One Bride for Five Mountain Men

I fling everything I can carry into one large suitcase and leave with it, rolling it behind me. Everything else that R had claimed he was buying for us, that he was furnishing to decorate our new life together, I leave behind.

Using the documentation he'd given me, I find a new flat in the Marais. It isn't as charming or as historical as the one I shared with R, but it is mine. Back to my original Paris with the drug dealers and the homeless, dragging their dogs behind them.

I'd struggled over the decision to spend some of Kelsey's money doing it, but isn't it really my money? Didn’t I earn it, albeit unknowingly? Isn’t it something that had been stolen from me that now I am reinvesting in my own life? At least that's what I am telling myself.

An

d I am starting again. I keep my hair red and cut it short into a cute pixie that sweeps the top of my eyebrows. I get glasses even though I don't need glasses. I buy a lot of hats.

A new wardrobe, a new address, and a new attitude... I tell myself that this time it will be for real.

Chapter 18

Raleigh

I gave her a week to come back to me. But she didn't.

She changed her cell phone number, at least I knew that much. I asked the doorman to ring the old number and it had already been given to a new couple that spoke only Polish.

It was as though she'd disappeared completely. I promised myself not to hire another investigator, but the skin on that promise was wearing extremely thin. What if she was hurt? What if she had already run out of money?

And then one day on the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, I saw her. Just the curve of the back of her shoulder, but I knew was her. How many hours had I spent looking at that shoulder while she was asleep? While she was flung over her childhood bed, arms and legs spread out, completely unaware of my intrusion?

It couldn't have been anyone else. I knew it had to be her.

But I wanted to respect her wishes, and so I merely followed her at a respectful distance until I saw her disappear into a doorway on the Rue de Bretagne, where she must live.

She is a creature of habit, as I well know. She has little rituals that I've watched countless times. She talks to herself. She likes to confront the mirror, casting her weight on one hip and pointing her chin in the air imperiously as though she is daring her reflection to talk back. She is never really quite that sassy in real life, but it is nice to know it is in there somewhere.

I sip at the small paper cup as I sit on a bench outside her apartment, waiting for her to go to the café for her breakfast and morning coffee.

As soon as I see her emerge from the darkened doorway, I rise from my bench, holding the newspaper under my arm as I stride toward the other end of the block.

This should take about two and half minutes. I flip the coffee cup lid off with my thumb into a garbage can as I navigate the sidewalk. Near the end, I hold out the newspaper and pretend to read it as I'm walking, as one does. Reading and walking, totally normal, until…

“Oh no!”

I stop up short, the coffee sloshes over the edge of the cup and splashes across her toes in a pair of fetching leather sandals.

“Pardonnez moi! I'm so—Jordan?”

She just stands, stepping slightly from foot to foot, probably feeling the coffee squishing under the balls of her feet. Just the thought of that sensitive skin makes my gut clench with longing.

Maybe this was a mistake!

Too late now, I tell myself. It's too late. Just do it.

“I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there!” I mutter, completely embarrassed. Now that my charade has been executed, I can see how completely pathetic it is. She probably sees right through me.

“Let me buy you new ones. Oh… those are really nice shoes.”

“No it's all right,” she finally says, and I watch her stained toes flexing in her sandals.

“Oh, you must let me,” I insist. “I can have something delivered to you today. Truly, I am so sorry.”

She looks up at me, her eyes steelier than I remember. But there's that pink flush in her cheeks, the stubborn set of her jaw. She still in there, my little girl.

“I suppose you better come upstairs then,” she mutters, turning on her heel and stalking off.