Sweet Filthy Boy (Wild Seasons #1)(34)

I find an empty bench and take a seat, breathing in the fresh air and the scent of summer. My stomach growls at the smell of bread from a nearby cart but I ignore it, waiting to see how it handles breakfast first.

It’s then that I realize again that I’m in Paris. Five thousand miles from everything I know. This is the last chance I’ll have to relax, soak it in, create my own adventure, before I begin school and the regimented march from student to professional.

I walk every inch of the park, throw pennies into the fountain, and finish the paperback I had tucked in the bottom of my bag. For the span of an afternoon, Boston, my father, and school don’t even exist.





Chapter EIGHT

I’M ON SUCH a high from my day, I stop at the small market on the corner, intent on making Ansel dinner. I am all over this Paris thing, check me out. I’m learning to make do with the language barrier and find that the Parisians aren’t nearly as frustrated that I don’t speak French as I’d expected. They just seem to hate it when I try and then mangle it. I’ve been able to get by just fine with some pointing, smiling, innocent shrugging, and s’il vous pla?t, and manage to buy some wine and prawns, fresh pasta, and vegetables.

But my nerves creep back in as I walk to the rickety elevator and as it noisily ascends to the seventh floor. I’m not sure if he’ll be home yet. I’m not sure what to expect at all. Will we pick up where we left off in San Diego? Or is now when we start . . . uh . . . dating? Or has the experience of our first few days put him off this little experiment altogether?

I lose myself in cooking, impressed with Ansel’s small kitchen. I’ve figured out his stereo and have some French dance music on as I happily bounce around the kitchen. The apartment smells of butter and garlic and parsley when he walks in, and my body grows tight and jittery when I hear him drop his keys in the little bowl on the entry table, put his helmet on the floor beneath.

“Hello?”

“In the kitchen,” I reply.

“You’re cooking?” he calls, rounding the corner into the main loft of the apartment. He looks good enough to devour. “I’m guessing you feel better.”

“You have no idea.”

“It smells wonderful.”

“It’s almost ready,” I say, begging my pulse to slow. Seeing him makes the thrill inside me bloom so wide my chest grows tight.

But then his face falls.

“What is it?” I follow the path of his eyes to the pan on the stove where I’ve tossed the prawns with the pasta and vegetables.

He winces. “It looks unbelievable. It’s just . . .” He swipes a palm across the back of his neck. “I’m allergic to shellfish.”

I groan, covering my face. “Holy crap, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, clearly distressed. “How would you have known?”

The question hangs between us and we both look anywhere but at each other. The amount of things we know about each other seems dwarfed by the amount of things we don’t. I don’t even know how to go back to the introduction phase.

He takes a step closer, telling me, “It smells so good.”

“I wanted to thank you.” It takes a beat before I can get the rest out, and he looks away for the first time I can remember. “For taking care of me. For bringing me here. Please wait, I’ll go get something else.”

“We’ll go together,” he says, walking closer. He puts his hands on my hips but his arms are stiff and it feels forced.

“Okay.” I have no idea what to do with my own arms, and instead of doing what I think a normal woman would do in this situation—put them around his neck, pull him closer—I fold them awkwardly across my chest, tapping my collarbone with my finger.

I keep waiting for his eyes to flare with mischief or for him to tickle me, tease me, do something ridiculous and Ansel-like, but he seems beat and tense when he asks, “Did you have a good day?”

I start to answer but then he pulls one hand away, digging into his buzzing pocket and pulling out his phone, frowning at it. “Merde.”

That word I know. He’s been home for less than three minutes, and I already know what he’s going to say.

He looks back up at me, apology filling his eyes. “I have to go back into work.”


ANSEL IS GONE when I wake up, and the only evidence I have that he came back at some point is a note on the pillow beside mine telling me he was only home for a couple of hours and slept on the couch, not wanting to wake me. I swear I can feel something inside me splinter. I went to bed in one of his clean T-shirts and nothing else. New husbands don’t sleep on the couch. New husbands don’t worry about waking up their new, jobless, tourist wife in the middle of the night.

I don’t even remember if he kissed my forehead again before he left, but a very large part of me wants to text him and ask, because I’m starting to think the answer to that question will tell me if I should stay, or book the flight for my return trip home.

It’s easy to distract myself and fill my second day alone in Paris: I wander around the exhibits and gardens at the Musée Rodin, and then brave the interminable lines at the Eiffel Tower . . . but the wait is worth it. The view from the top is unreal. Paris is stunning at street level, and hundreds of stories up.

Back in the apartment Sunday night, Lola is my companion. She’s sitting on her couch at home in San Diego, recovering from whatever virus we both got, and replying to my texts with reassuring speed.