Is it only in Paris that I would find myself having to convince a bus driver of my right to get off at the stop of my choosing? “I’m meeting him right there.” I pointed over the straight stone Pont du Change to the plaza framed by two nineteenth-century theaters and the red awnings of cafés. “I’m going to walk straight across the bridge, I swear. I just want to collect myself.”

He considered me for a steady, narrow-eyed moment, his expression as bored and cynical as ever.

“You’ll be able to see me do it!”

He kept the doors closed another long moment as he weighed my character. “All right, but I’m watching you,” he finally allowed, letting the doors swish open.

I walked across the bridge with the wind blowing through my hair, rushing cold over a barge full of sand below, and whipping around me without clearing my head. A pair of pigeons flew off the stone rail, heading for Notre-Dame and the easy tourist pickings. The bus lurched along nearly even with me, caught in traffic. I waved to the driver when I crossed the street to the fountain, just to make sure he didn’t abandon his vehicle in the intersection and come after me. I could imagine him weaving through the gridlocked cars, picking me up under the arms, depositing me before my date, and returning to the wheel, all without a change in that jaded expression.

But he didn’t. I went myself. Sébastien was sitting on the edge of the fountain, surrounded by crouching stone sphinxes, and he looked up at me and broke into a smile.

Six

As I approached, he stood and looked down at me, dark eyes questioning, mouth smiling. He wore jeans and a beige sweater considerably classier than anything I owned. When he bent to exchange cheek kisses, a scent of vanilla teased my senses and my cheek pressed against skin that was a tantalizing combination of baby-smooth and subtle prickle. He had just scrupulously shaved, but without managing to eradicate the suggestion of darkness along his jaw. I rocked back on my heels, feeling dazed. I had touched him. We had actually touched.

Okay, that was way too much excitement for me for one lifetime. The butterflies in my stomach escaped and fluttered their little, brushed-velvet wings all up and down my nerve endings. I needed to apply some pesticide to those things, fast. I searched his face, hoping to see something horrible that would let me escape this relationship before I went into a meltdown of embarrassment and eagerness. What was that in his ears? Silver circlets? “Are you wearing earrings?”

He looked surprised at this start to the conversation but nodded.

“Is that new?” How had I missed them? I would have been truly convinced he was gay if I’d seen the earrings and so I had managed to ignore them?