Chapter Eight

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Verneuil-sur-Avre, France

October 2011


"Are you sure about this, Vivienne? You are breaking my heart, ma chère."

I glanced at Pascal Janvier, a French count and Grand Slam winner, and rolled my eyes even as I laughed. He was France's favorite playboy given his perfect package of bloodlines, looks, wealth and celebrity status. We've become friends over the past few years after running into each other in the same circles and although he'd pledged his love for me multiple times, many of them in public view, I knew his heart was perfectly intact.

"All the more reason for the next woman to comfort you then," I said as we wound around a large, rounded shrub. The topiary garden was full of geometric shapes all arranged as one big maze and it had taken me three months since moving here to figure my way around it. "I'm sure there's going to be a long lineup."

"There always is but they're never the woman I want the most," Pascal said with a shake of his head, his arm, which mine looped through, pulling me just a tad bit closer to him. "You know I'm enchanted by you, Vivienne, and I'm crushed that you're leaving before I can make you mine."

Pascal was known for his dramatic declarations. He was so damn charming and handsome that he could get away with it as he had for years. He was normally the kind of guy that made me want to throw up listening to but he was a genuinely good man and one of the few I'd met who could make me laugh.

"I mean, think of what you're leaving behind. You have the Paris fashion circuit kissing your feet as one of its fast-rising couture designers. You have a castle," he said, pausing to sweep an arm across the view of the seventeenth-century French chateau that loomed over us in the background. It was resplendent in the low, romantic glow of the lights that spilled from the windows and the castle grounds. It was perfect for a fairy tale and maybe that was part of the appeal when I bought it six years ago. But it definitely did not have a happy ending. "And best of all, you have a prince charming who wants to sweep you off your feet if you'd just let him."

Pascal definitely looked like a prince charming with his light brown hair perfectly swept to the side and his face perfectly symmetrical in its beauty. He looked even more the part whenever he was in his military dress during formal state events. But while I could appreciate Pascal's princeliness, I ached for a man with short-shorn black hair, ice-blue eyes and a sharply-sculpted face that looked mean as hell. Oliver was all rough edges and while I knew they could scrape me raw, I still wanted them despite all reason.

I didn't know exactly what I would find when I returned to Cobalt Bay in five months but the only way I was going to find out was to get on a plane and fly home.

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