When I'm With You: The Complete Novel Read Free

the feeling of closeness to a beautiful young man who forever seemed unattainable to her. “You’re going to have to let me fill in as Fusion’s chef now that you’ve made such a mess of things with Mario.”
    He blinked and his expression went flat. “What are you rambling about? Are you drunk?”
    Anger bubbled up in her chest. “I had one glass of wine all night,” she said honestly. She noticed his sarcastic glance at her brandy snifter on the bar. “Mario handed it to me; I took it. Lucien, what are you doing here?” she asked again, her curiosity about him trumping her worry about her future. “You disappeared from Paris over a year ago. None of your employees in Paris will say where you are. My mother spoke to yours recently. Even Sophia doesn’t know where you are. She’s miserable with worry.”
    “Right,” he said sardonically. “My mother is sick to death at the idea of me not touching all that money she wants for herself ever since my father has been locked up in prison.”
    Elise blinked. He had a point. She had heard he was being strangely stubborn and elusive about accepting his ancestral fortune.
    “If you tell a soul you saw me here, I’ll make you pay, Elise.”
    Quiet. Succinct. Completely believable.
    Her heart leapt into overdrive. He’d paused a few feet away from her. She had to stretch her neck back slightly to see his face and hoped he didn’t notice her pulse throbbing at her throat. He struck her as even larger than she remembered—tall, lean, hard, and supremely formidable. He’d cut his dark hair since she’d last seen him, wearing it in a short, very sexy shake-out style that emphasized his masculine, chiseled features and an effortless sense of masculine grace. She’d always had a desire to run her fingers through that soft-looking, thick hair . . . wantonly fill her palms with it. He’d grown a very trim goatee since then, too. He wore jeans and a buttoned ivory cotton shirt, the color along with his silvery-gray eyes creating a striking contrast to smooth, caramel-hued skin. Mario wasn’t the first to refer to Lucien as a devil. Men said it with bitter envy. Women said it with covetous lust.
    His size and an undeniable aura of physical strength had always thrilled her, but Lucien intimidated her as well. His quiet, calm voice; contained, confident manner; and brilliant, charming smiles belied a coiled power inside him. There was a darkness to him that didn’t exactly match the white, flashing smile and easygoing manner with which he charmed the upper strata of the social world and his affluent hotel and restaurant guests.
    She had no doubt that Lucien could be dangerous when he chose. She also knew he’d never really harm her—not the young man who had once showed her kindness and taken her under his wing.
    But that didn’t make his threat any less intimidating.
    “Now,” he said calmly, stepping closer still and placing a hand on the rail of the bar. She suddenly felt cornered. “When are you leaving Chicago?”
    “I’m not leaving. I plan to live here.”
    “What?”
    “That’s right. Chicago is my new home,” she said with supreme confidence, even though she didn’t feel it. Elise was nothing if not an actress, and spirited aplomb was her finest role.
    Unfortunately, her father had been contemptuous of her plans to become a chef and relocate to Chicago, refusing to fund her new career. She couldn’t access her trust fund until she was twenty-five. Six months had never felt so far in the future to Elise. The nest egg she’d squirreled away after almost a year of waitressing in Paris had never seemed so pitifully small.
    “Why would you come to Chicago? It hardly suits you,” he said, his downward glance at her evening gown infuriating her.
    “You really don’t know, do you?”
    “Know what?”
    “My culinary school in Paris has matched me up with Mario Vincente for my training. I’m staging with him, Lucien,” she said, referring to the