The Billionaire's Innocent

Nora’s heart stopped beating.

His gaze moved on in the next breath, slid past her and onto the rest of the smiling and preening girls displaying their wares in a number of alluring poses, as if Nora were a stranger. As if she were no more than an interchangeable thing for sale and nothing more to him than that.

Which, of course, she was.

Tonight, she was.

Her heart slammed against her ribs with a vicious wallop, so hard she felt dizzy and sick at once and worried she might faint right there on the gold-and-navy nautical carpet, and Zair walked deeper into the vile little gathering as though he belonged there. He was welcomed as if he did, as if all the revolting people here already knew him well. It didn’t make sense. She couldn’t let it make any kind of sense.

She couldn’t accept—she refused to accept—what it meant that he was here. It was bad enough that she was.

It was bad enough that she’d come to Cannes on a kind of lunatic kamikaze mission in the first place, especially when there was a possibility that the unconcerned British police were right and her missing friend Harlow might not even want to be found after her disappearance from London a few weeks back.

There is the distinct possibility that Ms. Spencer has merely done what many young women do on their first trip abroad, the impatient British detective had said when she’d contacted him. There is almost always a foreign lover and a last-minute adventure she’d rather not share with anyone back home. I rather doubt she’ll appreciate all this fuss when she turns up.

But possibilities weren’t enough for Nora. Not when it was Harlow.

It wasn’t until a CCTV picture had surfaced showing Harlow entering Nice, France, with a grim-looking stranger—hardly the lover everyone seemed to think she’d taken, not with that merciless grip on her arm—that Nora had been sickeningly sure she knew exactly what had happened.

Harlow had written her undergraduate thesis on human trafficking and then, thanks in part to her friendship with their sorority sister Addison Treffen and in part to Nora’s merciless prodding that she do something with her life—not that Nora had taken her own advice—she’d accepted a prestigious law internship at Treffen, Smith, and Howell’s London office as a first step toward the kind of world-saving work she’d always said she wanted to do. But then the Jason Treffen scandal had broken a few months back and Addison’s father had been exposed as the leader of a high-class sex ring he’d operated out of his New York City law office, making him responsible for all manner of appalling things—including the death of the college girlfriend of Nora’s brother Hunter. Now Jason was dead, shot by an unknown assailant who’d never been found, right in front of poor Addison, and Nora knew there was no way Harlow could possibly have resisted poking her nose into things in that London office. Because if it was anything like the office Jason Treffen had run in New York…

All it had taken was a simple internet search on “sex trafficking” and “the south of France,” and Nora had found a wealth of unsavory information on the “yacht girls” who swarmed Cannes during the famous annual film festival to ply their trade on the yachts that dotted the Côte d’Azure bays and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. The yachts, the boulevards, the upscale, breathlessly opulent hotels that lined the iconic beaches, and the airy villas high in the hills. Some were prostitutes, some were down-on-their-luck actresses looking for cash and a way back to the bright lights of Hollywood by any vehicle possible, and still others were bored socialites simply out for a good time with a bit of rough and some pocket money besides.

Nora would have bet anything she had that Harlow was headed there. Which meant she needed to do the same, because she knew what no one else did. What she could scarcely admit even in her own head.

This was her fault.

Which made fixing this, by any means necessary, her responsibility.

She watched Zair stop and talk to a pair of very elegantly dressed twins on the far side of the lounge, both of whom giggled at his brooding attention. He gazed down at them in that hard, leashed-danger way of his that made her chest feel tight. Except she knew she shouldn’t let it.

He wasn’t flirting with them. He was inspecting the merchandise.

I can play whatever game you want, she’d told him on her eighteenth birthday. A desperation unlike anything she’d ever experienced before had swamped her as she’d stared at him out on that dark terrace with Manhattan at their feet, making her feel drunk and unsteady, when she’d been neither. I can do anything you want me to do.

Zair had watched her with that same expression on his face. Harsh. Predatory. Knowing.

Is that so? Anything is a big word, Nora. It covers a multitude of sins.

So can I. She’d thought she sounded sultry. Tempting.

The kind of sins I like leave marks, he’d told her. You don’t know what you’re asking, little girl.

Nora jolted when a hand grabbed her upper arm, slamming her back into the here and now, where she was still sitting on a vast yacht pretending to be a prostitute and Zair was still standing on the other side of the room in a sea of women, presumably because he wanted to buy one.

Proving that he’d been right six years ago. She’d had no clue what she was asking for back then. She’d had no idea who the hell he was. And there was no reason she should feel that like a wash of shame now, making her throat feel tight, as though he’d wrapped his hard hand around it and squeezed when he wasn’t even looking in her direction.

The real hand on her arm clenched tighter, and when she looked around, Nora found herself gazing into the disconcertingly sweet face of the woman who was running things tonight, Laurette Fortin. Who had been so easy to meet, really, once she’d arrived in France. Too easy. An old boarding school friend Nora hadn’t seen in a while, a late night talking about how bored she was with her life and how she’d kill for a little adventure, the crazier the better, and here she was. Greer, the friend in question and herself a notoriously ill-behaved plastics heiress with a penchant for public nudity, had presented Nora to Laurette back on shore an hour or so ago as though she’d been showing off her latest acquisition.

