Midnight in Montmartre: A French Kiss Sweet Romance (10 page)

B
eth gracefully pushed
the knife into the lettuce and cut the leaves into infuriatingly small pieces. Luc watched her as she ate her kale salad with dainty bites then looked down at his own plate, which contained a hunk of duck. She never overloaded the fork, and she chewed inconspicuously, as if she was trying to pretend she wasn't chewing.

"What are you thinking about?" Beth asked him. "Your mind seems to be elsewhere."

Luc looked up at her again, this time meeting her ocean-colored eyes. Beth had pulled her blond hair back in a sophisticated chignon. She wore the most dazzling earrings, and her red lipstick must've been painted on, because the color never faded as she ate, nor did it leave noticeable lip prints on her wine glass.

She was, in a word, captivating.

All the men had turned to look at her when they entered the Michelin-starred restaurant together. He'd felt a surge of pride in that moment to know that he was being seen at the right place with the right woman, but those superficial types of recognition were never fulfilling in the long run.

By the time he sat down, he'd been ashamed of himself. What did he care what a bunch of strangers thought? Beth wasn't really his. Or rather, he didn't belong to Beth. They didn't belong to each other, and that became clear as the evening dragged on.

"I was just thinking about your campaign," he said. "It's a big step for us. There's so much to do."

He popped a piece of duck into his mouth and chewed. It tasted good, like all the other
confit de canard
he'd ever had, which was why he always ordered it. Yet he regretted ordering it; he should’ve tried something new.

"Let's not worry about that now." She reached across the table and put her hand over his. "Tonight is about us. We don't have to talk about business. With all that has been going on, we've been working nonstop. We can afford to unwind a little, right?" She raised her wine glass. "To us."

"To us," Luc obliged, clinking her glass and returning her smile.

Beth was wearing the most low-cut dress he'd ever seen her in. The amount of skin she showed would make a priest blush. It was poppy red, matching her lipstick, and the diamond necklace around her neck was perhaps meant to distract from her ample cleavage. Or draw attention to it.

Is she really trying this hard to impress me?
Luc wondered.

Beth Montaigne, going above and beyond to please him for a change. It was almost unbelievable.

"Are you sure nothing's bothering you?" Beth was giving him another one of her strange looks.

"No, I don't think so. Although I do think the world is doomed and we're all going to die."

"Very funny." She took a tiny sip of her wine.

She had been the one who had picked the wine. Funny enough, it was the same one that Luc had picked for Mia the night they had kissed. Beth knew all about the wine, everything from the vineyard and the temperatures of the grapes to the fermentation times and the history of the owners.

When she swirled the wine in her glass, all Luc could think about was how he and Mia had joked about wine being basically grape juice. He had to suppress a laugh.

"You know, Luc, I'm very impressed with you." Beth leaned over her plate, speaking in a low voice as if she was trying to tell him a secret. "I don't think anyone else from our graduating class has been as successful as you."

"I don't think that's true. What about Claude, or Julien?"

"Oh, they didn't build a company from the ground up. Their success was handed to them. All they have to do is not fail, which isn't so hard when they already have competent people working beneath them, not to mention all that financial support from their families when the times got tough. I'm the same way. I don't deserve my success."

She looked up at him. This was his moment to interject and reassure her. Of course he did.

"That's not true, Beth. You graduated at the top of the class, and you seem to be making the right decisions so far with your company's new brand."

"Choosing your campaign, you mean?" She laughed lightly. "Sometimes I just wonder where I'd be if I were born middle class. Would I have more drive to succeed to prove myself?"

"I think so," Luc said. "You're not just a pretty face, you know. You're smart, too."

Beth fluttered her lashes. "You think I have a pretty face?"

"You know you do,” he said. "It's a basic fact, such as the earth being round and the sky being blue. You don't need me to tell you that."

Beth sat back, satisfied. "Sure I do."

"Everybody thinks you're pretty," Luc said. "And you know it."

Beth laughed. "I didn't know that I knew."

