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He glares at me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I stand up, tap my brooch, and see Romy jerk, touching her ear.
Then I pick up the very expensive wine he bought and pour it over Griffin.
The full glass, tilted with deliberate care onto the front of his Italian suit, the Burgundy spreading across the white shirt beneath in a stain that is going to require professional attention.
He splutters, standing up.
The restaurant goes briefly quiet. A waiter comes running.
“That”—I gather my bag and grin at him as he futilely wipes wine off his clothes—“was for touching me.” I look at him—at the stain, at his face, enjoying his dawning understanding that the meeting did not go the way he planned. “And for thinking I was still the woman you could decide things for.”
I pick up the last piece of bread from the basket—because they do baguettes so well here, and it would be a waste—and walk out.
Behind me, I hear Romy read Griffin the Miranda rights.
Nothing ever sounded more beautiful.
“Mademoiselle Morningstar,” Philippe says calmly, his expression that of a man who has seen everything and is choosing to see nothing.
“Philippe,” I murmur. “The steak was exceptional.”
“Thank you. As always.”
“Oh, and there’s a gentleman at the bar with an FBI badge who will be settling the bill.” Like hell I’m paying for any part of Griffin’s meal.
He smiles gravely. “Already taken care of.”
I walk out onto Hopkins Avenue into the Aspen afternoon.
I stand on the sidewalk for a moment.
Kaz pops out of a white van and walks up to me. “Come on, let’s watch Romy perp walk him.”
Mason joins us.
He came out through the side exit, which tells me Romy had a plan for extracting him before he did something inadvisable to Griffin Cole in front of a restaurant full of witnesses. He falls into step beside us without a word, and I notice his jaw is clenching and unclenching as he exercises considerable restraint and is not entirely finished with the effort.
“He touched you,” he mutters.
“I handled it.”
“I know you handled it. I still—”
“Mason, I handled it,” I repeat.
He exhales. Turns to the restaurant door. “Yeah, you did.”
We position ourselves on the sidewalk across Hopkins Avenue—Kaz with his hands in his jacket pockets, me with my bread, Mason beside me, still working out his frustration of not being able to lay a hand on Griffin.
It doesn’t take long.
Griffin Cole comes through the front door of Cache Cache with his wrists in front of him, with the look of a man whose day has departed so dramatically from his expectations that his face hasn’t caught up yet.
His Italian suit has a dark, spreading stain across the front that Philippe’s most attentive waiter was apparently unable to fully address with a linen napkin.
Behind him is Romy Boudreaux.
