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Stupid. The words did more than hurt. They twisted into her heart. She put down her brandy snifter; it tilted and amber liquid spread over the table. To hell with this, she thought, and shot to her feet.
“I’m tired, Marco. Good night.”
“Emily.”
He was on his feet, too.
She shook her head, started inside…
“Dammit, Emily,” he said gruffly. He caught her arm, swung her toward him. “I have no wish for you to be my mistress.” His expression softened; what she saw in his eyes made her breathless. “I want you to be my lover, as I am yours.”
Tears rose in her eyes.
He saw them, drew her close, kissed them away.
“Something is happening between us,” he said softly. “If you want the truth, it scares the hell out of me. But I am not going to walk away from it, Emilia mia, and I plead with you not to walk away from it either.”
She began to weep.
Good tears, the kind that came from a heart full of joy.
Marco wrapped his arms more tightly around her.
“I am yours, Emily Madison. And you are mine.”
She was. But she wasn’t. She had to tell him that. Surely, it wouldn’t matter. Not now that he knew her. The real her. Because everything that made her Emily Madison also made her Emily Wilde.
She hadn’t set out to deceive him…
“Emily,” he whispered, and she lifted her head from his shoulder and kissed him, and once again, she let the world spin away.
******
They ended up staying an extra four days in Paris.
“But don’t you have things on your calendar?” Emily said.
Marco shrugged. “As it turns out, I have an easy week ahead.”
He didn’t. He found himself wondering if that qualified as lying after that foolish, impassioned speech he’d made about lies and liars. No, of course it wasn’t. A lie was something that caused hurt.
Telling Emily they could be here another few days, making the surreptitious phone calls necessary to cancel his appointments, was hurtful to no one.
Besides, that didn’t matter.
This was Paris. It was a city of lovers.
There were so many wonderful things to see and do. They strolled through the Louvre. The Jeu de Paume. They walked the winding streets of Montmartre. They people-watched over demitasse at a sidewalk café on the Champs-Elysées. They went to Les Puces, the famous flea market that Emily had not been able to see when she and her sisters had been here visiting their father, because he hadn’t approved.
She dropped that piece of information—that she and her sisters had been in Paris visiting their father—unexpectedly, and instantly regretted it. A flea market wasn’t where she wanted to tell her lover the truth about herself, which she was increasingly desperate to do.
“So,” Marco said as they held hands, walking down the long, crowded aisles of the market, “you have sisters?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
