Maybe he would tell her that this last month and his ordination were the real lies, and his name was Augustine, and they could go back to Paris forever.
Lord, grant me sobriety and chastity, but not yet.
She hadn’t realized that he was praying to be a priest.
Her footsteps covered the floor as her body tried to believe what her mind was telling it.
She was pacing away from the door and had just passed the quilt-covered bed when a fist thudded on the wood of her door.
She ran.
She wasn’t proud of it, but sheranto the door, twisted the lock and the knob, and opened it, expecting the dark-eyed, black-haired unearthly male beauty of Maxence, an angel who wanted to save the world with a tattoo of demon wings on his back.
The man standing outside Dree’s door was blond and blue-eyed, a man Dree would have thought was the most handsome man she’d ever met, except that she had seen Maxence.
Isaak Yahontov was standing one step away from her door, his hands clasped behind his back. He said, “Perhaps this isn’t the right time or the right place to say this, but we’ve spent a month together, and every day, my admiration for you has grown. You are a beautiful woman, an exceptional nurse, an excellent engineer, and the most wonderful human being I’ve ever met. I would like to see you again after this project is over, spend some time with you, and see if the future could hold anything for us.”
Okay, that wasnotwhat Dree had expected.
Dree stammered, “I had no idea you felt like this.”
Isaak shrugged. “My apologies. I’m bad at this. I’ve never had to tell a woman I’m interested in her before. Usually, they’re climbing all over me. All I have to do is open my hands, and they fall into them.”
Dree laughed. “I don’t know what to say.”
“From what I understand, you are in some unusual circumstances, and I don’t know if you have a phone. Thus, I will leave you with my contact information. Send me a text or however you want to get in touch with me.” He held out a business card to her, but he looked up. His bright blue eyes caught hers. “Or, I’m taking a helicopter back to Kathmandu tomorrow, where my plane will be waiting to take me back to Paris. Come with me. No strings attached. We’ll just have some coffee and talk. If that works out, then a few meals, maybe a walk through the Tuileries. Nothing else.”
The option of leaving Nepal and Maxence boiled through her.
Being near Maxence wasn’t good for her. It was like walking around with forbidden fruit in her pocket. Eventually, she was going to bite it.
Her hand reached across the infinite space between them, and she took his card. “I’ll think about it. Thank you, Isaak. I’m not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow, but I appreciate your offer.”
“As I said, no strings attached. Wait, one string. I would like a cup of coffee with you. We can sit in a lovely Parisian café on the sidewalk, outside, and talk about ourselves and our lives. That’s all. One cup of coffee, that’s all I ask.”
A smile pinched her cheeks. “And where would I be staying?”
He waved his hand in the air. “I will get you a hotel room, if that is what you would like. I will pay for it for as long as you would like to stay there. One cup of coffee, that’s all. Other than that, consider it a free ride on an airplane that’s going to Paris anyway.”
“Okay,” Dree said. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”
They said goodnight, and Dree closed her door and locked it again.
She leaned against the wood and bonked the back of her skull against the door.
Well, that was unexpected.
The world tipped and felt off-kilter after finding the wrong man outside her door.
Maybe Isaak wasn’t the wrong man. Maybe Isaak or some other guy would be the right guy, because Maxence obviously wasn’t the right guy for her.
She stood there until the world felt right on its axis, a world that wasn’t centered around Maxence but was centered around other possibilities.
Getting on a plane out of Kathmandu with Isaak for the price of only a cup of coffee was a perfect idea. Even if she ended up back in Phoenix, even if she ended up back on the sheep ranch in New Mexico, even if she called Sister Annunciata and begged for another mission to Chile or The Congo, she needed to leave Nepal andsoon.
Isaak might leave Chandannath by helicopter early the next morning to meet his private plane in Kathmandu for the flight back to Paris.
To a girl who grew up on a sheep farm in New Mexico, that thought soundedso weirdin her head.
