CHAPTER 1
Tara
Is there anything sadder than being alone in Paris on Valentine’s Day?
Yes. Yes, there is.
It’s drowning your sorrowsaloneat a fancy bar.
When I first stumbled across the Prescription Cocktail Club on a walk from my small but charming one-bedroom on Rue de Buci in Saint-Germain-des-Prés—my new home for the next six months—a drink had seemed like the perfect way to celebrate.
Finally, after years of waiting, my work visa had come through for my dream assignment at the Louvre. Champagne-worthy, right?
But now, sitting here with my cocktail and my loneliness, I feel downright pathetic.
I arrived in Paris this morning, and the whirlwind of unpacking, finding a bistro next door for lunch, and getting settled had carried me through the day. Thenthe sun went down, the jet lag kicked in, and reality set in.
And, as if all that isn’t enough…of course, it has to be Valentine’s Day.
When my boss at the Philadelphia Museum of Art first told me about this restoration project, it felt like the universe was finally smiling at me. I work in a niche field, and this is exactly the kind of assignment restorers like me dream of.
My specialty isn’t oils, marble, or tapestries—it’s eighteenth-century pastel portraiture, the fragile, powder-soft creations of artists like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Rosalba Carriera. Pastels are treacherous; they fade, crumble, and practically disintegrate if you so much as breathe on them wrong. Most restorers won’t touch them. But I spent a decade honing the skills for my PhD on Rococo-era women artists overlooked by history.
Which is why, when the Louvre acquired Rosalba Carriera’s Portrait of theComtesse?*de Valois—a luminous pastel more than 250 years old, pulled from long-term storage and badly in need of restoration—I was one of the few in the world they could call.
And believe me, I showed up with bells on.
Now those bells are quiet and dull as I sit in a bar straight out of a Parisian dream—dim lighting, velvet armchairs that swallow you whole, andbartenders in suspenders treating cocktails like high art. The music is jazzy, sultry, and just loud enough for me to sip something lethal (with absinthe, of course) and pretend I’m not the saddest cliché in the City of Lights.
I’d made an effort with my outfit—boho chic armor against the embarrassment of being solo tonight. A vintage sapphire-blue dress with a long front slit, which a friend of mine made for me out of bamboo fabric (it’s all the rage these days). Boots that are chic but comfortable to walk in—which is a must for any city girl. I wore several silver chains around my neck—including the one that’s supposed to be my good-luck charm. Silver bangles and earrings that made a tinkling sound. I left my hair in loose, dark waves tumbling around my shoulders.
I hadn’t been in a relationship for…oh God, when was Brian? A year ago? No, almost two!
Now, he was a mistake. We’d been dating for six months when I walked into his apartment unexpectedly and found him balls deep inside a colleague. I wasn’t in love with him, so I wasn’t exactly heartbroken, but my ego took a major hit, and so did my trust meter, which was why I was steering clear of men.
Or so I thought, until….
“Drinking alone, they say, is a dangerous avocation,” a French-accented male voice said from behind me.
He’s not my type, and by that I mean he doesn’t look like an artist.
This one is all business—broad shoulders in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit, with the kind of face that belongs in an oil painting: sharp jaw, faint stubble, eyes like gray storm clouds. They rake over me like heavy silk, dragging across my skin.
“Pardon?” I manage to sound haughty as I’m fairly certain there’s a “Candid Camera” somewhere. Men like this guy—Vincent Cassel meets Jean Dujardin—don’t talk to women who look like me. They go for the sophisticated ones in designer wear.
“I was watching you,” he says, taking a step closer, “and wondered if your eyes were truly as sad as they looked from across the room.”
The balls on the man. And the charm.
I cock an eyebrow. “And what’s your verdict?” I ask, because screw subtlety. I am single. I am in Paris. I can flirt with a Frenchman if I want to.
His mouth curves—barely. “Honey-brown eyes…d'une beauté rare?*.”
I chuckle. “Is that a line? And does it work for you?”
“Absolutely not a line.” His voice is deep, smooth, and far too confident. And then there was the accent…deliciously French. “If I were the kind of man who dropped lines, I’d ask what a woman like you is doing here alone, on a night like this.”
I laugh, feeling giddy with Paris—or maybe it’s the champagne cocktail spiked with absinthe.
