“I feel bad deserting you, though. Do you want me to walk back to your house with you?”
“You are too kind, but no. I’m ine.”
And I am. It hits me that I haven’t been feeling watched for a while now, proving my theory that I get that sensation when feeling of-kilter. “I’ll see you of and shop a bit more before heading home.”
“If you’re sure, then”—she glances toward the road—“I need to cross the street to grab a taxi.”
We dart across the road together to a line of several taxis and Chantal lags the irst one in line. After tossing her bags in the back, she pauses. “It was loads of fun, Sara. I’m glad Katie called my mother and brought us together.”
I’m quick to agree. I like Chantal, and inding a friend this early in my move to Paris is comforting. “Me too.” I grin. “Even if you do eat snails.”
She snorts out laughter and the funny sound has us both grinning. With a quick wave, she starts to get in the car. “I’ll see you in the morning. Oh. Wait.” She pauses halfway inside the taxi and straightens. “I’ve started to ask this all day, and we keep getting of the subject before I do. Is there someone else helping you look for your friend?”
My brow furrows at the unexpected question. “We do have a private eye who’s been helping, but he’s not been able to get much information.”
“Oh, okay then. I guess he just crossed eforts with you today. The lady at City Hall said someone else had been by yesterday inquiring about Ella.” She disappears into the car with a inal wave.
Stunned, I stand there long after the taxi pulls away, my mind chasing Chantal’s words around in circles. Blake is in the States. He didn’t go by City Hall yesterday. Chris mentioned hiring someone here as well, but I’m certain he has no one on this yet. Did Blake go above and beyond and hire someone here we don’t know about? That has to be it.
A horn honks and shocks me back to the present. Shift-ing the numerous bags in my arms, I turn toward the row of shops and restaurants behind me. Squinting, I’m almost certain I see the green lady sign that would be my cofee destination.
A white mocha and a place to sit down and call Blake to see if he did indeed hire someone is perfect. I’d like an update on Ava anyway.
Ava—how have I managed to forget that she accused me of killing Rebecca? My only answer is self-preservation: my brain decided I can handle only so much at once.
I start walking, and almost instantly my skin prickles and the hair on my nape stands up. My steps quicken with that damnable sensation of being watched, and I glance around the busy sidewalk, surveying the people hurrying to and from destinations, and identify no obvious threat.
And why would I? This is just the control freak in me struggling with the unknown of a new city, paired with the stress of the past few days, triggered by thoughts of Ella and Ava.
Nothing more. I think. I hope. My reasoning isn’t comforting.
I’m three stores from Starbucks, counting the doors to a safe public place.
One more door and I’m at Starbucks, about to go inside, when I stop dead in my tracks. In disbelief, I blink at the sign hanging above the next store: THE SCRIPT. Amber’s tattoo parlor. The door to the parlor starts to open, and adrenaline surges through me.
Acting on pure instinct, I dart inside Starbucks, desperate not to be seen. Inside, warm air washes over me along with a strong dose of relief. I glance around the tiny café with limited seating, like everywhere I’ve been in Paris thus far, and I go to the counter.
“English?” I ask the tall, dark-haired man behind the counter, and receive a highly accented, “Yes. English.”
“Oh, thank you.” My stress level lowers instantly, my shoulders relaxing and my pulse slowing. It’s amazing how a little thing like ordering my favorite drink in English can be so im-mensely comforting. “White Mocha. Nonfat. No foam.”
I glance at the glass case by the register, delighted to ind all my favorites from back in the States. I’ve had macarons and chocolate today and don’t need anything else, but my inger has a mind of its own and points to an oversized sugar cookie with icing.
The employee speaks my silent language even better than English, and I’m quickly handed my cookie in a bag.
Once I’ve paid, I scoot to the end of the bar, juggle my bags, and somehow manage to gobble—okay, inhale—my cookie while I wait on my drink. I analyze why I was so desperate to escape an encounter with Amber. No, why I’d run away from one.
