We passed a boulangerie with a line out the door, the scent of fresh bread and butter making my stomach growl despite the croissant I’d eaten on our way out. A fromagerie with wheels of cheese stacked in the window. A florist arranging buckets of sunflowers on the sidewalk. The August air was warm but not oppressive, carrying the aroma of coffee and something savory from a restaurant preparing for lunch.
Garrett walked beside me, eyes moving the way they always did—doorways, windows, the couple crossing the street ahead of us—but his pace stayed easy. Not rushing me. Not steering me back toward the hotel.
“Didi would have loved this,” I said.
He glanced at me.
“She and Grampy came here several times, but she didn’t talk about it like she did London.” My throat tightened, and I switched my focus to a window display of kitchen gadgets I didn’t need.
“Because she was hiding something?”
Delphine. What does it mean, Didi?“I don’t know.”
Instead of dwelling on it, I stopped at a patisserie with a stunning display case full of éclairs with glossy chocolate tops, fruit tarts arranged like jeweled mosaics, and macarons in everycolor imaginable. My attention snagged on a row of delicate mille-feuille, its layers of pastry and cream so precise they looked like they’d been cut with rulers. I sighed, letting go of my thoughts of Didi, and admired the delicacies in front of me. “Garrett.Lookat these.”
“Iamlooking. They’re pastries.”
“They’reart.” I pointed at a tiny chocolate sphere dusted with gold leaf. “That one belongs in a museum.”
“Then don’t eat it.”
“That’s not—” I turned to look at him and stopped.
The corner of his mouth moved. Up. Not down.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No.”
“You’re definitely laughing at me.”
“I don’t laugh.” But the almost-smile was still there, hovering at the edge of his mouth like it wasn’t sure if it had permission to exist.
He started walking first, simplytrustingme to follow him. Halfway along a tiny park where pigeons swarmed an old man with breadcrumbs, Garrett stopped in front of a shop and gestured inside. “You should replace your lip balm.”
I stared at him. “My what?”
“The one the guy took. When he searched your purse.” He’d stopped at a pharmacy. He hadn’t been walking randomly; he’d led me here intentionally. “You’ll want it.”
In the chaos of everything yesterday afternoon, I’d forgotten.
But Garrett had remembered.
“That’s—” How was I supposed to finish the sentence?Thoughtfulwould sound silly.Sweetwould make him scowl for sure. “Yeah. Okay.”
The pharmacy was tiny, crammed with products I didn’t recognize, and all the labels were in French, of course. But lip balm was universal. I found a small pot that smelled like honey—fifteen euros, which was insane, but I didn’t care—and brought it to the counter. When we returned to the street, Garrett was back scanning the world for threats.
“Thank you,” I said. “For thinking of it.”
He shrugged. “You’ll need it for the flight home.”
Right. Because everything has to be useful or practical.
Except practical would have been ignoring it entirely. Practical would have been assuming I could do without lip balm. This was something else. This was him noticing a small thing had been taken from me, filing it away through all the events that followed, and quietly making sure I replaced it.
My whole body tingled for some reason. Hedidcare, didn’t he? Somewhere inside of him, there was a sweet, caring man who must have been dying to get out. Part of me needed to find that man. Another part of me thought searching for it might lead to things I wasn’t ready for.
Chapter 18
