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It was as though she could read his every salacious thought where she was concerned.
‘I’ll get you a separate room.’
‘Won’t everything be booked up with the conference?’
Not if he flashed his credit card and offered them extortionate sums to solve the problem.
‘I can ask...’ He shrugged.
‘But you won’t think I...? You won’t expect...?’
She flushed and he knew exactly what she was trying not to say.
‘Effie, I can assure you there will be no expectations on my part. We got it out of our systems the other night. Now we can go back to how it was before.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do,’ he asserted, wishing he felt half as sure as he sounded.
‘Well, okay, then.’
She smiled. A gentle half-smile which blew him away.
‘If you’re sure?’
‘Sure.’ He nodded.
Only he wasn’t sure. Not at all. Where Effie was concerned he couldn’t seem to control himself.
But this time he had no choice.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EFFIE STRODE THROUGH the hotel lobby, through the doors and practically skipped down the steps and away from the stuffy, windowless, airless conference room.
She stopped abruptly and tipped her head up. The sun was glorious in a cloudless blue sky. Like every stunning glossy magazine photo she’d ever seen all rolled into one.
Only better.
Not just because she was actually here, rather than merely standing holding a holiday brochure and imagining she was, but also because of the man who had brought her here.
For the best part of a week she’d been nodding courteously to Tak when she’d seen him at the hospital, smiling politely at him when he’d passed by whatever room she and Nell had been in at his home, and chatting amicably to him whenever actually meeting him had been unavoidable.
She absolutely, definitely, categorically had not been imagining him kissing and licking her, turning her inside out and making her cry out with unabashed abandon as she climaxed over and over again.
Shaking her head—her hair was wild and free, as it so often seemed to be these days—Effie tried to eject the memories from her head. She was here, in Paris, without a single other person to think about. She could do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to.
So, where to go first? Effie wondered, picking one cobbled street at random. Would she find herself in a square full of artists, all gathered together to share their creativity, or perhaps the famous cabaret house of the Moulin Rouge, or perhaps she’d even stumble upon Montmartre Cemetery, the last resting place of literary greats like Zola or Dumas?
She wound through the streets, scarcely
able to believe she was here—abroad. It felt so different from anything she might have anticipated and yet simultaneously exactly as thrilling, from the sights and sounds to the language itself.
Effie had no idea how long she’d wandered, taking in a museum here or a sculpture there, wandering in the footsteps of Picasso and Van Gogh, when suddenly she rounded on a tiny crêperie, squashed between bigger, sturdier, architecturally more attractive buildings, and the mouth-watering smells lured her inside.
By the time she exited, sugary crumbs from her glorious hot treat still coating her lips, she felt like a kid again, practically skipping up the steps she saw opposite her. Steps and steps and yet more steps.
And suddenly there she was, with the white dome of the Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre’s sacred basilica, right in front of her. Like a perfect dollop of whipped cream in the dazzling sunlight. People were spread out everywhere—on the steps, in the grassy areas, even on walls and benches—laughing and happy and making her feel like a part of something without even saying a word to her.
