Read When You Defy Me (When I'm With You Part 2) for Free Online Page B

know anyone in the city. You’ll love my friends Davie
     and Justin and Caden. . . . Well, Justin and Caden will love
you
, in fact, but they’re relatively harmless. And Fusion is closed on Sundays and Mondays, so I know you’re not working. Isn’t
     that right, Lucien? Tell her.” Francesca glanced at him for assistance. He held Elise’s gaze as he spoke.
    “Of course you should go, Ms. Martin. It will do you good to make some friends in a new city.”
    Elise’s eyes widened in surprise at his agreeable tone. Clearly she’d thought he’d signal for her to decline the invitation,
     but Francesca’s sincere request had blocked that option.
    “Will you be there Monsieur Lenault?” Elise asked, eyes wide and innocent.
    “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
    Her slight frown told him she’d understood his subtext. Allow Elise to run wild in the Noble penthouse without supervision?
    Not likely.
    The following day, Elise glanced up when Sharon walked into the kitchen.
    “Lucien would like to see you in his office, Elise.”
    The knife she held in her hand stilled at the news. It took her a moment to recover, something she hoped Evan and Sharon
     didn’t notice. It’d been a seemingly innocuous announcement, after all.
    “You can take over here, Evan. You have it down perfectly,” she said with a reassuring smile as she set down the knife. She’d
     been instructing and assisting Evan in the dressing of a capon. “I’m sure I won’t be long,” she added over her shoulder after
     she’d washed up.
    She coached herself to ignore the butterflies she felt as she walked down the long hallway to Lucien’s office. He couldn’t
     be requesting the meeting because she’d done anything wrong. Her work ethic had been unquestionable. In fact, she was usually
     the first one there in the morning, eager to begin cooking. Part of that motivation might have been the depressing dreariness
     of her hotel room—not to mention a desire to pass Baden Johnson’s room before he awoke from his nightly intoxication—but the
     point was, she’d
been
here, ready to work. She’d become an expert at avoiding her leering, malodorous neighbor at the Cedar Hotel.
    Her stomach fluttered with anticipation as she knocked on the carved wood door, graphic memories of her former meeting with
     Lucien in his office flooding her consciousness and mounting her anxiety.
    “You wanted to see me?” she asked a moment later when Lucien opened the door. Today he was dressed in black jeans, a simple
     black crew-neck shirt, and an ivory blazer that highlighted his broad shoulders and the smooth, beautiful color of his skin.
     He was such a sinfully gorgeous man, some rare, magical blend of unknown origins, the mystery of his existence somehow perfectly
     fitting the magnetic enigma surrounding him. She recalled how once during her fourteenth summer, she’d bluntly asked him about
     his ethnic heritage. They’d been fishing off the dock, a pastime they’d both gravitated toward that summer, a simple, wholesome
     activity that stood in such contrast to the complex machinations of their parents’ business and social lives. It was obvious
     to anyone that Lucien couldn’t be the natural child of his blond, painfully thin mother, and Lucien towered over his paunchy,
     balding father. Lucien hadn’t taken offense, probably because he’d sensed her childlike sincerity and simple curiosity.
    “I never knew or saw my biological parents. My mother and father adopted me when I was still a baby,” he’d replied, nodding
     at her fishing line. She’d obediently lifted it, and sure enough, a fish had stolen her bait. He took it from her without
     comment.
    “I’m adopted, too,” Elise had told him. She’d thought it a thousand times before. It must be true. How else to explain how
     she felt as if she were interacting with a different species when she related to her parents? Lucien’s smile had struck her
     as a little sad.
    “You are the