When I’m with You (Because You Are Mine #2)(3)
Author: Beth Kery

One, two, done. Almost too easy, Lucien thought grimly as air whooshed out of Mario’s lungs followed by a guttural groan of pain.

Lucien shot a “this is all your fault” glare at Elise and then put his hands on the shoulders of the now hunched over Mario. He grabbed his jacket off the bar stool and urged the gasping, moaning man toward the front door of the restaurant with a hold on his shirt collar.

When he returned a few minutes later alone, Elise still stood next to the bar, her chin up, her carriage held every bit as proud and erect as her aristocratic ancestors, her gaze on him wary. He walked toward her, unsure if he wanted to shove her into the back of a cab like he just had Mario, shake her for her foolishness, or turn her over his knee and punish her ass for the infraction of peering into his private world.

* * *

“What did you do with him?” she asked shakily when Lucien stalked toward her, his fierce, gray-eyed gaze causing her to quail inwardly, even though she didn’t show it. She understood what a potential threat Lucien Sauvage was. He could handle a drunk like Mario in his sleep. Elise knew of his athleticism, not to mention his years of experience in maintaining peace and the law in his popular, luxurious restaurants and hotels across the world. Many times organized-crime elements had tried to get a foothold in his establishments and failed, thanks to a combination of Lucien’s acute intelligence and raw power.

“I put him in a cab. Now—what to do with you?” he asked, his gaze dropping over her.

Her nipples tightened beneath a stare that was fire and ice at once. Her spine stiffened; her throat froze. The truth was still ricocheting around her skull: Lucien Sauvage owned Fusion. She’d unknowingly put her future in the hands of a man who had rejected her.

And nobody rejected her.

Well, hardly anybody, at least when she wanted otherwise. She’d definitely wanted “otherwise” with Lucien. Just my luck. Of all the restaurants and gin joints in towns all over the world, she’d had to walk into his, she thought with a panicked sense of amusement.

“You’re going to do the only thing you can do with me,” she replied, her voice cool enough for someone who was playing the poker game of a lifetime with a crap hand. It was a mark of their shared past—their onetime friendship—that they spoke English to each other. Both of their mothers were English, their fathers French. It was a commonality they shared, a small intimacy that used to seem significant to a fourteen-year-old girl who craved the feeling of closeness to a beautiful young man who forever seemed unattainable to her. “You’re going to have to let me fill in as Fusion’s chef now that you’ve made such a mess of things with Mario.”

He blinked and his expression went flat. “What are you rambling about? Are you drunk?”

Anger bubbled up in her chest. “I had one glass of wine all night,” she said honestly. She noticed his sarcastic glance at her brandy snifter on the bar. “Mario handed it to me; I took it. Lucien, what are you doing here?” she asked again, her curiosity about him trumping her worry about her future. “You disappeared from Paris over a year ago. None of your employees in Paris will say where you are. My mother spoke to yours recently. Even Sophia doesn’t know where you are. She’s miserable with worry.”

“Right,” he said sardonically. “My mother is sick to death at the idea of me not touching all that money she wants for herself ever since my father has been locked up in prison.”

Elise blinked. He had a point. She had heard he was being strangely stubborn and elusive about accepting his ancestral fortune.

“If you tell a soul you saw me here, I’ll make you pay, Elise.”

Quiet. Succinct. Completely believable.

Her heart leapt into overdrive. He’d paused a few feet away from her. She had to stretch her neck back slightly to see his face and hoped he didn’t notice her pulse throbbing at her throat. He struck her as even larger than she remembered—tall, lean, hard, and supremely formidable. He’d cut his dark hair since she’d last seen him, wearing it in a short, very sexy shake-out style that emphasized his masculine, chiseled features and an effortless sense of masculine grace. She’d always had a desire to run her fingers through that soft-looking, thick hair . . . wantonly fill her palms with it. He’d grown a very trim goatee since then, too. He wore jeans and a buttoned ivory cotton shirt, the color along with his silvery-gray eyes creating a striking contrast to smooth, caramel-hued skin. Mario wasn’t the first to refer to Lucien as a devil. Men said it with bitter envy. Women said it with covetous lust.

His size and an undeniable aura of physical strength had always thrilled her, but Lucien intimidated her as well. His quiet, calm voice; contained, confident manner; and brilliant, charming smiles belied a coiled power inside him. There was a darkness to him that didn’t exactly match the white, flashing smile and easygoing manner with which he charmed the upper strata of the social world and his affluent hotel and restaurant guests.

She had no doubt that Lucien could be dangerous when he chose. She also knew he’d never really harm her—not the young man who had once showed her kindness and taken her under his wing.

But that didn’t make his threat any less intimidating.

“Now,” he said calmly, stepping closer still and placing a hand on the rail of the bar. She suddenly felt cornered. “When are you leaving Chicago?”

“I’m not leaving. I plan to live here.”

“What?”

“That’s right. Chicago is my new home,” she said with supreme confidence, even though she didn’t feel it. Elise was nothing if not an actress, and spirited aplomb was her finest role.

Unfortunately, her father had been contemptuous of her plans to become a chef and relocate to Chicago, refusing to fund her new career. She couldn’t access her trust fund until she was twenty-five. Six months had never felt so far in the future to Elise. The nest egg she’d squirreled away after almost a year of waitressing in Paris had never seemed so pitifully small.

“Why would you come to Chicago? It hardly suits you,” he said, his downward glance at her evening gown infuriating her.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“My culinary school in Paris has matched me up with Mario Vincente for my training. I’m staging with him, Lucien,” she said, referring to the process whereby a new chef trained for a period of time under an established chef. She studied his stoic expression anxiously. “I have a contract,” she added defensively when he seemed unmoved by her confession. “You can’t send me away.”