“Uh,” someone said, the single elongated syllable intensely apologetic. I opened my eyes to find a young man with curly dark hair and a cute nose gesturing at my washing machine. Rapid-fire French tripped off his tongue in a way that only made him cuter.
“Je suis désolé,” I tried in my atrocious accent. “Je ne parle pas français. I know how to ask for the bathroom and the laundromat, but that’s about it I’m afraid.”
“Oh, well, your machine has an error.”
I scrambled up, curious gazes flitting my way. “Shit.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why but that one is always a bit . . . uh . . . risky.”
In the way of troubled whitegoods, a mystery error code had appeared on the screen, but when I tried the washer door it was firmly locked. From inside, my tennis shorts pressed against the porthole, trapped. “Shit,” I hissed again, running a hand through my hair. And feeling cursed, I looked around for the customer service number.
“Here.” Cute Nose pulled his phone from a pocket surely too small to fit it. “Let me. They may not be good with English.”
“Oh, uh, thank you.”
Phone already to his ear, the young man just nodded and looked into the middle distance in the way of people on phones everywhere. Barely a minute later, he’d already hung up, sliding it back into the tight shorts. “Someone is coming.”
“Thanks,” I said again, feeling all too like a damsel in distress.
Within a few minutes, a man stepped in off the street trailing muttered French. He threw an apology my way, exchanged a few words with my knight in short shorts, then began the delicate process of fixing the washing machine with a kick. A second kick made the error code disappear and the machine started rumbling, its timer set right back at the beginning.
I groaned, but the proprietor just shot me a shifty glance and hurried off, leaving me to Cute Nose’s pitying look. “It usually only does it once,” he said. “Were you in a hurry?”
“Not exactly.”
The young man shrugged, lips turning into an inviting smile complete with dimples. “Well, I was about to go for a coffee.” He pointed across the road at what looked more like a pub than a café. “Would you like to join me?”
Was that a hint of interest? Or just plain curiosity? I’d been better at telling the difference once. Either way, he was cute enough to take the risk, especially when what I really needed was a few minutes not thinking about tennis.
“Sure,” I said, and held out my hand. “I’m Mat.”
“Arnaud.”
We shook hands, and leaving our machines rumbling, headed out into the humid street. On closer inspection, the place across the road was neither café nor pub but something like a small sports bar with a collection of tables and a large TV. And because I was not allowed to escape, it was showing the tennis or, more accurately, showing Miles Callahan sliding across the clay to reach a frankly ridiculous shot.
My expression must have betrayed me, for as Arnaud chose a table, he said, “You don’t like tennis? It is popular in France while it’s here.”
“But not when it isn’t?” I dropped onto a chair, muscles weary. “It’s the same in Australia. People seem to think the Australian Open is the only tennis tournament all year.”
“Exactly, yes. But you are not a fan? I quite enjoy it myself. The men are . . . very nice to look at.”
Unable to hide my smile, I said, “Oh, tennis and I have a very complicated relationship, but who loves their job all the time?”
He laughed, those dimples back as he pointed toward the TV. “Your job is tennis? No wonder I liked the look of you. Are you here for Roland Garros?”
God, I felt like a bird puffing up its feathers with importance – embarrassing enough without then having to admit I wasn’t even close to the top hundred. “Yeah,” I said. “I played this morning.”
“But if you’re in the French Open, why are you moping around a laundromat?”
“I was not moping!”
“You were extremely moping,” Arnaud said, his eyes alight with laughter as bright as the cheerful chatter dancing around us. “Did you lose?”
“No. Although based on that score—” I jerked my head at the TV. “I’ll be playing him next round.”
Arnaud slapped the table, causing a few people to glance over. “Him? Miles Callahan? How I envy you!”
“Envy?”
