Page 9 of A Royally Fake French Menage
CHAPTER FOUR
BARCLAY
“Monique. You are so lovely.” Genie curtsied for my wicked stepmother like she was born to the position where she stood on the bottom step of my birthright. Well, one of many. “Your home is…just…” She breathed out and rolled her shoulders back, her face a perfect mask in its place just as it had been before I picked her up earlier.
Only myself and maybe the driver, who had disappeared in any case to put the car away and probably soap up for my stepmother, knew that her legs still trembled with need as she stepped gently toward my stepmonster. The older woman tittered as Genie continued her assault of sugared compliments and honed simpery.
“I have no words.” This last was accompanied by Genie’s softest, most genuine looking smile. Her hair shimmered in theFrench sun, pale, pink toned skin blooming in her own country, eclipsing everyone on the drive.
Not that Monique was likely to admit to the beauty before her, outclassed by the absence of makeup while her own was plastered across her skin with all the skill of a deplumed sparrow.
“Of course you don’t. The chateau is superb, is it not, Barclay?” My stepmother descended from the top step of the building I once mistakenly called home. Her steps and extended hand made out that she did, in fact, own the place and didn’t live here just because her presence suited my purposes and kept the place occupied.
I made a rude noise inside my cheek. Under her sharp eye I turned the sound into a cough at the last moment, earning myself a bemused look from the footman at the end of the row of house staff who should have known better than to react. But then, Monique didn’t know how to manage staff, because she’d never been trained to that either.
That little secret we kept to ourselves, of course. She couldn't admit she only played house by the grace of the stepson who neither cared about her, the land or the title, nor that she had no income nor investments of her own.
Monique caressed Genie’s soft cheek with a brittle hand. Her curved, sharpened talons displayed a shade that aimed for blood but didn’t quite make it. “Americans just don’t have culture like we do here on the Continent.”
Genie’s shoulders stiffened. I doubted her tension came from the contact, or at least, not only. I caught the slight shift, so minute it was almost imperceptible, because I knew to look for the change.
Prepared for intervention as someone had once done for me, I stepped forward. My wallet was a whole lot emptier as I movedaway from where the Bugatti had left us out the front of my old home, and its unpleasant, greedy driver.
“I see you two have met.” I tucked Genie’s hair behind her ear and pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, speaking softly into her ear. “You have a wet spot on the back of your skirt. Small, but telling.” I licked her skin, grateful for my prior local reputation as a Lothario that cloaked my true nature to perfection.
She slid her hand beneath the one I curved over her stomach and scratched my palm with those mini talons of her own while the stepmonster watched on with the sort of green tinged vitriol in her eyes that left me semi hard at her pathetic efforts.Too fucking cute. I laughed softly into Genie’s ear, pulling her into my body so her curves found all the right pressure points for both of us, if I measured her soft not-quite gasp well.
“Can't keep your hands to yourself can you, Barclay.” My stepmother actually clapped her hands to get our attention as though we were kindergarteners.
I gazed up at her like the lovelorn teen I’d never been. My dopey grin instantly lowered the IQ of the household staff lining the drive who deserved far better.
From the corner of my eye, someone tall shifted. The faintest snicker reached me—again, I was sure, by design. My heart pounded a little harder in my chest as I forced my gaze to stay steady on the stepmonster.
“Good to see you’ve kept the place in order in my absence, Monica.” I mispronounced her name for the pure, perverse pleasure of seeing her over Botoxed eyes attempt to widen in outrage, and fail. “Shall we?”
I kissed the corner of Genie’s mouth as she continued to blush oh so fucking beautifully and led her up the stairs with a general nod to the gathered contingent of staff. Many seemed to have survived the purge Monique made of decimating the placethe day my father passed and I left in an attempt to leave her mark on La Borde.
A week later, I hired them all back with instructions they could only be let go under extreme circumstances…and with my signature, made in hand before my localavocator equivalent. A phone call or eight I enjoyed far too much. The stepmonster loved that little tweak, and painted the entire bottom level of the house in revenge in a truly disgusting shade calledpoached salmon.
I changed the carpets to an equally hideous and clashworthy cyan shag pile in nylon that I ripped straight out of a seventies retro warehouse I was almost certain had been used as a porn casting studio. As an extra, I also gave every single employee an early Christmas bonus worth double their wage for dealing with her, every year.
And I’d halved Monique's allowance.
Permanently.
In the end it was her loss—she had to stare at that carpet and walk on it every day. I didn’t. When I called, the horrendous color scheme reminded me to maintain my battles in the most petty fashion possible and to always tip my waiter extravagantly and with a kiss behind closed doors.
Or to occasionally forget to close them at all.
That way, any spit in my eggs was well paid spit.
“You are the limit,” Genie whispered under her breath, trembling in her attempt to contain her giggles.
We passed beyond the etched, folding glass windows of the entrance way that would never have held in any incursion in any decade. That entrance was a pure indulgence, nothing more. The chateau was less of a castle and more an extravagance of the highest tier. Those windows that doubled as the building’s entrance were gilt in actual gold. A matching Louis V paintedfresco ceiling decorated the ceiling above us that the monster thankfully hadn’t been able to ruin.
“Maybe.” I shrugged, rolling my shoulders back to ease the familiar growing tension and collection of knots accumulated there. “But that is a pretty wet spot on your skirt.”
Her cheeks glowed brighter than ever. I grinned, catching her hand in mine to raise our laced fingers to my lips.
