Perfect Strangers

“Sure,” I say, confused. “As soon as you explain to me how I just upset you.”

He opens his mouth to answer, but closes it again. Then he looks away, brows drawn down, and drags a hand through his hair. “I can’t do that without getting personal. Verypersonal.”

He swings his gaze back to mine and pins me in it. “I’ll be honest with you if you want me to, but I’m telling you right now you don’t want to hear it. Your rules. Your call.”

War erupts inside me.

Of course I want to hear whatever it is that brought on such a change in his demeanor…but I also don’t. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to tell me, that he thinks telling me will change something between us. I appreciate that he’s giving me the choice, but for someone with an imagination like mine, ambiguity is dangerous.

Three months, Olivia. You’re only in Paris for three months. Keep it light. Let it go.

James watches me, waiting.

I say, “I’m feeling really ambivalent about this.”

He nods, his gaze searching mine. “I hear you.”

I love it when he says that. So many arguments could be solved with that short phrase alone. “Maybe we could compromise?”

“Compromise how?”

“What if you just told me if what I said is somehow related to your work?”

His eyes widen. He repeats gruffly, “My work.”

Why does he look so surprised?“Yes. Your art. Those portraits you drew, Perspectives in Grief. Death is kind of a thing for you. Right?”

A muscle in his jaw flexes over and over. He stares at me so hard I think he could ignite me with the heated intensity of his gaze. When it finally comes, his response is careful.

“Let’s say it’s…a touchy subject.”

I study his expression, convinced he’s telling me the truth, and also that he doesn’t want me to push it any farther.

Watching him waiting so tensely for me to speak, I decide I don’t want to, either.

I already know death has touched him somehow, the same way it’s touched me. There’s no need to exhume the graves.

“Okay.”

His eyes are wary. “Okay?”

I nod. “We’ve already agreed we’re not going to share our sad stories. I get that you don’t want to talk about yours, because I definitely don’t want to talk about mine. So…okay. From now on, if either of us doesn’t want to get into the details of something, we’ll just say, ‘touchy subject.’ It’ll be our safe word. Safe phrase, technically. Deal?”

The thundercloud over his head evaporates with dizzying speed, leaving his shoulders relaxed and his eyes smiling. Pulling me close against his chest, he says in a throaty voice, “What do you know about safe words, sweetheart?”

The heat in his gaze tells me that he knows an awful lot. “I’ve…read about them. In books.”

He murmurs, “Have you now?” and presses his face against my neck, gently biting the muscle above my collarbone. This time when he cups my ass, it’s with both hands.

Then he kisses me until almost every thought is eradicated from my mind.

Every thought except the memory of how his eyes changed so quickly from light to dark when I said he killed me.

I have the sneaking suspicion that one’s going to stick with me for a while.

* * *

“A book store?”

Standing beside me in the dappled shade of linden trees on a quiet, cobblestone avenue, James smiles and squeezes my hand. “Not just any book store. The book store. Shakespeare and Company is probably the most famous independent book store in the world.”

I gaze at the quaint shop across the street with its green awning and matching trim, rustic yellow sign, and weather-beaten book stalls lining one side of the small plaza in front. It looks like a place time forgot.

“I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s all right. But I have to warn you, you’ll fall in love with it as soon as we walk through the door.”

He tugs on my hand and pulls me away from where the taxi dropped us, on the left bank of the Seine, a stone’s throw away from Notre Dame. A small crowd of people mills in front of the store, browsing through the outdoor book stalls and chatting, sipping espressos from the café next door. The building the store is housed in appears centuries old, a tall stretch of pitted stone with crumbling corners and a white façade mellowed to ivory with age.

As soon as we pass through the glass-paned front door and a bell somewhere out of sight jingles merrily, I’m flooded with the most wonderful sense of connection, like I’ve been plugged into a socket and have started to hum with energy. I feel as if I’ve come home.

It’s the smell.