My lips twist in disapproval of my actions. What am I doing? Sure, Chris doesn’t want me around Tristan and I’m not a fan of Amber, but really? Running away? Hiding? If there’s anything Chris has helped me see, it’s that I have a tendency to run and call it avoidance, and it doesn’t work. By the time my cofee is set on the counter, I’m completely angry with myself for being a coward.
I glance around at the wooden tables and there are none available. I sigh and conclude I have to head home to call Blake, assuring myself the decision has nothing to do with a worry that I might run into Amber. Nevertheless, I pause with my hand on the door and steel myself for the highly unlikely chance I might run into her.
I step outside and immediately head toward the Script, past the window painted with a collection of tattoo-like graph-ics, and I don’t know why, but I stop. Cement seems to form around my feet.
I know Chris doesn’t want me to meet this Tristan guy.
Actually, he expressed concern at him being my private tutor.
Absolute disapproval would be a more valid description, but meeting him and having him become my tutor are two diferent things.
My ingers curl around the bag handles. I’m justifying standing here, and I know it, and I force myself to admit the real temptation that has me frozen in place. What I’d really been running from when I’d rushed into Starbucks. I want to go inside.
I want to know who Amber is, and what she once was to Chris. I want to know what this place was to him, what it might still be to him. But in my heart, I know Chris wants to show me these things himself. I know he won’t like that I’m here.
That’s all that matters. He matters. My decision becomes cemented in my mind.
I’m not going in.
I glance forward, and realize home is back the other way. I turn around to depart.
“Sara.”
I hear Amber’s voice and pause, more of that cement sucking the movement from my feet. If I were an artist, I would paint myself in a box. Instead, I’m a fool who’s just ensured trouble for myself with a certain famous, sometimes cranky, painter of my own. I can’t walk away from this encounter without potentially coming of weak, and thus more of a target to Amber than I already am.
Cringing, I turn to face her. “Amber,” I manage in greeting, and her name sounds as bitter as it tastes on my tongue.
“Hi.” Before I can stop myself, my gaze sweeps her very dif-ferent appearance today, taking in the red streaks woven into her blond hair that match the shiny red pants she’s paired with black knee-high boots. Her heels are so high they could be registered weapons, and I sure as heck will think twice about ticking her of.
Her lips twist into a knowing smile that says “caught ya,”
and I assume she means checking her out, but I’m wrong.
“Changed your mind about coming inside, I guess?”
Of course she’d seen me in the window. How could she not have? “Actually, I was trying to remember which direction my house is.” I lift my Starbucks cup, attempting a fast recovery. “An addiction I’ll indulge in frequently here, I’m sure. I need to be able to ind my way from it to my house on a regular basis.”
“Right. Well, you’re here now. Why not bring your American addiction inside and see my place?”
Let me count the reasons why not. Chris. Chris. And Chris.
Repeat ten times.
But Amber’s watching me, her expression illed with a challenge that can be about only one thing, or rather, person, to which the same answer repeats itself. Chris.
“For a minute,” I agree, walking toward her, still in the establishing backbone territory with her. “I’m meeting Chris for dinner soon. “
Her gaze cuts to the side a moment and I am shaken by the blast of emotions waving of of her and into me. Pain. Resentment. Jealousy. Afected by the magnitude of what I sense in her, I stop next to her and actually have to ight the urge to comfort her, reminding myself these are the same emotions that led Ava to very bad, very dark actions.
Her head turns sharply, icy blue eyes locking with mine.
“Maybe I’ll join you for dinner.”
A shiver races down my spine at the hatred I’d seen for an instant in the kitchen last night. “We’ll have to set that up sometime.” Memories of what jealousy did to Ava soften my tone far more than Amber’s ive-inch heels ever could.
I head inside the Script and ind myself in a warehouse-like, modern-looking open space. Wall-to-wall frames are illed with tattoo designs, and saucer-shaped silver lamps dangle over two shiny white tables with curved edges sitting side by side. Behind them is an open doorway leading to what appears to be a room illed with numerous tables and leather chairs.
