Beyond Ordinary Love by Ann Christopher

Author:Ann Christopher [Christopher, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blue Iris Press
Published: 2017-12-25T18:30:00+00:00

9

Paris.

They were in. Freaking. Paris.

Eating breakfast at a sidewalk café on a street overlooking the Seine, which was a pale and languid jade color beneath a cloudless indigo sky on this unseasonably warm day. Cars zoomed by. French-speaking people walked down the sidewalks and across the bridge catty-corner from them. If she turned her head left, what did she see on the Left Bank, which was on the other side of that bridge? The tops of Notre Dame’s two towers. If she looked right? The Conciergerie, with its distinctive round towers and pointy blue tips. And if she craned her neck just a bit? Why, she could see the Eiffel Tower, of course. Itty-bitty at this distance, but still.

Paris.

And she’d thought she’d pulled off a decent surprise by throwing Baptiste a dinner party and smuggling Mrs. Smith into the house? Ha! She glanced over and watched him sip his coffee while idly flipping a page of the paper. Sunlight shone on the top of his head, streaking his wavy dark hair with gold and copper highlights. His cheekbones were covered with a longer than usual five o’clock shadow, but the harsh planes seemed relaxed, and his full lips turned up in the beginnings of a smile as he read.

As though he felt the weight of her attention on his face, he turned and caught her in that bright green gaze, the one that always stopped her heart. Much as she wanted to return his smile, the moment was far too powerful for that.

“Êtes-vous content, ma reine?” he asked quietly.

Was she happy?

Was Paris the most beautiful city in the world?

“Oui. Très content.”

“Bien,” he said with a tiny wink. He put a hand on her thigh—she automatically covered it with her own—then went back to reading the paper.

She felt deliriously happy.

Crazy, stupid happy.

That was what scared her.

Because this was all too good to be true.

The man.

His mode of travel.

“Could we maybe go to a musical while we’re there?” she’d asked late last night, when he drove the Tesla into a small private airport on the outskirts of Journey’s End. “Do you like musicals? I’d love to see Hamilton. If we could get tickets.”

He made a noncommittal noise that made her suspicious.

“What?” she demanded.

“We’re not technically going to the city.”

“Oh.” She tried not to let her disappointment show, but it’d been awhile since she’d spent any time in Manhattan and she’d had her heart set on a slice of Junior’s cheesecake with strawberries. “Well, where are we going, technically?”

His lips twitched. “Paris.”

A beat passed while her brain keeled over in a dead faint.

“Paris?”

“Yes.”

“France?”

He snorted. “Yes.”

He parked and killed the engine, which was a good thing because she could no longer hold back her shrieks of excitement.

He laughed with her, at least until she grabbed his forearm with one hand and pointed her index finger in his face with the other.

“Are you messing with me, Jean-Baptiste Mercier?” she snarled. “Because if you are, I swear to God—”

He held his hands up, still laughing. “I would never mess with you about something like this.

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