But it had. Oh, it had. It came down to comfort in the form of a book about gardening.

  She was the butt of her own joke, only nothing felt funny. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt good.

  * * *

  “You’re closed?” he asked the man in French.

  “For lunch. Yes,” the man replied.

  “But I just want to buy that blue perfume bottle,” Jack said, pointing through the window of the shop to the back wall.

  “We will be open again in two hours,” the man said, tucking a newspaper under his arm, and taking a step away from the door.

  “Can you just sell me that blue bottle now? I’ll be fast.”

  The man shook his head. “No. I am meeting my wife for lunch. I have lunch with her every Saturday. Rain or shine.”

  Jack placed his palms together. Suddenly, it felt vitally important to get her the perfume bottle NOW. “I’ll pay you double. S’il vous plait.”

  The man clapped him on the arm. “You can come back later. I will sell it to you then. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will regret it more if I miss lunch with my wife.”

  The man turned and walked down the covered arcade and out into the Paris afternoon, that word trailing behind him like the last notes of a song fading out on the radio.

  Regret.

  This man would regret being late to lunch with his wife. And he’d chosen her over a business transaction.

  Jack stumbled into the wall with the realization. It was simple. It was so goddamn simple. He’d let this regret define him. He’d dressed himself in it every day. He’d come to rely on it, like a fucking crutch. He needed to be that man walking away, content with the knowledge that he’d regret not seeing his wife for lunch.

  Like a cloud rolling away to reveal the sun, Jack knew instantly what he’d regret more. Not telling Michelle everything in his heart. Every single thing he felt for her. Because it was no longer muddled. It was no longer messy. It was as clear as the closed sign on the door. It was as defined as the sapphire-blue bottle he wanted to buy for her. It was as easy as having lunch with your wife on a Saturday.

  Distance and muting weren’t the solution. They were the essence of the problem. Already, in a few short hours of her being gone, he missed her so much it was driving him mad. Insane with longing. Desperate with the need to see her. If he couldn’t get his act together and just tell her how he felt—regardless of the risks, real or imagined—he’d lose her for good.

  He couldn’t chance that.

  He didn’t need an elaborate plan or a complicated strategy. He needed to speak from the heart. The thing he was most afraid of doing. His biggest fear was speaking the full truth about his feelings. But he’d lose her for sure if he didn’t do more than try. Trying was for other men. Trying was not remotely sufficient any more. He needed to do.

  Fully, completely, without reservation.

  He grabbed his phone from his pocket and called Michelle. She answered on the third ring.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m standing in the doorway of the perfume shop, and I need to see you. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you exactly what I should have told you the last time I was here. I need to tell you in a thousand ways,” he said, because that’s all that mattered. He needed to submerge himself in the words, to drown out all the other things he hadn’t said. To start now, and start over, and start better. To stop being so damn terrified of love.

  There was silence. Only silence for what felt like an eternity, and in that span of time he simply had to wait for her.

  “You do?” she asked carefully.

  “I do. Where are you? Are you in your favorite part of Paris that’s not in Paris?”

  He was rewarded with a small laugh. “I’m predictable.”

  He shook his head. “No. I just listened. To everything. Will you be there in an hour?”

  “If you’re coming, yes,” she said, and he swore he could see her smiling. He knew he was.

  “I am. I’m coming for you.”

  He doubled back to the hotel, calling the concierge along the way to request a car service stat, and then slid into the backseat of a black sedan that shot him straight out of Paris and along the road to Giverny. Nearly an hour later, the driver pulled up to the gardens, and Jack paid him.

  “Do you need a ride back to Paris, sir?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know when.”

  “I’m going off-duty, but please call this number and we will send someone for you,” the driver said, and handed him a card. Jack slipped it into his back pocket, thanked the man, and bought his ticket to the gardens. He walked through Monet’s one-time house, then crossed into the lush landscape that had inspired the painter. In all his time here in Europe, he’d never made it to these gardens. It was a true paradise, an escape from city life, and he understood why this land had inspired so many works of art.

  He scanned for her across the flowerbeds, a sea of petals in every color. A central alley was covered by iron arches, roses climbing over the metal. Weeping willows brushed the green ground with their branches. He walked the perimeter, eyes peeled the whole time, and then the Japanese bridge came into view, its green wood slats rising over the lily pond. The most beautiful sight in all the gardens was this bridge, but in his mind it barely compared to her. She was resting her elbows on the bridge, reading a book. He picked up his pace, walking across a path edged by orange and red and gold bursts of petals, then reached the bridge. She looked up when she heard footfalls.

  “Did you know this garden displays two hundred thousand annuals, biennials, and perennials each year?” She held up the book. “I read it in here.”

  “Did you know I started to fall for you when you told me why ‘Ode to Joy’ was your ringtone?” he asked, stopping in front of her, and gently closing her book.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I started to fall for you then because it said something about you. About who you are, and what matters to you. And I fell more the day you came to my office in your librarian outfit, and not because of how you looked or what you did. But when you sat on my lap, and you told me about how you once wanted to be a Broadway star. Except you couldn’t sing, dance or act,” he said, and he wanted to take her hand, to kiss her palm, to kiss her face. But he had already won her with touch. He hadn’t earned her love with words yet.

