He left, face serious again, moving efficiently about the confined space, and I realized he wasn’t flirting with me; he was just doing his job. Fine, I wasn’t flirting with him either; I was just trying to order a meal.

“What did you order?” Tory asked.

“Intestine stuffed with blood.”

She choked on her water and began to laugh.

“Blood sausage,” I realized. “I bet he was trying to describe blood sausage. Oh, my God, I had that once in Spain.” I still remembered the stink of it and the thick taste on my tongue.

Tory couldn’t stop laughing. People at the other tables grinned, which showed something about the ambience. There were restaurants in Paris where people would have glanced at us sidelong and sniffed at the loud table.

“Well, he recommended it,” I said pitiably. “What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head, seeming to find me hilarious. “Ask for another recommendation?”

“Critic.”

“Now you have to eat it,” she said. “You couldn’t insult his recommendation by not eating it.”

“I know.” I bared my teeth at her. “But did you see how gorgeous he is?” His five o’clock shadow graced a chiseled masculine face. Right now, as he moved around the place, focused on his job, that face looked stern. But sometimes, someone at another table or at the bar would throw a remark his way that I couldn’t catch, and his face would split into laughter.

“When he brings things to the table beside us, I could accidentally brush his tush,” Tory murmured, sotto voce. “He’s that close.”

I frowned at her.

“He’s got a great butt,” she said. “Definitely over a ten, I’ve got to agree with you.”

“Aren’t you too young to be sexually harassing people? How old are you, anyway?”

She started laughing again.

The gorgeous waiter arrived back with my boudin on its bed of salad. “You’re in luck. There was only one left, but I got Didier to save it for you. It’s really good.” The scary thing was, I could tell he thought he’d done me a favor.

“Thank you!” I beamed at him. I didn’t look down right away. I kept my eye on his tush for as long as I could, postponing the moment. Finally, when he disappeared up the spaghettithin stairs into the kitchen, I dropped my gaze to what awaited me. Blood sausage. And he had so nicely described how it was made: blood, pork fat, and onions, all held together by some intestine.

Tory was making choking, snortling sounds as if suppressing interior explosions, but I ignored her. People do that all the time around me.