you think is going to happen?” I ask curiously, taking a step closer to her.
She stiffens up and keeps her attention on the road. She nods across the street. “There’s a café. That will do.”
She’s avoiding my question but still I look. It’s a total tourist trap, the kind that serves escargots and croque monsieurs to unsuspecting travelers who think that is what real Parisian cuisine is. I wouldn’t be caught dead in there.
Which is probably why she picked it. She knows that.
She’s staring at me now with a look of challenge in her eyes, which only confirms it.
“No problem,” I tell her. I look both ways to cross the street and try to take her arm, but she deftly escapes my grasp and trots ahead of me, her sandals smacking the pavement as she goes.
I guess the bright side of eating in a place like this is that the tourists who frequent it have no idea who I am and therefore can’t judge me for being here. They probably just think I’m some ridiculously handsome Frenchman on a date with a lady.
A lady who hates me, but I think in time I’ll win her over. The Dumonts are persistent, if nothing else.
We take a booth in the corner, and the waiter tosses some menus at us with disdain.
Gabrielle gives him an unimpressed look in return, takes her menu, and peers at it. “I’d forgotten how the service was in Paris.”
“Compared to where?”
“Everywhere else,” she says, watching as the waiter does the same to a few other tables, rarely speaking or looking at the customers.
“Is that a bad thing?” I ask. “Why should a waiter spend his time pretending to be your friend? You don’t tip here. There’s no money involved in it.”
“So you think people should only be nice if money is involved.”
I give her a look that says, Oh come on. “Look who you’re dealing with here.”
“Dealing with is one way to put it,” she mutters under her breath.
I flag down the waiter and order myself an espresso in French, which seems to take the waiter by surprise. Doesn’t make him any friendlier, though, but I respect that.
After Gabrielle orders a cappuccino, I fold my hands together on the table and say to her, “How about we put the fact that you don’t like me, for whatever poorly formed reason, to the side and pretend like we’re long-lost friends. Fill me in on what you’ve been doing.”
“I thought you don’t pretend if there’s no money involved.”
I can’t help but smirk. “I think I really like you, you know that?”
She rolls her eyes and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. It’s then that I catch a glimpse of her left hand. A ring on her wedding finger.
Normally that doesn’t bother me. I was married once, and those vows didn’t mean a thing in the end. Maybe not even in the beginning. But there’s a hot poker in my stomach at the thought of Gabrielle with someone. She seems too free-spirited for that, though I obviously don’t know her at all.
“How about we start with who you’re married to,” I say, nodding at the ring.
She glances down at it and smiles sheepishly. “Oh. No. This is just for show.”
“Just for show?”
“It’s just glass, not a diamond,” she says, holding out her hand. “It’s from a dollar store in the US.”
“I see that now. The question is why? Are you married or not?”
“No,” she says emphatically, sitting back in the booth and slipping her hand underneath the table. “But it helps keep creeps away.”
“I would think the real creeps wouldn’t care if you’re married or not.”
“Every bit helps.” Her expression grows hard.
“You have a problem with men hitting on you?”
“I take it that’s hard for you to believe,” she says mildly, then smiles for the waiter when he comes back with our drinks. Her smile is so bright and beautiful, it’s like a gut punch, and when the waiter finally takes the time to look at her, I can tell he’s affected in the same way.
“Not at all,” I manage to say after he leaves. “You’re unusually beautiful. That is to say, beautiful in an unusual way.”
She smiles wryly as she picks up her cappuccino and blows on it with those unusually perfect lips. “You could have left it at the first sentence.”
“I could have, but it wouldn’t have been honest.”
“Yes. I’m sure honesty is what runs Pascal Dumont, one of the most ruthless and richest men in