I make a beeline for a chair in front of one of the tables, when a man appears in the open doorway, and it’s all I can do to keep walking. Dressed in black leather pants and a T-shirt, he is tall, with wavy raven hair to his chin, and perfect, masculine facial features. But it’s not his looks that have me ready to stumble over my own feet. It’s the way he oozes the kind of power Mark does and leaves me with two certainties. He is Tristan and he is a Master.
He leans against the wall directly across from the table I’ve stopped at, crossing his heavily tattooed arms in front of his broad chest. I stare at them, expecting some izzle of female awareness like I get from Chris’s, and ind none. Huh. I’m still not a tattoo girl. I’m a Chris girl. The idea makes me smile inside. Yes. I am deinitely a Chris girl.
“Hello, Sara,” he says, his voice a deep, rich, highly accented tone, his intelligent eyes assessing me with far more interest than I’m comfortable with.
I set my bags down and claim the chair in front of the table, instinctively playing the power game Mark has taught me to engage in so well. “Hello, Tristan.”
His lips quirk. “You know who I am.”
“You know who I am.”
“Amber described you quite well,” he assures me, a bit too much suggestiveness to his tone.
Considering Amber has seen me na**d, I really don’t want to know what that means.
Amber sits behind the table in front of me. “I left out the more intimate details,” she says, clearly reading my mind, before rolling her chair over so that she can see both of us.
My cell phone rings and I dig it out of my purse and, rather than my normal pleasure at the sight of his number, my heart plummets when it’s Chris calling. I close my eyes and push the answer button. “Hey,” I say, and my voice sounds as tentative as I feel.
“Hey, baby. I just turned onto Champs-Élysées. Where are you? I’ll pick you up so we can go eat.”
I inhale deeply, the breath splintering through my lungs like shards of glass. He isn’t going to be happy, but I have to tell him the truth. I’ve had a lifetime of people lying to me. I won’t lie to Chris. I won’t do that to our relationship. “I stopped at Starbucks, and—”
“You’re at the Script, aren’t you?”
His voice is tight, hard, and I can barely ind mine. “Yes,” I whisper.
“Is Chantal with you?”
“No. Her mother was sick and she had to leave.”
There’s a dreaded tense silence before he says, “I’ll be right there.”
Ten
“Chris isn’t happy you’re here,” Amber comments before I’ve even had time to stick my phone back inside my purse.
“Why do you say that?” I sound as defensive as I feel.
“Sweetheart,” Amber purrs, “I read your expression like it was a book.”
“Le Professeur.”
My attention lifts to Tristan, still leaning against the wall, and who logic tells me has just said “teacher.” I have the distinct impression his oddly timed insertion into the conversation is an efort to delate the situation before war breaks out.
“Teacher,” he conirms in English. “I hear you need one.”
There is a message buried in the heaviness of his stare that tells me he isn’t talking about French. “No. I have a teacher I’m quite satisied with.”
Amber snorts. “He’s teaching now, is he?” Bitterness tinges the clear insult.
My gaze lands hard on her, and I open my mouth to defend Chris, planning to hold nothing back—but in the process my attention lands on her arm, which is resting on the table. The material has climbed up enough for me to see more of her skin, and my lips part at what I ind.
Without conscious thought, I grab her wrist to hold her in place and see the familiar marks I once saw on Chris’s skin. The marks made by a sharply landed whip.
Ice slides down my spine. Suddenly, Amber is so much more than a bitter ex-girlfriend of Chris’s. She is damaged like him, like me, someone I relate to. Someone I understand.
My gaze lifts to hers and my throat is thick, my words hoarsely spoken. “What happened to you?”
Shock registers on her face, and I know she knows what I mean. Her lashes lower, blocking out my inspection. When they lift she meets my stare, and contempt pours from her, but it does nothing to hide the pain I now know runs far deeper than a mere breakup with Chris.