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“Know what?” Henri seemed to be directing the question at me.

I sighed. “I’m not actually a sorceress,” I told him.

He stared. “Is there no end to your secrets?”

“Don’t feel bad, mate,” Christian told him. “We’ve all been digging for years and have yet to see the bottom of that well.”

I glared at my unhelpful friend.

Henri was going off on a tangent in French. It was colorful and unflattering to me in a very personal way.

I let it go on for a bit.

“If you don’t have anything nice to say,” Christian began in a chipper voice.

“Say something mean,” Caleb finished unhelpfully.

Christian blinked. “Well, yes.”

I glared at them both. Their joking just seemed to be egging Henri on.

Henri resumed cursing me, mostly in French.

I would have let him go on longer just to get it out of his system, but Dom lost his patience first. “Enough!” he clipped out. “That was your one free pass. You’ll watch how you speak to her. I don’t care what happened between you two in the past. It’s over now.”

Henri was panting, but he stopped spouting obscenities. “All of my paintings of you have been locked away since the day I thought I saw you die, but no more. I’m going to unearth every single of them and sell them to the highest bidder!” He looked triumphant.

I sighed. This just got better and better. “Any chance I get first bid on them?”

He laughed theatrically. “I don’t think so, Ma Colombe.”

“Don’t call her that,” Dom snapped. “Enough. Henri, with me. I need a word.”

The two men strode off together, causing me all kinds of anxiety.

“This can’t be fun for you,” Christian said in a tone that let me know it was, in fact, quite fun for him.

“There’s no way they won’t be talking about you,” Caleb added as unhelpfully as possible.

“You can’t even make a run for it,” Christian continued as though I’d asked. “We have to stay put so we can go see your brother tomorrow. What kind of dirt does Henri have on you, other than the art? Wait. Is it nudes?”

I grimaced. “No comment,” I said, referring to the nudes. “And he has the average amount of dirt any ex might have. More than I care to dive into.”

Caleb shrugged like that was the end of it. “Back to the pool?”

“Ma Colombe?” Christian asked as though he hadn’t spoken. He wasn’t going to drop this subject for a while.

“An old endearment he used to have for me. Again, this was all a very long time ago.”

“Well it’s new to us,” said Christian, “so you know we won’t just be dropping the subject.”

And they didn’t. There seemed no end to the questions Christian had about Henri, and I answered about one in ten just to get past it.

It was sometime later, Dom and Henri had not reappeared and Christian had somehow talked us into a lazy game of truth or dare by the pool.

“Truth,” I chose, for some insane reason. Mostly because I didn’t want to get up from my lounger.

“You have to answer anything I ask,” Christian told me.