He takes out his card. “It’s coffee.”
“That is not the point.”
“No,” he says. “The point is that you’re going to object, I am going to pay anyway, and both of us know you have larger battles to win today.”
I should argue harder, but I don’t. He pays, stands, and waits while I gather my notebook and bag. His restraint is careful now, almost formal, but the memory of his hands makes that formality feel less like distance and more like control.
Outside, Paris has shifted into afternoon. The air is warm, and the pavement still carries a faint dampness from earlier rain. People move past us with shopping bags, cigarettes, flowers, phones, whole lives that have nothing to do with the fact that mine has become more complicated over coffee and pastry. We walk a few steps together before stopping near the corner. He looks down at me.
“I am going to Rungis later this week.”
“Of course you are,” I say.
His mouth curves slightly. “Would you be available?”
“For a feature opportunity?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “For a conversation about where the food starts.”
“That sounds dangerously close to professional access.”
“It’s not for the review,” he says.
“It’s for you.”
The answer is too direct. I shift my bag higher on my shoulder.
“I’ll check my schedule.”
He studies me as if he knows exactly what that means and is too disciplined to call me on it.
“Good.”
“You’re very sure I will say yes.”
“I am very sure you want to,” he says.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” he says. “But it is usually the beginning of the same thing.”
I hate that I almost smile.
He steps back first. “Goodbye, Serena.”
“Goodbye, Damien,” I say.
He turns and walks away, and this time I let myself watch him for only three seconds before I move in the opposite direction. I make it half a block before I check my calendar. There is nothing I can’t move. I tuck the phone back into my bag and keep walking toward Le Marais. I know three things before I reach the river: the food is extraordinary. The man is impossible. I am going to have to be more disciplined than I have ever been in my professional life.
By the time I reach the hotel street, my mind is still circling the same facts with infuriating precision. He ordered my coffee correctly. He asked me about the third course like he actually wanted the answer. He pushed back on every assessment I made, and he was right about two of them.
I stop outside the hotel door and look up at the pale stone façade, the window boxes, the familiar brass handle waiting beneath my palm. I have four weeks left in Paris. I have the most important review of my career to file. I have a very strict set of rules from my editor. I go inside before I can stand there long enough to look foolish. I told him I would check my schedule, but I’ve already said yes in my head a hundred times.
Chapter Seventeen
Damien
Rungis is already awake when Paris is still pretending it sleeps.
