Celine’s eyes widened. “If you so much as mention this to him—”
“You what?” Bastien closed in. “Will you ask for another kissing lesson? Or did you exhaust that already and want me to teach you something else? My prowess extends beyond all mediums of passion, baby vamp.”
“Don’t forget that you came to me tonight. Not the other way around.”
“Right, right. I did. Maybe I wanted you to teach me something this time.” Tentatively, he reached out and brushed a hair behind her ear. His fingers ran smoothly through the strands. “How were your kisses with Jacques tonight?” he asked.
“What?” Celine returned hazily.
“Because he told me they were definitely better than before.”
Celine blinked. “What!”
“Oh, relax. Like Jacques would ever come to me to gloat about that. Besides, I don’t think I would have stopped myself from bragging about how remarkable a teacher I am, and then he would have known everything.”
The window was right there. Celine could just push and—
“This is not funny, Bastien.”
“Your face is a little, though. You look like you rose from the grave.” To her surprise, he shook his jacket off his shoulders and draped it over hers. “Here.”
Reluctantly, Celine slipped her arms into it. Now that she wasn’t worried about him plummeting to his death, a sudden impression of awkwardness settled into the room. She had been kissing him not five hours ago. And then she had spent those five hours thinking about that kiss.
Celine shifted on her feet. “Did you come here just to give me your jacket and break half of my ribs?”
Straightening himself, Bastien produced the book he had been holding earlier, and waved it in front of her. That blue cloth cover was…
“My sketchbook!” Celine exclaimed with recognition. “Wh-where did you find it?”
“Turns out Franz only needed a little seducing. Though I can’t be too sure he hasn’t copied—”
One second, Celine was standing there, stupefied by the gesture, and the next she was wrapping her arms around his neck, rendering him quiet for a brief moment.
Her measurements, her designs, her patterns—all of them were inked within its pages. And he had retrieved them back for her. “Bas, I—”
“I know, I know. You love me, I am incredible,sooooohandsome and charming, and you will be grateful for all eternity,” he gloated. “What else?”
“I wasn’t aware you possessed a compassionate bone in your body,” she teased.
“I don’t,” he returned obstinately, peeling her arms from his neck. “One of my bones just malfunctions sometimes, that is all. So don’t let it get to that pretty little head of yours.”
“Do not stress,” she said exasperatedly. “Much appreciated as it is, your sudden heroic deed isn’t nearly sufficient to inflate my opinion of you. You are still a pig.”
“Good. I—”
He was interrupted by the sound of Madame LeBeau’s voice ringing through the house clear as glass. Bastien and Celine held their breaths and listened intently to the conversation that was transpiring downstairs.
“What do you mean rescheduled?” Madame LeBeau screeched.
“Y-you see, Madame,” Francine stammered. “Mademoiselle thought it was better—”
“Well, what does Celine know? It’s not like she had been helping with the preparations.” There was a brief pause, then: “I suppose we cannot do anything tonight. We’ll call the store manager again in the morning and tell him it was a misunderstanding.”
And just like that, she went on discussing the menu for tomorrow’s lunch.
“What was all that about?” Bastien asked when the argument had receded.
“Maman had scheduled a cake tasting for my birthday party the same day as our next challenge. I told the manager our entire family was suffering from a terrible case of smallpox and we couldn’t make it. I doubt he’ll even let the operator connect the call tomorrow out of fear of contagion.”
