“Sarah...”
A cab screeched to the curb. Forehead creased with worry, she yanked on the door handle. Dev had to wait until they were in the taxi and heading for the hotel to explain his sudden incapacitation.
“It wasn’t the foie gras.”
Concern darkened her eyes to deep, verdant green. “The veal, then? Was it bad?”
“No, sweetheart. It’s you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Startled, she lurched back against her seat. Dev cursed his clumsiness and hauled her into his arms.
“As delicious as lunch was, all I could think about was how you taste.” His mouth roamed hers. His voice dropped to a rough whisper. “How you fit against me. How you arch your back and make that little noise in your throat when you’re about to climax.”
She leaned back in his arms. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He could see it in the desire that shaded her eyes to deep, dark emerald. In the way her breath had picked up speed. Fierce satisfaction knifed into him. She was rethinking the cooling-off period, Dev thought exultantly. She had to recognize how unnecessary this phase two was.
His hopes took a nosedive—and his respect for Sarah’s willpower kicked up a grudging notch—when she drew in a shuddering breath and gave him a rueful smile.
“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t the goose liver.”
As the cab rattled along the quay, Sarah wondered how she could be such a blithering idiot. One word from her, just one little word, and she could spend the rest of the afternoon and evening curled up with Dev in bed. Or on the sofa. Or on cushions tossed onto the floor in front of the fire, or in the shower, soaping his back and belly, or...
She leaned forward, her gaze suddenly snagged by the green bookstalls lining the riverside of the boulevard. And just beyond the stalls, almost directly across from the renowned bookstore known as Shakespeare and Company, was a familiar bridge.
“Stop! We’ll get out here!”
The command surprised both Dev and the cabdriver, but he obediently pulled over to the curb and Dev paid him off.
“Your favorite bookstore?” he asked with a glance at the rambling, green-fronted facade of the shop that specialized in English-language books. Opened in 1951, the present store had assumed the mantle of the original Shakespeare and Company, a combination bookshop, lending library and haven for writers established in 1917 by American expatriate Sylvia Beach and frequented by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. During her year at the Sorbonne, Sarah had loved exploring the shelves crammed floor to ceiling in the shop’s small, crowded rooms. She’d never slept in one of the thirteen beds available to indigent students or visitors who just wanted to sleep in the rarified literary atmosphere, but she’d hunched for hours at the tables provided for scholars, researchers and book lovers of all ages.
It wasn’t Shakespeare and Company that had snagged her eye, though. It was the bridge just across the street from it.
“That’s the Archbishop’s Bridge,” she told Dev with a smile that tinged close to embarrassment.
She’d always considered herself the practical sister, too levelheaded to indulge in the kind of extravagant flights of fancy that grabbed Gina. Yet she’d just spent several delightful hours on a touristy, hopelessly romantic river cruise. Why not cap that experience with an equally touristy romantic gesture?
“Do you see these locks?” she asked as she and Dev crossed the street and approached the iron bridge.
“Hard to miss ’em,” he drawled, eyeing the almost solid wall of brass obscuring the bridge’s waist-high grillwork. “What’s the story here?”
“I’m told it’s a recent fad that’s popping up on all the bridges of Paris. People ascribe wishes or dreams to locks and fasten them to the bridge, then throw the key in the river.”
Dev stooped to examine some of the colorful ribbons, charms and printed messages dangling from various locks. “Here’s a good one. This couple from Dallas wish their kids great joy, but don’t plan to produce any additional offspring. Evidently seven are enough.”
“Good grief! Seven would be enough for me, too.”
“Really?”
He straightened and leaned a hip against the rail. The breeze ruffled his black hair and tugged at the collar of his camel-hair sport coat.
“I guess that’s one of those little idiosyncrasies we should find out about each other, almost as important as whether we prefer dogs or cats. How many kids do you want, Sarah?”
“I don’t know.” She trailed a finger over the oblong hasp of a bicycle lock. “Two, at least, although I wouldn’t mind three or even four.”
As impulsive and thoughtless as Gina could be at times, Sarah couldn’t imagine growing up without the joy of her bubbly laugh and warm, generous personality.
“How about you?” she asked Dev. “How many offspring would you like to produce?”
“Well, my sisters contend that the number of kids their husbands want is inversely proportional to how many stinky diapers they had to change. I figure I can manage a couple of rounds of diapers. Three or maybe even four if I get the hang of it.”
He nodded to the entrepreneur perched on his overturned crate at the far end of the bridge. The man’s pegboard full of locks gleamed dully in the afternoon sun.
“What do you think? Should we add a wish that we survive stinky diapers to the rest of these hopes and dreams?”
Still a little embarrassed by her descent into sappy sentimentality, Sarah nodded. She waited on the bridge while Dev purchased a hefty lock. Together they scouted for an open spot. She found one two-thirds of the way across the bridge, but Dev hesitated before attaching his purchase.
“We need to make it more personal.” Frowning, he eyed the bright ribbons and charms dangling from so many of the other locks. “We need a token or something to scribble on.”
He patted the pockets of his sport coat and came up with the ticket stubs from their lunch cruise. “How about one of these?”
“That works. The cruise gave me a view of Paris I’d never seen before. I’m glad I got to share it with you, Dev.”
Busy scribbling on the back of a ticket, he merely nodded. Sarah was a little surprised by his offhanded acceptance of her tribute until she read what he’d written.
To our two or three or four or more kids,
we promise you one cruise each on the Seine.
“And I thought I was being mushy and sentimental,” she said, laughing.
“Mushy and sentimental is what phase two is all about.” Unperturbed, he punched the hasp through the ticket stub. “Here, you attach it.”
When the lock clicked into place, Sarah knew she’d always remember this moment. Rising up on tiptoe, she slid her arms around Dev’s neck.
* * *
She’d remember the kiss, too. Particularly when Dev valiantly stuck to their renegotiated agreement later that evening.
After their monster lunch, they opted for supper at a pizzeria close to the Hôtel Verneuil. One glass of red wine and two mushroom-and-garlic slices later, they walked back to the hotel through a gray, soupy fog. Monsieur LeBon had gone off duty, but the receptionist on the desk relayed his shock over the news of the attack