneland Racecourse with my dad for the horse auctions. And he told me that in the 1950s, Keeneland paid for every preschooler in Lexington, Kentucky, to get the polio vaccine. He told me that and I said then and there, that’s what Arden Farms would be like. We would give back to Kentucky like that. And now...”

  It broke her heart to even think of it, to think of all her hard work being tarnished by a scandal she had nothing to do with. She couldn’t bear to face it. Eventually she would have to face it.

  “Tell my father we’re in New York,” she said. “Tell him we’ll be back by next weekend.”

  “Next weekend?” Julien sounded devastated.

  “I have to work,” she said. “I have responsibilities. I have to take care of the farm before my family makes everything fubar.”

  “Fubar?” Salena repeated.

  “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition,” Merrick translated.

  “Lovely,” Salena said. “So where—”

  The buzzing of Remi’s phone silenced the entire room.

  Remi took a deep breath. Merrick held out his hand. Remi winced and handed him the phone.

  “Merrick here,” he answered. Remi grabbed Julien’s hand for comfort. She couldn’t bear to look so she put a hand over her eyes.

  “Remi? She’s still out,” Merrick said to whoever had called—her father, most likely. “I know. She misplaced her phone. We just found it. Women. Am I right?”

  Remi heaved a sigh of relief. Having such a bizarre assistant paid off sometimes.

  “Where’s Remi? She’s out in the stables with this guy...I don’t know his name. She got a hot tip on a couple horses.”

  Good, Remi thought. Dad loved it when she aggressively went after a good horse.

  “What horses?” Merrick repeated. “I don’t know. Brown ones?”

  Remi tried to grab the phone from Merrick. He slapped her hand away.

  “Any luck with the horses?” Merrick repeated. “Yeah, she’s found herself a nice young colt. She rode him last night.”

  Remi slapped a hand over her mouth to stop her from yelling at Merrick.

  “How big is the colt?” Merrick said. “That’s kind of a personal question. Big enough to enjoy the ride, not so big she can’t walk today, I guess.”

  Remi glanced at Julien through a slit between her fingers. He’d fallen onto his side on the sofa and lay curled in the fetal position with a pillow smashed on his face. He was either laughing or crying. She couldn’t quite tell which.

  “Yeah, I’ll have her try to call you once she’s back in,” Merrick continued. “We’re getting shitty reception out here in the country, so don’t freak out if she doesn’t call you back right away. We’ll be back this weekend.”

  Merrick ended the call and tossed Remi the phone. “You’re good,” he said. “I covered your ass.”

  “You told my father I rode a fine young colt last night,” she nearly screamed.

  “What? You did,” he said.

  “He had a point,” Julien said, waggling his eyebrows. He lay back on the couch, his ankles crossed on the armrest. All she wanted to do was drag him back to bed with her. But instead she had to think, to plan.

  “Come on,” she said to Julien as she reached out her hand to him. He took it and she started to pull him to his feet. “I only have a few days left with you before I have to go back. Show me Paris.”

  “No,” Julien said.

  “No? You’re not going to show me Paris?” Did he really think they could spend the next few days fucking? Well, if he wanted to try, she was game.

  “I will show you Paris, yes. But you aren’t going back.”

  “Julien, I told you. I have a job. A very important one and—”

  “We are going back,” Julien said. “All four of us. Right, Salena?”

  Salena smiled at Julien. “I go where you go,” she said to him, a display of loyalty that made Remi love Salena just a little bi
t. What next? Was she going to love Merrick?

  “And I come where you come,” Merrick said to Salena and bopped her on the tip of her nose. Nope. No love for Merrick.

  “It’s settled then,” Julien said.

  “You’re coming back with me?” Remi asked, her heart fluttering with the new and dangerous love she felt for Julien.

  “Yes. I just got you back. I’m not going to let you go that easily this time,” Julien said, taking both her hands in his.

  “Julien, I don’t want to leave, either, but we can’t be seen together. And I don’t want to drag you into this mess. I can take care of it on my own. Merrick and I can, and then we’ll come back here.”

