What she felt for Mike went beyond words and intelligent exchanges. It was a force of nature. She couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before, even with Matthieu. He had taken over her life like a domineering father at first, but she had liked it—it made her feel loved and safe. It had begun to chafe with time, particularly as she gained more experience herself and a mind of her own. She ran her business the way she wanted to. She valued most of Matthieu’s advice and disagreed on some points. They had almost always agreed on how to raise their son. But Matthieu still treated her like a child at times, and he respected and valued his own freedom and independence more than hers.

Matthieu was very old-fashioned about some things, particularly about her. He was old school, which she had found charming at first and annoying later on. He was brilliant about business, but less so about people. He prided himself on knowing her perfectly, but he didn’t always. He said things that hurt her, and when he cheated on her, she found it hard to forgive him, but she always did. He was far less forgiving than she was but expected his transgressions to be forgiven every time. She was having trouble getting over the last one. After all she’d been through with his death and Axel’s, it was a final blow to learn that he had had a mistress in Russia until shortly before he died. She was fifteen years younger than Theo, which hurt too, and forty years younger than Matthieu. Now she was feeling guilty for being attracted to a man. What would people think if she stopped mourning him one day? She knew she would never stop grieving for Axel, but Matthieu had been her husband, not her child. They’d only been gone a year. It seemed like minutes at times, or days. Was it long enough? Had she cried enough? She looked down at the wedding ring still on her finger, and after a simple dinner at a diner, it felt like a lie. She wasn’t the grieving widow if she was smiling and laughing and having dinner with a man.

Mike was having the same qualms when he thought about her. He berated himself for being too forward and letting his attraction to her show. He had spent seventeen years using Becky as an excuse for not forming a serious attachment to any woman. His survivor guilt had convinced him that her death on their mission was his fault, despite the fact that agents died in the field every day, and she had been marked by an informant and would have been killed whether Mike was there or not. She was doomed by the informant, not by him. He knew that now, too late. Now he was edging closer to a woman who had already suffered too much and didn’t deserve the risks that his job exposed him to. He vowed to himself that he would do everything he could to get the investigation of the kidnappers brought to the forefront again. It was the best thing he could do for her, and he had no right to be in her life in any other way. He was angry at himself for missing her when he hardly knew her. He wanted to send her flowers for her arrival in Paris but wouldn’t allow himself to.