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“Baileys hot chocolate,” Hattie says immediately.

“Me too!” Freya pipes up.

“Hold the Baileys,” Kristen says over Freya’s head.

“Why?” asks Freya.

“They have something called a ‘Parisian special’ on the board,” Mark says. “What do you reckon that is?”

“Oh, that sounds fun,” Susan says.

“How do you know it’s fun?” Hattie asks. “Could be terrible. They could put snails in your coffee or something. Don’t they do that in Paris?”

“Yes,” Finn says, deadpan. “It’s literally all they eat there.” His eyes flicker, very briefly, to Mel’s. And she finds herself thinking, for the second time today, of their first date. Of sitting opposite him in a French restaurant and trying not to let on how nervous she was. She doesn’t actually remember what they ate—too distracted by him—but it definitely wasn’t snails.

“Well, I’ll risk it,” Mark says. “Live life on the edge and all that.”

“I’d love a coffee,” Finn adds, as Mel counts everyone’s orders on her fingers. She’ll get him a tea, she thinks. Claim it’s an honest mistake.

“With sugar?” she asks sweetly.

“No thanks.”

She’ll add five.

For a moment, his gaze catches hers and the corner of his crooked mouth lifts, like he knows exactly what she’s thinking. She turns away, though as she does she finds herself willing to concede something—not out loud, and certainly not to Priya. But there’s a chance that, as much as she wants to convince herself of the opposite, she may not be totally over Finn Hawthorne. Which only means she’s going to have to be extra careful the rest of this week. Now is not the time for going down memory lane, for thinking of that heady feeling she’d gotten the second time he kissed her, the music from the restaurant spilling onto the cobblestone street. No. Now is the time for payback.

Chapter Nine

Three years, ten months ago

Three years, four months until Hattie’s engagement party

Finn checked his phone for the millionth time where he sat at a candlelit table for two, off the beaten track but still in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. He was still five minutes early. He didn’t think he’d ever been early for a date in his entire life. Just as he’d never put quite so much thought into it—spending hours googling the best date spots in Paris.

You two, Priya would say later, shaking her head at the two of them. Who has their first date in Paris, for God’s sake?

Though Mel wouldn’t even concede that to be their anniversary, over a year later, Finn liked to claim their anniversary was on New Year’s Eve. Awww, Mel, look, they put on fireworks just for us. And when she’d rolled her eyes he used to tease her, asking if they were, in fact, together, if she wouldn’t even agree on an anniversary. She’d laugh at him. Finn, I can’t pinpoint the moment I fell in love with you. Isn’t that the point? Love isn’t immediate, but when it’s there it’s there.

Mel had been impossible to pin down for a first date. They’d been texting since Edinburgh, but although Bristol, where he was currently doing up a house, and London, where Mel was sharing a flat with Priya, weren’t all that far away from each other, they’d so far failed to be in the same city at the same time. Instead, they’d been sending each other a lot of memes over WhatsApp. Mark had been teasing him nonstop. This has got to be your longest relationship to date. Maybe never meeting in person is the key for you.

That February, she’d told him she was heading to Paris for a weekend city break with Priya, and, after skiing with some friends, Finn had decided to head back home via Paris because why the hell not. She’d agreed to meet him for one evening, setting a two-hour time limit so that she could still spend the rest of the evening with Priya. He sometimes wondered if he’d have managed to get her on a date with him if it hadn’t been for that—and was seized with panic at the idea that it would have just fizzled out, like every other semi-relationship in his life.

He took a sip of his water—not wanting to order a proper drink until she arrived—and checked his phone again. What if she didn’t show? What if she did show and they didn’t get on? They’d both been drinking on New Year’s, and it was easy enough to feel chemistry in the middle of a street party with fireworks erupting overhead. And why the hell was he nervous? He didn’t usually get nervous around women.

His phone lit up and he snatched it off the table, worrying it would be her, canceling last minute. But it was only a message from his mum, responding to a selfie he’d sent her of him under the Arc de Triomphe.

Weather looks glorious! We had a picnic near there, didn’t we? Hope you’re having a lovely time—it’s making me want to go back there! Beth at Book Club is suggesting a reading retreat somewhere. Maybe I’ll suggest a wine retreat to Paris instead. Love you lots. Xxx

He smiled as he laid the phone down. Last year, he, Hattie, and Mark had taken their mum to Paris for a few days for her birthday, organizing and paying for the whole thing. They’d done all the classic touristy bits, had even made her try escargots, much to Hattie’s amusement. They’d have to do another trip for her, take her to Budapest or something. He sometimes worried about her, alone in that house, though she claimed to have quite enough of a social life, thank you very much.

He’d heard Mel before he saw her—surprising himself with how he recognized her voice.

“I’ve just got here,” she was saying. His gaze snapped to the entrance of the little restaurant where she was coming in, cheeks and nose pink from the cold, phone pressed to her ear. “Not sure. I followed Maps. Near Rue Saint-Dominique, I think?” She clocked Finn, smiled, and waved. She’d been nervous too, she’d told him later, but at the time the smile had seemed so natural that it had made him relax.

He stood up as she made her way over. “I’ve got to go…Yes, he’s here…Well, I mean, he doesn’t look like a serial killer, but I suppose you never know…Yes, two hours. I promise…Okay. I’m hanging up now.”

She did just that, smiled again at him. “Sorry. Priya checking I got here safely.” She’d given him a look up and down, then met his gaze head-on. “Thank God. You’re just as hot as I remembered.”