Page 67 of My Best French Wedding

Hildy angled her head slightly, lips easing apart as they met Walter’s. It was barely a conscious decision.

Bad idea, her better self whispered.Shhh, her body replied.Let us have this.

Why did the feel of his tongue in her mouth unravel her more than another man’s mouth between her thighs? She’d never gotten this hot this quickly from kissing anyone else. As Hildy sagged, boneless, he wrapped an arm around her waist to draw her up and against him.

“Is that French enough for you?” she whispered.

He breathed a ragged “no” against her earlobe.

She twisted to meet his mouth again, hardly realizing they were moving until she felt the edge of his mattress against the back of her legs. That jarred her enough to register the insistent buzzing of her phone, which snapped Hildy out of her trance. Sanity returned with a vengeance. Hildy used the heel of her hand to shove him back a step.

“For reference, that was taking it too far.”

“I guess we overcorrected.” His breathing was still uneven.

Hildy gave a decisive nod. “It’s good we had this time to practice.” She checked her phone, only half surprised to see a series of texts from Corinne. Most were variations on the theme of a stop-sign emoji.

Were she and Walter that predictable? How annoying. Hildy preferred to think of herself as a force of nature, shifting and changing like the wind.

“I’ll see you at breakfast,” she told him, hurrying for the door.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” Walter promised.

Whatever that meant.

23Hildy

TWO DAYS BEFORE THE PRESCOTT-SCHAFER WEDDING

TAMNIÈS, France—“I’ve been thinking,” Walter said when he joined Hildy at breakfast the next morning. “If we’re really going to make this work, we need to lock in.”

The smile Hildy had practiced in the mirror last night faded. “We’re having breakfast together. You don’t have a fork sticking out of the back of your hand. I’d call that a win.”

“I think we need to go deeper.”

“Is that supposed to be a double entendre?”

“No, Hildy.”

“Good, because I haven’t had enough coffee for that. I’m not sure there’s enough coffee in the world.” She gazed thoughtfully into the distance. The lack of eye contact made it easier to pretend last night had never happened.

“I’m talking about having an honest and open conversation,” he persisted.

“About?”

“Us.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Our relationship.”

She raised her sunglasses so he could see her brows arch.

“Whatever you want to call it. The past. Our history.”

“And you think that’s going to smooth out the kinks? Also not a double entendre,” she added, before he could ask.

“I’m hopeful, yes.”