Page 56 of Heartbreaker

Holding out her chair I watch as she sits and then I sit, a few moments later the private butler comes in and serves us both Champagne before taking our orders.

We sip at our drinks and I look at Ashley as she looks out over Paris at night the lights twinkling and the sky bright with stars and I knew I would never forget this night for as long as I lived.

“Tell me about what you do Jackson. I feel as if your job is a blur. Are you really a businessman or are you really an international playboy or secret agent spy? You wear that tux as if you were born to it.”

I feel the first prickles of unease tingle at my scalp as Ashley asks about my job. If I tell her now I risk ruining a perfect holiday. I would tell her one more white lie, and then I could come clean when we get back.

“You got me. I’m really an international diamond thief on the run from Interpol. I spend my time seducing beautiful shop owners and stealing priceless diamonds. My house is just a front and of course have a Lamborghini and Maserati parked at the marina with my yacht.”

Ashley bursts out laughing, throwing her head back in abandon and making my guts twist with need and something else I can’t quite define.

“Well, now I feel cheated, I want to go on the yacht.” she responds playfully. I take her hand and stroke my fingers over the inside of her wrist, feeling her pulse.

“Alas, I can’t take you there, it’s under the watch of an evil mastermind determined to take what is mine and I must protect the fair maiden at all costs.”

Ashley belly laughs then and wipes the tears from her eyes. As she finishes our meal arrives and the moment is gone.

Once we finished our meals of Crevettes Sauce Boursin- shrimp sautéed with sun-dried tomatoes, corn and leeks in a garlic, herb cream sauce followed by Saint-Jacques Sauce Gingembre et Citron Vert- Pan Seared Scallops in ginger and lime sauce and finished with a decadent Chocolate Mousse and a Toasted Almond cocktail, we were both replete.

It is the epitome of exuberance and we both pat our tummies and laugh as we hold hands and watched the people of Paris go about their lives.

I take Ashley’s hand as we watch a street musician plays a beautiful ballad. “Dance with me?”

We dance in silence our bodies swaying to the haunting song of love, there on the balcony of one of the oldest hotels in the city of love and a feeling of magic falls over us that neither one of us will ever be free of and at that moment, I don’t care.

We make love that night and I realise that maybe just maybe I have been wrong about love.

Ashley and I have breakfast at the Un Dimanche, a Parisian a chocolate restaurant famed for its breakfast specialties. I joke about the workout I would need when we get back after all this chocolate and Ashley assures me she would help me get a sweat on in her own unique way. Which was, I had come to realise, my favourite exercise of all time.

It was as we were checking out that fate kicks me in the teeth and reminds me of why I did the job I did and why I’d never allowed myself to be vulnerable.

Standing with my arm around Ashley as I paid the bill, I hear a voice I hoped to never hear again.

“Jackson, is that you?” I feel my hackles rise at her voice but keep my cool as I turn.

“Jade,” I reply with a cool edge to my voice.

“My, my, you have filled out,” she says with a smirk as her eyes go from top to bottom making me feel dirty. She licks her pouty, false lips and reaches her hand out to stroke my arm with her long talons. As I look at her I wonder what the hell I had ever seen in her.

I pull away and turned slightly to Ashley,

“Now, now, Jacky, don’t be like that. We were close once, you and I,” she trills, and I feel my spine stiffen.

“And who do we have here?” she asks as she looks at Ashley and turns her nose up dismissing her.

“Slumming it, Jacky?”

“Jade!” the man at her side hisses and she laughs and pats his arm.

“Oh, come, Eddie, she knows I’m only joking, don’t you darling,” she says to a now pale Ashley.

I am dumbfounded for all of ten seconds. “No, Jade, she doesn’t know that, I don’t either. You are just being the spiteful bitch you always were and always will be. You're not fit to lick her shoes.”

I feel Ashley touch my arm and turn to her.

“It’s okay, baby,” she says, “the collagen has probably addled her brain. Isn’t that right sweetheart? Come on, Jackson let’s go home baby, your Tinkerbell has a hankering for the mile-high club.” She pulls me away and I see a smirk cross Eddie’s face as Jade turns beetroot red and fumes.

“Toodle-oo, Jadey, careful your fun bags don’t explode. You’re looking a little red.”

“Enjoy him while you can, Trash Girl. Jacky doesn’t do long-term, poor boy had his heart broken and it has never mended poor love,” Jade hisses, I have to pull a hissing and spitting Ashley away as she goes to slap a smirking Jade.

“Come on, Tinkerbell no fighting over the trash or I’ll have to call you scrappy doo not Tinkerbell.

“Humph, well I’m glad to see your taste has improved Jackson,” she huffs.

We fly home that day and we don’t join the mile-high club and something changes in me and I don’t know what and I wouldn’t until it was too late.