Chapter Two

Unbeknownst to her, a tall man stood at the railing of the mezzanine above the lobby, watching the small woman giggle with her friends on her way out.

"Monsieur," said a voice behind him that he knew far too well.

He didn't turn. "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?"

Instead of answering, the small man stepped forward and held out an envelope, then retreated with a slight bow. With a furrow of his brow, the tall man opened it and pulled out a hotel keycard and a yellow Post-it note. It didn't take long to read.

He tossed the keycard aside, and the small man scrambled to catch it before it hit the floor. The note, however, was a souvenir he intended to keep.

"Intéressant," he murmured, and touched it briefly to his lips. "À la prochaine, Belle." Until next time.

He slid the note into his wallet. At seven o'clock that morning he had been certain she'd been sent — one more pretty trap, with a photographer waiting somewhere downstairs. Women who were sent didn't leave notes like this. And they didn't laugh like that on the way out.

He let out a long breath and turned to the small man, who was studying the floor between his shoes as though it might save him.

"Alors, où est ce salaud?" When the small man only frowned, his jaw tightened and he repeated it in English, the small man's native tongue. "Where is the bastard? The photographer who followed us from the club. I want every picture he took, and every copy. She is not going to end up in anyone's newspaper."

Four years later

The second Furina opened the front door of her father's flat, she knew something was wrong. Her heart knew it before her eyes found the proof. The place had been torn apart: drawers yanked out, cushions slashed, everything they owned flung across the floor.

A burglary? No. Everyone on their road knew Furina and her dad, Fionn Dunne, had nothing worth stealing.

She didn't stop to look at the rest. "Dad? Daddy?"

She found him in the kitchen, on his knees, picking up shards of glass with shaking hands. "Oh my God, Dad, you're bleeding."

There was a bloody patch on the side of his head and a split in his lip. She ran for the first-aid box, knelt beside him and cleaned the wound. He didn't say a word. He didn't even lift his eyes from the floor. His fingertip caught the edge of a shard, and he hissed.

Furina took his wrist gently and dressed that cut too. When there was nothing left to keep his hands busy, he finally looked at her and mumbled, "I'm sorry."

She helped him into a kitchen chair and pulled another round to sit facing him. "Are you all right, Daddy?"

"It's my fault. It's all my fault." He said it a few more times before the story came out.

After the hit-and-run eighteen months ago, when the waiting list for his rehab had stretched past a year and the pain wouldn't let him sleep, he'd borrowed forty thousand pounds from a man called Vince Draper to pay for private treatment. He hadn't told Furina. She was already working two jobs — waiting tables in Covent Garden by day, bartending at a club in Soho by night — since she'd given up her place on an accounting graduate scheme to look after him.

"It was forty thousand, F*e. Only ever forty." His voice cracked. "Then it was the interest. And last month Draper said the debt had been sold. Someone new owns it now. They want one and a half million pounds in five days, or next time—" He couldn't finish.

One and a half million. Furina stared at him. It was a number from another planet.

Once she'd made him promise to lie down, she cleaned the flat. Her eyes kept landing on the small suitcase in the corner, the same one that had gone to Paris with her four years ago, and regret settled in her chest. If she hadn't spent that money on one stupid, wonderful week... She shook her head. Regret didn't turn back time. It only wasted more of it.

Among the mess, she found an envelope far too thick and creamy to belong in their flat. Someone with money had sent it, and it was addressed to her. Inside was an invitation, embossed in gold, to a charity gala at the Vauclair house in Hampstead that Saturday.

The hostess was Mrs Orla Vauclair. Her mother.

At first all Furina felt was resentment. Four years of silence, and now this? But resentment soon gave way to something more dangerous: hope. Married to a billionaire, her mother could make one and a half million pounds disappear without noticing.

"You may come by any time you like, Furina," said Antoine Vauclair, her mother's billionaire husband, with a warm smile. "It would delight your mother. She spends so much time alone in this big house." He spared a loving glance for his wife before turning back to his stepdaughter.

In all honesty, Furina couldn't find a single fault in the man standing beside her mother. He was polite and well-mannered, and even in his late fifties he had the kind of looks women must have swooned over in his youth: a chiselled, film-star jaw and eyes as blue as the sea. And, like every Frenchman she'd ever met, he dressed beautifully.

"Yes, do come, darling." Her mother, Orla Vauclair, linked her arm through her husband's. She wore the proud, vexing smile that reminded everyone she was above them. Furina noticed a few things had been done to her face since they'd last seen each other, more than four years ago. It was mad how much a person could change — not just on the surface, but all the way through.

"I've had the maids make up a room especially for you," Orla went on. "You could move in tonight. It would be a great deal nicer than your father's place." She hid a laugh behind her hand. "Though can one call it a place? It's a single room. If you were clever, like me, darling, you'd have left that man years ago. Fionn is useless."

Furina clenched her fists and pressed her lips together so she wouldn't shout at the woman who was supposed to be her mother. In her father's defence, he hadn't been able to work since the accident — the accident that had left him with nothing but pain and a mountain of bills. Which reminded her exactly why she'd come.

"Actually, Mother, and, um, Antoine, I was wondering if I could possibly—"

"It's one thing to be poor," Orla went on, as if Furina hadn't spoken, "but quite another to be useless. Some men simply have no will, no backbone, no—"

Furina didn't wait for her to finish. She stood and walked out of the crowded ballroom. She didn't care if she was making a scene. Walking away was better than doing something violent, like tipping her risotto over her mother's arrogant head.

She was halfway down the front steps when she collided with someone getting out of a car. She would have fallen backward if a pair of arms hadn't caught her and set her back on her feet.

She looked up, and her heart stopped.

It was him. That guy. The French man who had asked if she wanted a tip.

"Are you all right?"

She was about to tell him exactly where he could go when she heard her mother's voice behind her, sharp and carrying, calling her name. Orla was coming after her.

Without thinking, Furina glanced at the open car door — and dived straight into the back seat.