She put her head down, let her hair hide her face. She felt the muse slinking away, drawing back into her corner, away from the biting, gnashing teeth of Sutton’s memory.

The cars rushed past; the sirens bled away. The vise in her chest loosened. She took a breath, then another.

“Are you on the run?”

The voice startled her; she jumped, knocked her cup with the back of her hand. The remnants of the espresso spilled across the table, onto the open page of her notebook. Words began to swim in a lake of black and blue. She patted at them frantically, knowing it was for naught. They were lost.

The man sitting next to her had jumped to his feet to avoid the splash. “Alors,” he said, “you are quite jumpy. Let me guess. You murdered someone and rushed off to Paris under a false name to stay out of prison.”

She forced herself not to stare. What sort of stranger says such a thing?

He wasn’t French, rather, he was, but she could hear an accent underlying his words. British, maybe?

“You frightened me,” she said casually in French, giving up on the notebook. There was no help for it; the words were well and truly gone. Three of the twenty handwritten pages were utterly ruined. She could only pray her imagination would keep the images on file until she could set up shop again.

She sat back in the chair. The waiter brought her a fresh cup, talking under his breath about clumsy customers. “And no, I am not a murderer. I’m on vacation. It’s my first time in Europe. I’ve never heard those sirens in person before, only in the movies.”

She was amazed at how easily the lies slid from her tongue. Then again, they weren’t really lies. She was trying on another persona, that was all. She wasn’t here to make friends.

“You speak excellent French for someone who has never been to Paris. And what a shame. Every woman should spend time in Paris. It is a prerequisite for a well-lived life, mais non?”

“I agree. That’s why I took several years of French in school.” She met the man’s eyes at last, found him smiling quizzically at her. He was handsome—of course he was, this was Paris, after all—with dark hair cropped close to his head, an imperious, hawkish nose, blue eyes. Very blue eyes, deep, the color of dark denim. He was young, in his late twenties, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt. A striking man, and she looked back at her ruined notebook quickly.

He stuck out a hand. “Raffalo. Constantine Raffalo.”

“Enchantée,” she said, shaking his hand. It was cool and rough, and held on to hers a moment too long. She stood and threw two euros onto the table. “Au revoir, monsieur.”