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Her expression softens slightly. “Good to know.” Before she can say anything more, her phone rings. She peers at it. “My daughter. I need to take this, Jules. You can handle…” She flaps a hand toward me. “Anything.”
“I’ve got it.”
The executive producer pushes on the door to the stairwell, disappearing and leaving me alone with the woman I can’t stop thinking about.
Jules wears her glasses today, black pants, and a short-sleeve red blouse. The outfit is professional but trendy and young. Fitting. “She knows she’s in good hands with you,” I say, not surprised Jules has made such a good impression already.
“She is. And Solange is great,” Jules says, and damn. That’s some sexy confidence. I like that Jules knows she’s good at her job.
I should let her go wherever she was heading. But I don’t. “How did you sleep your first night here? Were you up in the middle of the night?” I probably shouldn’t think of her in bed, but it’s too late for that.
“Melatonin worked its magic, though I was up before the sun. I watched it rise from Sacré-Coeur.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say but it wasn’t that. “From the steps of the basilica?”
“I was awake,” she says easily, likewhy would I do anything else. “The early morning light was streaming into my window. How many times am I going to be in Paris watching the sun rise?”
I’m jealous of the church steps for getting to spend the dawn with her. “What else is on that bucket list?”
“You figured out I have a list?” she asks with a quirk in her lips that says she’s impressed.
I don’t need to pat myself on the back. I do need to know what she wants, what she needs. “Yes. Tell me what’s on it.”
“So demanding,” she teases.
“Yes. I am.”
“Since you’re so insistent…” She checks the time on her phone, then, satisfied, she answers. “I plan to sit at a café by the Seine and read a good book, to try something I’ve never had before at a restaurant, to wander down a quiet street where I feel like I can get lost. Amongother things,” she adds, and I bet I’d likeother things.
But this conversation is not helping my resolve. “You have six more days to do them,” I say, but what I mean isI can help you with the restaurantone, and thewander down the streetone, andall the other things.
“And I’m on pace. I checked one off yesterday. But I didn’t even know it was on there.”
I’m confused now. “What do you mean?”
Her lips curve up. “Find a hidden gem where you least expect it.” She glances down the hall. “I should go.”
And I should go say hello to the cast. That’s why I’m here. Not to obsess over her Paris list.
* * *
But when I return to the hotel that night, I do obsess over it. And over her. I’m wondering what she’s crossing off that list. What room she’s in. What she wears to bed when she’s alone.
And in the morning, I wonder whether I’d find her on the steps of Sacré-Coeur.
“Fucking idiot,” I say, cursing myself as I get ready for the day’s meetings. She’s not going to do the same thing the next day, and I’mnotgoing to stalk her.
Besides, I have back-to-back appointments all day, so once I’m up and out of the hotel, I refuse to look back.
If I can just make it through the next five days without bumping into her—or engineering opportunities for that to happen—that’d be great.
When the first meeting of the day ends, I tell my team I’ll see them later then I take a breather to reset. Exercise has always helped me focus. When I was younger, soccer gave me tunnel vision, along with the hope that the sport would pave my way in life. Later, the triathlons I started running centered me as I grew my business. I can’t go for a run along the river in my tailored slacks and button-down, so instead I drop on aviator shades and get a little lost in the city like I did yesterday, walking past boutiques, souvenir shops, and chichi restaurants, thinking about my meetings for the week—my goals for the year—when a scent stops me in my tracks.
A trace of honeysuckle tickles my nose, and I turn, helplessly, in its direction, the open door to a perfume shop.La Belle Vieis written in rose-gold script on a white sign above the store.
Are you kidding me? Everything in this city is a temptation. I don’t stand a chance.
I stop fighting and go inside, flashing back to the night at my home when Jules asked about the honeysuckle outside my window, a rarity in the city.
