Sophie assessed the clothes that covered her bed, along with shoes and accessories. Kara was organised to the point of borderline compulsive disorder. The outfits were perfect, right down to the earrings arranged on her pillow and the shoes positioned along the footboard - it looked like the bodies had been spirited away, leaving their clothes and accessories behind.
"You scare me." Sophie handed Kara a wine glass.
"Years of living out of a suitcase does that to a girl."
Kara held down a job as a sales manager for an international drugs company and spent much of her time on the road for conventions and meetings. Coupled with her addiction to designer clothing, she was a girl who could out-pack a royal lady-in-waiting.
"You've got professional day outfits, more relaxed evening clothes, and your killer dress." Kara waved her hand to indicate each option as she spoke. "The only thing missing here is underwear."
Sophie knocked back a gulp of wine. "I don't need your help with that. I can sort out my own knickers."
Kara grinned. "I hope you're going silk and lace. No granny pants, okay?"
Sophie dropped onto the small sofa at the foot of the bed.
"Okay. Not that it really matters, because no one is going to see them."
Kara sat next to her and curled her legs underneath her. "You're sure about that?"
Sophie nodded and swirled the wine in her glass. "It's strictly business."
"You said that when you went to Norway."
Sophie bit her lip. Norway. Just the mention of the place sent a shiver down her spine. Though it was more akin to a finger stroking lightly down her backbone than a shudder of revulsion.
"Actually, I didn't. I knew perfectly well what was going to happen there. This genuinely is business. Lucien's opening a club in Paris, and he needs to visit the site."
"A sex club?"
"An adult club."
Kara laughed and shook her head. "And the difference is?"
Sophie shrugged and studied her wine glass. There wasn't a difference, aside from the nicety of the description.
When she looked back up, her friend's expression was troubled.
"Are you sure you're okay with this, Soph? Going to Paris, I mean?"
"Not really." Sophie took a deep drink from her wine glass. "But if I can't do my job, I'm no use there. I'll have to leave."
Kara nodded slowly, well aware of the demands of working for a high-flying boss. But this thing with Lucien and Sophie was a world away from her own experience. She sensed it wasn't the unsociable hours and sexual nature of the business that bothered her friend. It was Lucien, and having met him in all his dirty blond glory, Kara could well see why. It would take a saint to go to Paris with that man and not jump his bones, and lovely as Sophie was, she was no contender for sainthood. She was soft, and gentle, and still all kinds of messed up over Dan.
Kara understood why Sophie felt the need to keep Lucien at arm’s length, but she wasn’t convinced that her friend was equipped to act on her conviction. Nor even whether she should.
"What will you do if he makes a play for you?"
Sophie picked up a cushion and plucked at the stitching for a few seconds. "He won't."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because he hasn't so far. I made the rules, and he's stuck to them."
Sophie knew in her heart that Lucien was a man who could be trusted. He wasn't Derek, shoving his pudgy, clammy hands where they shouldn't be. He wasn't seedy, and out to exploit her vulnerabilities. But, she admitted to herself, she was no safer with Lucien, because the man oozed sex from his very bones. Even with their chaste behaviour firmly established over the past weeks, he still stirred feelings inside her that left her breathless, confused and wildly turned on. She knew it wasn’t a safe combination.
"That's all well and good in the office. You're going to Paris, the city of romance."
Sophie blew out a defiant sigh.
"I'm done with romance."
Kara flinched and rubbed Sophie's knee. "For now maybe. But not forever, Soph. You'll feel better, I promise."
"Promise?" Sophie tried to draw comfort from Kara's assurance. Clichéd as it was, she loved romance. She'd always cried at rom-com movies even as Dan scoffed his way through them, and she adored Valentine's Day, even though her ever-cynical husband wrote it off as a marketer’s manufactured wet dream.
"Can I say something without you hitting me?" Kara said.
Sophie nodded.
"Well, it's just... you’re going to Paris with the most gorgeous man either of us have ever laid eyes on." She paused. "You have a killer dress." Kara paused again and cleared her throat. "So...throw your bloody rules out the window and shag his brains out!"
"Kara!" Surprise rounded Sophie's eyes into big blue pennies.
"What?" Kara asked, thoroughly unrepentant. "They say the best way to get over a man is to get under another one." She raised her eyebrows over the rim of her wine glass at Sophie. "What happens in Paris stays in Paris, and all that. Just sayin'.”
Sophie shook her head and laughed softly. Kara had no clue, and she herself didn't have the words to explain how impossible it would be to have anything approaching a casual Parisian fling with Lucien Knight. The last time she'd dropped her guard and let him close, it had been all consuming. He'd taken her body and her mind to places she'd never known existed, and then returned her to her small world like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight.
Except she hadn't lost her shoe. She'd lost her marriage, her peace of mind, and her acceptance of being ordinary. Lucien was a whole lot of trouble because he made her want things she couldn't possibly have. He made ordinary life feel pale and insipid, a watered-down version of the existence she’d tasted that had him in it.
Was that why she'd gone back to work for him? To be close to him, to bask on the edge, bathed by the glow of the fantasy of Lucien’s life without actually stepping back into the full glare?
Maybe. Truth told, Sophie didn't really know herself all that well at the moment.
Lucien had awoken sexual needs and desires within her that she'd never before acknowledged, and they were still there now, whether he was in her life or not.
He'd opened Pandora's box, and there was no way to put its troubles back inside again. Even if she sat on the lid.
Sophie glanced at the regimentally laid out clothes on the bed and sighed. She'd definitely be sitting on the lid of her suitcase, if nothing else.
She pulled herself back to the present and smiled at Kara, who grinned and clinked the rim of her glass against Sophie's with a conspiratorial wink.