  “Why that?”

  “Because it showed your sense of humor. Which is part of what I love about you,” he said, and every time he said the word love it was as if another small slice of regret sheared away. “And you asked me about Aubrey and if I missed her, and that’s part of how I fell in love with you too. Because you care. You care about your work, and your clients, and your friends, and your family. And you cared about me long before I could even begin to try to deserve you.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said softly, her hands gripping the wood railing behind her.

  “It’s true. Because you are so good with words and with talking and sharing, and I’m not. But I want to be. Because I want to deserve you. Like the night at the symphony, when you got mad at me.”

  She looked down at her feet, red coloring her cheeks. Gently, he tipped up her chin.

  “I fell for you because of that, too. Because you weren’t afraid to tell me the truth. To tell me to stop playing games. To be blatantly honest about something as simple as wanting an orgasm.”

  She laughed, and glanced away. “You’re embarrassing me,” she said, but she didn’t seem mad. “You make me sound so horny.”

  “You are. And I fucking love it, Michelle. Like I love you. My God, I have to tell you how much I love you. I wasn’t going to sit in that hotel room and wait for you to figure out if you were going to spend the rest of the trip with me. And I had to get my head out of my own ass and out of the past. As soon as I left the hotel, where else did I wind up but the spot where I should have told you in the first place how I felt?”

  Her lips curved up, and he was dying to kiss her. But words mattered more.

  “I should have told you that night outside the perfume shop. Because I felt it that night. I felt it then, and before, and after, and now. And all the time. And as soon as I realized how monumentally stupid I was for not saying something so simple as I’m in love with you, I had to see you. I had to tell you all the things I should have told you a million times already. The things I let myself believe were too hard to say. The things I was afraid of because of the last time I said them to Aubrey. But you’re not her. You’re you. And I am in love with you, and I couldn’t wait for you to come back to the hotel. I didn’t come to Paris to not be with you,” he said, inching closer to the woman he adored.

  “Why did you come to Paris?”

  “I came here because I can’t be without you. And I’ve held too much back. I’ve kept it all in here,” he said, tapping his chest. “But I was feeling it all along. Denying it, but consumed by it. And I love that you call me out on my bullshit. And I love that you invited me to Paris. And that you let me spend the night with you. You let me into the part of you that you were scared of. The part that made you feel vulnerable. You brought me into all of that,” he said, and his heart beat so hard and so furiously, it might leap out of his chest and into her hands. But that’s where it belonged. With her.

  Her brown eyes were so big, and a tear slid down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb, and brought the salty streak to his lips. “Don’t cry,” he whispered.

  She just shook her head, unable to speak.

  “I’m not done,” he said. “Because I’ve done a bad job telling you how I feel. I thought if I kept it all inside, I wouldn’t hurt you. I thought words were what had ended Aubrey’s life. And that if I didn’t say them, I could somehow protect you. But you made me realize I was a stupid, fucking selfish idiot for thinking that.”

  “You’re not an idiot.”

  He nodded several times. “Yes, I am. I’m an idiot for not telling you in the doorway. I’m an idiot for not telling you at dinner last night, or later in the hotel room. Or even this morning. I’ve been so consumed with regret that I let it dictate everything in my life. And everything with you. And I’m not a shrink, I’m not someone who understands the fine details of emotions, or how people heal or move on. And I know you’re worried that I’m not capable of love.”

  She started to speak, but he silenced her as he held up a finger to signal he had more to say. “It’s okay, I’d be worried too. And all I can do is tell you this—I have never felt this way for anyone. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. You consume my thoughts, you fill my heart, and I want so much more than thirty nights with you. I want the days, too. I want days like this. Good days and bad days. I don’t want another week. I want all the weeks. Maybe I’m a work in progress. Maybe I’m like a rough piece of clay. But I can be refined, and shaped, and become better with you. I want to go back to New York and not have an expiration date. I want you to let me keep loving you. The way I feel for you is without question,” he said, and now he didn’t resist the impulse to touch her. Because he’d done enough resisting. He needed to connect fully with her.

  “I want that too,” she said in the tiniest voice, full of so much vulnerability.

  He cupped her cheeks, holding her face in his hands, looking at her. At the woman he loved madly. Deeply. Truly. Without any regrets, without any reservations. “I’m going to tell you over and over how I feel. Because I need you to know. I always ask you to give yourself to me, and you do, and have in every way. And I want to give myself to you,” he said, and she was trembling under his touch. Her shoulders shook and her lips were parted. “If you’ll still have me.”

  “Oh Jack, you know I will. You know I love you. You know I’m crazy in love with you. You’re not a work in progress,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “I kind of am, but I want to be a work in progress with you.”

  “We can be that for each other,” she said, tilting her chin up.

  “You want me to kiss you, don’t you?” he said, their playfulness coming back.

  “Always.”

