I tilted my head at the unfamiliar word. “Romani, what’s that?”
“Well, a lot of people refer to them as gypsies, but that term sounds a little harsh these days.”
“Aha. And do you play guitar as well?”
He smiled. “I do.”
Intrigued, I set my cup down. “Can I hear you play?”
“Did you bring a guitar?”
“Not here, silly. Maybe later?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You planning on coming home with me?”
Immediately my cheeks burned. I’d gone from pleasant to pervy in under a minute. “No—I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, I just—”
Lucas laughed as he reached over and patted my shoulder. “Relax, Mia. I’m only teasing.” He pulled some money from his pocket and laid it on the table.
I bit my lip—I didn’t want him to think he had to keep paying for things. This wasn’t a date. “Thanks. I need to change some money, I guess.”
“Does that mean you’re staying?” Lucas looked at me with a gleam in his eye.
I wanted to say yes, but I didn’t want him to stop trying to sway me. There was something really enjoyable about being the sole focus of his attention. “Still undecided.”
“All right, then. I’ve got work to do. Come on.”
Chapter 5
“So nothing romantic, right?” Lucas rubbed his chin as we walked. He’d helped me change some money and now we were headed toward a Metro entrance.
“Right.”
“Damn, that’s a tall order in Paris, but I think I have an idea.”
I followed him down the cement steps, at the bottom of which he took my arm. “Come here. Do you know how to read this?” He led me over to a large map of the routes on the wall.
Quickly I looked it over. I actually love maps and I’m usually really good at reading them. “Each route is has a number and a different color, right? And the little dots are stops?”
“Yes. And the bigger shapes, the white ones, indicate where you can make a transfer to another line. The key is to look at the name of the stop that’s on the end of the line in the direction you want to go. For example, here we are…” He pointed over my shoulder to a big white oval on the map. “At Charles de Gaulle – Étoile.”
He was standing so close behind me that I could feel his breath in my hair. I wondered if it smelled like coffee and then scolded myself for having such a weird thought. “Right.”
“And we want to go here.” He slid his finger across the map to a stop labeled Père Lachaise.
“Père Lachaise…like the cemetery?”
“Yes. Dead people and stone monuments. Not romantic, right?”
I laughed, peeking at him over my shoulder. Holy shit, he was close. My temple actually grazed his chin, and he stepped back, clearing his throat.
“So, how do we get there?” he asked. “You tell me.”
“Hmmm.” Sucking my lips between my teeth, I studied the map, but my navigational skills didn’t feel too sharp, for some reason, and I was pretty sure that reason was Lucas’s scruffy jaw. It hadn’t been as scratchy as I’d imagined. What the hell, Mia? Focus. “Uh, we look for the number three and we want to go in the direction of…Gallieni?”
“Well, you could. Except the number three doesn’t stop at Charles de Gaulle – Étoile. We’d have to make a transfer.”
“Oh.” I squinted at the map again, but I could still feel his whiskers on my skin. Fucking concentrate, goddammit! You don’t even like scruff. “Oh! I see. We get on the…number two and sort of go up and around. That way we don’t have to transfer.”
“Exactly.”
Beaming with pride, I turned around. “So I need a ticket, right?”
“Yes. Over there.” Lucas led me to one of the ticket machines and watched as I got started, changing the language to English and moving through each step.
At one particular screen, I hesitated. “How many should I buy?”
“Is it just for one day?”
I kept my eyes on the screen. “I don’t know. Maybe two.”
“Aha! My plan is working!” he gloated.
I shrugged, refusing to look at him. “It might be. A little.”
“Get a book of ten.”
I paid by credit card and put nine tickets inside my wallet. Lucas had some kind of pass he swiped, and I fed my ticket into the machine and followed him through the turnstile. At that point he wanted me to lead the way, so I looked at all the signs carefully before choosing which tunnel to take.
When we arrived at the tracks, Lucas held up his hand and I high-fived him. “Way to go, princess. You successfully navigated the metro. I have confidence you can get yourself anywhere in Paris now, even when you’re on your own.”
“Thank you.” I took a small bow, but I felt a twinge of sadness when I imagined myself doing all this alone.
While we waited for the train, Lucas asked me what I did back in Detroit.
“I’m an event planner.”
He burst out laughing. “Of course you are.”
Indignant, I stuck my hands on my hips. “What’s funny about that?”
“Nothing.” He stopped guffawing but couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. “It’s the perfect job for you. I bet you’re really good at it.”
“I am, thank you very much.” I sniffed, slinging my bag higher on my shoulder. “I worked for someone else for a while after college and then started my own business when I was only twenty-five. Well, my best friend and I started it—she had inherited some money and we’d always wanted to do something together. So we went for it.”