He abruptly stopped. “What, you do not like Fred Astaire? That was ‘Night and Day,’ one of his greatest hits.”
“No, Fred Astaire is fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just need to handle this situation. So can you stop dancing for a moment and talk to me?”
Guillaume shrugged. “Okay.”
“Great.” I took a deep breath. “I can have this money?” I asked, holding up the bills.
“That’s fine.” He nodded and smiled at me. “Whatever you want, Emma. You should buy a souvenir, too. To remember this day.”
“I think I’ll pass on that,” I said drily.
I knocked on the door to the security office and slipped inside, holding the roll of bills in my hand. The eyes of all three guards widened as I held it up.
“Okay, I have twenty-eight hundred euros here,” I said.
“Mademoiselle, where did you get that?” asked one of the guards.
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
“Mademoiselle,” the security chief said slowly. “I think you misunderstand. You are trying to make a pot-de-vin?”
“What?” I asked. I rapidly translated the words in my head. “A pot of wine?”
“No, no,” he said, looking troubled. “It is an expression. It means to, eh, to try to get somebody to do something by giving them the money?”
“A bribe?” I asked. We seemed to be talking in circles.
“I do not know that word,” the guard said. “But in France, mademoiselle, it is illegal to trade money for a favor.”
“Oh,” I said, reddening. “I thought that’s what you were asking for.”
“No, no, mademoiselle!” the security manager said, shaking his head violently. I glanced at the other two, who were staring at the money rather more lustily than their boss. “I meant that perhaps we could trade a favor for a favor, so to speak.”
“A favor?” I asked hesitantly. I jammed the wad of bills into my pocket, feeling like an idiot.
“Oui.” The chief glanced at the other guards and then back at me. “Could it be arranged to have Guillaume Riche play a private concert for my daughter and her friends? I would be the best father in the ?le-de-France.”
“And my daughter, too,” said one of the guards. “She would also like to go to the private concert.”
“I do not have a daughter,” the youngest guard said. “But my girlfriend, she would like to see Guillaume Riche.”
I stared at the three of them for a moment.
“You just want Guillaume to perform a private concert?” I asked.
“At my house,” the security chief said boldly. “My wife will even cook him dinner.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “I think that can be arranged.”
Twenty minutes later, after extracting a promise from a reluctant Guillaume that he would put on a private show for the security guards’ loved ones, I was on my way downstairs in an elevator, my Celio-clad rock star in tow.
“Here,” I said, thrusting a piece of paper at him. I’d spent five minutes jotting out some notes while he signed autographs for the starstruck security staff. “This is what you’re going to say to the media.”
“I have to make a statement?” he whined. “C’mon, Emma! I just want to go home and go to bed.”
“You should have thought of that before you wound up naked in the Eiffel Tower,” I said.
“I wasn’t naked,” he pointed out with a grin. “I had my briefs on. And,” he added pointedly, “a top hat.”
“You are the strangest person I’ve ever met,” I muttered. “Anyhow, unless you want me to go out there and tell the truth, you’re going to have to read this.”
“You’re very tough, Emma,” he said sullenly. “You know that?”
I sighed. “Can we lose the top hat, too, Guillaume?”
He shook his head sadly, removed the hat from his head, and handed it over, along with the cane.
I led Guillaume outside to the wall of reporters. The moment they spotted us, they started shouting. I tried to avoid locking eyes with Gabriel, who was in the front of the crowd, staring at us in disbelief.
“Guillaume and I have a statement to make, and then we won’t be taking any questions,” I said firmly. The crowd quieted down a bit. “This has all been a mistake. Guillaume will be filming scenes for his ‘City of Light’ music video here, and he was simply scouting out locations. There was a miscommunication, which is why I wasn’t here with him. ‘City of Light,’ ” I added, throwing in a promotional plug, “is the first single off Guillaume’s debut album. I have no doubt you’ll be blown away. It’s the story of a man meeting the woman of his dreams in Paris, which is why this location makes so much sense for the video shoot. Of course the song will hit radio stations across the world this evening, for the first time.
“Now,” I concluded, “Guillaume has a few words to say to you.”