"Don't pretend to be humble." Luc smiled. "I think you're clued in enough by all those men following you around campus and the marriage proposals that you probably get on a daily basis."

"Don't all girls get the same treatment?" Beth joked.

"I once saw a segment on TV about the science behind beauty. I bet your facial features would match the proportions of the ideal face."

Beth wrinkled her nose and laughed. "That sounds so cold and sterile. I was hoping for a comparison that was more poetic."

"I guess I'm not a poetic kind of guy. I definitely shouldn't be waxing poetic. I'll stick to advertising."

Luc took a sip of his own wine. He thought about how he'd compared Mia's beauty to the Rocky Mountains. The mountains, for Pete's sake. Was that poetic, or had that been stupid?

Beth laughed again.

Life is odd, Luc thought. The number-one thing on his life's wish list used to be to go on a romantic date with Beth, make her laugh, woo her, and make her fall in love with him.

While he enjoyed her company, it wasn't what he'd imagined it would be. Rather, this wasn't what he thought he would feel. He was living his fantasy, but he felt as if he was at dinner with one of his sisters. There was nothing wrong with Beth. She hadn't changed. She was still as lovely as always, polite, charming, graceful. But something was missing.

Beth wasn't Mia.

He had meant it when he said that Beth was beautiful. Any living human with working eyes could see that.

But Mia was a piece of art, priceless, moving, one of a kind. She made him feel things that were inexplicable, and she inspired him in ways he could never have predicted. She was the woman who came from nowhere whom he couldn't stop thinking about.

"
S
arah
, you're a genius!"

Mia jumped out of her seat and gave Sarah a big hug, causing a few of the employees who were back from lunch to turn and give them weird looks.

"I wouldn't go that far." Sarah grinned proudly nonetheless. "I'm on a computer all day. I know my way around one."

"What's going on?" Amélie came by.

"You know how I'm looking for someone who could be my sister?"

"Why? Did you find her?" Amélie asked excitedly.

"Not yet, but Sarah created a Facebook page for me. Here."

Mia showed her what Sarah had taken only her lunch break to put together. Sarah had put up a screen shot of the woman from the Fizz commercial next to a photo of Mia. Sarah also linked to the Fizz commercial on LUX's company website.

"
Doppelgängers or Sisters?
" Amélie read out loud. "
Mia Golden was watching YouTube when a Fizz commercial popped up. In the background, there was an extra who resembled her. Adopted at birth, Mia has never known her birth parents, but she believes that there is a high chance that she is related to the woman pictured. If you have any leads on who this woman is, please contact Sarah Christie.
Wow, the search is on."

"It's only been live for a few minutes," Sarah said. "Fingers crossed that this will go viral and we'll find her in no time."

"What about your parents, Mia?" Amélie asked. "What if they saw this page?"

"Well, last weekend, I decided to be honest with them. We Skyped, and I finally told them that my decision to move to Paris wasn't all about taking a yearlong break from journalism or trying to learn French."

"Were they hurt?"

"Yes, but mainly because I didn't tell them sooner. I thought they would be hurt that I wanted to find a blood relative, but I should've given them more credit. I made them watch the Fizz commercial, and they agreed that this woman looks just like me. My mom even said there's a chance that we could be twins. Fraternal twins at least. They really do understand why I would want to find this woman. Everybody wants to find a piece of themselves in someone else."

"I always thought my little brother was a pain in the butt growing up," Sarah said. "But after hearing Mia's story, I appreciate him more. There's something to be said about relating to someone who shares your blood."

Amélie nodded. "You have my full support. This girl might be French, and I can spread the post to my French network. Hey, why don't I help you translate the page?"

"That would be fantastic," Mia said. "You know, just this morning I was thinking just how impossible it was to find this girl. All the adoption agencies in this city simply will not help me whatsoever. I understand their point of view, but I was just defeated. I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Use the power of the Internet, of course."

"The world is more connected than ever," Sarah said. "If the Internet doesn't find our girl at this point, nothing will."