  “I don’t care if you can take care of it on your own,” he said. “You’re not on your own. It’s my family’s mess, too. I don’t know what the plan is but I don’t care. I’m going. We’re in this together.”

  She sighed and then smiled. “Okay, we’re in this together,” she agreed. “Whatever this is. We need a plan.”

  “I’ve got the plan,” Merrick said. “First I get hard evidence that both families are involved in whatever they’re involved in. Then we put the thumbscrews on your parents.”

  “How do you propose to get hard evidence?” Remi asked him.

  “The usual,” Merrick said. “I’ll sneak into the offices and snoop. Hopefully I won’t find naked pics of your mom. Again.”

  “Nice plan, but someone’s always at our house,” Remi reminded him. “And my family doesn’t like you or trust you.”

  “That’s entirely fair,” Merrick conceded. “What about you, Ginger?”

  “My dad has an office at the house, too,” Julien said. “I can try to dig around at night.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?” Merrick sounded skeptical.

  “Well...no,” Julien admitted.

  “You know anything about gambling?” Merrick asked. “Anything about business, finance, or record keeping?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a computer hacker and/or know your parents’ passwords to their bank accounts so you can see if you they perhaps have received payments from mysterious sources?”

  Julien sighed. “Okay, you got me there.”

  “Then I have to do it,” Merrick said. “I just have to get into your house. Is it alarmed?”

  “Not when we’re home.”

  “Cool. We’ll need to get everyone in your house out of your house—at night, preferably—and we have to make sure they’re in such a tizzy—”

  “A tizzy?” Remi repeated.

  “A stone-cold motherfucking tizzy,” Merrick said. “They need to be gone for several hours with no chance of them returning and walking in on me à la the Christmas party four years ago. I hack naked. It’s just a thing. Don’t ask.”

  “Then what’s the plan?” Remi asked. “You have one, yes?”

  “Yeah, and it’s a fucking good one,” Merrick said. “It’s also insane and horrible and you’re probably not going to go for it.”

  “Let us decide that,” Remi said, although she truly dreaded whatever was about to come out of Merrick’s mouth. If even he thought the plan was insane and horrible, she could only imagine her reaction to it.

  “I’m not telling,” Merrick said.

  “Why not?” Remi narrowed her eyes at him. Of all times to be abstruse.

  “Because you’ll kill me,” Merrick said, wincing. “I’ll be worm food.”

  “Stop being a drama queen and tell us the damn plan,” Julien said. Remi heard a note of command in his voice and liked it. He might be young but he wasn’t weak.

  Merrick raised his hands in surrender. “Fine. Stop pressuring me. I feel violated,” he said. “So...the plan.”

  “Yes...?” Remi waved her hand to encourage further words.

  “First, we’re going to need a priest.”

  Chapter Seven

  Santa Claus and the Banana

  A week in Paris with Julien was one perfect moment after another for Remi.

  Perfect Moment #1—Julien dipped her and kissed her under the Arc de Triomphe, which led to a crowd of tourists applauding them.

  Perfect Moment #2—Julien took her to the Musée de l’Orangerie, where they stood in silence holding hands as they stared into the deep blue of Monet’s Water Lilies. They didn’t say a word in the room. Words would have been an insult to the lilies. Remi realized that day she enjoyed being silent with Julien as much as she enjoyed their conversations. She’d never been able to say that about anyone else before.

  Perfect Moment #3—All four of them—Remi and Julien, Merrick and Salena—spent hours and euros galore in Shakespeare and Company. They bought more books than they could possibly fit in their suitcases. Salena bought French novels. Julien bought history books. She bought a little bit of everything. And Merrick bought erotica. All of it. The entire section. When she lamented her books wouldn’t fit into her suitcase, Julien told her to leave them at his place, since she would need reading material when she came back to Paris with him again.

  Perfect Moment #4—Remi and Julien’s last night together before she left Paris. While Julien was inside her he whispered things into her ear they never taught her in sophomore high school French class.

  J’ai envie de toi.

  I want you.

  Fais-moi l’amour.

  Make love to me.

