Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(57)

“Glad it was handled discreetly and well.”

“It was perfect. Exactly what we hired you for,” he said and flashed a brief smile before lacing his fingers together. “What do you think we can do as private business owners to combat the gang problem?”

Michael eyed Ryan, and a look passed between them. These guys were speaking their language. They loved having a client who cared so much, who wanted the same things.

They spent the next thirty minutes strategizing, brainstorming, and discussing best practices for private citizens and companies to handle the problem.

When they were through, Curtis glanced at his boss, and Charlie nodded, giving him permission to say what was on his mind.

“This is why we want to do more work with you,” Curtis said. “We want you to handle security for our clubs in Phoenix, Dallas, and Miami.”

More business sounded good, so Michael took his brother out for a celebratory round of poker and beer. That was a welcome end to a shitty work week.

With so much trouble still on the streets, Michael and his brother decided it made sense for them to start carrying again. They both had concealed weapons permits and knew how to be safe. With crime on the uptick, it was a necessary precaution.

Michael said good-bye to his brother. As Ryan headed home to his bride-to-be, a pang of sadness hit Michael. He was happy for Ryan, and he also couldn’t help but want some of that for himself.

With one woman in particular.

As he shut the door to his home with a thunk, his phone buzzed. It was Friday morning in France, and there was a note from Annalise lighting up his screen.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


Annalise ran her finger over the computer screen, tracing the contour of her own body. She’d turned the image of herself on a hotel bed into an arty black-and-white photograph. In this one, Michael had captured a full nude shot, but from the side. Nothing too porny. Sure, he’d taken some of those pictures, and she had no interest in gazing at her parts. But this picture? She rather liked it. In it, she looked at the photographer out of the corner of one eye, one knee raised, and her hair spilling down her back.

From her desk by the floor-to-ceiling window in her home, she adjusted the contrast a bit more, then she leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms, and studied the screen.

She gazed at it as if she could find the answers to her heartbreak in a photo. To some it might seem narcissistic, but Annalise comprehended the world from behind a lens.

Her world.

Her heart.

In all its brokenness.

But here in this photo, she felt…whole again. For the first time. So odd that a nude photo, a shot of her turned on beyond any and all reason, would make her feel that way. But it did. Because her body had been a part of the heartbreak, too.

Her body was healing.

Perhaps it was no surprise too that this photo on her screen was next to the shot of him at Caesars. The candid of him by the pool. She hadn’t yet decided how she wanted to frame it or crop it. If she would edit it, or leave it untouched.

Keep it raw. Maybe because she felt that way with Michael.

She pushed away from her chair and roamed around her flat. Sex with Julien had been good. They’d had an active sex life, tried many positions, and never went more than a few nights without making love. She’d always been a physical woman, had always longed for that kind of triple connection between heart, mind, and body. She stopped at a bookcase and picked up a photo of Julien taken in one of the covered walkways in Paris. He’d emerged from a store full of maps, a gleeful look in his eyes, like he’d found treasure. She picked up an image of him sipping espresso, coolly staring in the distance, contemplative. Then another of him thumbing through postcards at a sidewalk dealer along the Seine, sweetly complimenting her work in comparison.

He was her handsome, thoughtful, kind, inquisitive love.

Her throat hitched as she considered the picture.

But the lump disappeared as quickly as it came.

No tears threatened her. No pain rattled around in her chest. No ache descended on her body.

Did that mean something? Anything?

An idea seized her, and in minutes her purse was slung on her shoulder, flats were on her feet, and the metro was rattling its way to this very spot from the first photo—one of the passages of Paris.

Soon she walked past the map shop, stopping outside the window to stare at the vast collection of maps of the world. Julien had loved history and geography. That was one of the reasons he’d become a photojournalist. He’d always been drawn to the big world beyond this city. And she’d been lucky to spend time traveling with her explorer man. She ran her finger over a map in the window, tracing a line over Italy, to Turkey, over to Singapore…all the places they’d been…recalling the times they’d had.

She looked at her watch. She was due at her mother’s in two hours to help her with dinner and to fix her broken sink. That gave Annalise time to walk past some of the haunts she’d shared with Julien. At the café they loved, she tapped their regular table for good luck. She wandered across their favorite bridge on the Seine, marveling at the gray ribbon of water that snaked through Paris, then along the antique shops and art dealers near the Musee d’Orsay, one of her most beloved spots in the city, and past the sidewalk dealers by the river, peddling postcards.

He’d once joked that she’d set up shop someday, selling her photos there. She smiled faintly at the memory.