Page 46 of The Last Kiss

“No.” I shake myself into focus, ignoring the illicit pull of his Frenchness (is that a thing. I’m making it one if it isn’t). “I left university thinking I was going to set the publishing world alight, that I would have this amazing career, would be written about in the broadsheets how I’d discovered all these breakout authors. ‘The woman who finds the greatest writer of our time’.” I air quote around my former dream.

“And you haven’t?”

I shoot him a withering glance. “No, I work in a dingy office surrounded by disgusting dinosaur old men for a newspaper that no one wants to read anymore.”

“So, change?” he gives his shrug.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because, Rebecca, my boss. She needs me.” I stare into my wine, unwilling to meet his expressive stare. “She makes so many mistakes. Even last month she fiddled with one of my spreadsheets and managed to accidentally not print two thousand copies.” Lifting my glass, I glug down more of the amazing red. Probably a bit too amazing judging how quickly I’ve been sinking it. “We can’t afford to lose two thousand readers.”

His fingers steeple together, reminding me of our first dinner, his thoughtful I’m going to read you like a cheap and loose magazine look.

“That’s not all on you though, Juliette.” Even though that’s not my real name, I love it. I like being her, sitting and having sophisticated dinners with a sophisticated man.

“I’ve thought of you.” Someone take the red away from me. Truth bubbles with the tang of fermented grapes. “A lot.” I tuck my hair behind my ear, gaze down. “I was telling the truth you know. I’d never done anything like that before. But somehow, from that night you’ve put a smile on my face at a time when I wasn’t sure that would happen again.”

“But you still look sad.” He reaches across the table and slips his fingers over mine and I shiver in my seat. “Look at me.”

I do, meeting his dark-blue, incandescent stare. He doesn’t speak and neither do I.

What am I doing?

How did this happen again?

“It seems like fate to me, ma petite.” He rolls the words making them swim in my head with the wine. “The chances of two people meeting in two different places in one very large city, no?” He shrugs. “Fate? Maybe destiny.”

I snort a giggle. “Destiny?”

He doesn’t answer my schoolgirl giggle, merely watches me, making my mouth dry. “So, what happens now?” My gaze falls to his lips—stupid, treacherous gaze.

His smile expands, enigmatic. “I’d suggest a nightcap, but you made your rules very clear.”

He’s thrown that gauntlet down.

I feign innocence. “Oh, does nightcap mean something else in French?”

“I think nightcap is a bilingual expression of understanding, no?”

My heart thuds. Pulse beating in the base of my throat.

“And if I said I’d like a nightcap?”

Am I really doing this again? Am I crazy?

My pulse is shouting yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Maybe it is fate. Maybe this man is supposed to appear like magic and make all the bad things evaporate with wine and happenstance.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and holds it between us, balanced on the surface of his broad palm. “Your word, ma petite.”

Go home… go home…

I meet his eyes.

“Yes.”