"I think you'll find her," Amélie agreed. "Facebook campaigns are good with these types of things. I remember a story from two years ago. This one American guy had traveled to Australia during the holidays. He met and kissed a local girl on New Year's Eve, but she didn't give him her contacts. All he had was her first name and a picture of them together on his phone. I don't know why she did that. Maybe she was trying to be mysterious or wasn't serious about him. When he went back to America, he couldn't stop thinking about her, and he made a similar page, asking people to help him find her. He got a lot of leads."

"What happened in the end?" Mia asked.

"I think he did find her. Unfortunately she was in a relationship, and she had to delete her Facebook and other social media accounts because so many people were messaging her to the point of harassment."

"Oh." Mia looked at the computer again, having second thoughts this time. "She probably didn't want to be found to begin with. What if this woman doesn't want to be found either, even if it turns out that she is my sister?"

"Well," Sarah said slowly, "the point is that the guy tried."

"Right," Amélie agreed. "If he didn't try to find her, he might've lived with the regret of letting go of someone that he thought was the love of his life. He would've idealized her and the night they shared for years. It was better that he found her and got a dose of reality. She wasn't interested and she had moved on. It's painful, but at least that allowed him to move on."

"What about this woman?" Mia asked. "What if she gets mad that her picture is all over the Internet?"

"I'm sure she has pictures of herself on the Internet already," Amélie said. "If she complains, we can always take it down, no harm done. At least you'd know her stance on this whole thing if you find her."

"So stick with it," Sarah encouraged. "Don't worry. Even if you didn't find your sister, you found us. You have to make your family, especially when you move to a new country by yourself."

Mia smiled. "Thanks, girls."

"Send me the link to the page, Sarah," Amélie said. "I'll start translating it now."

"Are you sure it's okay to work on it during company time?" Mia asked. "More people will be coming back from lunch soon. I don't want you to get in trouble. Especially with Brigette and Lina."

"It'll be fine," Amélie said. "They won't notice. They'll be too busy gossiping about Luc and his date with the Montaigne heiress to care what I'm doing."

Mia's heart fell. Her expression must've fallen as well, but Amélie and Sarah were too distracted by the Facebook page to notice.

"They went on a date?" Mia tried to ask casually.

"Dinner at this snooty restaurant," Amélie said. "Chez Antoine. Somebody here saw them. Alec in accounting."

"Chez Antoine?" Sarah exclaimed. "I heard about that place. It is impossible to get in! I heard that there's like a three-month waiting list to eat there."

"That's funny, because Alec wasn't in the restaurant. It wasn't as if he got in either. He saw the two of them walking out of the restaurant."

"Were they all lovey-dovey?" Sarah asked. "Maybe it was just a business dinner."

"I doubt it," Amélie said. "Everybody here knows that Luc's been in love with Beth for a long time. The dinner was not business related. Alec said that Beth was wearing the most seductive red dress. You don't dress that way for a business dinner."

Mia gulped. She could imagine. Beth had a gorgeous body. There was no reason Luc would resist dating someone like her.

"So are they an item now?" Mia asked. "Luc and Beth?"

"Probably," Amélie said. "She was even here at the office earlier that day. I guess they'll be spending a lot of time together, since they're working on the campaign and everything."

Mia shouldn't care about who Luc dated, but it hurt. She hadn’t realized it would hurt this much.

"Beth is really beautiful, isn't she?" she said.

I
f only Luc's
personal life was going as well as his professional life. LUX had just won a major campaign over two other top French ad agencies for the nation's leading dish soap, and things were looking good for all their other pitches. The Mademoiselle Montaigne commercial was going to be shot at the end of the week, and Didier and the Montaigne company had already arranged for the print ads to run in numerous fashion and luxury lifestyle magazines.

Everybody was excitedly anticipating the public response to the lingerie ads. A few of his employees had suggested that it could turn into an iconic campaign. Didier was even optimistic about their chances of being nominated for the best ad agency in Paris that year. Luc didn't want to get his hopes up, but he had a good feeling about this one.

