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“Can I help that I like pretty things?”
His nose wrinkled. I braced myself for another tirade, but he exhaled heavily and dropped his hands. “You’re a pretty thing. Can I help that I like you?”
I stiffened, but accepted the olive branch for what it was. “Thank you for the compliment.”
Smiling wider, doing his best to shed the tension between us, he slid his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. We stood on the outskirts of the busy dance floor and the noisy racket classified as dance music blared far too loudly. The fact that we’d been able to argue at all was a small miracle.
“I’ve always found you gorgeous. You know that.” His hand skated up my side and played in the pin-straight, blue-black hair skimming my collarbones. Sam definitely had Irish somewhere in his lineage, but—if I believed the fairytales my adoptive father whispered to me—then I was the half-blooded descendant of a maharajah.
According to him, somewhere, somehow, a king had corrupted a maiden and created my family line. If I hadn’t been dumped outside the local hospital where my father worked as a heart surgeon, I might never have existed past a few days old—bastard child of a long-ago maharajah or not.
Luckily, I now belonged to the best people in the world, and a pang of homesickness filled me.
We’d only been in Paris two nights, and I already wanted to leave.
I miss Krish. Wonder what he’s doing right now?
Damn, this was a mistake.
This relationship.
This holiday.
I…I’m done.
I’d been done for months, yet it’d taken all my savings and a foreign country to finally admit that.
Sam brought me closer, his lips puckering to kiss me. His eyes closed in preparation for making out in a raucous French nightclub.
I braced myself.
I went to kiss him back.
Only…in the time it took for our lips to meet, a surge of bravery washed through me. The strange courage was definitely ill-advised, but I couldn’t fight it anymore.
I couldn’t stop the urge to flee and be free.
“Sam.” I swayed back, refusing his kiss. “Sam…we need to talk.”
His eyes flew wide, the glittery disco ball dancing in his green gaze. “What?” He cocked his head against the music. “What did you say?”
Great.
I finally get the strength to break it off, and he can’t even hear me.
I could just pretend I hadn’t said anything.
Pretend I was happy.
Pretend I was fine.
But…I needed out.
Right here.
Right now.
Tonight.
