Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86799 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86799 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
There’s only one thing to be done.
Once we step onto the train, Bettencourt is there waiting, sporting an expensive suit and an intensity in his gaze. “There you are, Amy,” the billionaire says, and her name contains multitudes. He’s eager to see her, he’s hungry for her, he only has eyes for her.
I wave goodbye to the single mom who looks a little enchanted as she talks to the man waiting for her. I can’t wait to tell Axel about the two of them and how they deserve a train romance.
When I reach my compartment, I flop down on the same bed we shared earlier in the trip, and I call him.
“How’s your compartment?” I ask when he answers.
“You trying to trade, Valentine?”
I smile. “If yours is better, we should sneak into yours tonight.”
I can hear him smile over my boldness, over the way I ask for what I want.
“Get over here now. Act casual, like we need to, I dunno—”
“—plot.”
“Yes. That. Brilliant.”
Seconds later, he’s opening the door to his compartment, and I’m stepping inside so I can ask for something from the guy I couldn’t stand when I shared a table with him in New York more than a month ago.
And it’s not about Amy and the billionaire. It’s about us. I’m eager to wring as much joy as I can from the waning days. “What if we make the most of these last two nights?”
“What do you mean?” he asks, sounding full of hope too.
“We finish the book tour tomorrow afternoon in Copenhagen. But we don’t leave till the next day. Spend it with me. Just me. All day, all night.” I take a beat, gearing up for the real ask. “Like a date.”
His blue eyes twinkle. Then, he lifts a finger, swipes it across my eyelid gently and holds it up. “Eyelash. Make a wish.”
I blow on it, wishing there were a way for Axel and me.
“What did you wish for?” he asks.
I already know it won’t come true, but I still don’t reveal my wishes. “I can’t tell you, but I can tell you what my fountain wish was.”
“Yeah? Does that mean it came true? It was my iron dick, right?” He’s trying to make me laugh, to keep the moment light, but I can tell he wants more from my wish.
I play with the neck of his shirt. “I wished to have a good trip, and I did. What about you? What was yours?”
He shakes his head. “It hasn’t come true, but I’m close. So damn close.”
“Tell me then?”
He just shrugs, noncommittal, and I hope to learn his wish someday. I hope, too, that it comes to pass.
Then he kisses me, and I taste both wistfulness and joy.
33
NO MORE WORDS
Hazel
Dinner is finished. Drinks are flowing. The train rumbles across the rolling hills of Germany as we travel deeper into the night on our way to Denmark. I finish the last of my chardonnay, but it’s my only glass this evening.
I don’t want to be tipsy or drunk on my final night on the train. I do want to be alone with Axel, but I also feel a little guilty for ditching our guests.
So we stay a little longer at the table in the dining car—now the liquor car.
The conversation with the group bends like the tracks, and eventually it turns once more to us.
“Have you thought about Noah and Lacey?” Jackie asks, bolder than she’s been before, determined.
I put on my best polite, happy face—this is a secret we need to keep. “We’ll see who catches Lacey’s eye.”
“When do you start writing?” Steven asks.
“After we return to New York,” Axel answers, and that makes me happy and sad at the same time.
“Are you looking forward to working together again?” Jackie asks, but before we can answer, she tilts her face. “You know, I don’t think I know this. How did you two even meet in the first place?”
It’s been so long. Axel’s been a part of my life since I became the person I always wanted to be.
Alecia jumps in with her own answer: “I bet you have a meet-cute like in a romance novel.”
I glance at Axel with a smirk. “Too bad we didn’t meet in an elevator,” I joke.
“That got stuck,” he adds.
“And then there would have been a power outage,” I say.
“And I’d have had to single-handedly climb out the top of the elevator shaft to save the building.”
Nice finish, I mouth, then I start a new made-up meet-cute. “Or at an ice-skating rink, where you bumped into me skating.”
“Naturally, you were wearing a cute hat,” he says in a too-charming tone.
“You caught me before I fell,” I say the same way.
“But then you sliced my shin open with the blade,” he says, his voice growing darker, matching the shift in our fable.