She didn’t want to go home, so she’d sit here and eat.
The little spa she liked an hour north of Manhattan was able to slot her in, so she’d be flying north in twenty-four hours. She’d be thoroughly pampered for the next three days while being fed world-class meals.
And then rent a car and drive into New York, or maybe just pay someone to drive her.
If she was going to live out of a suitcase for months, she needed to get started on her packing list. She had tons of microfiber travel clothes, the trick was making sure she had some clothes for after-work, too.
- - -?- - -
A month later, Tuesday’s plane landed in Paris, and she made sure she had the translation app on her phone ready. She knew enough French to survive in airports and restaurants, but having another way to translate made this much less stressful.
Her wolf hated big cities, and it hated airplanes even more.
Cora had managed to get her an invitation to run with a pack just north of Manhattan for the full moon, and she’dchangedin her hotel room a few times to sleep through the night, but it wasn’t enough for her inner animal.
But it wasn’t the first time her wolf had to survive in cities, and probably wouldn’t be the last.
She’d taken the Paris alpha wolf a bottle of Jack Daniels. A lot of alphas in Europe require a small gift for allowing her to visit their territory, and that usually did the trick. She was told not to bring her phone for the meeting with the alpha, but thankfully, his wife could translate back and forth for them.
Four days later, the app on her phone had gotten quite a workout. She’d talked to the restaurant owner on the phone before she left, but she hadn’t talked to the head chef, who was an asshole.
A lot of chefs are, so she could handle him fine, but he wouldn’t slow the fuck down while ranting in French, so even words she knew, she couldn’t understand from his mouth.
But then, when the job was nearly done, he’d gone and offered to show her around Paris, and she’d wanted to accept because she’d been physically attracted to him from the start, but she doesn’t fuck her clients.
He’d just looked her over, assessing her, when she’d told her phone she doesn’t mix business with pleasure, and it’d translated it into French.
“You are fired.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have that authority.”
“Exactly. This means I am not your boss, and thus we may fuck, but first, I show you Sainte-Chapelle, and you will understand light differently after. We have dinner at my favorite bistro, and then we shall see cabaret at Crazy Horse.” He shrugged. “And then? Perhaps we fuck, perhaps we do not, but you will see the Paris that tourists do not.”
She stared at him, and he said, “I shall pick you up at five o’clock on Saturday. Do you wish me to come to your room to get you, or will you be waiting outside your hotel?”
There was nothing wrong with spending an evening with clients; she just couldn’t get romantically involved with them. Or sexually involved.
But he wasn’t demanding sex. Just suggesting an evening together.
Plus, he was being nice.
“I’ll be waiting outside.”
- - -?- - -
Tuesday was actually a little disappointed when he was more charming away from work, since the asshole thing had been working for her in ways she wasn’t prepared to examine too deeply.
He picked her up at five exactly and took her to the Île de la Cité, to the Palais de Justice…
And then she understood why he hadn’t tried to describe Sainte-Chapelle, other than to say she’d define light differently, which she’d thought was an odd translator snafu, but it hadn’t been.
She stood in the upper chapel and just looked around. Awestruck. The world went silent as color poured down from every direction. Deep blues, glowing reds, and brilliant golds fractured across stone, skin, and the air itself. The light didn’t just illuminate the space, it defined and altered the space. She forgot to breathe for several long seconds, feeling suddenly small while she witnessed such glory and beauty.
She wished she could tell Knife about it, and shut down that train of thought before it could grow. She was in Paris with a charming asshole of a man, in a magical building of light and architecture.
“You understand now,” the charming asshole said, watching her face.
“Oui,” she said.