There was a lot going on at LUX, but Luc made a habit of starting his mornings off alone in his office in a quiet moment of reflective peace. He sipped his espresso, looking out the window at the blue dome rooftop of the building across the street and the blue sky above.

He tried not to think about Mia.

Her words still stung him.

"Let's just forget it ever happened,"
she had said.

Maybe in America, a kiss didn't mean much. He'd been surprised during his semester in Utah, where his American classmates would kiss different girls at campus parties on the same weekend. "Hooking up" was what they called it.

In France, if you kissed somebody, you were in a relationship. It must've been a cultural difference. Perhaps that was why a kiss meant so little to Mia, why she thought a kiss didn't mean a lot to him, or both.

He wondered whether she was rejecting
him
or the idea of a workplace relationship. Perhaps she was embarrassed. After all, he was her boss, not the other way around. Maybe she didn't want to jeopardize her job or was embarrassed that she had been drunk when it happened.

No matter how he tried to justify her words, they still hurt. Did she really mean them, or was she trying to protect herself somehow? Usually she was so open with her feelings that he thought he could read her, but her expression had been shut down that day, completely blank. She couldn't meet his eyes, and her voice had been cold and lifeless.

He closed his eyes. The same scene flashed back to him. Mia sitting in front of his desk. He had been about to ask her out when she tried to make light of their kiss.

His eyes opened in realization: she didn't know how he felt about her. He had never told her. If she knew how much he was interested in her, perhaps she would reconsider.

It was a tricky line to cross, however. If she simply didn't like him, he didn't want to come on too strong, especially since he was her superior.

He picked up the phone to speak to his secretary.

"Can you ask Mia to come into my office, please?"

After he hung up, he leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. He was a picture of professional calm, but on the inside, his heart was beating like crazy. His palms were sweating and the room was getting warmer by the second.

What was he, thirteen again? At that age, he'd been so shy around girls. His brothers would tease him, and Luc had to force himself to get out of his shell.

Slowly, throughout his teen years, he had gotten better and better at talking to girls. It turned out that the girls he liked weren't so scary after all. They usually responded favorably or were nice about it if they weren't interested. It helped that he had two sisters and a doting mother, so he knew how to treat a girl.

His experiences had taught him that fear was just an illusion. Now getting over his fears was second nature. Whatever he wanted, he went out and got it, which had contributed to his successes in life so far. He rarely let his fears get the best of him.

Almost.

So he had dragged his feet when it came to Beth. If only he hadn't been so intimidated by her, he would've had the guts to properly ask her out. That way, he would've known sooner rather than later that they didn't click romantically and that they were better off as friends. He wouldn't have wasted so much time chasing after someone just because everyone else wanted her.

Now he wasn't going to do the same with Mia. She would only be in Paris for a year. Two months were already up, and they had ten months left. There was no way he would let her slip through his fingers. Time could pass so quickly. There was no way he wasn't going to try to see if he was right, that there was really something between them.

Mia's knock startled him. She poked her head in before she entered.

"Am I disturbing you?"

"No, not at all." Luc sat up. "Come on in."

"I heard you wanted to see me. Is it about the Damour campaign?"

Her tone was brisk and businesslike. In response, he found himself tapping his fingers on the desk from the tension. Luc had been hoping for more of the easygoing friendliness they used to share. What had changed?

He had forgotten about the Damour campaign, but it was something they were supposed to start on.

"Right, the Damour campaign. Have you ever visited their patisseries?"

Mia sat down in her usual spot. She was looking everywhere but at him.

"No, not yet, but I heard they have the best macarons in the city."

"They do," Luc said. "Their green tea macarons are my favorite."

Mia only nodded. She seemed distant.

Luc cleared his throat. Mia's bright eyes fluttered and grazed over his before her lashes lowered. She looked down at her hands.

"They want to run a series of ads for the store's twentieth anniversary," Luc said. "They have patisseries around the world, and they want to run the ads in a lot of luxury publications, from fashion to travel to gourmet food magazines and websites. It'll be in French and English."

