Page 64 of Royally Romanov
“That is categorically untrue.” Mostly, anyway. “There’s a legitimate reason Maxim can’t stay in his apartment. I’d just rather not get into it.”
“And you want to be there with him for purposes of protection, obviously. I get it. You make a great bodyguard.”
“Scott, just answer the question. Can you give me the key again?”
“Bien entendu. Anything for you, darling. And no worries, there are no Tumbleweeds tonight. You’ll have the place all to yourselves.”
Maxim walked back into the room with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He held up a paper for her to see—his birth certificate. She couldn’t make herself meet his gaze for some reason.
You’ll have the place all to yourselves.
Finley swallowed. “Merci,Scott. I owe you one.”
“I’ll be here for another half hour. The key is yours.”
She thanked him again, ended the call, and aimed a smile at the document in Maxim’s hands. “You found it.Très bien.” Finley nodded and forced herself to look him in the eye. This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman. There was nothing remotely scandalous about sleeping with a Russian royal in Paris’s oldest literary institution, was there?My life has become a soap opera.“We’re all set with a place to stay. We can spend the night at Shakespeare and Company. The bookstore has an open-door policy. It’s a Parisian tradition. Scott says hello, by the way.”
Maxim’s dimples made a surprise appearance while he rolled up the birth certificate. “Somehow I doubt that’s exactly what he said.”
Finley opted not to confirm or deny. “Ready?”
Gerard bounced up from the pile of feathers he’d been rolling around in and woofed.
“Apparently we all are,” Maxim said.
Their easy banter faded into a heavy silence once they left the apartment. Maxim wrapped his arm around her waist, but he studied every dark corner like he was James Bond. It was unnerving.
By the time the fairy lights hanging from the bookshop’s rafters came into view, Finley had managed to convince herself that there wasn’t the slightest possibility of a romantic tryst.
What had she been thinking? They werehiding, not dating.
Even Scott seemed to pick up on the generally somber vibe when they arrived. He didn’t make a single inappropriate comment, which pretty much verified that Finley would be sharing her bed with Gerard. As per usual.
But after he’d gone and she and Maxim were alone, things changed.
Gerard shuffled off to his little bed in the corner and the shop grew quieter than it had ever been before. It was a weighty kind of quiet, thick with words and whispers of the past. Swollen with possibility.
The fairy lights just outside the windows cast strange shadows across Maxim’s face, making him look haunted and ethereal. Like someone from a dream or a memory, one of the countless literary souls who surely moved among Shakespeare and Company’s dusty shelves.
“Here we are.” Her pulse pounded in her ears so loud she could barely hear herself think. “Home sweet home.”
She was hyperaware that this was only the second time they’d been alone with one another—truly alone—since the last time he’d kissed her. That kiss had shaken her to her core, as had the first. But being alone with Maxim here, in the dark, knowing that so many velvet hours stretched between them until the morning light, made those first kisses seem like a prelude.
“Finley.” There was an ache to the way he said her name, just as he’d said it hours before.
Finley, I’m so sorry.
She’d told him things in this room. Things she’d never said to another living soul, not even her family. Not Jeremy. Not Scott. Just Maxim. And now that they’d come back, she felt as if her words were echoing around her, drawing her deeper and deeper to a place where there was no turning back.
I’m not okay...But I’m getting there. Finally. For the first time in years, I feel connected to another living person.
Something was definitely happening between them. And it wasn’t just a crush. Finley didn’t quite understand the feelings she had for Maxim, and she no longer wanted to try.
She was tired of denying herself. Holding herself at arm’s length from the rest of the world was exhausting. It took effort not to feel... not to want things. She couldn’t do it anymore. Not when it came to Maxim.
He came closer, so close that she could feel his breath on her face. A shiver ran up her spine. She felt hot and cold at the same time, bombarded by sensation.
Dangerously, deliciously alive.
