One To Watch(109)

She didn’t know how long it went on like that, them making out on the bridge, their legs tangled together like a couple of insufferable teenagers. Eventually, a producer broke in to tell them they were losing the light; the crew needed to be let go for the day, and it was time to go back to their hotel.

In the van on the ride back down toward the Seine, Ray asked Bea if they could spend the night together. A voice in her head screamed, Yes, please, yes, but she shoved it downward and told him she wasn’t ready, that she needed more time.

“You have all my time, Bea.” He draped his arms around her, pulled her in, like she was his. “Every minute I have left is yours.”

That night, Bea worried she’d lie awake fretting again, but her exhaustion finally overtook her. After all the confusion and elation and anguish and satisfaction, she found that there was nothing left to do but sleep.



Bea hadn’t seen Sam since the ruinous kissoff ceremony in Amboise, and she hadn’t had an actual conversation with him since their date in Champagne, now a full week past—an eternity in Main Squeeze time, and seemingly double that in Bea’s emotional journey. For their final date, Alison dressed Bea in dove-gray trousers and a black merino sweater, then handed her a silk bag small enough to fit in her palm.

“Eighteen pennies tied with red ribbon—an old superstition of my grandmother’s,” Alison explained. “She’d give them to us on special days for luck. After she died, my grandfather kept up the tradition, and now all us grandkids do too. They were married sixty years, can you imagine?”

“I honestly can’t.” Bea turned over the little satchel in her hands.

“Anyway, I just thought—for your last date of the season.”

“Thank you.” Bea hugged Alison, marveling that this whole experience had lasted only eight weeks, how little that really was compared to a lifetime.

After all the things Bea had seen in the past week—the shock on Luc’s face when she caught him with Lauren, the slope in Asher’s back as he walked away, the swimming relief in Ray’s eyes as she gave in to her desires and kissed him—was there any sight so uncomplicated and welcome as Sam at the base of the Eiffel Tower, beaming as Bea approached him?

“I know it’s so touristy, but look how BIG it is!” he exclaimed, his eyes full of wonder.

Bea laughed. “Yeah, that’s kind of its thing. You want to ride to the top?”

“No, I absolutely do not!”

He pulled her into a super-tight hug, planting sweet kisses on her forehead and in her hair.

“I missed you so much.” She exhaled.

“You’ve had a big week, huh?”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Well, I’ve got this idea—maybe it’s stupid, you tell me—but I’ve been thinking I might spend the rest of my life making you happy. So maybe today we get a head start?”

“How did you get so good?” Bea looked up at him, her heart swelling with fondness.

“You met my parents—your guess is as good as mine,” he joked, and Bea burst out laughing, reveling in how easy it was to be by his side.

After they finished filming at the tower, they loaded into their vans and went to Bea’s all-time favorite department store, the Galeries Lafayette. From the outside, the Galeries looked like any other building, but inside, they were absolutely spectacular: dozens of chambers filled with the most beautiful clothes, all arranged surrounding a soaring atrium topped with a magnificently patterned glass ceiling. From each little galerie, you could stand at a railing and look across the atrium to see the whole wonderful place, every room framed in archways of gleaming gold.

“This is not like Macy’s,” Sam observed, and Bea laughed.

“I’m so glad we got to come here,” she told him. “I have a little tradition that every time I’m in Paris, I stop in to buy a tube of Chanel lipstick.”

“Wow.” Sam grinned. “How’d I land a classy girl like you?”

Bea smiled back. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“I know it,” Sam murmured, pulling her in for a lingering kiss.

After that, they had to separate for a while: For this portion of the date, they were both given personal shoppers to help them select outfits for their dinner that night, a sunset cruise on the Seine. While Sam was off in menswear with a snooty fellow named Augustin, Bea went up to the specialty department with her shopper, Lorraine—one of those impossibly chic Parisian women in her fifties who looked more fashionable in a black turtleneck than most Americans could in couture.

“Well,” she said to Bea in a warm but matter-of-fact tone, “for you I am afraid we do not have many options.”

“I know.” Bea sighed. “I always try to shop here, but I usually just buy shoes and makeup—I never have much luck with clothes.”

“Ah, but this is the fault of backward-thinking designers,” Lorraine assured her. “Today, we’ll make our own luck.”

Lorraine had pulled a few gorgeous dresses for Bea, and while some worked better than others, none were perfect—until Bea stepped into a dress by Tanya Taylor. It was a black silk kimono-style dress embellished with jewel-bright flowers made of rainbow-hued sequins and paillettes that shimmered and caught the light with Bea’s every move. Best of all, the dress had pockets, so Bea could keep Alison’s satchel of pennies with her for the rest of the date.