Page 105 of Fated

I tilt my head up and smile at him, warmth spreading through me, replacing the chill and the shaking. “It doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Hmm.” He thinks for a moment, looking up at the sky, his winged eyebrows rising. “I forgot my new assistant’s name. Again. So she poured spoiled milk in my coffee. I watched her. How’s that?”

I narrow my eyes. “A little better. What’s her name?”

His lips press together and he shakes his head. “I can’t remember.”

I laugh. “Still no. What else?”

“Hmm.” He considers for another moment, the cool breeze off the lake rustling his glossy black hair. “In Paris a woman asked me to watch her French Bulldog while she went into a café. She was flirting?—”

“Of course.”

“—and I forgot the dog was there. She’d tied it to my café chair. So I started to walk away and the dog sprinted after me, the metal chair dragging behind its leash. It knocked over two café tables, a flower stand, and the easel of an artist painting in watercolors before I caught it. The dog was painted in vermillion and cerulean and chartreuse. It was grotesque. The woman was not impressed. Needless to say, my excuse ‘I forgot it was there’ was not appreciated.”

My eyes widen. “Oh.”

Max nods. Smiles. Then he reaches up and pulls a finger down my cheek. “Better?”

I let out a long sigh, releasing all the worry and fear that suddenly rose to the surface and knotted in my chest. “Yes. Better.”

He smiles and then pulls his arms from me and steps back. The warmth he was offering lingers as the cool lake breeze licks over me. Behind me the chateau rises, formidable and imposing, a stone castle that’s remained for centuries and has withstood much more than a single gunshot. The history of my family behind me and Max in front of me makes my shoulders rise.

He takes me in and nods. “Good.”

I look Max over. He’s had a long week. His trips to Paris are always long—full days and full nights, working all hours. He looks as if he could sleep for a week. But instead of heading home after his trip he came to me.

“I think,” Max says, studying my expression, “we should skip the romantic dinner I had planned. Throw out the champagne, fire the serenading violinists, and burn the roses, and instead we should just ... see where the evening takes us.”

My mouth twitches, and at the light in Max’s eyes I grin at him. “Serenading violinists?”

“Mm-hmm. All the way from the Rue de Romance.”

I laugh and take his arm. There’s a light breeze dancing over my cheeks, the wood thrushes are singing in the deepening forest shade, and the lake glitters diamond-blue in the evening light. Max’s arm is steady and warm beneath mine.

Is this what my dreams are leading me to? Giving Max a chance? Opening my heart to him?

I take a cautious peek at him as we stride across the drive to his car. He’s the same Max. Sharp nose, high cheekbones, austere and closed-off until he slams you with his dry observations and hidden humor.

I imagine he’d be easy to love. If I could let myself.

Is that what I’ve been waiting for? Permission to love Max?

Is that what my dreams are teaching me? That I have permission to love? To be loved?

The thought makes me wonder.

Have I ever really given myself permission to be loved—to truly be loved by someone else?

My heart pinches as I remember Aaron gripping me to him, his mouth hot against mine, as he asked between urgent kisses, “Will it hurt much tomorrow when you don’t want me?”

Max opens my door and I slide onto the soft caramel leather, and the cool interior of his car. When he closes his door and starts the engine he turns to me, the space tight and intimate, and says over the purr of the engine, “Ready?”

I smile and nod. “Yes. Let’s see where the night leads.”

The night leads to a tiny medieval village on the shores of the lake, about an hour outside Geneva. Max follows the summer-leafy road winding around the lake, his car rumbling soothingly, the leather warm on my legs and his voice filling the intimate space with stories of Paris—the tight-fisted dealer with his golden monocle, the haughty broker with her two misbehaving diamond-collared toy poodles, the doe-eyed greedy daughter with her nasal accent and trust fund of Australian opal mines—until I’m laughing and out of breath from the caricatures he paints.

Then, as the setting sun sprays lacy, tree-filtered light through the car window and Max reaches over and squeezes my hand, I see it.

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