French Kissed Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  I See London Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Chanel Cleeton

  About the Author

  French Kissed

  An International School novel

  by

  Chanel Cleeton

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Chanel Cleeton (contact: [email protected]). Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  French Kissed Copyright © 2014 by Chanel Cleeton

  Cover Design © Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations

  To every reader who wanted to see Fleur get her happy ending . . .

  This one’s for you . . .

  Thank you!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fleur

  I’d never spent much time thinking about men’s backs. Clothes, watches, cars? Sure. Backs? Not so much. But then again, to be fair, no one’s back looked like his.

  I shifted in my seat, hoping the movement would keep me awake. Bad enough it was nine a.m. but it was also my Project Finance class, which was a giant pain in my ass. So, really, my back ogling kept me sane and alert. At least that’s what I told myself as he stretched again, and I felt things. Lots of things.

  Max Tucker sat in front of me, wearing a light-gray T-shirt that vaguely translated to, I don’t give a shit what I look like. Your clothes could say things like that when your body screamed warrior sex god. Not that I was listening or anything.

  He moved forward an inch, and I sucked in a deep breath, watching, fascinated by the muscles rippling under the soft fabric. Compared to the rest of the guys here at the International School in London, Max was huge. The Arab guys weren’t bulky at all, and most of the European boys had a slim but muscular build that gave them an air of grace when they moved. My ex, Costa, had that same languid ease about him, as if it were too much trouble for him to exert himself physically.

  There was no grace about Max, and not only because he wasn’t built that way. There was something about him . . . something that didn’t fit here.

  It wasn’t just that he was American or that he didn’t have money, although that was a big part of it. We went to a school where labels, wealth, and appearances mattered, but more than anything, what counted most was swagger. You had to walk around like you owned the place, and at a school filled with the sons and daughters of world leaders and moguls, that was no easy feat. But even without the swagger, you noticed Max. He might have been more peasant than king, but his body was all god.

  He was tall. The kind of tall that actually made me feel small, which at five eleven was a challenge. His shoulders were so broad, he nearly blocked out the class. Reason number one why I sat behind him. If they couldn’t see you, they couldn’t call on you. And fuck if I knew anything about project finance. I was here because it was required for my fashion marketing major, and even though it was only the first week of classes, I was already over it.

  The other reason, the one that had me squirming in my seat as I drank in Max’s body, was that I liked looking at him. He was beautiful in a rugged way that really shouldn’t have been beautiful at all. Costa had been elegance and sophistication, with eyes that hinted at wicked pleasures and dark sex.

  Max didn’t look like that at all. He was too open, his eyes too expressive, his face too easy to read. He didn’t look like he had secrets, like he’d ever had secrets. He looked solid. And while I’d once thought solid was the most boring thing in the world, it now taunted me, sitting inches away. It said, Taste, touch, see. It wanted me to reach out and curl my fingers around his ratty gray T-shirt, slip my hand under the fabric, and stroke the golden skin and hard abs his shirt hinted at.

  Merde.

  It hit me again, like a punch to the head. I wanted—no, after over a year of celibacy, needed was a better word—to get laid. I knew I was hard up when I was lusting after someone like Max. Someone I hated. Someone who definitely hated me.

  ###

  Max

  Fleur Marceaux’s eyes bore into me like two lasers shooting at my back. Half the time I expected that when I turned around, I’d find a dagger there. The other half I thought of long, straight light-brown hair and deep brown eyes, ballerina-like legs, tanned skin, and more attitude than one man could ever handle . . . or want.

  I wasn’t sure if it was a French thing, or a Fleur thing, but either way, she took high maintenance to new levels.

  I turned in my seat slightly, just able to make out the curve of her jaw and her soft pink lips. Because I was weak, I allowed my gaze to dip down to take in the rest of perfection.

  Even at a school like the International School, where the vast majority of the student body—male and female—bathed themselves in designer labels and over-the-top outfits, Fleur took the cake. She’d brought her A game today, and if she wanted to stare holes in my back, then fuck, I’d return the favor to her front.

  I’d been around her enough last year when she’d dated my best friend George—before she put his heart in a blender and hit “liquefy”—to know that the only way to manage Fleur was to not let her mind-fuck you into submission. She always had the upper hand, so I made a point of taking it from her—because I liked it, and even more, because I liked the way it teased out a little line between her brows. The girl who glided through life looked pissed off, and as much as I shouldn’t have cared, her reaction did things to me. So I looked. A lot.

