But then she’d gotten too busy with the job. She was working fourteen-hour days at that time, trying to impress the powers-that-be, and could barely take the time to breathe, much less write a long letter to her boyfriend.

So she’d declined again.

His letters became less and less frequent, more and more detached. I cannot stay far from you any longer? Turned out, they could. And maybe the next time they saw each other, it would be in eternity because months later, she stopped running to the mailbox for them.

She’d met Evan a few months later at an alumni get-together at the college. He was in his first year of med school. Originally, she hadn’t been too serious about him. Yes, he was kind and handsome and obviously had a good career ahead of him. But he was no Stéphane; that much was obvious. No man on the continent was.

More things interceded. Her friends told her she was an idiot to treat a pre-med rich, good-looking man like Evan as a placeholder for a silly French pipe dream. Her student loan bill came in, and it was astronomical, making thoughts of travel seem silly when financial disaster was around the corner. Her parents kept reminding her how lucky she was to have found a good job when many recent graduates would’ve killed to get one, and how she needed to stay in her supervisor’s good graces. She simply couldn’t tell her employer her intention to traipse off to France a couple months after being hired.

After a while, the letters from Stéphane stopped altogether. He quietly faded into the background, leaving Evan front-and-center.

And the rest was history.

Shivering, she reached into the deep drawer of her night table. Under photo albums and greeting cards, she found it . . . the single letter he’d sent her on rich, creamy stock. It was folded and falling apart at the creases, but when she held it to her nose and inhaled, she remembered the scent of his aftershave, which she imagined she could still smell, even though it had long since disappeared.

She unfolded the letter and pulled her covers up to her chest, remembering Stéphane’s warm, heart-melting brown eyes. He could be so boy-next-door one moment, smolderingly romantic the next. And ooh la la, that accent! As she read it, she imagined him speaking to her, in that sexy way of his:

My dearest Diana, I can’t tell you how much I have missed you in these weeks. With every breath I think of you and await the moment I can have you in my arms again. I feel in my soul that you and I are destined for one another, and I hope you feel the same. Versailles is the home to many treasures, though when you are within its walls, none will be as beautiful or more precious as you. They will pale to you, my love.

He always knew exactly what to say. Never before and never since had she gotten a letter so romantic, so dripping with love and absolute adoration. It made her heart thump wildly, even now, as she read the words.