  “I will always want to,” he said, and kissed her in the garden, on the bridge, the weeping willow the witness to his deep and abiding love for this woman who’d challenged him, who’d changed him, and who’d healed him simply by loving him. That was what had truly washed away the regret. Yes, her words, her insight, her kind understanding of his past had helped him see all that he was clutching unnecessarily. But ultimately, he’d been letting go already. Letting go because she loved him.

  * * *

  They had a very late lunch at a cafe in town, laughing, talking, touching.

  She hadn’t expected him to show up. She’d resigned herself to her own hotel room, to a few more lonely days in Paris, and then to a long string of empty nights back in Manhattan, as she immersed herself in another 10K, in more Spanish lessons, in bowling, in whatever she had to do to rid this man from her mind.

  She had no doubt the process of erasing Jack would have been even harder than erasing Clay had been.

  But she didn’t have to, because there was no longer an arrangement or an end. There was only this new beginning.

  At lunch, his phone rang. He glanced at the screen, then hit ignore, then silent. “Just a customer. I’ll call him later. I will regret it more if I miss this lunch right now,” he said, then laced his fingers through hers.

  After they ate, they wandered through Giverny, getting lost in the shops, and getting found again. Instead of calling the call service, they simply caught a train back to Paris. Because the train was what they needed and wanted. The last one, and they were all alone in their car. The conductor took their tickets, and then the overhead lights dimmed. She gazed out the window as the train rattled through the countryside at night. The hum of the wheels and the din of the engine made for a relaxing soundtrack at the end of the day.

  She felt his hand in her hair, a gentle tug as he pulled her close. He turned her face so she was looking at him. “Make love to me on the train,” he whispered.

  It was the first time he’d said that. Make love. The words were like diamonds to her, and just as valuable. She wanted to be as intimate with him as she could, after he’d said those gorgeous words over and over at the gardens. Besides, they were living in the bubble for a few more days, existing outside the public eye of prying New York City gossip papers. Carla had advised her to be cautious, but as far as she could tell that guidance applied to New York, not to this moment in time.

  She kissed him, sweeping her tongue across his lips, savoring the taste of his mouth. His kisses were consuming; they rocketed her to another realm; they turned her on in mere seconds. She felt that sweet ache between her legs, the one only he could soothe, so she straddled him, and unzipped his pants, so grateful to be wearing a skirt. Then, she sank onto him, and gasped silently. He filled her so completely, and held her like she was all he’d ever wanted.

  She cupped his cheeks, and he gripped her waist, and she made love to him on the train back to Paris.

  “Michelle,” he whispered, keeping his eyes locked on hers.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m so in love with you,” he said, holding tight to her, his words better than any dirty ones he’d ever spoken, and those had melted her with heat. But this was something else entirely. This was the deepest connection, her greatest wish. This was everything she’d ever wanted—to love and to be loved back.

  “I’m so in love with you.”

  She looked away once to catch their hazy reflections in the dark of the window. They looked like two people who couldn’t get enough of each other. His eyes squeezed shut, his breath came fast and harsh, and he moved deeper into her. She watched for another moment, thrilling inside at all that the window revealed about him, and how he felt for her. She turned back to him, their bodies colliding, their lips connecting, her arms wrapped around him as they came together once more.

  Three days later, they boarded the plane for New York, and flew across the ocean. They hadn’t even needed thirty nights to know they wanted so many more, and they were going to get to have them.

  * * *

  But the look on Jack’s face when he turned on his phone as they touched down at JFK told her that something had gone terribly wrong.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Slammed

  The tweet bothered her.

  Casey’s social media manager had alerted her to it this morning. Not sure if this is anything, but check this out. ConroyforUES: Can’t wait for Wednesday’s paper. Gonna be a social media field day.

  What was most concerning was the tweet’s life. It had lasted for all of thirteen seconds. The social media manager’s software scoured Facebook and Twitter regularly, so if a tweet existed at all that they needed to know about, they heard about it. Killing a tweet didn’t make it cease to exist. It only made the tweet more worrisome.

  Tomorrow’s story could be anything. It could be about a new poll revealing Conroy’s lead. Or it could be about something else entirely. But given that Casey, and Denkler, hoped to dominate social media with their change-the-conversation news in a few more days, she didn’t like the enemy playing in her sandbox, nor preening over it in advance.

  That’s why she was at the art gallery Rebel on Third and Seventy-Sixth, nibbling on a cracker and pretending to sip wine as Conroy chatted up donors in the corner. He stood next to a pricey piece of abstract art, and she half wondered if some of the wealthy patrons backing him had created the image of two red squares inside a blue one.

  She’d infiltrated the event in the simplest way possible. She’d found it online, then bought a ticket under a fake name via Eventbrite. The cocktail party was being thrown to thank the biggest donors to the campaign so far, and Casey hoped she’d be able to pick up a clue, any clue, simply by circulating. She’d figured out the thin, baby-faced man was the press spokesperson, that the blond man was the chief of staff, and that the guy with slick dark hair was the campaign manager. She’d put those pieces together from her earlier digging into Conroy. But she couldn’t figure out who the guy in the suit with the short dark hair was. He wore thick, black glasses, and he had the press guy’s ear, whispering throughout the event.