He looped an arm around her waist, then whispered something in her ear in French.

“Perhaps someday,” she said suggestively in answer.

“Someday soon, I hope,” he said, squeezing her butt, then shifting gears. “What do you love most about Paris?”

“This chocolate is pretty good,” she said, then reached for another one and handed it to him. “For you.”

He took the chocolate and rolled his eyes in pleasure. “That is pretty damn good. But I know it’s not what you love most about Paris. What is?”

“That’s not a fair question,” she countered, running her fingers through her hair. She’d have to keep a brush here, but then that also would be too intimate. She didn’t plan to leave any evidence of all these nights with him. Evidence led to memories, and memories led to closeness. That’s what they both desperately needed to avoid. True intimacy. “It’s impossible to pick one thing.”

“I like impossible choices, though,” he said, flashing her a wicked grin.

She placed a hand on his chest, moving in close. “Why?”

“Because they force people to show who they really are. I thought you’d appreciate that, being a shrink.”

“Fine. I’ll answer,” she said, counting off the potential options on her fingers. “What I love most about Paris isn’t even in Paris. It’s Monet’s Gardens, but that’s outside of the city. So if we’re talking purely Paris, I might choose the food. I might choose the museums. I might even say the cobblestoned streets, or the rich history, or the way the French don’t care if you like them. But if you really want me to choose, my favorite thing about Paris is the beauty. And the way the French love beauty for its own sake.”

A smile tugged at his lips as she continued. “I love the beauty in the every day. I love the glow from the streetlamps. I love that you’ll find a store in Montmartre that sells glass perfume bottles with gorgeous designs on them, and they’re things no one needs, but they exist solely because they’re pretty. I saw a sapphire one once that I wanted, but the store was closed that day. So I just stared longingly through the window. Because that’s the other thing—even the shop windows are beautiful, and full of gorgeous displays, whether of cakes or candies or jewelry or clothes. Doesn’t matter. The French find beauty in the magnificent and in the seemingly mundane.”

“They do. And now I’m picturing the city perfectly, from the glass displays of a cake shop to the towering spires of Notre Dame. I love that answer. I love that you respond to beauty.”

“Why?”

“Because I do too,” he said, and raked his eyes over her in a way that made her skin heat up. The compliment was loud and clear in his gaze.

“Who are you then, Jack? What are your impossible choices?”

In an instant, his smile erased itself, as if it had been bleached away. He said nothing for one moment that stretched into many moments, and felt far too long. The expression in his beautiful eyes looked pained, haunted even. In that span of silence, she sensed all the reasons why he’d come to see her in the first place. Self-loathing, maybe even guilt was written in his eyes. She wanted to ask him more, to try to help ease his burden. She was tempted, even as he swallowed and looked away.