Chapter 1 A Stranger To The Rescue
Vivienne's POV
"You can resign the moment we’re married,” Harold Greystone announced, as if the matter were already settled. “Your only duties will be keeping my house in order and delivering a son within the first year. Daughters cost too much, so we’ll stop at one boy.”
He delivered the decree while dabbing croissant flakes from his lips, his belly straining the buttons of a bespoke shirt that had clearly surrendered years ago. At thirty-nine, Harold’s hair had retreated to a wispy crown, and his eyes carried the dull gleam of a man who believed money could buy anything, including youth.
I sat opposite him in a Marseille waterfront café, forced into this meeting by my stepmother Margot, who feared her wenty-four-year-old stepdaughter might actually choose happiness over obligation.
Harold had spent the first ten minutes complaining about my smoky eyeliner (“too theatrical”), then spent the next ten mentally undressing the rest of me. The moment I crossed my long legs, his complaints evaporated.
“And your height?” he asked, leaning forward with the eagerness of a man calculating future bedroom logistics.
I swirled the last of my espresso, voice cool. “One-seventy-eight.”
His face lit up like a child handed the exact toy he demanded. “Perfect. I’m barely one-eighty-one on a good day. You’ll have to rise on tiptoe to kiss me, exactly how I like it. I’ll still bend if I must, of course.”
Every woman in Marseille knew that when men bragged about being “one-eighty,” the tape measure usually shrank a solid eight centimetres once the shoes came off.
I arched a brow. “You seem unaware that most women prefer not to crane their necks like giraffes just to reach their husband’s mouth.”
Harold’s smile faltered.
At that precise moment, the café door swung open and a man stepped inside who made the afternoon light look dimmer by comparison. Over six-foot-four, shoulders filling the doorway, dark hair pushed back by impatient fingers, the kind of bone structure that belonged on marble statues, not mortals. He moved like he owned the air itself.
My gaze locked on him and refused to let go.
I stood without thinking, chair scraping loudly against terracotta tiles, and crossed the café in four deliberate strides.
“Excuse me,” I said, voice honey over steel, “mind if I steal you for thirty seconds? I need to prove a point.”
Raphael Moreau glanced down, way down at the stunning brunette suddenly in his space. One dark brow lifted in silent question.
Before Harold could protest, I quickly curled my fingers into Raphael’s silk tie, tugged him down to my level, and brushed my lips against his in a kiss so swift and searing it left scorch marks on the air.
Then I stepped back, turned to Harold, and smiled like a woman who had just won the war.
“See?” I said sweetly. “That is the height a man should be if he ever expects me to kiss him on tiptoe.”
Harold’s face went from pink to purple. He shot to his feet, chair toppling behind him. “You little..! Who the hell do you think you are? I’ll make sure every matchmaker in Marseille knows what a cheap…”
Raphael’s low voice cut through the rant like a blade through silk.
“Careful,” he murmured, eyes never leaving me. “Finish that sentence and you’ll be picking your teeth off the floor.”
Harold sputtered, grabbed his jacket, and stormed out, muttering threats that dissolved the moment he hit the sunlight.
I finally looked up, really looked up at the stranger whose tie she still held hostage.
I released the silk, offered a slow, dangerous smile, and said, “Thank you for the rescue, Mr…?”
“Moreau,” he supplied, the corner of his mouth curving. “Raphael Moreau. And you just made my entire afternoon.”
Perfect, I thought with vicious satisfaction. Once Margot heard how I had humiliated Harold Greystone in front of half the old port, no respectable (or even semi-respectable) suitor would touch me with a ten-foot barge pole.
I delivered one last kick to Harold’s ego with the heel of my stiletto, spun on the spot, and flashed the towering stranger a dazzling smile.
“Thanks for the assist, handsome. See you around, Marseille’s a small city.”
I was already halfway to the door when a large, warm hand closed around my wrist like a velvet shackle.
“Running off after using my mouth without permission?” Raphael Moreau’s voice rolled over me, low and rough like gravel soaked in cognac. “That’s new.”
A shiver raced up my spine and detonated at the base of my skull. I turned slowly and finally looked, really looked, at the man I had just kissed.
Good God.
