Page 94 of The Stranger

“But what is that on your neck?” Sylvie persists.

“C’est pas tes oignons.” Her father murmurs the French equivalent of mind your business.

I remember how he takes his coffee, but I can’t remember how to regulate my own pulse, I think as I fumble with the demitasse cup, almost dropping it. “Bugg—butterfingers!” I say, turning to my audience.

“I hope everyone slept well.” Luc reaches for a strawberry from the fruit platter, the slow curve of his lips not quite a smile. Somehow it’s more telling. More dangerous. The man has ‘sexy secrets’ written all over his face.

Heat prickles beneath my skin as he pops the fruit into his mouth without breaking eye contact.

“Fine,” I murmur, though I’m sure my puffy eyes say otherwise.

I spin back to the machine as Luc enquires how his children slept. Felix makes his usual grudging responses, though Sylvie, chatty as always, tells him about her dream. Something about a clown with big yellow nose riding a flying bicycle.

As the machine works, I swear I can feel his eyes on me. I busy myself with a cloth. The room is suddenly too warm and too small, and my thoughts are dedicated too much to him.

When I finally turn, he says nothing. He just looks at me, looks at me like he can see right through my skin, through flesh and bone, to the very core of me.

It’s unnerving. So penetrating.

I set the cup down in front of him.

“Merci, Primrose.”

His hand wraps the tiny vessel, and he stares up at me. I know what you look like with no clothes on, his gaze seems to say. I know the sounds you make when you’re at your most vulnerable.

And I realize I know neither of those things about him.

“De rien,” I answer brightly.

Luc’s eyes narrow almost infinitesimally. But any fool can say “you’re welcome” in French. Can’t they?

“Bravo!” Sylvie claps her hands together like a delighted kindergarten teacher. “Vous parlez Français, Primrose!”

“I can speak a little French,” I mumble, turning back to the machine.

“How much French do you have?” Luc asks in French.

My back to him, I give a shrug. “You speak too fast.”

“How much French do you know?” he asks in English this time.

“Just what I learned in school.” Over seven years and multiple holidays here. I’m not fluent, but I do okay. Not that I’ll ever tell.

“I will teach you!” Sylvie insists. “I am a very good French speaker, right, Papa.”

“You never shut up,” Felix grouses.

“Perhaps we can all help Primrose learn how things are done in France.”

There’s a particular note in his tone, one I’m not touching—not with a ten-foot pole. Zoe appears back in the kitchen at that moment, sliding a fair-sized square bandage into my hand.

“That’s to protect the burn, and this,” she says, pressing a spiky bit of aloe vera plant into my hand, “is to cool it.”

I frown. “What?”

“Primrose burned her neck on her straightening irons this morning.” She gives a playful roll of her eyes and a tsk.

Bless her for trying to protect my job. She might not have been fooled by such tosh, but she obviously thinks a man would be. Just not the man responsible for administering it.