Page 149 of Ten Years and Then…
She picked up the phone, dropped it back on the bed. “Until a few minutes ago. But now we have no way to reach each other, so I don’t know where Nora’s going to be.”
“Rachel probably didn’t kill her phone,” he said. This wasn’t a problem at all. “We can just call her from the room phone.”
Bianca shrugged and didn’t quite laugh. “If I remembered her number, sure. But you know how I am with that. I programmed it into the phone so I wouldn’t have to remember it. And of course the one detail we forgot to tell each other is which hotel we’re at.”
Okay, that was a problem.
They’d walked past a dozen hotels, just in the couple of blocks surrounding theirs. Nora could be in any one of them and he’d never know it.
Just like they hadn’t known they were in the same building—sometimes the same room—for that first month of school before they’d properly met eleven years ago.
No, it wasn’t a problem after all.
He knew exactly where Nora would go.
Nora, the exact same moment
“So Bianca tracked you down, and you guys decided to get me and Daniel together in Paris on New Year’s Eve?”
Rachel shook her head. “It was supposed to be Tuesday night at the ballet. Sleeping Beauty seemed appropriate. I should have just bought four tickets. But Bianca thought it would be more romantic if we all met up by ‘accident.’ Except she went and got tickets at Opéra Bastille instead of Palais Garnier. And then she went to the Champs Élysées store instead of the flagship Galeries Lafayette where we were yesterday.”
Both of those sounded like easy enough mistakes to make, especially if you’d never been to Paris before. “And now she’s not texting you back at all.”
Just like Daniel never called her back in Kansas City, because his phone had died.
So he was in the same city—maybe the same block, for all she knew—but neither of them had any idea where the other was.
“You see the problem,” Rachel said.
Her freshman year, she and Daniel had kept just missing each other, time after time, before they finally met face to face.
And that was the answer, right there.
She knew exactly where Daniel would go.
Daniel, a few minutes later
There was no point waiting. If he was right, Nora would be on her way right now.
“Bee, I’m going to find her.” He couldn’t just leave Bianca alone on New Year’s Eve, though. Not when he wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for her. “You—do something fun today, just for you. It’ll be my treat.” He reached into his jacket pocket, took out his wallet. “Here’s my credit card. I think there’s at least $1,500 on it.” She didn’t take the card out of his hand. “Bee, please. I owe you so much. This is the least I can do for you.”
She finally took it. “$1,500, you said? I guess I can work with that.”
He knew she wouldn’t spend a fraction of that. When they got home, he could do something to thank her properly. Or at least make a start on it.
“Good. And let’s meet up tonight, eleven o’clock.” He could spare a few minutes from Nora to make sure Bee got a kiss on the cheek at midnight.
But where to meet?
Bianca had an answer to that. “The concierge said the big New Year’s party’s going to be by the Arc de Triomphe. Want to meet there?”
“Let’s look at the map,” he answered. He unfolded the big tourist map on the bed. “There!” It was a perfect spot, no way to miss it. “The exit for the Metro station there. Charles de Gaulle-Étoile. Eleven o’clock on the dot.”
She grabbed him, hugged him tightly. “Good luck, Danny. I hope you find her.”
“I know I’m going to find her, Bee.”
Nora, a few minutes later
