Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(75)
The entire restaurant erupted into insane cheers. Even her grandmother grinned.
It went all over Paris, from all those phones held up to film them. Hell, it went all over the world.
To think that once upon a time, she had just been Lina Farah, top pastry chef. And now she was some kind of international symbol of courage and persistence and pursuing the beautiful in life no matter what. Like a tulip.
Or if necessary, a hydra.
Jake slid the hydra-dragon ring onto her finger.
“I’m going to get you a lion ring,” she said, and wrapped her arms tight around him.
Cheers and cheers and more cheers. She wasn’t the only one crying. Complete strangers were crying, actually.
Vi said something to the head of the wait staff, and in a couple of minutes, champagne bottles were popping at all the tables, and they didn’t do what wait staff in a top restaurant were trained to do, discreetly pop them. They gave those bottles a little shake pre-opening and let the corks fly.
“If I become an international heroine because of a marriage proposal rather than for my career, I feel as if there’s some kind of feminist issue here,” Lina murmured to Jake wryly, resting her weight against his side.
He tightened his arm around her. “That’s because you overthink things. You probably should join our book club. It’s made for people like you.”
“Only if you guys promise to read Simone de Beauvoir.”
“Sure.” Ian stopped beside her to grin at her and handed her a pair of black frames. “I’ll even let you borrow my glasses.”
Lina slipped them on and pulled them down her nose enough to give Ian a librarian’s look.
Ian winked. Chase laughed. Elias and Vi both shook their heads. Lina’s parents looked at each other and smiled.
And all around them, people toasted them all through the night.
“And that,” Jake told Elias with a great deal of relief and satisfaction a while later, as he took a sip of the champagne someone had thrust into his hand, “is what I call flirting. You should try it sometime.”
FIN
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My next book will be Lucien’s story in the Vie en Roses series. If you haven’t tried that series, keep reading for an excerpt from the first book, Once Upon a Rose.
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Other Books by Laura Florand
Paris Nights Series
All for You
Chase Me
Trust Me
Amour et Chocolat Series
All’s Fair in Love and Chocolate, a novella in Kiss the Bride
The Chocolate Thief
The Chocolate Kiss
The Chocolate Rose (also a prequel to La Vie en Roses series)
The Chocolate Touch
The Chocolate Heart
The Chocolate Temptation
SunKissed (also a sequel to SnowKissed)
Shadowed Heart (a sequel to The Chocolate Heart)
La Vie en Roses Series
Turning Up the Heat (a novella prequel)
The Chocolate Rose (also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
A Rose in Winter, a novella in No Place Like Home
Once Upon a Rose
A Wish Upon Jasmine
A Crown of Bitter Orange
Snow Queen Duology
SnowKissed (a novella)
SunKissed (also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
Memoir
Blame It on Paris
Once Upon a Rose
Book 1 in La Vie en Roses series: Excerpt
Burlap slid against Matt’s shoulder, rough and clinging to the dampness of his skin as he dumped the sack onto the truck bed. The rose scent puffed up thickly, like a silk sheet thrown over his face. He took a step back from the truck, flexing, trying to clear his pounding head and sick stomach.
The sounds of the workers and of his cousins and grandfather rode against his skin, easing him. Raoul was back. That meant they were all here but Lucien, and Pépé was still stubborn and strong enough to insist on overseeing part of the harvest himself before he went to sit under a tree. Meaning Matt still had a few more years before he had to be the family patriarch all by himself, thank God. He’d copied every technique in his grandfather’s book, then layered on his own when those failed him, but that whole job of taking charge of his cousins and getting them to listen to him was still not working out for him.
But his grandfather was still here for now. His cousins were here, held by Pépé and this valley at their heart, and not scattered to the four winds as they might be one day soon, when Matt became the heart and that heart just couldn’t hold them.
All that loss was for later. Today was a good day. It could be. Matt had a hangover, and he had made an utter fool of himself the night before, but this could still be a good day. The rose harvest. The valley spreading around him.
J’y suis. J’y reste.
I am here and here I’ll stay.