Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
This man pays attention. He listens, but he sees too. He notices me. “They make me happy.” That simple admission is a strangely vulnerable one. But he deserves it. He’s earned it. He took me here.
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?” I toss back, but he waits patiently for me to give some kind of an answer. “I’ve always been drawn to scents. Maybe I just have a good nose. But there’s just something about perfume and flowers and gardens that does it for me. I wish I could explain it better. But they speak to me. I close my eyes, inhale, and I feel…transported.”
I draw a deep inhale, catching that fire and leather scent of him, then falling back in time. Earlier today, he must have splashed on cologne at his hotel. Closing my eyes, I see Finn in front of the mirror, freshening up. Did he think at that moment that he might run into me? Was he hoping, as he put on his cologne, to see me? A just-in-case hint of his mysterious scent?
When I open my eyes, I feel wobbly.
“Where did you go a few seconds ago? To a memory?”
Instantly, I’m rooted to the now. “I read somewhere that the sense of smell is the one most closely tied to memory. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to scents,” I say, connecting the dots inside of me.
“Did you think of the past just now?”
I shake my head. “No. Just a few hours ago. It’s not even my memory. It’s my…imagination…You. Your room. Putting on your cologne. Setting down the glass bottle, adjusting your shirt, leaving.”
His eyes darken, and his smile disappears as he stares at me like he can’t look away. “You pictured it.” He sounds intrigued and aroused.
“And I imagined you wanting to see me,” I admit, since I want it to be true.
He glances down at his clothes. “I didn’t have meetings today. That’s true. But mostly I dressed like this because I hoped to see you. I knew we were staying in the same hotel.” His jaw tightens for a beat before he lets go. “I chose that one because you were staying in it.”
That’s…obsessive. And I like it. I grab hold of the iron railing so I don’t throw myself at him. “Well, it’s a nice hotel too,” I say dryly.
“Yeah. Nice because I wanted to run into you.”
I can barely catch my breath. “Same for me.”
He looks behind him, perhaps checking to see if the coast is clear. It’s still just us here at the Medici Fountain. He stares at me in the way only a lover can. Intense. Passionate.
“Fuck it,” he says, then he drags his thumb along my cheek and comes in for a kiss.
It’s a heady, dreamy one in the middle of the gardens that makes me feel a little lost and a little found all at once.
When he breaks it, we wander through the rest of the tourist attraction as if the kiss didn’t happen.
Like it’s just a memory now.
22
ALL THE OTHER THINGS
Finn
The next morning, I’m sitting at a sleek black metal table in a conference room in the offices of a luxury goods marketing partner. Several stories below us, Rue Saint-Honoré bustles with shoppers and expensive cars, with the nearby Opéra Garnier just visible at the corner of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
But the city’s not what’s distracting me. Thoughts of a woman are.
I’m doing my damnedest to pay attention to the presentation the brand is giving my team and me about the superior quality of their luggage and the way their advertisements will reflect The Rendezvous.
But my mind is half here, and half on Jules.
“When we run this campaign, we can show the snippets of the characters with their luggage,” Henri says, gesturing to the image projected on the wall—a mockup of one of the scenes from the show.
It’ll be set in the character’s flat in Le Marais. Did Jules arrange details for that flat? Did she set up the shooting schedule for that day? Is she there right now?
“So we’ll integrate the travel aspect of the series into all our marketing, just as the show is slated to integrate our goods,” Henri says with a professional smile, tinged with hope that this deal will come through.
And it probably will, if I sign off on these plans that were ironed out by the prior majority owners.
Plans—the things I didn’t make with Jules yesterday when I took her back to the hotel. She was yawning the whole time in the car, struggling to stay awake. When we reached the lobby, her eyes fluttered closed and I said a chaste goodnight, not the words go out with me tomorrow that were on my lips.
But it’s a good thing I resisted. I’m not in Paris to see her. I’m in Paris for business. Even though I have a marketing team who’ll oversee these brand sponsorship deals, I need to make sure this flagship show launches on Streamer without a hitch. That means I need to put the finishing touches on some of the deals I inherited.