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“If I’m being honest, yours is the largest job I’ve ever taken on. So I’ll admit I’ve done everything I can trying to impress you. Let me know if it’s working.”
It did the trick—I got a small, easy smile out of her, turning back to me with a playful look, but there was something else there, too. Something more dangerous.
“Well,” she said. “You’re taking on all kinds of adventures, aren’t you?”
I blinked. “Er… what do you mean?”
She set down her glass with a tired sigh, a dry smile on her lips. “So, I suppose I wasn’t the only one using a fake name, was I? Cara.”
My stomach lurched so hard it felt like I’d pitch forward. A wave of dizziness hit me hard, and I had to work to catch my breath again.
Those crisp blue eyes—a halo of sea-green on the inner ring of her irises.
Chapter 5
It took me a solid four, five seconds to find the breath to speak again, but finally, my hand clenching the champagne flute tightly, I whispered, “Amelie…?”
She leaned across the table, dropping her voice to that same husky whisper that had tied me up in knots at Club LIV. “I assume you’ll keep my secrets.”
My head was spinning, a heat burning behind my face. And I wasn’t going to admit to the heat stirring in my chest. “I—that was you?”
“Amelie doesn’t exist. A wig and a pair of statement glasses, and suddenly people are willing to tell me things they wouldn’t tell me as my real self.”
I don’t know how I didn’t notice it—that elegant swoop to her jawline was the same, the gentle point of her chin, the pout of her lower lip, and those eyes—not just in how they looked, but in how they looked at me. I forced myself to take a breath, setting down the champagne flute, trying everything to relax my posture. “Or… when you want to do things that won’t affect your reputation.”
“Well. Someone catches on quickly.” She looked out past me with a sharp, pointed sigh. “Sunday night, I’d thought you were quite the bit of good luck.”
I’d never had bad luck manifest for someone around me quite like this before. My throat tightened, and I tried desperately to quell the dizzy feeling.
I hadn’t kissed Cameron Mercier’s assistant. I’d kissed Cameron Mercier herself. And now I was really sure her lingerie collection was impressive.
But this was one hell of a way to find out the girl you met in the bar was married.
“Well, then,” I said, following her gaze out to the ocean—something easier to look at than each other. “I assume you want a different agent.”
She flicked a smile at me, a dangerous glint there in her eyes. “Trying to get rid of me that quickly?”
“I wasn’t—” I frowned. “What, then? Do you want us to just… continue as if nothing happened?”
She leaned across the table, folding her arms and smirking at me in that same way she had in the club, and my body betrayed me by reacting the same way, my stomach dropping out. “You’re still perfectly capable of doing the work, aren’t you? I hear you’re María’s best agent.”
She couldn’t have been coming onto me. Not still—not like this. But that sounded a lot like she was coming onto me.
Dammit. I didn’t want to react the way I was. My heart was beating faster, and I couldn’t pull my eyes away from hers. Cameron Mercier was married, and she was our client—our best chance at saving Queen Pearl, too. I shouldn’t have been thinking about her like this.
But there was something intensely erotic about the sudden realization that she’d designed that lingerie I’d tried on yesterday. She’d been the one to make me look like that. And I wanted desperately to know what she thought of me in it.
“Besides,” she said, relaxing back in her seat, kicking one leg up over the other, “I hear someone stole the credit for a big win you got at work recently. You wouldn’t want to hand this over right now, would you?”
“I—” My face burned. “Miss Mercier—”
“There’s no use in being formal,” she laughed drily.
I swallowed. “Cameron. I will be happy to take you on a tour of the property, if you like. But I need to assert there are certain… boundaries.”
“Oh, yes?” A smile played over her lips. “And you want to tell me you weren’t trying to come on to my assistant? Don’t tell me you didn’t know she was connected to me. I know you do your due diligence.”
I flushed. “I’d… been sent to find Amelie and try getting to know her. I hadn’t expected… well…”
