All for You (Paris Nights #1)(80)

So much pride swelled in her, to hear her much-loved, big-brother boss praise her boyfriend, that Célie bounced on her toes with it before it burst her.

Then she remembered he wasn’t her boyfriend.

Shit.

“Your wife?” she asked Dom, as saucily as she could manage.

He pointed a big finger at her. “Don’t you start.”

“What?” she exclaimed, and maybe Dom couldn’t tell how fake and forced the teasing sounded over her own empty heart. “It’s been a week! Didn’t you miss me?”

“I had your damn boyfriend to keep me company. Trust me, I’ve heard enough out of him about putting a ring on somebody’s finger. I think my own method is working out better for me in my relationship, thank you.”

Hey. If Dom and Joss were in a contest, Célie kind of wanted Joss to win. Except, of course … she stared at her bare left ring finger.

Damn it.

She went to make chocolates. Mint. Joss’s favorite.

Merde.

And maybe she did keep glancing out the casement window. But Joss never showed up to stand in his usual spot.

Leaning on the railing of her apartment window that night, gazing out at all the other millions of people in Paris, some of whom must have screwed up their chances of happiness, too, she thought for a moment she spotted him, leaning against a building down the street, looking up at her apartment. But he made no sign to her if it was him, and when the male body shifted from that spot and walked down the street away from her, she decided she must have imagined it.

Still the sight of that broad back leaving her farther and farther behind broke her heart.

The second card came the next day. A view of Abidjan at night, glowing glamorously against the water. Célie. The ink on the heart over the I in her name was so thick it almost couldn’t be recognized as a heart. Then, I miss you. Joss.


She stared at it a long time, that emotion that he had pulled out of himself and put down onto vulnerable paper. Then she hugged it to herself and placed it very carefully in a line at the back of the marble counter by the casement window. I would wait more than five years for you. I am terrible at this. I miss you. Joss.

But he still didn’t show up at the end of the day, and the next day, no cards came at all.

Her stomach knotted until even chocolate couldn’t sit in it. When she left work, she stared at the motorcycle, still parked where Joss had left it ten days ago, and then drove her little moped home. In the middle of the night, she had to sit between her bed and the wall again, arms wrapped around herself as tightly as she could hold.

Dom tossed two envelopes to her as soon as the mail came late the next afternoon. She grabbed them and carried them into the currently empty ganache room, opening them in order of postmark.

Célie. No heart over her name, the usually square handwriting angled, as if he’d written quickly. I know you told me to leave you alone. The thing is, you also made me promise not to do that ever again. So I … here’s my phone number. Just to make sure you have it. Joss.

She swallowed, around so many things stuck in her throat that she couldn’t get down.

She opened the fourth one. Célie. Her name underlined three times, a heart drawn over her name just once. Je t’aime. Joss.

She pressed the postcard to her chest and stood at the casement window, staring down at the empty street. It took her a long time to release that postcard and set it in the line with the others. I would wait more than five years for you. I am terrible at this. I miss you. Here’s my phone number. I love you. Joss.

Her fingers stroked that first postcard from C?te d’Ivoire, the words, I am terrible at this. It had made her smile over the deep twist of her heart, because it was so true. He was terrible at writing his thoughts and feelings down. It was just exactly like him. His true offer of himself: I am terrible at this. But I am going to try for you anyway.

Exactly like him.

Like, I’m going to screw this up, when she let him up into her apartment. This thing deep inside him, this conviction, that he would fail. A belief he shoved aside ruthlessly, refusing to allow it power over him: I won’t screw this up. I will get it right.

The mixed-up determination of a man who couldn’t offer the girl who was crazy about him a fake diamond ring.

She went to the window again.

And … there he was. She almost didn’t recognize him seated, his forearms braced on his knees, his shoulders slumped, his head bent. He didn’t look like her Joss at all.

***

Joss sat waiting again, a man they were probably going to arrest as a stalker. He didn’t stand in his usual spot but sat on some crates piled outside a store, gazing down at his linked hands, his thumbs pushing and catching at each other like miniature martial artists.

For the past two weeks, he’d done his job. That was what a Legionnaire did, after all—his job, no matter what. He’d gone to C?te d’Ivoire, with Jaime Corey and her overprotective boyfriend. Just watching Dom lay his arm over Jaime’s shoulders possessively felt as if Dom was carefully dropping stupid, sparkly flakes of that precious sea salt Célie liked so much into every single wound Joss had. And smiling in self-satisfaction at a job well done, when Joss clamped his jaw together to hide the agony.

But, in fact, Dom was probably just too damn blissfully content to think about his effect on Joss. Although he and Jaime both slipped Joss little bits of advice at every opportunity.