She lifts her chin in the air. ‘Keep it. You clearly wanted it badly enough.’
And with a dramatic flair that would make Darcy proud, she spins away, leaving him staring behind her. She realises too late that it was a totally stupid thing to say – that and the fact she’s supposed to check the e-scooter back in. Well, no chance of that. She’s not turning around now; she’ll just have to take the hit. Especially as there’s a tiny part of her that’s beginning to feel a bit embarrassed, because therewasa car coming towards her, wasn’t there? And she wasn’t paying as much attention as she should have been. But still. A heroic gesture doesn’t usually end with the woman face-planting the pavement. Besides, right now, a random man with a hero complex is not important. Even if he did have nice eyes.
She heads to the gin bar down one of the alleys, a nearby street lamp flickering to life as she walks past. Warmth and noise greet her as she steps inside, the smell of citrus and spice lining the air. She does a quick scan of the room. She’ll need to wash her hands, which are now stinging, but she wants to check he’s here first.
Her eyes travel along the length of the sleek oak bar, every single stool occupied. And there he is, right at the end, an easy smile on his face as he chats to one of the waitresses. Her distraction.
Chapter Two
Lissa sits outside a café on one of her favourite streets in Paris, the back of her neck warm in the late-afternoon sun, her head bent over her sketchbook. She doesn’t know how exactly she knows she’s in Paris given that a) she’s concentrating on what she’s drawing rather than on her surroundings, and b) she’s never actually been to Paris, but there’s no arguing the fact. The smell of coffee and cigarettes lingers in the air, the clinking of metal against porcelain mingling with the low hum of chatter.
She loves this place. It’s mere streets away from some of the worst damage from the Blitz, areas that haven’t quite recovered despite the fact it’s been ten years now. This café opened after the war, she knows, the owners determined to see Paris be all that it had been and contribute towards that in some small way. Every time she comes here – mainly at weekends, since she got the job at the school – she feels hopeful, invested in the idea of new beginnings, of building something out of the ashes.
The face is beginning to take shape in the charcoal as she sketches. It’s a face she once must have known so well, but over time she’s forgotten the exact texture of her sister’s expressions, even as she tries to call them into focus.
She hears a feminine laugh coming from inside the café as the bell on the door jingles. Hears a man’s voice calling out a goodbye. She doesn’t look up, too lost in her work now. She hears the muttered oath a split second before she feels it – searing-hot liquid seeping through the sleeve of her dress. She yelps, then reacts on instinct, pulling her arm towards her and scrabbling to her feet, her hand coming to cover the spot where the liquid scalded her.
There is a man there, apologising to her, catching his balance from his stumble and bending to pick up his now empty coffee cup. She doesn’t look at him, though. Instead she looks down at her sketchbook, at the drawing of her sister. Coffee stains one side of her sister’s face, the charcoal edges blurring into one another. Ruined.
‘Je suis vraiment désolé, excusez-moi, puis-je …?’ The man is reaching towards her sketchbook now, like he might pick it up, try to save it.
‘Don’t.’ The word is a harsh snap, and she’s alarmed to find that tears are burning the back of her throat.It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. She has countless of these drawings, tucked away in a drawer in her bedroom, somewhere her mother will never find them. And she has other sketchbooks at home – she doesn’t need this one.
So without acknowledging the man – or his stupid apology – she bends to pick her bag up off the floor by her chair, then turns to leave. But she feels a hand on her forearm, pulling her to a stop. She wrenches it from his grip, glaring at him.
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice is clipped and perhaps – objectively speaking – angrier than the situation warrants. She registers, dimly, that she is speaking French – she didn’t even know shecouldspeak French, but there you go.
He lifts his hand in apology. ‘Sorry. I was just trying to stop you making the same mistake I did.’ When she frowns, he gestures down to the pavement by the café door. To the doorstop there, which he clearly tripped over.
She huffs out a breath, pushes a hand through her curls. ‘Think it’s a bit late to be playing the hero.’ She raises her arm for emphasis, showing off the coffee stain on her polka-dot dress – the dress that her friend encouraged her to buy with the majority of her salary, and that she thought she should make the most of.
He grimaces. ‘I really am sorry.’ He glances down at the table, at her ruined drawing. ‘It’s beautiful.’
Her stomach tightens. She doesn’t like people seeing her work, especially not things like this, which are only ever for her. ‘It was,’ she says shortly.Shewas, is what she really wants to say. But she realises, even through her temper, that this is the kind of behaviour she’d scold her class for. He didn’t mean it. He is apologising. So she sighs. ‘Look, I’m sorry too. You caught me off guard, that’s all. But apology accepted, okay?’
He cocks his head to the side as his gaze travels along her sleeve. He has a nice gaze, she thinks. Hazel eyes, on the edge of brown and green. And though she tells herself she’s ridiculous because of it, she feels goosebumps prickle underneath the fabric of her dress, along the line where that gaze travels. ‘You’re not hurt?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m fine.’ It had been a brief flare of pain, but it’s gone now. Still, she’ll make sure she checks it later, to see there is no lasting damage. Can’t be too careful, after all. ‘And I was finishing up anyway,’ she lies, ‘so I’ll just …’ She gestures to the street before moving towards it.
‘Wait.’ He looks like he might reach for her again, then seems to think better of it, shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘Can I buy you a coffee to make up for it?’
She hesitates, lingering when she probably shouldn’t.I have somewhere I need to be.The lie is there, on the tip of her tongue. She doesn’t have anywhere to be – would rather, in fact, have an excuse not to head home to her tiny apartment or to her parents’ house, where they will inevitably be arguing. Maybe that’s what makes her do it. Or maybe it’s looking down at the ruined sketch and thinking that, perhaps, when it dries in the sun, it won’t be that bad after all. Certainly the rest of the sketchbook will be usable, at least.
She meets that warm brown gaze. ‘One coffee.’ She says it sternly, in what has become her teacher voice in the few years since qualifying. ‘And as long as you promise not to spill the next one on me.’
‘I can promise to letyouspill it onmeif that would make you feel better.’ She almost gives in to the smile. Almost.
He turns to the door, then glances back at her as she sits back down on the woven rattan chair. ‘What’s your name?’
She makes a show of smoothing out her skirt. Beside her, on a bed, somewhere else entirely, a man’s body shifts. ‘I only give out my name to people who earn it.’
She looks up in time to see an almost-smile cross his face, a twitching at the corner of his lips, before it’s controlled, like he’s not sure how she’ll react to it.
She can feel it now, that pull towards consciousness, those moments where you hover between sleeping and waking. But the dream lingers just a moment longer, the sound of his lyrical voice travelling along the outskirts of her subconscious.
‘I’ll take that as a challenge.’
His face blurs in front of her as Lissa blinks into an unfamiliar room. Sunlight filters through the gap in the thick blue curtains, slicing a path right over her eyes. A heavy arm is slung over her waist, too hot on her skin.
