***
She was
not
expecting him to bundle both of them out of the restaurant at five on Valentine’s Day.
“Patrick!” she protested, trying to dig her heels in. “We’re swamped! It’s
Valentine’s
!”
“You noticed!” His shoulders slumped in dejection. “And here I thought I was going to surprise you.”
She laughed before she could help it, and reached up to gently knuckle the side of his head. “You idiot.” Her pretend knuckling turned into a caress of his hair before she could help that, either. “Come on. We can’t leave. Well,
you
can’t. Poor Noë.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m making his dream come true. He’s dying
to be out of my shadow. What better opportunity than the biggest night of the year?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You just want to avoid making all those heart things yourself, don’t you?”
He gave her a lazy, got-me smile and waved for a taxi, pushing her into it. “Meet you at your place in an hour?”
She poked her head back out. “It’s really too bad your apartment isn’t in the Ninth,” she said sweetly. “We could share a ride.”
He looked much struck. “Come to think of it, I know this really hot chick who lives in your neighborhood. Definitely worth a man going far out of his way.” He bent down and kissed her, warm and quick. “Unfortunately her closet doesn’t have much of a selection of my clothes. Something I’d be happy to remedy any time you want, but I feel as if we’d have more space if we did the clothes shifting the other direction. See you in an hour, Sarabelle.”
And in an hour, he was there, in that black tux, his eyes lighting as soon as he saw her, and his fingers stretching out to stroke gently down her soft sleeve.
She pulled back into the room, turning slowly and peeking back at him over her shoulder.
He drew a soft breath. “And you’ve got your hair up. Sarah, you know what that nape does to me.”
Her nape sent a shiver all through her body just at the knowledge.
“This is hopeless,” Patrick said. “I’ve got, what, ten thousand sexual fantasies to work out on your body, and I only get a chance to do one every two days or so anymore? How long is that going to take?” He sounded utterly despondent. “You’re the one who’s good at math.”
“Over fifty years,” she said, a little amused. Ten thousand fantasies, three hundred sixty-five days a year, one every two days, equaled...54.79 years, in fact. The rest of their lives. Her breath hitched. Had he used that number carelessly? Or only pseudo-carelessly?
“I’m not going to get to do them all until I’m
eighty
?” he said despairingly. “Sarabelle, we’ve got to find more time for this stuff.”
She bent her head and bit her lip, on a wave of mischief and shyness, and eased up her skirt just enough to show one garter.
Patrick caught her in a body dive that carried her all the way to the bed, landing with him braced on top of her. “It’s such a good thing I made our reservations for eight thirty,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “I knew this would happen.”
“You knew I’d wear a garter belt?” Sarah asked, a little offended. Because that was a special favor she was doing him, that garter belt. He’d better not get used to it.
Also, how in the world had he found a restaurant that still had a table left at eight thirty, the peak dinner hour, on Valentine’s Day, as recently as they had started dating? Some special, secret little hole in the wall that only he knew about?
“I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. God, I’ve missed you. Do engineers have to work twenty-four-seven or do they get to have a few hours off once in a while?”
“It probably depends on whether the Mars rover is up there stuck in the sand.”
He made a face. “
Merde
, that would be frustrating. Not to be able to just reach out and
fix
it.” His fingers stroked over her shoulder, as if even the thought of not being able to touch something made them restless. “Sarabelle, you’re so
soft.
I could pet you all over.” He lowered his head to rub his face between her angora-veiled breasts. “And I’m going to get so much fuzz in my mouth,” he murmured, and she could swear she felt that wicked grin of his right through the dress.
He rolled them suddenly, settling her astride him. “And you’re wearing my earrings.” He reached up to pet the tiny dangling sapphires.
She smiled shyly. “I thought maybe I should take them in the spirit in which they were given. As something to make me happy.”
“As a mark of possession,” he corrected. “Sometimes you give me too much credit.”
“I don’t think I ever give you enough credit, Patrick. I’m not sure I ever could.”
That flush rose to his cheeks, that one she had thought so rare only days before. He took her hand to his lips and kissed the inner side of her fingers.