  She was wearing a dress today. I had no idea what the color was—something between red and orange that clung to every inch of her body. The neckline dipped low—lower than it probably should have for class—framing mouthwatering cleavage. She wasn’t curvy, and her breasts were smaller than average, her ass the same, but when her hips moved as she strutted down the halls, I’d always found myself unable to tear my gaze away.

  I’d hated her for three years; been in lust with her since the first day I bumped into her in the hall freshman year. Total mind-fuck.

  She glared back at me, her lips slanting into a hard line, and I met her gaze with a smug satisfaction I didn’t completely feel. I never felt satisfied around Fleur—just needy, and edgy, and wanting more. It made the game of chicken we constantly played with each oth
er that more difficult to win. Impossible, really.

  I turned in my seat, adjusting my jeans, struggling to concentrate on the professor at the front of the room and not the girl behind me.

  It was my senior year of college, just weeks before I started the long process of going through rounds of interviews for my dream job. Some companies began hiring in the fall of your senior year. I’d been waiting for this moment forever, and now it was here, and it was scary as shit.

  I heard my father’s voice in my head:

  What do you need with that fancy education? You think you’re too good for home now? You just wait. You’ll come home and end up working with your brothers at the bar.

  I tried to block it out. Block out the doubt and the fear that he was right, that I actually couldn’t do this. I was applying to some of the best investment banks in London, one of the most competitive cities in the world. My academic record had to be perfect.

  “Eighty percent of your grade in this class will be a team project you’ll work on for the entire semester,” our professor announced from the front of the room. “The project will involve you financing a business venture. I’ll give you the parameters, and you’ll have to work within those guidelines to create a successful business. You’ll be graded on a variety of factors, including how well you work together, the overall quality of your project, a written paper, and a presentation before the International Business faculty at the end of the semester. You can see how the individual components will be weighed on page four of the syllabus.”

  I thumbed through the pages, unable to ignore the feeling that Fleur was watching me again. Didn’t she care about her grades at all? Rumor had it that her father was filthy rich, but what the hell was she going to do after graduation? Live off Daddy? Did she even care about her education, or was college just a series of parties for her?

  The International School was a good school, but it definitely attracted a certain type of student. For the most part, the American kids came here to study. A lot of us were on scholarship and had taken out student loans. Taking your education seriously had an entirely different meaning when you knew you’d be spending the next ten years of your life paying it back. If I got lucky, got the kind of job I’d been working for all along, I could turn ten years into two.

  “Part of being successful is meeting the challenges thrown your way,” the professor continued. “You may not always like your coworkers, and there’s no ‘fair’ in business. You may be paired with a weaker group, and you can only work harder to overcome your shortfalls. So, in the spirit of creating an authentic business environment, you won’t be allowed to choose your partners as was done in previous years.”

  Shit.

  Groans erupted throughout the classroom. I understood his point, but the odds of me getting a good partner were just drastically reduced. Maybe a quarter of the class took their major seriously and actually cared about learning. The rest of the class was like Fleur; their degrees were pieces of paper to hang on walls at family companies where they had secure positions waiting for them after graduation, and an impressive title like “vice-president” they would add after their name before they turned twenty-five.

  I had seventy thousand dollars in student loans, and the offer that I could sleep on the saggy couch in my parents’ living room for a couple weeks after graduation—if I paid rent.

  “If you’re sitting in an odd numbered row, turn behind you. Congratulations, you’ve just met your new business partner.”

  Wait, what?

  I counted the rows, dread filling me when I came to mine. Fuck.

  There was a moment when I thought about saying something to the professor, a stupid wistful moment that vanished as soon as it came. I turned slowly, as if my body could prolong the inevitable. But it couldn’t, and it didn’t, and the next thing I knew, I was face-to-face with my nemesis-slash-crush.

  Fleur’s lips curved, and her eyes filled with a knowing glint as if she recognized my discomfort and loved it. Her voice came next, that hint of a French accent some masochistic part of me gravitated toward like a sailor caught by a siren’s song.

  “Hi, partner.”

  ###

  Fleur

  We faced off at a little French café around the corner from school. Professor Schrader had released us early so we could go over the project with our partners. Normally, I would’ve been thrilled—thirty minutes less of class was always a win—but at the same time it meant thirty minutes of my life spent with Max.

  He scowled at me across the table, and I got a little preview of what the next three months would hold. Fabulous.

  I plastered on a saccharine smile completely at odds with my tone. “Are you always like this, or is it just me?”

