One Reckless Decision

“I cannot possibly choose,” she said, but she let him pull her to her feet, exulting in the slide of his palm against hers. Why not dream a little longer? she asked herself. Who would it hurt?

“Then you must tell me about the Musée Rodin instead,” he said, taking a moment too long before releasing her hand and stepping back to pull out her chair. “I have not been in many years.”

Jessa had studied every luscious, supple curve of stone in the museum he mentioned, and had marveled at the raw sensual power of marble statues that should have seemed cold and dead yet instead begged to be touched, caressed. As she thought she might do at any moment.

But Tariq only took her arm and ushered her out into the soft Parisian night.

Sharing Jeremy’s adoption with him had changed something, Jessa realized as they walked together along the banks of the Seine in a silence that was not quite comfortable—too charged was it with their simmering chemistry and the restraint they had shown in not touching each other in so long. Not since that first night.

Later, back at the grand house, when Tariq had politely excused himself and she was left in the lonely expanse of the bedroom suite, she thought more about the evening’s revelation. Jeremy was not her private pain now, to hoard and to hurt herself with. It was theirs to share, and the sharing not only lessened the hurt, it removed all the walls she’d built around it. In place of those walls was something far too delicate and shimmering to name. She did not want to think about when she had felt this way before, and what had become of her.

“You are such a fool,” she whispered aloud, her voice swallowed up by the ornate furnishings all around her.

But she also did not want to think about the one crucial bit of information she had withheld from him. The one small yet crucial fact about Jeremy she had not been able to bring herself to share. She could not quite trust him with it, could she? Not when she knew deep down that this was a fantasy she was living in, something that would not, could not last. Protecting Jeremy was forever. It had to be.

It was as if, Jessa thought as she changed her clothes for dinner a few nights later, having hurt each other so terribly and so irrevocably they were now both easing their way into enjoying each other’s company, as if that might make the pain lessen. As if it could make it bearable somehow. She twisted her hair into a chignon, gathering her heavy copper curls at the nape of her neck and pinning them into place, then looked at herself in the mirror of the dressing room. She felt like Cinderella. With her hair up in the casually elegant bun, she thought she looked a bit like Cinderella, too. It was so easy to get used to the life she’d been living these past weeks, without a care in the world, wandering Paris by day and exploring the many facets of Tariq’s beguiling mind at night. The dressing room contained an array of clothes tailored to her precise measurements, all of which fit perfectly and made her look like someone other than Jessa Heath of Fulford: office manager in a letting agency and all-around nobody.

The Jessa she saw in the mirror was no ordinary Yorkshire lass. Tariq had mentioned the evening would be formal, and so she wore a floor-length satin gown the color of buttercream. It whispered and murmured seductively as she moved, the neckline plunging to hint at her breasts and the perfumed hollow between, then catching her at the waist before falling in lush folds to the ground. Her back was very nearly bare, with only thin angled shoulder straps to hold the gown in place. Though Jessa would have thought her very English paleness would look sickly in a gown so light, the color instead seemed to make her skin glow. Her freckles seemed like bursts of vibrant color rather than an embarrassment.

“You are lovely,” a familiar voice said from behind her, causing Jessa to start, though of course she knew who she would see when she looked in the mirror. Her body knew without having to hear the words he spoke. It reacted to the very sound of his voice, the hint of his nearness, with the now familiar rush of wild heat that suffused her.

Tariq stood in the entry to the dressing room, mouthwateringly debonair in his tuxedo, his long, strong body packaged to breathtaking perfection. His eyes seemed more green than usual, standing out from his dark hair and the black suit like some kind of deep forest beacon. His hard features seemed more handsome than fierce tonight, more approachable. Jessa felt a little stunned herself.

“Am I late?” she asked, feeling unaccountably shy suddenly in the face of so much steely male beauty. It was unfair that any one man could exude as much raw magnetism as he did, and so carelessly. She met his gaze in the mirror and then looked away, heat staining in her cheeks.