“And I kind of like you wanting to mark me,” she admitted. She shrugged funnily, a gesture so close to one of his he might be wearing off on her. “Would you ever let me? Put a stamp of possession on you?”
His breath caught for no reason she could quite explain. He stared up at her.
She drew her hand down his arm. That indefatigable, muscled arm, so cleverly veiled by a fancy tux. “I don’t know – a bracelet maybe?” She closed her fingers around that strong wrist, but of course her fingers couldn’t meet. “Would you wear it, if it was masculine enough? Leather or something?”
A tension sagged out of his body. “A bracelet,” he said oddly. He gave his head a slight shake, as if to clear it. “Yes. Definitely I would.” A half-smile up at her, not his playful, hide-everything smile but that one that was almost shy. “I would like it very much.”
Her own smile relaxed, happiness filling her. Oh, she liked the idea of having her mark of possession on that strong wrist.
Mine. All mine.
“Now let me see that garter belt.” He stroked the dress up her thighs to her waist and just looked for a minute before he had to shut his eyes. “
Shit.
”
“Is that a compliment?” Sarah murmured, amusement tangling with arousal and a kind of relief. Because it would have been deeply embarrassing if he hadn’t responded to the garter belt this way.
That wry grin, his eyes staying firmly shut while his hips bucked up against hers, his hands tightening to pull her down to him and enhance the grind. “Sarah,” he managed, opening his eyes and concentrating diligently on her face. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, because you know how I usually prefer to focus on deeper, more important things. Wouldn’t want you to think I was shallow. But
you are so pretty.
”
She laughed from pure happiness. Sometimes he just made her whole being light up. Like she really was that pretty. “You’re kind of hot yourself.”
“Yeah, but you love me for my mind, really,” he said cheerfully, while his fingers started to follow all the logical paths that a garter belt made for them. “You know – my highly creative mind.”
She laughed again, even as arousal started to eagerly awake, and leaned down over him, bracing her hands on either side of his face. Was it that recently that she had thought she would never be confident enough for this position? It seemed a whirlwind of time and emotions ago. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was shallow,” she teased. “But maybe just a little bit.”
I love you
, he mouthed, and pulled her head down suddenly to kiss her, as if the kiss had to hide the words.
“It’s kind of a secret,” she said, and slipped her mouth close to his ear to whisper barely as loud as a breath, “but I love you, too.”
Chapter 34
Patrick had pulled strings for a hotel car, which dropped them off at the Trocadéro, so that they could gaze at the Eiffel Tower in all her splendor for a moment. Then they headed down the slope from the Esplanade past the fountains, quiet in the winter, to the base of the Tower, by which point Sarah’s shoes were already killing her.
Did that not figure?
Never, ever dismiss that twinge in the store in the hopes the sparkly shoes will turn out comfortable with wear.
That wasn’t a metaphor, was it?
She looked at Patrick. No. No twinges. Everything easy, perfect, right.
She craned her neck back to gaze up at the dizzying, powerful swoop of the Eiffel above her. She had been under it before – of course she had, her first night in Paris – but not with
him.
His arm braced her, so that when she looked up into the great, glowing height of metal and one man’s crazy, determined dreaming, part of what she saw was Patrick’s head, glowing gold, and his smile.
“Don’t fall over.” His eyes laughed, but he held her in case she did.
It was only when he directed them to the south pillar of the tower, with its private elevator for restaurant guests, that she realized they weren’t just passing by the Eiffel on a romantic route to somewhere else.
Oh.
Dining at the Eiffel Tower on Valentine’s Day. What favors had he swapped for this one?
They took the private elevator to the second floor, and then a second elevator for the long ride to the top. Sarah pressed against him as they rose up, up, up, girders of metal flashing past, city sparkling. Her stomach rose into her throat as they slid higher and higher, his arm firm around her. Terrifyingly beautiful, it made the funicular car to Montmartre seem like just a warm-up.