  Max jerked his head up from the notebook he’d been scribbling in—he had freakishly small handwriting—and stared at me blankly as if he’d almost forgotten I was there.

  My eyes narrowed. “Believe me, I’m no happier about us working together than you are.”

  Okay, that was an outrageous lie. My GPA hovered dangerously around a 2.0, and I needed to pass this class to graduate. Max was allegedly a genius. I definitely had the better end of the deal here. Unfortunately, he was just so Max.

  I leaned in closer, trying to sneak a peek at the notebook in front of him. “What are you doing?”

  He looked back down at the page, his face hidden, his voice barely over a mumble. “Coming up with a plan for the project.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to talk about it?” I asked, torn between annoyed and hurt that he didn’t even ask what I wanted. He probably figured I wasn’t smart enough to contribute. “Shouldn’t we come up with a project together?”

  No way was I going to end up with something boring. If I was going to have to stare at numbers all day, then at least give me something pretty to look at—besides Max. A fashion label, something I could handle.

  “Hello?” I waved my hand in his face and was met with silence. He wasn’t particularly talkative on an average day, but this was ridiculous.

  Max let out a little huff of air as he leaned back in his chair, his palms behind his head. I was treated to the view of big, tanned biceps, and long, corded arms. His shirt rose with the motion, displaying an inch of his abs before it snapped back into place as he slouched forward in his seat.

  Merde.

  “Fine. What kind of project do you want to choose?” He stared at me expectantly as I struggled to transition from that hint of ab to finance. “Well?” There was a challenge in his voice we both knew I couldn’t rise to, and a gleam in his eyes that said what I already knew. He’d written me off as an airhead a long time ago.

  This was what I hated most about Max. He always made me feel like I was an idiot. To be fair, compared to him, I probably was. I didn’t like school, found most of it to be a giant waste of time. And I didn’t love my major. The fashion part was great, but the rest of it? Business was my father’s thing, not mine.

  It would have been easy to blame the language barrier—English, after all, was my second language—but it wasn’t that. Boarding school in Switzerland had been in English and French, and my grades had still been dismal. I’d spent more time hooking up with Costa than studying.

  And now, at twenty-two, with less than a year between me and graduation, I regretted it. Regretted all the times I’d blown off studying to go clubbing, all the time I’d wasted on things that didn’t really matter, and the one person who definitely didn’t.

  I didn’t want to be stupid, didn’t like the way people like Max looked down on me, but it was all so far beyond me. So I got Cs and Ds occasionally and skipped class when I could get away with it, because sitting in classrooms listening to subjects everyone else so easily understood was sheer torture.

  I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. No clue who I was supposed to be.

  I blamed Samir. He was my best friend, and thanks to our French mothers, my cousin. But most of all, he was my partner in cri
me. When I’d been slinging back Cristal at clubs, he’d been right there next to me. It was what everyone around us did. It was normal. And there was safety in numbers; it was how you knew you were doing what you were supposed to, that your life was going according to plan. Eventually we had to grow up, but I’d always thought I’d have more time. But then Samir had graduated and enrolled at the School of Oriental & African Studies to get his master’s, and he’d given everything up for his girlfriend, my other best friend, Maggie.

  He was more serious, more driven, just more. So was Maggie. They were talking about getting a flat together next semester and making all these plans, and I was happy for them, really I was. I just wasn’t sure where that left me. I was the female Peter fucking Pan, left behind, wondering what happened next.

  I didn’t have a future to get excited about. Didn’t have someone to make plans with. I had a past I wished I could forget and a blackmailer obsessed with making me remember.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Max

  I took my aggression out at the gym, hitting the weight machines until my muscles were screaming. It didn’t help.

  Today’s meeting with Fleur had been a disaster. We’d spent thirty minutes alternating between arguing and ignoring each other. I’d kept my head buried in my notebook while she froze me out. At this rate, it was going to take us three years to do the project, and I’d be paying off my student loans working at my father’s run-down bar.

  I had to get it together. I had seventy thousand reasons I needed to play nice with Fleur . . . somehow.

  I keyed in the code to our room, greeted by the sight of my roommate George playing Xbox.

  He was one of the few British students at the International School, and I always wondered if that sense of being different was what had made us such fast friends. He wasn’t a scholarship kid like me. In a country where university education was a hell of a lot cheaper than it was in the United States, it was a little unusual that he attended an international university and paid the school’s high tuition fees. But his dad was on the board of trustees so I figured that played a role.