Nights With Him(99)

There was silence. Only silence for what felt like an eternity, and in that span of time he simply had to wait for her.

“You do?” she asked carefully.

“I do. Where are you? Are you in your favorite part of Paris that’s not in Paris?”

He was rewarded with a small laugh. “I’m predictable.”

He shook his head. “No. I just listened. To everything. Will you be there in an hour?”

“If you’re coming, yes,” she said, and he swore he could see her smiling. He knew he was.

“I am. I’m coming for you.”

He doubled back to the hotel, calling the concierge along the way to request a car service stat, and then slid into the backseat of a black sedan that shot him straight out of Paris and along the road to Giverny. Nearly an hour later, the driver pulled up to the gardens, and Jack paid him.

“Do you need a ride back to Paris, sir?”

“Yes, but I don’t know when.”

“I’m going off-duty, but please call this number and we will send someone for you,” the driver said, and handed him a card. Jack slipped it into his back pocket, thanked the man, and bought his ticket to the gardens. He walked through Monet’s one-time house, then crossed into the lush landscape that had inspired the painter. In all his time here in Europe, he’d never made it to these gardens. It was a true paradise, an escape from city life, and he understood why this land had inspired so many works of art.

He scanned for her across the flowerbeds, a sea of petals in every color. A central alley was covered by iron arches, roses climbing over the metal. Weeping willows brushed the green ground with their branches. He walked the perimeter, eyes peeled the whole time, and then the Japanese bridge came into view, its green wood slats rising over the lily pond. The most beautiful sight in all the gardens was this bridge, but in his mind it barely compared to her. She was resting her elbows on the bridge, reading a book. He picked up his pace, walking across a path edged by orange and red and gold bursts of petals, then reached the bridge. She looked up when she heard footfalls.

“Did you know this garden displays two hundred thousand annuals, biennials, and perennials each year?” She held up the book. “I read it in here.”

“Did you know I started to fall for you when you told me why ‘Ode to Joy’ was your ringtone?” he asked, stopping in front of her, and gently closing her book.

She shook her head. “No.”

“I started to fall for you then because it said something about you. About who you are, and what matters to you. And I fell more the day you came to my office in your librarian outfit, and not because of how you looked or what you did. But when you sat on my lap, and you told me about how you once wanted to be a Broadway star. Except you couldn’t sing, dance or act,” he said, and he wanted to take her hand, to kiss her palm, to kiss her face. But he had already won her with touch. He hadn’t earned her love with words yet.

“Why that?”

“Because it showed your sense of humor. Which is part of what I love about you,” he said, and every time he said the word love it was as if another small slice of regret sheared away. “And you asked me about Aubrey and if I missed her, and that’s part of how I fell in love with you too. Because you care. You care about your work, and your clients, and your friends, and your family. And you cared about me long before I could even begin to try to deserve you.”

“Don’t say that,” she said softly, her hands gripping the wood railing behind her.

“It’s true. Because you are so good with words and with talking and sharing, and I’m not. But I want to be. Because I want to deserve you. Like the night at the symphony, when you got mad at me.”

She looked down at her feet, red coloring her cheeks. Gently, he tipped up her chin.

“I fell for you because of that, too. Because you weren’t afraid to tell me the truth. To tell me to stop playing games. To be blatantly honest about something as simple as wanting an orgasm.”

She laughed, and glanced away. “You’re embarrassing me,” she said, but she didn’t seem mad. “You make me sound so horny.”

“You are. And I fucking love it, Michelle. Like I love you. My God, I have to tell you how much I love you. I wasn’t going to sit in that hotel room and wait for you to figure out if you were going to spend the rest of the trip with me. And I had to get my head out of my own ass and out of the past. As soon as I left the hotel, where else did I wind up but the spot where I should have told you in the first place how I felt?”

Her lips curved up, and he was dying to kiss her. But words mattered more.