  Je veux passer la reste de ma vie avec toi. S’il te plâit?

  I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Please?

  To that Remi had only one answer—“Oui.”

  On Friday morning, Remi kissed Julien goodbye un, deux, trois times, and she and Merrick boarded their return flight. She was leaving the City of Light and Julien for the Horse Capital of the World and her parents. She did not consider this a fair trade. Julien and Salena would wait a few days before following them back to Kentucky to avoid unnecessary suspicion.

  Remi and Merrick barely spoke on the flight back, but he held her hand for part of the trip—a much-needed show of support and comfort.

  “This is crazy,” she whispered to him as their plane finally glided over American soil.

  “I know,” he said, and gave her that broad, wicked grin that sent women either running to him or away from him at top speed. “And that’s why it’s going to work.”

  “I can’t believe I got—”

  “Don’t stress,” Merrick said, squeezing her fingers. “Just tell yourself it’s not real. That helps. Now, deep breaths. Focus. Eyes on the prize. We got this.”

  “The pep talk is not helping,” she said.

  “How about a finger bang?”

  Remi glared at him.

  “Don’t say I never tried to help you,” he said, shoving his sunglasses down on his face.

  Remi pulled his sunglasses off his face and Merrick met her eyes.

  “Julien was diagnosed with leukemia two weeks after we met,” she said. “That’s why he disappeared. Did Salena tell you?”

  “Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Merrick said, giving her a look of compassionate sympathy. “I had a hunch, though, when she told me she was an oncologist. I’m sorry he went through that. He’s a good guy, good enough for you, and that’s saying something.”

  “You know I hate you sometimes, right?” she asked, taking his hand.

  “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

  “I do love you a little teeny tiny bit, too.”

  “Gross, Boss.” He pulled his hand away from hers. “Don’t make me call HR on you, you perv.”

  He gave her a wink and put his sunglasses back on. Then he patted his shoulder. Remi rested her head against him and slept there until they landed.

  She did her best to play it cool when they returned to their normal schedule. Luckily her father was too busy to interrogate her about the unplanned horse-hunting trip she’d taken, seemingly on a whim. The irony of it was that he trusted her implicitly, and she no longer trusted her father at all.
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  She tried to concentrate on her work that week—scheduling races, meeting trainers—but Julien had taken over her mind. She thought of his face, so angular and striking. She thought of his skin—so young and smooth and warm. She thought of his body and how it belonged on top of her, inside her, underneath her, and every other sexy position she could think of. She missed the light citrus smell of his sheets on her skin and his arms that had held her as she’d fallen asleep during the all-too-brief nights she’d spent in his bed.

  On her way to her small house that sat on the edge of her parents’ thousand-acre property, Remi’s phone buzzed with a text message.

  Here, the message read. Remi grinned at her phone. Finally she and Julien were on the same continent again.

  Where? she wrote Julien back, desperate to see him.

  My family picked us up at the airport, he wrote. Trapped with them. That’s why I’m texting instead of calling.

  Remi stared at her phone as she unlocked her door and walked into her house. She’d lived in it for three years, and it had never felt empty or lonely to her. But now it needed something, someone else here. That someone else was unfortunately trapped at his parents’ house.

  I need to see you, came the next message from Julien. Five little words that made Remi’s heart dance, her stomach trip, and her feet flutter.

  Tell me when and where and I’ll be there, she wrote back.

  Mom won’t let me out of her sight for a couple days. We’re visiting my grandparents in Ohio. I’m being smothered. I had cancer. Haven’t I been through enough?

  Your fault you’re so damn cute.

  I love you, came Julien’s reply.

  That too, she replied and then added an I love you of her own. She wasn’t used to writing those words, saying those words, feeling those words. But the more she wrote them, spoke them, felt them, the better they fit onto her fingers, her tongue, her heart.

  She went to bed alone and cursed the cold sheets. She had loved sleeping with Julien. Every night after sex, he’d rubbed her back while they’d talked. Their very last night together had been their best night. They’d dared to discuss the future, a future they could share. Remi had asked Julien what he wanted to do with his life.