Dissolving into giggles, I dug into my bag for my wallet and took out my credit card. “Yes, but not for that reason. I want to see more Paris today. And I want to pay for lunch.”
“No.” Lucas pushed my hand away when I tried to lay down the card. “My treat. I chose an expensive bottle of wine.”
“So what? I loved it! Please let me pay for lunch. You’ve been so nice to spend this entire day showing me around.”
“I wanted to do that. It was my idea, remember?”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing. Put your card away. You can buy our next bottle of wine, OK?”
I dropped my hand to my lap, nodding once. “I like the way you think, Lucas Fournier.”
#
Outside the restaurant, Lucas asked what I wanted to do next.
Make out with you.
The thought slammed into my head with astonishing speed, and I tried to banish it just as quickly. What if he wasn’t feeling any chemistry between us?
“Hmmm. Let’s see—we’ve done a monument and a cemetery, so I’ll vote for a museum or a cathedral.”
Lucas looked skyward, where the sun was trying hard to peek through heavy clouds. “Well, the light’s not awesome for stained glass windows but I think it might be even worse tomorrow, so let’s do a cathedral.”
“Notre-Dame?”
“You got it.”
We took the Metro to a stop a few blocks from the Seine, and rather than switch to another line to get closer, we decided to walk. The day had warmed up and gotten a little humid, so I shrugged out of my sweater and tied it around my waist.
“So I have to ask,” said Lucas, who’d been pretty quiet since the restaurant. “Why were you thinking about sex before?”
Because watching you drink wine made me hot in the pants. I glanced over at him and decided to go with a different reason. “Because Tucker was boring in bed.”
“What?”
I held up my hands. “Truth. I used to offer, in an effort to improve what was not a very interesting or mutually satisfying part of our relationship, to do more fun things than we were doing, but he had a routine that worked for him and didn’t really feel it was necessary to deviate from it.”
Lucas stopped walking and stuck a hand out in front of me to halt my steps. “Tell me you’re not serious.”
I laughed. “I’m serious. He didn’t even like blowjobs. Maybe he heard that story about the French President and got scared.”
Lucas stared at me for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “Nah. I’m pretty sure he was just an ass**le who didn’t know what he had. You deserve a lot better.”
Was it the compliment or the alcohol that gave me the fleeting urge to reach over, grab him by the cardigan and smash my lips to his? What would he do? He said flirty things to me sometimes, but other times he acted totally platonic and casual, even a little aloof. Was he waiting for me to make the first move?
We stood there in silence for a full ten seconds, during which I couldn’t help wondering what he’d be like in bed.
I’ll bet he’s a million times more generous than Tucker. I’ll bet he’s fun and hot and willing to take it slow sometimes. Just talking about sex with him felt so easy…and damn if I wasn’t turned on again thinking about him that way. My stupid ni**les were hard, poking right through the thin material of my bra and cotton tank. I don’t have huge br**sts or anything, barely a C cup, but my ni**les get incredibly hard and they’re ultra-sensitive. Naturally, Lucas’s eyes were drawn right to them, but then it was obvious what he was looking at and he dropped his gaze to the ground, his cheeks coloring.
I opened my mouth, racking my brain for something clever or flirty to say, but the moment had dragged on too long, and Lucas just gave me a quick smile and started walking again.
Shit.
Next time, I’d be braver. What did I have to lose, anyway?
As we got closer to the river, the towers of Notre Dame came into view, and Lucas began telling me a little bit about the Île de la Cité, the small island in the middle of the Seine on which the cathedral stood. I listened with interest as he told me about narrow medieval streets, stone walls, and the construction of Notre-Dame, which took almost two hundred years.
“God, imagine dedicating all that time and labor to something you knew would never be finished in your lifetime,” I said. “Or even your children’s lifetime. You work your ass off for something and then you never even see it completed.”
Lucas shrugged. “I think it was less about the finished product for them and more about their faith. The reason they were building it.”
It may have been an offhand comment, but it made me think about the huge, ridiculous wedding I’d planned for myself, and how mad I’d been that it didn’t come off. I should have been thinking more about the reason for the marriage, and less about the wedding. But I’d never felt the kind of devotion to him I should have, nor had strong faith in the relationship. Thank God we didn’t get married.
Lucas insisted the outside of the Gothic masterpiece was even more magnificent than the inside, so we spent quite a bit of time looking at its exterior—from the bridge we crossed over the Seine, from the square in front of the cathedral, from the garden behind it. I wanted to know the names of all these things but Lucas wouldn’t let me open my guidebook.
“What does it matter what the name of the bridge is? You don’t need to stick your nose in a book right now, Mia—look at the damn cathedral.”