Page 1 of French Kiss

Prologue

July10

Paris

“Those of youwho know me well might call me a planner,” I said, pausing to let the crowd enjoy a laugh at my expense. The pause was planned. I’m obsessive about controlling details, and I knew I’d need to catch my breath. I was a little nervous speaking in front of a crowd, but I reminded myself that these people had my back.

“There is nothing I like better than a well-conceived agenda that takes me exactly where I want to go, according to an exact series of events. And today… I’m here to say that maybe I was wrong. Maybe life isn’t all about planning and looking for expected results. Maybe the great parts can’t be controlled like that. We have to just let them happen and go along for the ride.”

No one was arguing with me. It’s possible that this group already knew something it took me years to learn. But I didn’t care. I was going to tell them my thoughts anyway.

“I guess what I’m saying is that I get it now. It just took me a little longer than some people to figure it out. But I’m finally there. And in my defense, I was really, really tired for a long time. Med school and residency suck. So I’m just gonna blame that for my lack of common sense. And maybe a few other things.”

A few people were nodding. They understood.

I just hoped It made sense to everyone else. So I continued with my story.

* * *

Sleep deprivation will drivea person to make decisions that are at best a bit reckless and at worst totally insane. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had any real sleep in almost a decade.

Working as a medical resident for the past three years, after a separate spate of sleepless years during med school, I’d learned that sleep was just a fantasy, something that existed in other people’s lives, not my own.

I also learned early on which of my fellow students could still function normally on five or six hours of sleep and which of us needed a full eight, which we never actually got. In a perfect world, I’d have been happy with nine hours per night, so the math was never going to work in my favor.

It would stand to reason that I’d choose a different field, one that allowed me to feel rested at least occasionally. But equal to my unmet desire to hit the snooze button a thousand times was my love of science.

I was not going to let a little sleep deficit stand in the way of doing what I wanted.

That’s how I found myself on a three-hour train ride from Amsterdam to Paris with the intention of meeting my insanely hot, insanely wrong-for-me fellow resident, Maddox, and having mind-blowing European sex in the City of Light.

In addition to the sleep issue, I had to lay the blame in poor judgment and my habit of wishful thinking. I could never entirely see the difference between what I wanted to be true and what actually was true. Especially when it came to Maddox. And his tight, hard abs.

To a driven premed student—and later, to an equally driven medical student—envisioning what I wanted and going after it with dogged determination was the only way to make it happen. I figured I could apply that to everything, even guys who’d broken other people’s hearts. I thought I could make it work with them, even if none of the two dozen women who’d come before me had tamed those bad boys. I’d be more captivating and more persuasive.

If I’d been thinking logically, I might not have gotten on that train in Amsterdam. My friends had cautioned me against it, and I hadn’t listened. I got in line to be number two-dozen-and-one.

Ah, Maddox.

Gorgeous, impeccably built, emotionally screwed-up Maddox.

I pictured exactly how our meet cute in Paris would go and how our decadent weekend would unfold after that. I could picture the cloudless sky. I’d see him waiting for me with that cocky, faux-innocent grin of his, like he knew how much time I’d spent thinking about seeing him shirtless. I’d trip over a wayward baguette, crash into him, and he’d tumble on his back, laughing.

“You’re beautiful. Do you know that? Everyone here is looking at me and wondering how someone so gorgeous could ever be here with someone like me,” he’d say.

I could almost smell the freshly baked croissants we’d nibble the next morning after losing ourselves in the kind of sex that people sang about in angry ballads. It would be the culmination of three years of glances and innuendos, his insinuations of, “if only…,” which had felt safe to say because he was always dating someone else.

“That’s what I love about you, Hannah” or “Why are we never single at the same time?” were the kinds of meaningless phrases that Maddox tossed around casually with me. He could flirt with abandon because we both knew nothing could ever happen.

But what if it could happen?

By June of our third year in residency, we’d finished our friendship tour of duty, and there were no more roadblocks. The blooming promise of romance propelled me. I wasn’t wrong about this. I’d done a thorough assessment. Scientific method. I’d been trained to think that way.

If I was being honest, I knew Josh would have an issue with my plan. Logical, level-headed, I-wish-I-found-him-attractive Josh. Honest enough to call bullshit when I moped and fretted that I’d never land a good job, and cynical enough to warn me that global warming might doom us all before I ever needed to land a job.

Josh knew I how much I loved and respected him. He was probably the one person in my life who had a completely clear view of the way things looked to an objective observer, even when he stood squarely in the middle of the drama. He could pull himself out long enough to give advice or point me in a better direction, often diametrically opposed to the one I was rushing toward, my heart in my hand and logic thrown to the wind.

Josh had been the first to warn me that a Paris rendezvous with Maddox was a terrible idea. After all, he lived with the guy, so he had a pretty good idea of what Maddox was capable of doing.

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