She noticed that Joe was holding a glass of his own, filled with ice and what she imagined might be whisky, although she wasn’t sure.
‘May I?’ he asked, gesturing to the empty chair beside her.
‘Of course! Please, sit down, I…’ She paused, shaking her head. There was nothing to be nervous about. Just because he was handsome didn’t mean she had to get all flustered—he wasjust a man who may or may not be able to help her. ‘I’m Mia,’ she said, holding out her hand.
He took it. ‘Nice to meet you, Mia.’
She watched as he sat back, one arm casually resting on his leg, the other holding his glass. It took her a moment to realise he was waiting for her to say something.
‘Have you finished work for the night?’
‘The boss is being kind to me,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s not often I have a beautiful stranger waiting for me.’
Mia blinked back at him, clearing her throat as she tried to remember what she’d been about to say. He was the kind of guy who looked so relaxed and comfortable in his own body. His smile was easy, his eyes were warm, his body angled to face her with his knee dangerously close to skimming hers. Although she supposed the tiny French tables with the chairs crammed next to them were to blame for that, and she wondered if a man had designed them for exactly that reason.
‘So, tell me about your mysterious little bottle. I’m curious to know how you’ve come to be in possession of it.’
‘My great-aunt passed away and had the bottle hidden among her belongings, and I’m trying to find out anything I can to trace her history and understand how she might be connected to it.’ She paused for breath and watched as he placed his glass on the table and slowly leaned forward. ‘I was told it might have been a bottle of French absinthe.’
‘You’ve travelled from?—’
‘London,’ she said. ‘I’ve travelled from London. It’s very important to me to try to find an answer.’
Joe met her gaze for a fleeting second again before opening his palm. She placed the bottle there, waiting for his fingers to begin curling before she let it go. It was too precious to be accidentally broken.
He looked over it, his eyes seemingly considering every little part of the bottle, until he finally raised his head again. She could see that he was interested, that she’d shown him something that had made him at least a little curious.
‘What if your aunt just saved a bottle of her favourite liqueur? What makes you think there’s a deeper connection?’ he asked. ‘What is it you think you’re searching for?’
‘Answers,’ she said, without thinking. ‘I’m searching for answers, because I believe that my aunt designed the fairy on the bottle, and I want to know more.’ She blew out a breath. ‘Ineedto know more.’
‘You’re certain your aunt designed this?’ he asked.
Her pulse began to race. ‘I have her original sketches of the fairy, so yes, I’m fairly sure. When you look through her sketchbook, it’s impossible not to see that she was the artist, and she hid it with some other things that were incredibly precious. I don’t think she would have done that if this bottle didn’t mean a great deal to her.’
‘Do you have the book with you?’
Mia reached down into her bag and brought out the sketchbook, leafing through some of the pages before passing it over to him. She watched as he slowly flicked from one sketch to the next, and she knew he agreed with her when he put the book on the table and looked up at her.
His smile touched his eyes, and she found her stomach flipping again when he leaned back in his chair, his glass of whisky back in one hand and the little bottle in the other.
‘Well, Mia, I hope you’re prepared for what you find out, because your aunt must have been quite the woman if she had something to do with absinthe production.’
‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.
‘Because getting caught making absinthe in the 1930s wasn’t for…’ He paused. ‘How do you say it in English? For the faintof heart? And if you’re right about your aunt, then she was very lucky not to have been caught.’
9
Mia found it impossible not to smile back at Joe as excitement rose inside her. He wasn’t anything like she expected—not that she really knew what she’d been expecting, but there was something about him that was hard to look away from. She also hadn’t expected to find out that her aunt might have been involved in anything so scandalous in her youth. Was that why Hope had become estranged from her family? Had she fled France because she’d feared being caught by the authorities? It didn’t help her understand how she might have come to establish Hope’s House, but if she could just find someone who recognised the bottle, it might tell her at least part of the story. From everything she’d pieced together about her aunt’s life in England, it sounded like she’d been nothing short of a model citizen, and certainly not involved in anything illegal.
‘You truly think this dates back to the 1930s?’ she asked, as he held up the bottle again and studied it. ‘I don’t want to get my hopes up, but if I could just understand this part of her history…’ Mia sighed. ‘It’s probably an impossible ask, isn’t it? All these years later.’
Joe handed her back the bottle, and he was even more careful than she’d been, carefully wrapping each of her fingers aroundit before properly letting go. She tried to focus on the bottle and not the warmth of his skin momentarily brushing hers.
‘It’s not impossible,’ he said, with an easy shrug. She watched as he downed the rest of his drink. ‘There weren’t many people manufacturing absinthe at the time, it was too dangerous. Those that were would have needed access to a distillery, or else they would have been making an inferior product, so it does narrow down the search a little. You’re certain your aunt was in Paris?’
Mia nodded. ‘I have very little useful information about her early years, but yes, she did move to Paris, sometime in the mid-1930s from what I understand. Before that, she lived in a village a few hours away with her family, so she must have been very young when she left home.’
