Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(58)
Then, when she was done with her tour, she turned her face to the sky, looked heavenward, and said her final good-bye.
“Love, I won’t be here always. You need to move on. You’re young, and beautiful, and smart, and vibrant.”
It was okay to feel again, to want again, to live, and maybe even to love.
And it was okay to let him go.
When she arrived at her mother’s, she knocked then let herself in, and walked over to her mother, who was reading a book on her couch, a news station playing softly on her radio. Her mother set down the book and greeted her with a hug and a warm hello. “How was your day, mon petite papillon?”
“It was completely necessary,” she answered, and her mother raised an eyebrow at her response.
Annalise explained what she meant as she made dinner, then fixed the sink, chatting about the news of the day. Her mother was a newshound, and Annalise had always loved world affairs. Later, Annalise fell asleep on the couch. When she woke up the next morning, she stretched, brushed her teeth, and said good-bye.
Outside, as the sun rose in the Paris sky, she snapped a photo of a coffee éclair in a bakery window. She captioned it: “Are coffee éclairs on your hell-no list, too? Wait. Don’t tell me. I want to discover all the things about you I do not know. Will you let me?”
*
“And then you will hand me the ring for Ryan,” Sophie said to Michael, as she gestured grandly to the waterfalls raining behind them. They were at Mandalay Bay’s outdoor terrace, framed by gentle waterfalls that would form the backdrop to Ryan and Sophie’s ceremony next month. The walk-through was early, but Sophie had said she wanted to be prepared.
Michael was the best man. Well, one of them. Ryan had decided to have two best men. Both Colin and Michael would stand with him. John would be the one to give his sister away, but he wasn’t here today. Sophie said he’d been called away on police business, and Michael could only hope that was code for “close to cracking the murder investigation.” Of course, Michael was well aware that John was a busy detective and had many cases he was working. His father’s was one of them, though Michael felt, selfishly, like it was the only one that mattered.
It had been a quiet several days on that front since he’d returned from New York, but his private investigator, Morris, had messaged him the other day to say that he had some leads and hoped to get some solid intel soon.
Soon couldn’t come fast enough, especially after Michael’s pointless pursuit of Luke several nights ago.
As they finished the quick walk-through of the ceremony, his cell phone buzzed, and Michael’s new Pavlovian response kicked in, a dart of lust flaring in him.
His phone had been glued to his side since he’d left New York, but even more so after Annalise’s note the other morning. That note. It was a window opening and sunshine pouring in, and of course he’d said yes. She hadn’t said I love you, but in the last few days she’d given him so much of her time and herself, even from an ocean away. She sent him sweet little messages throughout the day, and often included photos, too. She took pictures of her lunch, her coffee, her life in Paris. A flower planter in a second story window of a flat she walked past in the Fifth Arrondissement. A couple lounging on a blanket on the grass by the Eiffel Tower. A shop window with impossibly tall silver mannequins on display. The rain on a cobblestoned street corner. She captioned them all.
In French.
He answered them. In French.
That wasn’t all, though. She also gave really good naked Skype strip shows. The best, actually.
Last night, for instance, she’d shown him precisely how a cheektini looked on her succulent ass. She’d modeled no less than a dozen, sliding them on, gliding them off. Yeah, he was okay with how things were. Because at least they had something. He didn’t try to define it, or to pressure her for a declaration. Maybe just voicing his own feelings on the street had been enough. He was no longer carrying that hard knot of tension inside him, that secret knowledge that he was a man wildly in love with a woman. His feelings were out in the open, and somehow that made things better, especially after she threw the line back to him with her note. I want to discover you.
But as he pulled the phone from his pocket, his thoughts of her vanished. Morris’s name flashed across his screen.
“Michael,” the man said in a gruff, gravelly tone befitting a PI. “I got something for you.”
He straightened and glanced over at Ryan and Sophie, who were wrapped up in each other, laughing, whispering. They probably wouldn’t care that he was busy on the phone. He walked away from them and down the aisle that would be covered in peach tulip petals for the wedding.
“Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Meet me in person in thirty minutes. There’s a diner off the highway. It’s busy enough, but far enough away, too.”
Morris gave him the address, and Michael repeated it. When he hung up, he headed to the happy couple and dropped a hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “Hey, I need to take off, but I’m all set on the ring and what I need to do.”
“What’s going on? Client stuff?” Ryan asked. “On a Saturday? Wait. Don’t tell me there’s more trouble at White—”
Michael cut him off. “Nothing work-related. Just something I need to do.”
He didn’t want to say anything in front of Sophie. Not that he was worried it would get back to John, but the fewer people that knew about his own investigation, the better chance he had of gaining information. He’d learned that over the years in business.