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The weight of the world was in Maxime’s sigh. “Alain, your arrogance has always been your undoing.”

“Not arrogance, Maxime. Confidence in my abilities. There’s a difference. You’ve just never been willing to see it.”

Alain ended the call and slipped his phone into his inside breast pocket. With the cotton glove, he snapped his ancestor’s grimoire shut and scooped it up, along with Cordelia’s book of vile spells. Skirting the bed, he pressed the hidden switch on the headboard, opening the secret compartment behind it, concealed by the floor to ceiling mirror. It was one of a few modifications he’d made when he’d moved in.

With a square footage not much bigger than a broom closet, it was a safe room. Not for himself, but for all the knowledge he’d collected. Not nearly as extensive as the library Maxime presided over at the d’Louncrais manoir which contained every tome ever collected by the d’Louncrais dating back centuries—a collection any librarian would drool over. Alain’s collection had a different focus. Less on historical treatises and more on the witchcraft side of things. Secret tomes the libraries didn’t know existed, including his grimoire, and now Cordelia’s.

He placed both books in acid-free, buffered archival boxes, shutting the lids, then checked the control panel’s display. Everything was as it should be. With the flick of the switch, the door swung back into place, meshing with the ornate paneling seamlessly.

He tested the ward. It was potent. Alain buttoned his jacket and straightened his cuffs. Let Cordelia try her best. He was ready for her.

He paused at his bedroom door. And what of his vision? Of the woman tied to his bed, her beautiful dress bunched about her hips in swathes of yellow satin and Swarovski crystals. Foresight or fantasy? He eyed his bed and his cock stirred. He knew what he wanted it to be.

Alain pushed the images away. Colored by hopes and desires, visions of oneself were rarely accurate. A lot of his pack members had found their mates recently. These types of visions were to be expected. He turned his back on his bed and the image of the woman in the yellow dress. He had bigger things to focus on. And time wasn’t on his side.

Chapter Two

Backlit by the soft glow of the streetlights, the Gothic spires of the Cluny Museum rose behind the modern façade of its reception building as Grace Williams stepped out of the taxi.

What in the sweet tarnation am I doing here?

The Swarovski crystals on her dress shimmering with her every step, Grace presented her embossed invitation to the door attendant and entered the brightly lit foyer. She kept waiting for someone to stop her, but no one did.

Directed to the stairs, her heels clicking on the tiles and her mouth drier than a cotton crop in the summertime, she crossed the floor, mindful of every step. If she wasn’t careful, she’d roll her ankle. Or, worse, fall in a heap of yellow satin and heels. What she wouldn’t give for her trusty sneakers, but they wouldn’t fit in here any more than she did.

She tightened her grip on her clutch, a Louis Vuitton, bejeweled and worth as much as she made in a month. She’d only been this nervous once before in her life. Three days ago. And she’d had as good a reason then as she did now. The one thing worse than being summoned by Cordelia King, matriarch of the King family and rival for the role of most evil old witch ever, was to be given a task by said witch.

Good golly gravy. Grace would trade half her inventory to be ensconced in the familiar smells and cozy clutter of Thrifty Witch, sitting behind her counter with a tall icy glass of sweet tea, decanting herbs, doing a stock report…balancing the books, even. She did not belong here. In Paris. At a fundraiser event with a twenty-five-hundred-dollar ticket price. In this dress. Could not comprehend why Cordelia had deemed her suitable for this mission. She was going to stick out like a cat hair in a home-baked biscuit.

A glamorous couple overtook her on the steps in a splash of red sequins and an expensive suit. Cordelia could’ve sent her great nephew, Dutton. She snorted, and the couple gave her the side eye. She pasted a smile on her face, and they continued on.

Grace knew why Dutton hadn’t been sent, and that only made the butterflies in her stomach flap with the frenzy of a hurricane’s wind. Alain d’Louncrais—her target—was a notorious playboy, so Cordelia had told her. With a preference for women. Then why not Irena King? The rumor doing the rounds of the coven had Irena stealing another witch’s fiancé. Who better than someone with the moral compass of a weasel to undertake this mission? At least Irena had experience in seducing a man to get what she wanted. Bile rose in her throat. It wasn’t Irena whom Cordelia had sent. It was Grace. And her mama was counting on her.

Grace took two more steps, then, horror of all horrors, she tripped on her dress and would have face planted on the top step if not for the strong hand that gripped her elbow.

“Mademoiselle?”

She turned, smiling up at her savior, and her heart stalled. He had the most beautiful and unusual eyes. One blue and one green. In a face that would haunt her dreams from here until eternity. Good dreams. Sexy, don’t-tell-your-grandma-what-we-did kind of dreams.

Grace was gaping like a guppy fish. She scrounged up some dignity. “Thank you, monsieur. I…I mean, merci, monsieur.”

Weird, Cordelia has the same eyes as him. But he wasn’t a King. She would’ve remembered a guy like this.

He straightened, though he still had hold of her elbow, and the warmth of his hand was doing funny things to her insides. As was the sheer visual overload of gorgeousness standing before her. This is what they meant when they said a man filled out a suit to perfection.

“Américaine, non?”

She almost swooned at the rumble of his voice, the smoothness and the lilt of his accent. Was it any wonder French was one of the Romance languages? Especially when it came out of the mouth of such a— He was staring at her, waiting for an answer.

“Yes. I…I mean, oui. I’m visiting from le Americain.” Or was it Amèrique? Or something altogether different with the words united and states in it? “Pardon, monsieur, I don’t speak a lot of French. I’m from California. It’s my first time in Paris. I flew in yesterday morning for this event.” She’d heard the French liked it when you tried to speak their language, but a few days of Duolingo and a French phrase book did not make her fluent. And she was babbling. And butchering the French accent.

You can take the girl out of the South, but not the South out of the girl.

She must be doing something right, for he smiled at her, and oh, what a smile it was. Perfect teeth, dimples. She basked in it, her humble heart fluttering in its warmth.

“Well, mademoiselle, I hope you enjoy your time in Paris.”

He pronounced it Paree in that swoon-worthy accent of his. She locked her knees so they wouldn’t buckle.