A Billionaire for Christmas

He was standing straight and still as he ate, not leaning on the counter or fidgeting. “What could be so awful that it would make a beautiful woman like you cry?”

She did laugh at him for that. “I don’t know, alien abduction? The state of the whole world? That I had no one to bring me flowers, but now I do?”

His gaze slowly rose from his croissant to her eyes.

Dree realized what she’d said and waved her hands, crossing them like she was waving off a landing airplane. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not imagining that we have a relationship. We don’t. It was just one night, and that’s all it was supposed to be. I just meant that it was nice of you to bring me flowers this morning. If there had been something else going on, if I were in Paris alone for some stupid reason when I should have had a romantic trip planned but then everything went to shit, it’s not your responsibility. I don’t expect anything from you. We’re cool. That’s all. We’re cool.”

Augustine held a piece of croissant pinched in his fingers, staring at it and not eating it. Butter and strawberry jam leaked onto his fingers. His steady look seemed resigned and sad, not freaked out.

Or he might be screaming inside and good at covering it up. It was hard to tell with guys sometimes.

“It really is okay,” she said. “I was just thinking about things I might do in Paris, like tourist stuff.”

He finally spoke. “Last night, it sounded like you had a bucket list.”

“Funny you should put it like that, a bucket list.” That’s what Roxanne and Gen had called it the night before. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Augustine neatly wiped his fingers on a paper towel and then reached over and picked up her special napkin that was covered with black handwriting and her map for the rest of her life.

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “You don’t have to look at that.” A lot of it was pretty embarrassing and made her look like a tramp. Well, even more like a tramp than she’d already made herself look by screaming that she wanted to screw all the men in a bar and then taking a guy home for the hottest sex of her life.

Yeah, the tramp ship had already sailed.

He studied it, frowning in places. “This is quite a list.”

“I wasn’t planning on doing it all.” She totally was.

Augustine tilted his head, glanced up at her with a startled expression, and then looked back at the napkin as his eyes grew larger. “A threesome, a foursome with three guys, a gang bang. You mentioned these last night.”

It all sounded so sordid now, like only an idiot would want to do ridiculous things like that. “It’s just a list. I don’t even know how many of those things I’ll be able to do, ever, in my whole life.”

“It also says that you should see the Louvre. You haven’t seen the Louvre?” He shook his head and raised one hand. “I forgot it’s your first time in Paris. Of course, you haven’t.”

“Yeah, I haven’t done anything.”

“Just as a fellow tourist in Paris, I might suggest you prioritize seeing the Louvre and the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and eating in some of the restaurants listed here before you check the various debaucheries off your list. You can sleep with men anywhere in the world, but only Paris has the Louvre and the Palais Garnier.”

Dree considered the one hundred fifty-two euros that were still in her wallet. Tickets to get into the Louvre were seventeen euros, and she needed to eat. “Well, I’m not going to be here for very long. I don’t know how many of these things I’ll be able to see at all.”

“When is your flight back?”

“Thursday morning,” she said.

His dark eyebrows rose. “That’s when I’m scheduled to leave, also. I believe I have an early flight.”

“You don’t live in Paris?”

He shook his head. “And no more questions unless you want me to lie to you, as you said. Of these restaurants listed here, may I heartily recommend Le Cinq. It’s the restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel George V.”

Dree muttered, “I’m kind of on a budget. I don’t think I’m going to be eating at any of those fancy restaurants my friends recommended. They’re a lot better off than I am.”

He looked up from the napkin. “Oh?”

Shame filled her. Some families were weird about money. Dree’s sheep-farmer family was ridiculously proud of how they’d made do for over a hundred years with the small income that shepherding their small flock provided. Dree had never owned any clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs from her siblings or cousins, and most of them had made a trip through the church’s poor box at some point, too. She could mend, darn, or patch anything.