Page 49 of Tangled With the Wrong Guy
The doorbell tinkled, and Chloe, busy attempting an arrangement of lilies for imminent collection, heard a deep male voice. She couldn’t make out his words.
‘Oui, Chloe, là bas,’ said Aunt Daisy.
Chloe turned to see Monsieur the Security Guard, wearing his wide grin. ‘BonjourMadamoiselle Anglaise!’ he said. ‘Ça va?’
‘Ça va bien merçi,’ she replied, her heart in her mouth.
What was French forWere you on that bridge this morning? If she was going to run this place, she’d have to step it up when it came to learning the language.
‘I ’ave your phone!’ he said.
‘What? How …?’
He shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. She’d seen him do that before.
‘Voilà,’ he said, passing it over. ‘I ’ave, ’ow you say, done the charging a leetle. Wasnecessaireto find out its owner. It was dead. Haha! It was dead inlecemetière. C’est amusant, non?’
‘Yes, very funny,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.Merci.’
‘Derien. It ees nothing.Au revoir!’ He turned to Aunt Daisy. ‘Au revoir, Madame Daisy.’ And he winked at her.Winked?What was going on with all the winking? And his tone when speaking to her godmother had beenveryfamiliar. How did he know Aunt Daisy’s name?
Chloe woke up her phone, wondering how Monsieur Le Security Guard had known it was hers. Up came the home screen, with a photo of Chloe and Aunt Daisy at the Eiffel Tower. Ah.
And there was a notification. A text message:
Oscar Wilde, noon. Bring sunflowers. X
The number was unknown.
He was waiting for her by Oscar’s guardian angel. She broke into a run – not very respectful behaviour for this place but she needed to cover that stretch of cobbled path between them very quickly.
He wrapped her in a two-armed hug and lifted her off her feet, then put her down and kissed her, and it went on for quite some time.
‘My phone,’ she said, when they finally broke apart. ‘Who fetched it, you or Monsieur Le Security Guard?’
‘Well, that’s the strange thing,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it’s not that strange, bearing in mind recent happenings. I got to the hotel, told the guys I was back … shit, Chloe, the state of them. They were barely capable of understanding what I was tellingthem. Then I remembered your phone, so I caught a cab to the cemetery to get it – I promised, right? I was going to drop it off at your shop, just somehow get it in there without you seeing me, cos I couldn’t face another goodbye.’
He kissed her again. ‘Istillcan’t face that. But anyway, at Jim’s tomb, there was the security guy. He saw me and said, “Are you ’ere for zees?” and he was holding up your phone. I said it belonged to a friend who lost it yesterday. He said, “Oui, Madamoiselle Anglaise. I ’ave put some power in, and now –” I swear to you Chloe, he said this: “Monsieur Anglais, it is time for you to give zis story its ’appy ever after.”’
‘How did he know? Because he saw us on the bridge?’
‘It must have been him, right?’
‘Joel–’
‘And his words … they did something. It was like suddenly I was seeing clearly, like a fog had lifted. In that moment I knew I couldn’t marry her, Chloe.’ He pulled her close again. ‘I would have done – like I said, I wanted to do right for a wrong, for Monty …’ He looked over at Oscar’s tomb. ‘But then I met you. Yesterday changed everything.’
Chloe had started crying again. He wasn’t marrying Zara. He wasn’t marrying Zara because he’d met her.
‘Hey, don’t cry, this is the happy ending, right?’
‘But you don’t believe in those.’
‘Didn’t.’
‘What about Zara?’
He heaved a breath. ‘Been thinking on that. I’ll tell Zara the wedding’s off, but that I’ll make sure she’s okay, help her with everything she needs for a fresh start. No arranged marriage, no shit from Rohan.’