He was carved from midnight and sin. Sun-kissed olive skin stretched over razor-sharp cheekbones, a jaw that could cut diamonds, and eyes the color of burnt amber under thick black lashes. Everything about him screamed money, danger, and very expensive trouble.
I swallowed. “I… tend to act first and think later. Occupational hazard.”
His mouth curved, slow and lethal. “I noticed.”
Before either of us could speak again, the black-suited man at Raphael’s side ended a call and stepped forward, face grim.
“Sir, change of plans. Sophia’s flight was diverted; storms over the Alps. She can’t land until tomorrow at the earliest. The engagement banquet is tonight. Your grandfather is already asking questions.”
Raphael’s expression froze. The temperature around him seemed to drop ten degrees.
I felt the shift like a cold wave. Engagement banquet. Of course. Men who looked like that didn’t walk into random cafés single.
I tried to tug her wrist free. He didn’t let go.
Raphael’s grandfather, the legendary Armand Moreau, had survived two wars, three bankruptcies, and one near-fatal heart attack eighteen months ago. The old lion had agreed to the transplant on one ironclad condition: his thirty-year-old grandson would be married within three days of getting engaged, or the entire Moreau shipping empire would pass to charity.
Sophia Valenti, the polished, camera-ready heiress Raphael had hired to play the part of perfect fiancée, was now stuck somewhere over Switzerland.
Raphael’s gaze flicked down to my mouth, then back to my eyes. Something dark and desperate flickered there.
He still hadn’t released my wrist.
I arched a brow. “Anything else you need from me, monsieur? Or are we done here?”
Raphael’s grip tightened for a fraction of a second, then loosened just enough to slide his thumb across the frantic pulse at my wrist.
“Actually,” he said, voice velvet and steel, “I think we’re just getting started.”
Raphael’s assistant, Lucien Valois, stared at me as if I had materialised from thin air. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Sir,” Lucien tried again, voice tighter, “we are out of options.”
Raphael’s gaze never left my face. Something cold and calculating slid behind the amber, then settled into ruthless decision.
“This one,” he said simply. “We’ll use her.”
Lucien’s eyes widened. “She’s… not exactly…”
“She’ll do.”
I felt the shift like a trap snapping shut. “Use me for what, exactly?”
Raphael stepped closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “You stole a kiss. Now you owe me. Take responsibility.”
My pulse stuttered. “Responsibility? I didn’t sign up to be your scapegoat because you got handsy with your own tie.”
He tilted his head, amusement flickering. “My first kiss in public in fifteen years, and you just claimed it on a whim. Be honest. Was it really your first ever?”
I lifted her chin, defiant. “Twenty-four years on this planet and I saved it for today. Congratulations. You just became my original story.”
A beat of silence. Then the corner of his mouth curved dangerously, and delighted.
“Perfect.”
Before I could blink, Lucien was barking quiet orders into his phone. Four black-suited men appeared from nowhere and formed a silent wall around her.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I had expected shouting, maybe a slapped face, possibly a viral video of my little stunt. I had not expected it to be smoothly, professionally kidnapped.
The venue was the Château de la Croix, a cliffside palace of glass and stone overlooking the Mediterranean, the most exclusive address in all of Provence. Tonight it belonged to the Moreau dynasty, and every light in the place blazed for one reason: Raphael Moreau’s engagement announcement.
Guests in couture and diamonds whispered behind champagne flutes.
“Who is the girl on Jeremy Holden’s arm? She looks like she wandered in off the docks.”
“Different from the polished creature we were promised, non?”
Raphael, dressed now in midnight-black tuxedo that cost more than most cars, walked onto the marble dais with my hand locked in his. Cameras flashed like lightning.
He lifted a microphone, voice carrying effortlessly over the stunned crowd.
“Bonsoir, mesdames et messieurs. Allow me to present the woman who will become my wife, Vivienne Laurent.”
A collective inhale sharp enough to suck the oxygen from the room.
My blood roared in my ears. I had wanted to ruin Margot’s plans.
I had not planned on becoming the counterfeit fiancée of Marseille’s most powerful, most untouchable bachelor in front of four hundred
witnesses.
Raphael leaned down, lips brushing my ear, voice velvet and venom.
“Smile, chérie. You started this. Now we finish it together.”