Page 98 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

My first few months were dire.

But I was determined to get my footing—because the streets seemed like an upgrade over crawling back to my stepmother and I do not intend to live down toherlow expectations in this lifetime, thank you—and so one day I took down the sign that hung outside my door with my name on it. I put up a simple one that readprivate investigationsinstead.

I wanted to see if the immediate disconnect that happened when I told people I was said investigator, or possibly even as soon as they saw my name on my useless shingle, could be handled if I got them in the door first.

And when a man walked in, all furtive eyes and that seriousness about the mouth that indicatesissues, I prepared to launch into my usual spiel.

I’m here for your boss, sweetheart,he said with curt dismissiveness, looking around like I might have stashed said boss in the requisite dinged-up filing cabinet that came with the rented space.

I didn’t mean to do it. But I had a clientin the roomat last and he wanted a boss. And the customer is always right, so I invented that boss on the spot.

I gave my pretend boss the name of the hero from the romance novel I was currently reading to while away the hours no one hired me, and when that worked—beyond my wildest expectations—I named my business after the made-up kingdom in that book, too.

My Luc Garnier is only partly the hero from the book, sure. I refined him to suit my own purposes over the years. He’s now a billionaire man of mystery himself, dedicated to ferreting out the truth no matter what it takes. He is elegant yet masterful. Gloriously and unabashedly male yet always exquisitely dressed. No shabbily dressed, seemingly hapless sleuth, our Luc Garnier.

Look closely,I always tell my more suspicious clients while brandishing society rag photographs in their direction.He is a master of hiding in plain sight.

Then I claim that we canalmostsee his ear in a paparazzi picture of the most famous person of the hour. Or perhaps we can glimpse his elbow, just there,at the sort of outrageously extravagant charity ball normal people can never dream of attending.

Luc Garnier never allows himself to be caught on camera,I tell everyone with great seriousness, and a bit of earnestness and awe, too, for effect.Such is his commitment toyourprivacy.

Thanks to Luc Garnier, I went from not being able to book a client to having too many clients to take on. I quickly elevated my office space from the sketchier outer boroughs into Manhattan itself, where I am currently sitting pretty on Fifth Avenue.

I did well, is what I did, and I do better now. And these days I mostly find it funny—and only sometimes bittersweet—that I amjust startingto be seen as an investigator on my own merits. I have more than a few clients who tell me that if I wanted, I could step out from famous Luc Garnier’s shadow.

Though they whisper it, like they expect him to materialize from behind a potted plant and confront them for their daring in making such a suggestion.

Maybe one day, I like to tell them, trying to look grateful and deeply complimented.But I’m still learning so much from Mr. Garnier.

My favorites are the clients who condescend to me and tell me thattheyspeak personally to Luc Garnier daily, when, obviously, I know they don’t. And then they like to argue that the instructions he never gave them contradict the ones I made up.

I thought that I’d seen it all.

But I did not expect that anyone would wander in the door and pretend to be the man himself.

I charge down the hallway, passing the actual office that I use and continuing on past the little conference room with its view of the city, then on to the grand corner office that stands mostly as a shrine to a man who does not exist. There are client photos on the wall and also, just to entertain myself, I like to frame photographs that seem to suggest that Luc Garnier attended this or that wildly exclusive event—without showing him, of course.

Today, something hitches inside of me as I pass the conference room and can see through the glass that there is, indeed, a man sitting there behind Luc’s desk.

My desk,I correct myself.

I stride to the door, throw it open—

And stop dead.

Because the man who sits—loungesis a better word—behind the desk I maintain for a completely fictional character of my own devising, looks…

Exactly the way that I imagine Luc Garnier himselfwouldlook.

If only he was real.

He is so tall that he even looks tall sitting down, and hecommandsthe room somehow, even though all he does is glance up from his laptop—his own laptop, not the prop I leave on the desk, I note—seemingly taking very little notice of me as I stand there.

“Is it office protocol to simply throw open doors instead of waiting to be granted access?” he asks, and his voice is another problem.

I do a sweep of him like he’s someone I’m surveilling.

Tall. Commanding. Dark hair and eyes like steeped tea. Chiseled jaw and acrobatic cheekbones. Sensual mouth that’s at complete odds with the austerity of the dark, bespoke suit that he wears. That caresses his body as if silkworms and various sheep personally sacrificed themselves for his sartorial splendor.

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