Prologue
Mel
One year ago
Some weeks, my job is a breeze. Everything runs like clockwork, and nobody fucks anything up. I can stay in New York, where I can water my neglected plants, eat my vegetables before they get moldy, and get caught up on my overflowing inbox.
This is not one of those weeks.
This week is an epic Grade-A disaster.
I work at Fontaine & Yarrow. My official title is Operations Consultant. My unofficial title is Corporate Ass Kicker. F&Y owns fifty hideously expensive boutique hotels around the world, and when someone does something incredibly stupid, it’s my job to fly out and fix it.
This week, it’s Paris. Pierre Gilbert, the manager of the Fontaine Paris, screwed up, and a wannabe tabloid reporter invaded the very discreet celebrity wedding the hotel was hosting.
Jordan Greene, a famous pop star, was marrying Gabriel Silva, who plays for Juventus and is the captain of the Brazilian soccer team. Many celebrities tip off the paparazzi themselves, but this wasn’t one of those occasions. Jordan had been pretty clear about privacy when she chose the Fontaine Paris as her wedding venue. “I don’t want my wedding photos on the front page of the Daily Mirror,” she’d told Weston Fontaine (Boss #1). “Can you guarantee me that?”
West said yes.
And then Pierre Gilbert, that walking, talking catastrophe of a human being, had gone on a date. He’d boasted to the woman he was with that he was a huge deal in the hospitality industry. Ignoring the NDA he signed when he joined F&Y, he bragged about the secret celebrity wedding taking place at the hotel he managed.
By the way, not that I’m keeping score or something, but I told West to fire Pierre more than a year ago.
Pierre’s date—Elodie Dupuis—hadn’t sold us out to the press. But she had told her roommate, Marie, about the Greene-Silva wedding, and Marie told her brother Simon. Simon wanted to work for TMZ, and he decided this was his way in.
So he invaded the wedding.
It was a disaster, of course.
I flew to Paris immediately. (Does Pierre even care about my dying houseplants? No, he does not.) Usually, it’s just me handling the mess, but this time, I couldn’t contain the shitshow on my own. Both West Fontaine and Robert Yarrow flew out with me.
I handled Simon by paying him an absolutely ridiculous amount of money for the pictures. West and Robert had the more complicated task of soothing Jordan's feelings. They did this by comping the very expensive wedding and by picking up the tab for the honeymoon.
I spent two hundred and fifty thousand dollars buying the photos. The wedding tab was probably a million dollars, if not more. Pierre’s indiscretion cost F&Y a lot of money.
Have I mentioned I told West and Rob to fire Pierre long before this latest disaster? Oh right, I did. I told them that a year ago. And I said it again six months ago. But they hadn't.
‘I told you so’ is probably not a good thing to say to one's bosses. So I’ve retreated to a bar a few doors away from the hotel I’m staying at. (Not the Fontaine. I’m spying on the competition by staying at the Sayara.) Paris is normally a city I enjoy, but it’s wet, cold, and miserable today. I’ve found a table by the fireplace, and I plan to stay here all evening long, drinking red wine and nursing my wounds.
A shadow looms over my booth, and a man sets a bottle of wine in front of me. “Go ahead,” West says. “Say it.”
Weston Fontaine. At thirty-six years old, he’s been the CEO of Fontaine & Yarrow for the last eight years. When he took over, the company had been teetering on the edge of failure. West looked at the mess he inherited, acted swiftly and decisively, and brought Robert Yarrow on board. Together, they sold half the hotels, renovated the others, and doubled the room prices. When the hotel bookings exploded, they doubled the rates again. Nowadays, F&Y is considered the best boutique hotel chain in the world.
West is rich. Because life is unfair, he’s also gorgeous. Wavy chestnut brown hair, chocolate brown eyes. Warm olive skin reveals his Mediterranean ancestry. He wore a suit earlier today—undoubtedly a custom-made Armani that costs more than my annual salary—but now he’s changed. He’s wearing jeans and a dark gray sweater, and a blue woolen scarf is wound around his neck. He should look idiotic but instead looks European and sophisticated.
“How did you know where I was?”
West slips into the booth across from me. He fills the empty glass and pushes it toward me. “I didn't,” he says. “But it's cold out, and it’s drizzling, and you, Mel, are like a cat. You don't like the rain. I figured you wouldn't go far.”
Gah. I didn’t know I was that predictable.
He pulls out his phone. “I'm texting Rob,” he says. “He’s looking for you, too. I turned right out of your hotel, and he went left.”
I pick up the glass of wine and take a sip. I know nothing about wine, but this is significantly better than my first glass. Of course it is. Weston Fontaine probably knows everything there is about wine. For all I know, he might even own a couple of wineries in the South of France.
“What are you doing here, West?”
My boss opens his mouth to answer, but before he can, Robert Yarrow, Boss #2 and Chief Financial Officer of Fontaine & Yarrow, enters the bar. He takes off his leather gloves and tucks them in the pockets of his charcoal gray tailored coat. Then he shrugs out of the cashmere garment, looks around for a hanger, finds one, slings the coat on the hook, and makes his way to us.