the bottle and leveled his gaze on me. “Are you telling me you had three different men in your life in one year and no one since?”
“Do not slut shame me,” I said. I pointed the empty fork at him as if I’d stab him with it. “I was twenty-two, it was a year abroad, and I loved every one of them.”
He made an annoyed face. “What? I would never. Three in a year is completely respectable. It’s the seven-year dry spell that has me boggled.”
“It wasn’t totally dry,” I said. “There just wasn’t anyone who was relationship material.”
“No, I refuse to accept that in all of Boston, you couldn’t find one man who was shaggable on a semipermanent basis.”
“I couldn’t,” I insisted.
“Really?” he asked. “And you’re not even going to pretend to consider me for a moment? I’m hurt, Martin, really hurt.”
I laughed, knowing he was teasing me, and he grinned in return.
“So, that’s my story, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Now, what’s the office gossip?” I asked. “I feel so disconnected from everyone.”
“Well, it started as a major brouhaha over the staff-room refrigerator,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. “And also, I was really looking for more of a who spatted with whom.”
“Oh, this is even better than a spat,” he said. “Because it involves a mystery.”
“I’m listening.”
“You know Michelle Fernando from Human Resources?” he asked.
“Yup.” I tried not to make a face, but it slipped out.
“I can see you do know her,” he said.
I bit my lip. “She’s just a bit rigid, you know? And coming from me, that’s saying something.”
He laughed. “Indeed. Well, someone got into the turkey club sandwich she brought for lunch a few days ago and took a quarter of it.”
“A quarter? Why not take the whole thing?”
“Exactly,” he said. He raised one eyebrow. “Needless to say, the signs went up immediately. She positively papered the place, calling out the culprit and demanding reimbursement.”
“Michelle does love her copy machine signs,” I said. “Let me guess, the font was Helvetica.”
Jason laughed. “As in give them hell-vetica? Yes, it was—in bold. And yesterday she had a personal pizza in the fridge, and someone took one slice, or again, one quarter of the pie.”
“No way.”
I knew I shouldn’t laugh, but I did anyway. It was hard to feel badly for Michelle. The woman had a well-deserved reputation for being a jerk, which had proven true when one of my team members wanted to take an extended maternity leave and Michelle refused. We’d almost come to blows over it because of the sheer unreasonableness on Michelle’s part in not letting the new mom attach her accumulated vacation time to her leave.
And as for me personally, she had positively vibrated with disapproval when Aidan and I filled out the paperwork for my leave of absence. She was one of those people who should never be given any sort of power. Ever. I couldn’t help but admire whoever was messing with her.
“Picture, if you will, Michelle, arms straight, hands balled into fists, stomping through the office, demanding to smell everyone’s breath to see who had eaten her pizza,” he said.
“She didn’t!”
“She did.”
I howled. “I am dying.”
“I know. It’s been as entertaining as all get-out,” he said. “Honestly, I can’t wait to see what the Quarter Thief does next.”
“Is that what everyone is calling him?”
“For now.”
“I like it.” I met his gaze and found a warmth in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. I wondered if I’d been too hard on him over the past few years. Maybe Aidan was right and Knightley wasn’t so bad after all.
“So, Paris tomorrow?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Oui, and then I’m going to meet up with my friend Marcellino in Italy, hopefully for the annual wine festival at his vineyard, Castello di Luce—depending upon how things go in Paris, of course.” It made me feel vulnerable to share this much with Knightley, but I refused to be embarrassed that he knew about my quest. I’d made the decision to share, and there was no going back now.
“Well, now I’m jealous. Bon voyage, and this time, Martin, find out if he’s married first.”
I picked up my phone, preparing to finish the call. “Never going to hear the end of that, am I?”
“Nope,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and smiled before hanging up.
* * *
• • • •
RETURNING MY RENTAL car took longer than I’d anticipated, because of course it did. I got lost on my way to the Dublin