All for You (Paris Nights #1)(22)
“Célie.” He came after her. Not even hurrying to keep up with her, just this easy, ground-eating walk. Her chocolates still rode against his waist.
She swung back, putting the moped between them. “Don’t you tell me that you did it for me, you bastard.” She yanked her helmet away from him and thrust it onto her head. “And quit stalking me! It’s creepy! They’re about ready to have you arrested!”
An eyebrow went up a little, and he rubbed the back of his military cut. “That would be weird. And I’d have to go quietly to be polite? Or were they planning on sending a SWAT team?”
“Aaaarghh.” She strangled the scream as best she could, but the sound vibrated in her throat. She zipped her leather jacket.
“I didn’t realize I was stalking you. I was just waiting. Do you—” Straight brown eyebrows drew slowly together. “Do you want me to go away?” His words came out hard, jumbled, as if he was back in school, having to make sense of a text while the letters danced and twisted in front of him.
And her eyes filled again of course. Of course she had to keep crying in front of him. Wasn’t that perfect? “Don’t you—don’t you—” She had to gasp through the threat of sobs. “Don’t you dare go away again.” She yanked the metal box out of his waistband and shoved it into his hand. “And this is to be eaten! Not melted against your skin like you’re some … porn star!”
She swung onto the moped, starting it, wishing she had a big, growling motor like Dom on his real motorcycle instead of her silent little electric thing.
Joss reached out and grabbed hold of the handlebars. “Célie. I don’t know where you live. I don’t have your number. You don’t have mine. And I can’t give it to you, because I still need to buy a phone and find a place to stay. I don’t even know when you usually get off. If you don’t like me waiting outside where you work all day, can we come up with some plan for how I’m supposed to not go away?”
She stared at him, wishing for once she had a face shield on her helmet to provide a barrier against the world. “Fine,” she snapped. “Get on.”
And instead of roaring out of their banlieue with her arms wrapped around him on a powerful motorbike he’d souped up so he could rescue her on it as she used to daydream, she wobbled carefully with all his weight behind her and his thighs pressed against hers on her little moped into the mass of traffic circling République.
She’d always known she would regret not getting the pink bike.
Chapter 9
“You need a helmet,” Célie grumbled, sitting on the edge of the quay of the ?le de la Cité. She folded her legs under her, so she wouldn’t be tempted to lean back against the wall instead and … tuck herself up against a shoulder.
She’d always wanted to do that. Tuck herself up against his shoulder. She’d been looking for another guy against whose shoulder she would love to tuck herself for five years, but … yeah, no. No, the last thing she wanted to do was lower her guard to someone else, depend on someone else, and have him disappear in pursuit of all those big dreams that had no room for her.
“I need a car,” Joss said. “And a phone.” He leaned back against the wall behind him, stretching out his legs and folding his hands behind his head, contemplating the Seine. “Merde, but it’s good to be out of the Legion.”
I didn’t tell you to join it, Célie thought bitterly. She pulled her jacket off and draped it over her helmet, using it as an armrest. “Was it terrible?”
“It was challenging,” Joss said, of what was supposed to be one of the most brutally demanding military services on the planet. “Especially Corsica. It changed everything I understood about my own limits, about what I could do. But in the end, you’re under the orders of officers you don’t always agree with, and politicians, and, God forbid, sometimes even the UN. Also, while there are some of the best men in the world there, men you can look up to, there are definitely also some psychopath officers and NCOs. I hated having to do things I didn’t agree with, so I couldn’t see myself doing it another ten years.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asked warily. Wait, Corsica?
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. The river stretched behind her, the sun setting beyond the bridges and the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her or looking at the view of Paris with that hint of wonder that even seemed to ease the hardness his eyes had gained in the past five years. “I imagined taking you to the south of France or even one of the islands, like Tahiti or Réunion , and living there. But you seem to be happy here in Paris, so I’ll have to readjust. Unless Tahiti appeals.” A questioning lift of his eyebrows.
“Every time you talk about all the plans you made for me, like I was a snack in the refrigerator you were looking forward to eating when you got off work, it makes my head want to explode,” Célie growled.
His expression blanked again. He did that even better than he used to—hid his thoughts and feelings. Yeah, she could imagine that skill standing him in good stead as he went through training under those psychopaths he mentioned, and she could imagine that skill getting honed relentlessly. Coming as she did from an emotive and unstable family, something about that control of his reassured her. But it could also drive her completely nuts.