Chase had a split-second to control his instinct to duck, and he managed it. Took it on the chin.
Vi’s hand connected with a force that shouldn’t have surprised him, and he shoved off with his feet for good measure, so that the punch sent him flying back into the river. He grabbed a deep breath as he flew, hit the water with a loud splash, and sank out of sight.
Okay, let’s just hang out down here for a while, give her a chance to calm down. Given all the free-diving he’d done, he was tempted to give it a full five minutes just to panic her—best way to break through anger, right?—but he didn’t want her actually diving in after him. Well, he kind of didn’t. Ruin that leather of hers. So he came up after three, expecting to find her hovering on the edge of the stone quay, getting anxious.
She wasn’t even looking at him!
She was—oh, fuck, she was huddled over her hand, her face twisted in agony.
He leapt out of the river, water flinging off him. “Honey—” He reached for her wrist.
Her hands flew up, and he barely saved his eyes. One of her nails raked up his cheek, as she went for them.
He grabbed both her arms, taking firm control of her. She kicked him in the groin.
Ow. Damn it. He should have kept that vow to wear protection around her. Hunching over himself, he glared at her. “Was that the fuck necessary? Ow.”
“Fuck you.” She clutched her wrist, her face a mask of pain.
“Honey.” Damn it, had she broken her hand on his jaw? And he’d been so damn cocky about letting her hit him. It had never occurred to him that she’d get hurt. “Let me look at it. Please?”
He was vaguely aware of the audience they were gathering, all the other couples or groups who had been hanging out on this stone island in the middle of the Seine now focused on them with varying degrees of fascination, wariness, and willingness to intervene to help Vi. He kept the awareness of the crowd and its potential for trouble in his peripheral, but mostly he focused on Vi.
Who had all her rage focused on him, green eyes like two of her own knives. “You ruined my life. Go to hell.”
“I didn’t! It wasn’t—” He bit his teeth together over the words.
I didn’t come up with the food poisoning thing.
But he was the one who had said the restaurant needed to be shut down.
“You didn’t ruin my life?” she said very precisely. “I’ve been climbing my way up through macho kitchens since I was fifteen. I run a two-star restaurant. I worked eighteen-, twenty-hour days for the past thirteen years. And now this will be the only thing the world remembers about me. What the hell do you think you haven’t ruined?”
He shoved his hand over his face. “Can’t you still do all that? I mean—those people who give stars don’t even like the American president, right? They’ll probably give you an extra one for poisoning him.”
And she hit him again.
Or she tried. This time, he did duck, shifting with her attack so that her body flew half past him, guiding her wrist, bringing her back up so that he locked her against his body, back to him. “Honey—”
She stomped on his foot. With that stiletto heel. Fuck, that hurt.
He hefted her up so that she couldn’t reach it.
She kicked him in the shins.
Ow. “Will you stop?” He let her go, putting some space between them. At least she wasn’t as likely to break her foot on him as her hand.
Phones were out in the crowd around him. Yeah, this was definitely ending up on film, and some people were bound to be calling the police. Wonderful. If he got arrested, there were some people higher up his chain of command who were going to skin him alive.
If she got arrested a second time in one day, they might actually keep her in jail.
“Honey, we need to get your hand looked at, and—”
“If you call me honey one more time, I will kill you.”
He hesitated. “Hon—bab—sweetheart, listen.”
“And not sweetheart either!”
He frowned at her. “Mademoiselle Gorgeous, then, fuck.”
“Mad-moi-selle!” she shouted.
“What?”
“You pronounce it mad’moiselle!”
Wasn’t that what he had just said? This damn language. “You’re getting hysterical.” And thank God she didn’t have her knives on her. “Will you just—”
“Hysterical?” Her fist clenched.
Oh, hell. He took the coward’s way out and just went ahead and threw himself back in the water before her fist could actually make impact.
He came up starting to get just a little mad himself and gripped the edge of the quay, glaring up at her. “Are we done yet?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she gave a look at his hands that made him jerk them back from the edge, just in case she decided to stomp on them with those stilettos. He gripped a ring halfway down the stone wall of the quay instead, out of stomping reach. Some people in the crowd were starting to laugh and applaud her. “You can swim, right?”