Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,131

started low and deep and fluttered up through me reappeared, and I could no more ignore it than I could break the kiss. Instead of shoving him away, I found myself clutching his forearms as if I’d lose my balance and tumble to the ground without him to hold me up.

We kissed and kissed and kissed some more until I felt the burn of his whiskers on my skin and my lips were puffy and all I could taste was him. He wrapped his arms about me and held me pressed against him. When he broke the kiss, he didn’t let go but leaned down and pressed his forehead against mine while we struggled for breath.

“I’m in love with you,” he said.

“Don’t—”

“Too late.” He gave me his crooked smile, and it about broke my heart. “I know you probably think it’s too soon to say it, but I have to, because it’s true. I knew it the first time I kissed you, and then I knew it for sure when you left for Italy, because I’ve only felt that sort of heartbreak once before. I. Love. You.”

I felt as if I might faint. This was so much more than I was ready for. I shook my head, but he ignored me.

“I thought about it and thought about it, and I realized when I left Paris that it was always you. All of our animosity at work, it was me trying to keep you from getting under my skin, because I think I knew even then that you were the one,” he said. “The very first time I saw you, I noticed you. How you walked with purpose, your hair pulled back at the nape of your neck, looking all business, the cut of your skirt, slim and sexy but utterly professional. No flashy jewelry and barely any makeup, as if you didn’t want anyone to see you as anything other than a woman who got things done.”

“You remember what I was wearing?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. He grinned. The moonlight made it look like a pirate’s smile, all roguish charm and mischievous intent, and I felt my insides melt. “Aidan introduced us, and when I shook your hand, your grip was cool and dry and firm. Then you looked me right in the eye and said, ‘There aren’t any hot wings here,’ and then you walked away.”

I cringed. “Oh man, I was such a jerk. I’m sorry. Truth? I was totally threatened by you and your success with that viral challenge and felt the need to establish dominance.”

“I know,” he said. “It was totally hot.”

I burst out laughing. Then I sighed. What was I supposed to say?

“Working together makes this really complicated,” I said. “This whole thing would be easier if I had fallen in love with Marcellino again.”

He frowned. “But you couldn’t, because even though Marcellino is the perfect man, he is not the perfect man for you. I am.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked, both charmed and affronted by his arrogance.

“Because I fell in love with you on the other side of your greatest loss, your deepest grief,” he said. “I fell for the strong, determined, driven woman who you’ll always be, and I love you exactly as you are.”

I felt my throat get tight. He cupped my chin, bringing my gaze up to his.

“Chelsea, you’re trying so hard to be who you were before your mother died,” he said. “But you can’t be her. That woman died with your mom.”

A tear coursed down my cheek, and he tenderly wiped it away with his thumb.

“That was the girl Marcellino and Jean Claude and Colin fell in love with, but you’re not her anymore,” he said. “You’re a woman who has suffered tremendous loss and found the courage to keep going.

“That’s what makes us perfect together. We understand that pieces of our hearts will always belong to those who are gone. For us, love and loss are forever entwined, making us love more cautiously but also more deeply,” he said.

I was openly crying now. “I can’t,” I gasped. “I don’t want to be the person on the other side of my grief. I want to be the person before the loss happened. I want to be her.”

“I know, darling, but you can’t. You’ve been fooling yourself that if you become that person again, you can slyly keep your pain tucked way down deep. The truth is you’ve been hanging on to your grief as if it’s the last part