Page 32 of Tangled With the Wrong Guy
For Chloe, the sound signalled the opening of one door, but the closing of another. Joel lifted the latch and pushed, and the narrow street beyond was revealed. Opposite were tall, balconied buildings with picturesque, shuttered windows, lit by moonlight and the soft glow of a streetlamp. The cemetery trees leaned over the spiked wall, casting shadows over the footpath. There was no one around.
‘What do we do with the key?’ Joel asked as they stepped through.
‘Toss it over the wall?’
He locked the door behind them then did as she suggested; they glimpsed it silhouetted against the sky then heard it land with a faintchink.
‘So long, dead people,’ Joel said, lifting his free hand. ‘Goodbye, Oscar,’ he added quietly, and gave a small salute.
‘I’m so glad you got to see him,’ said Chloe. ‘I’ll swing by sometimes on my way home from work and send him your love.’ As she said the words she saw herself in weeks to come, leaning on the glass barrier, remembering.
Sitting on that bench, remembering.
To her dismay, a big fat tear rolled down her cheek. She quickly brushed it away.
Thankfully, Joel was looking up the street. ‘Is that your restaurant?’
‘It is,’ she said. ‘Look, it’s still open. I wonder what time it is.’
‘You want to eat? Um, have you got any money? The guys took my card. I can pay you back, obviously.’
For that he’d need her phone number, or at least to send a Facebook friend request. Not that she had a phone, currently. Would he really get it back to her? Oddly, she didn’t relish the prospect of staying in touch. She didn’t want to witness this journey he was on. If he stuck with it.
Back to her mission, then.
‘When are you going home?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow afternoon. We allowed the morning for recovery.’
‘And where are you staying?’
‘Not far from the Eiffel Tower, in a hotel. Food, Chloe?’ he said, looking longingly at the cosy little bistro. The thought was extremely appealing, and she was hungry, but she was far too shy to walk in there chained to a man. A man who’d just made her come against a cemetery wall. For some reason she felt that might be written across her face; her cheeks were probably still flushed, and there could well be a rash on her neck courtesy ofhis stubble. And when was the last time she’d brushed her hair? This morning. Oh dear.
Joel, however, looked cool as a cucumber.Un concombre. Unflushed, with his hair just slightly, appealingly, dishevelled, beautiful in his tight stripy T-shirt and close-fitting black jeans, his shadowed jaw the only hint of stag weekend depravity. She supposed she was part of that depravity now, but that fact didn’t bother her as much as it might have done earlier.
Her reluctance to step inside the bistro was mostly about the chain. Her French was too basic to explain the truth of the padlock – who knew what she might end up saying?Table for two and please excuse my bondage accessory?
‘Do you speak much French?’ she asked.
‘Not unless it would be useful to tell the waiter my aunt’s pen is on the table and it might rain today.’
She looked down at their wrists. ‘We can’t go in, Joel. Not like this. It’s too embarrassing. We need to find a gendarmerie. Or … I guess there might be something back at my apartment we could cut it off with? A bread knife?’
Joel snorted. ‘Have you seen the thickness of this chain? It’s reinforced steel. Do you have a hacksaw?’
‘I do not. My DIY skills stretch only to changing light bulbs and hanging pictures. But wecouldtry the bread knife? It’s quite a good one. Shall we?’
Joel threw one last look of regret at the bistro, then they set off.
This was an entirely different experience to wandering around the cemetery. As they turned from the quiet lane onto a wide boulevard, an elderly woman’s eyes went to their wrists, then to their faces, before looking quickly away. She was followed by two men who nudged each other and smirked. ‘Amusez bien!’ called one.
Chloe was mortified. Joel was trying not to laugh.
‘Hold my hand,’ he said. ‘People will think it’s chunky his ‘n’ hers jewellery.’
She twisted her wrist and he grasped her hand, and swung it a couple of times. ‘There we go. Just two lovers strolling the nighttime streets of Paris.’ He squeezed it.
She loved holding his hand far too much.