"Too bad they don't have a store in Seattle," Mia said.

Luc smiled. At least she was starting to look more comfortable in his presence.

"The ads need to be classy but not stuffy. You're good with tasteful humor. Think you can take a crack at it?"

He found the Damour file on his desk and passed it to her.

"Sure." Mia opened the file to Damour's company information. "Their desserts look beautiful. I'm sure they'll inspire me to come up with something halfway decent."

"Actually," Luc said slowly, “they have a great
salon de thé
in the 16th. We can eat lunch there together. That is, if you're free. It's on the company."

"Oh." Mia seemed to be considering it. "You mean, today?"

"Yes. We'll take the company car there, and actually, I wanted to speak to you about something."

"I would." She bit her lip. "But I promised Sarah, Amélie, and a couple of other girls that I'd go to lunch with them. Sarah really helped me out with something and I wanted to treat her."

Luc was impressed that the other employees had warmed up to Mia. He had known some of the French staff would like Mia as soon as they got to know her.

"Is it because of the website?" Luc asked. "The Facebook page? I heard the employees talking about it, and later Sarah sent me the link. Did anybody contact you so far?"

"Only messages of support." Mia's soft lips eased into a smile. "Nothing really to go on yet, but fingers crossed."

"About that. My brother came home from touring yesterday, finally. I went over to his place, and we had a long chat about the situation. As I've mentioned, he doesn't recognize the girl at all, but we're brainstorming about other ways we can get a hold of her."

"That's okay, Luc. You've done more than you needed to. It's really okay. I have a good feeling about this Facebook thing."

Luc nodded. "So maybe we can do lunch another time then. Tomorrow?"

"You really don't have to take time out of your busy schedule. I know you usually like to have a quick lunch at your desk. I think I'll just visit all their patisseries in the city during the weekend. That way, I'll be able to observe, eat, and write at the same time."

"Oh, sure. Whatever you feel would work best for you." Luc tried not to sound disappointed.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something?"

"Yes." Luc had second thoughts about professing his feelings for her in the office.

However, he was supposed to seize the moment, right? Not let her slip between his fingers?

But what was he supposed to say? He couldn't just ask her out on a date given how uncomfortable she was when faced with the prospect of going to lunch with him.

Then the solution hit him, and he brightened up.

After his evening out with Beth, she'd invited him to Mademoiselle Montaigne's store-opening party. He was allowed to invite all the friends and employees of his choosing. If Mia came, it would be the perfect place and time to tell her how he felt. It wasn't exactly a social event, and it wasn't exactly work related.

"Mia, you know where the new Mademoiselle Montaigne store will be, right? Three doors down from the Madame Montaigne flagship store on at the Rue Saint-Honoré.”

Mia nodded. "I've visited Madame Montaigne once."

"Well, Mademoiselle Montaigne is having a store opening next Saturday night. I was wondering if you'd like to go."

Mia blinked at him. Luc was afraid she was about to say no.

"Some of the other employees will be going too," he added quickly. "Didier, of course."

"Really?" Mia was still thinking. "Sarah and Amélie as well?"

"Yes. You can even bring a few friends if you'd like."

“Really? I have a couple of friends from French class who would enjoy coming to something like this. Amanda especially. She
loves
the Montaigne line."

Luc beamed at her. Having her say yes to the party meant a lot to him.

"Then it's settled. It begins at eight p.m., and I'll tell Beth to put you plus two guests on the list. The dress code is formal.” He cleared his throat. “Would you like a ride?"

"Oh, that's not necessary," Mia said. "Who knows when the girls and I will be ready. We'll find our own way, don't worry."

Luc had meant that he wanted to pick up Mia only. They were speaking the same language, English, but their communication was cross-wired. Somehow he'd imagined picking Mia up on his Vespa, like he had on the first night they met. But he couldn't blame Mia. He hadn't exactly made it clear that he wanted to take her to the party as his date.

"How are French classes going anyway?" Luc asked.

"
Bien
. I still have a long way to go.” She paused. “See? I don't even know how to say that in French yet."