Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
“Guess what?” Sébastien said happily, glad to proffer a new subject, now that the one on how little he truly loved me had been exhausted for the next three minutes. “My family has a surprise for you! They decided to postpone their Feast of Kings get-together until tomorrow so they could get a chance to meet you. Wasn’t that sweet?”
It was probably just a minor flaw, but I had noticed before that my almost fiancé had a tendency to pose trick questions, most of them to do with his family. On the one hand, I had always wanted to participate in a real French Epiphany celebration, and I did have to meet more of his family someday. On the other, it sounded like a gathering where a lot of people would be forming their first impressions of me. The average Frenchmen I passed in the street had never acted as if their impressions of me were all that good. “When you say ‘family,’ could you be more precise?”
“Well, my grandparents, of course, can’t wait to meet you. Then there’s my uncle Titi, his partner, Bruno, their dogs, my aunt Martine, her husband, Jacky, and their children, Julie and Gaëlle. And, of course, my mom and Jean-Charles and Justine, and their dog, whom you’ve already met. I don’t know yet if there will be anyone else.”
“Wow,” I said. “All of those future in-laws at once. That’s nice.” I wondered if I had to impress the dogs, too. Probably. I wouldn’t trust anybody who couldn’t get along with my dogs.
Sébastien hefted a seventy-pound suitcase in each arm, an act that reminded me I was at least going through all this for a really sexy guy, and slanted me a look distinctly lacking in sympathy. “Until you have to taste wine from Alabama at eleven in the morning, I don’t even want to hear about it.”
Nineteen
Sébastien’s apartment, now ours, was on what the French call the fifth floor to make it seem more accessible but which would be the sixth floor in the U.S. There was no elevator, but one of my suitcases wouldn’t fit in most Parisian elevators anyway. I wouldn’t even fit in most Parisian elevators, and it’s nothing to do with the chocolate.
We could hear Indy caterwauling as we came in from the street, and he still hadn’t stopped by the time all the wheels had fallen off my suitcases and we had finally bumped them up to the top. The striped beige cat crouched in the middle of the floor and gave one last defiant yawl as we came in, before stalking off. I could tell Sébastien had thoroughly vacuumed before I came, because the layer of cat hair clinging to everything was only two inches thick.