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“It was stupid. If you don’t want to do this anymore, I’ll completely understand. There must be a thousand other things you’d prefer to be doing, in fact.” She laughed uneasily.
Silence crackled between them, his eyes roaming her face, until finally he put down his coffee and walked towards her.
“The problem isn’t that I don’t want to do this.” His words were hoarse, his voice throaty and deep. Her gut pulled. “It’s that I can’t.” He stood so close she could feel heat emanating off his frame. “I have a job to do here, and I can’t do it if I’m thinking about you in that way.”
She swallowed, his explanation a balm she hadn’t known she needed.
“But it’s more than that.”
“Oh?”
“What you’re going through is incredibly difficult. I’ve seen it before. I know what this kind of anxiety does to a person, how isolated and scared you feel. You’re vulnerable, Max, you’re looking for reassurance, for someone to make you feel okay, to tell you everything’s going to be okay. I’m not going to be the asshole who takes advantage of that.”
“When you said you wanted to go shopping, I presumed you meant for clothes,” he drawled, as she turned down another aisle of the antique bookshop.
“Stereotyping much?”
His grin warmed her belly. She tried to ignore it, but the sensation of heat spiralled through her anyway. She hadn’t been able to turn off her awareness of him since that morning.
“I just wouldn’t have guessed antique books,” he said.
“I love it here,” she responded, drawing a centuries’ old complete works of Shakespeare from the shelf. “These books are from all over the world – upstairs there’s African and Middle Eastern, some of the oldest texts the general public can buy. I don’t know why it’s not busier.”
“I guess people don’t come to Paris to buy antique books?”
“Philistines,” she joked, replacing the Shakespeare. “I already have one.”
“You like books.”
She frowned. “Obviously. Doesn’t everyone?”
“No.”
“I guess that’s true now. We scroll our phones more than we actually read. Kind of sad, actually.”
“Social media is a form of reading.”
She made a sound of disapproval, then gasped. “Oh, look! It’s an early copy of To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf. I love this book.” She turned it over in her hands. “I have to have it.”
He walked silently behind her as she moved to the register, and as excited as she was by the book, she was aware of his every step, his proximity, his warmth, his masculine fragrance, so she slowed down a little, stretching out their closeness, enjoying being near him.
What time was her flight supposed to leave? She couldn’t remember, and as they emerged onto a sun-filled Parisian street, she tilted her face to the sky and breathed in, feeling relaxed for the first time in a long time.
“I feel safe with you,” she said, without looking at him at first, but when he didn’t respond she turned to him slowly. “You make me feel safe.”
His eyes lanced her then wordlessly he reached out, taking the book bag from her. She smiled as she passed it off, and without thinking about anything as frivolous as her fingers and their placement, their hands brushed, quite by accident, and it was like being struck by lightning. Did he feel it too?
Her eyes flared to his, then away again, her mouth dry, her knees wobbly.
“That’s my job.”
She pulled her lips to the side, as he approached the car, opening the rear door and placing the book in. She stared at the open door a moment then transferred her gaze to Noah.
“Let’s walk for a while. I don’t want to go yet.”
He lifted a brow, but closed the door, locking the car before joining her once more.
“You’re happy here.”