“You can see everything,” she whispered as they looked out over the City of Lights from the top. “You can see all of Paris.” Notre-Dame, the Louvre, Sacré-Coeur, and the twisting promise of the Seine, little lights traveling down its gleaming darkness toward the sea. The Sacré-Coeur looked so small from here, that spot where they had sat on the steps high above the world now so far below them. Had they risen that far? The Eiffel Tower hung them up here in this vertigo of height and space that felt so precarious, and yet those iron girders were never going to fail.
When she looked up at Patrick, he was gazing down at her, tender and intent, as if she was his own personal miracle. As soon as their eyes met, the tenderness hid under lazy charm again. “The
salauds
,” Patrick said cheerfully, while his hand rubbed her hip over and over. “I bet with a view like this, they don’t even have to make their food good. They’re probably going to serve us frozen pizza and it’s still enough to get a damn star.”
She smiled and took his hand, and his tenderness escaped back out of hiding. “
Tu es si jolie
.” His hand touched her hair, just gently, so he wouldn’t mess it up. “
Look
at you with all the city sparkling behind you. You’re gorgeous.”
She was so entirely ordinary looking. But he made her feel gorgeous. Perfect. She drew a little heart over his chest and smiled up at him.
Me, too. I love you, too.
His breath caught, and he bent and kissed her. There, in the most magical place in the world to be held in the arms of an utterly charming prince and kissed.
He grinned at her when he lifted his head, and then slid slowly down her body, his arms still wrapped around her, until he was kneeling, his eyes laughing. “Now let’s see your feet, Sarah.” He slipped one sparkly shoe off and examined her heel, gently stroking the little blister already forming. “Sarabelle, you know how much we like to walk. What was wrong with your little boots?”
In his big, square palm, the shoe shimmered like a woman’s tears of joy. “These were sparkly,” she said wistfully.
He gave her an indulgent look and slid – okay, squooshed – it back on her foot, his eyes dancing, fully aware of the fairytale gesture. “But the shoe doesn’t fit,” he teased, caressing that blister one last time before he let the heel slide back where it would continue to rub.
“I know,” Sarah said glumly.
His eyebrows raised, and he slid back up her body to his feet, holding her dress to keep it from riding up her body with him. Several people around them clapped, assuming the obvious. A man shouldn’t
kneel at a woman’s feet at the top of the Eiffel Tower unless he had a proposal in mind, damn it. Trust Patrick to be so perfectly romantic so easily, so carelessly, and not realize how it could break a woman’s heart.
“I always thought that was such a pessimistic fairytale.” He slipped one arm around her now so that they stood facing the same view. “I suppose you like it?”
Well – no, not really, but she was pretty sure she was
living
it. “Pessimistic?”
Cinderella?
“The guy thinks he’s found his beautiful princess, and she’s only lying to him, tricking him into believing all those ashes and rags are his dream come true. He has to bring
everything
to their lives.
À la base
, the whole romance is due to his inability to give up on a dream, however false it proves.”
Sarah found it suddenly difficult to swallow, her insides congealing.
“I mean, he’s a
prince
. He gives her his
whole kingdom.
And all she gives him back is the right to put her shoes on.” A slanting, wicked grin. “Granted, I love your feet, Sarah, but–”
But. She was starting to feel sick. Oh, this wasn’t what she had imagined this Eiffel Tower conversation would be about
at all.
“There are a lot of fairytales like that.
Enfin,
if the girl kisses a frog or a beast, the frog always turns out to be a prince in the end. But if the guy falls for a beautiful princess, or the woman who spins gold, it’s always some trick to get him to give her his dreams, so she can social climb. It’s not like she’s even in love with him
,
right? He doesn’t even ever have a name, just
le prince charmant
. Poor bastard. Nobody ever cares about his
dreams, as long as he satisfies hers.”
Sarah stared out over the city, no idea what to say. Was everything about this moment beautiful – except for her? She’d thought – oh, for a while there, she had started to really believe – that everything wonderful in their relationship wasn’t coming from him, that she gave him something he needed, too. All that strength and beauty she felt in herself around him…was it really only due to him? Not a self-confidence nurtured by his belief in her but only a testament to his ability to fantasize?