Because, of course, she had been.

“She’s cool,” Greer had said, nodding at Nora as she’d kicked off her wedges to climb into the little speedboat that would transport the group of girls out to the much bigger yacht. “An old friend of mine from prep school. And her brother is Hunter Grant. You know. The American football star.”

Laurette had obviously recognized Hunter’s name, which had made Nora feel…profoundly unsettled. She’d eyed Nora up and down, taking in everything. The short, flirty dress Nora had worn for this strange occasion that drooped from one shoulder but then caught tight beneath her breasts, the shoes that made her bared legs seem twice as long. Every minute detail of Nora’s appearance, making her want to squirm, or cover herself. Or both.

This is her job, Nora had thought, and though that was as awful as all the rest of it, she’d started to feel a bit numb. Which had been a bit like a blessing, all things considered.

“I’m Nora,” she’d supplied when the silence stretched out between them, and the other woman had smiled back at her in a way that had made Nora’s blood chill. She’d had to fight not to shudder, and from the look on Laurette’s face, she’d known it. And liked it.

“It is not your name that matters, chérie. It is all that American old money stamped on your face. They like to look at that while they fuck you in every degrading way they can think of. It makes them feel like the gods they think they are.” The older woman had jerked her chin at the boat. “Climb in. Let’s see how you do.”

Not very well, if the current expression on Laurette’s face was anything to go by.

“Are you feeling all right?” Laurette asked, her voice as concerned as the look in her dark eyes was hard. She dropped her hand from Nora’s arm, but she didn’t shift herself from the arm of the sofa. “A little seasick, maybe? Poor darling.”

“Not at all.” Nora forced a smile she didn’t feel at all. “Why would you think that?”

“Because this is a party,” Laurette murmured silkily. Viciously. “Everyone is here to have a good time. To make friends, have fun. Do you know how to have fun? I ask because no one else is sitting in the corner, frowning at the ground.”

Nora almost laughed out loud, but not because anything was funny. She wasn’t sure anything could ever be funny again, not after tonight.

Get a hold of yourself, she ordered herself sternly. This is about Harlow. And you’re not going to find her if you don’t figure out a way to please this woman. You know exactly what that means you have to do, so stop sitting over here feeling sorry for yourself that your teenage crush has turned out to be a disgusting pig, and do it.

Yes, she knew what she was asking of herself. What she was going to do with…whoever. She’d turned it over again and again in her head, she’d studied the pictures plastered all over the internet of pretty starlets in the grip of repugnant, always older and less attractive men, and she hadn’t been able to come up with a reasonable alternative. It was her fault Harlow had left New York in the first place. This was how she’d pay for that.

She’d rationalized it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Some girls picked up strange men in bars every weekend and had sex with them for free, she’d reminded herself. How was this any different? It was probably smarter, really, because if Greer and her friends and certain Vanity Fair articles were to be believed, Nora could come out of this with a hefty addition to her investment portfolio rather than a run-of-the-mill Sunday morning hangover and its attendant regrets.

Of course, she’d also be a prostitute, but that was only a word, she’d assured herself. That dark, hollow thing inside her that whispered otherwise was irrelevant. It had to be. She had no other choice if she wanted to find Harlow.

“I was just getting up now,” Nora said and did so at once, with a bit more speed than necessary. She caught herself before she toppled over and aimed a too-bright smile at Laurette to cover it. “To mingle.”

“This is good,” Laurette said, still in that voice that sounded lovely on the surface but had all those sharp claws beneath, and Nora was certain she felt each one of them draw blood. “Mingling is much better than frowning at the floor, reminding a man of the troubles he is here to forget, mais oui?”

Nora agreed with a vigorous nod and then smoothed her hands down the front of her too-short dress, steeling herself to look around. But not to look too closely when she did, because she didn’t want to see which lissome girls had caught Zair’s attention now. She didn’t want to know anything further about him or his proclivities—

So there was no reason she should have felt something like disappointment, if far sharper, when she couldn’t spot him. Had he already made his choice? Selected a girl as if she were a shiny bit of produce and headed off to get his kicks—whatever those were?

Nora refused to let herself wonder. You’re not here for Zair. You’re here for Harlow.

She had to order herself to focus. She didn’t want to focus.

There were too many people crowding the vast and tastefully decorated room, none of them Harlow, and it was obvious at a glance which people were displaying themselves as the merchandise tonight and which ones were doing the shopping. It wasn’t like a run-of-the-mill, meat-markety Manhattan bar scene at all, no matter how many times Nora tried to tell herself otherwise. There was a different sort of energy in the room, taut and gritty and spiked, that she could feel along the length of her spine every time one of the men looked at her.

Because each man was deciding whether or not he wanted to fuck her, which wasn’t the same thing as hitting on a girl in a bar and hoping for the best. This was a room filled with grim certainties, not any bright or drink-fueled optimism.

Nora had to fight not to shudder, or to break for her freedom and swim back to shore. She had to scream at herself until she managed to smile prettily. To act as though she was happy to be here and having the best time. She had to force herself to look as cheerful as she did available.

And as she looked around she realized that Zair—wherever he was, and she shouldn’t care, she shouldn’t let herself speculate, she couldn’t deal with how awful that was just yet—wasn’t the only person she recognized.