Paris Is Always a Good Idea

by Jenn McKinlay

  I started to walk in the direction of the vineyard, but Jason stopped me. He turned me to face him, cupped my face in his hands, and then lowered his lips to mine in a kiss that felt as if it had been waiting just beneath the surface for days. He sipped at my upper lip, lightly slid his tongue across the lower one, and fit his lips to mine so perfectly it was as if our mouths had been formed with the other in mind.

  I couldn’t get close enough to him, so I dropped my flowers and pressed up against him. His hands moved to my hips, drawing me in and holding me in place. I realized as his mouth wooed mine that this wasn’t just a kiss; it was staking a claim. When my lips parted on a gasp, his tongue swept in, clearing out any capacity I had to think or reason. The taste of him, of us together, was the breaking down of the old and the rebuilding of something new. It was everything.

  “Dance with me,” he said, breaking the kiss so we could breathe.

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. I studied his face to determine just how serious he was. He was staring at my mouth in a way that made my heart kick into high gear in my chest.

  “There’s no music,” I said.

  “There’s always music when you’re near me,” he countered. Then he began to hum “La vie en rose.”

  And just like that, I was back on the Eiffel Tower with him, listening to Edith Piaf with his warmth wrapped around me while we swayed back and forth. The scent of him, cardamom and mint, rose up from his skin while we danced, and I suddenly felt as if everything in my life had been stumbling toward this moment in time. It was too much. He made me feel too much. I stepped back from him.

  He didn’t let me go, however. Instead, he stepped close and cupped my face, tilting it so he could meet my gaze. His eyes were filled with purpose, as if he could sense that I was panicking and he wasn’t about to let that happen. He pressed his mouth against mine. The kiss smoldered, and any thought I’d had of escaping incinerated on the spot.

  The magic that I always felt when he touched me, the euphoria that started low and deep and fluttered up through me reappeared, and I could no more ignore it than I could break the kiss. Instead of shoving him away, I found myself clutching his forearms as if I’d lose my balance and tumble to the ground without him to hold me up.

  We kissed and kissed and kissed some more until I felt the burn of his whiskers on my skin and my lips were puffy and all I could taste was him. He wrapped his arms about me and held me pressed against him. When he broke the kiss, he didn’t let go but leaned down and pressed his forehead against mine while we struggled for breath.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said.

  “Don’t—”

  “Too late.” He gave me his crooked smile, and it about broke my heart. “I know you probably think it’s too soon to say it, but I have to, because it’s true. I knew it the first time I kissed you, and then I knew it for sure when you left for Italy, because I’ve only felt that sort of heartbreak once before. I. Love. You.”

  I felt as if I might faint. This was so much more than I was ready for. I shook my head, but he ignored me.

  “I thought about it and thought about it, and I realized when I left Paris that it was always you. All of our animosity at work, it was me trying to keep you from getting under my skin, because I think I knew even then that you were the one,” he said. “The very first time I saw you, I noticed you. How you walked with purpose, your hair pulled back at the nape of your neck, looking all business, the cut of your skirt, slim and sexy but utterly professional. No flashy jewelry and barely any makeup, as if you didn’t want anyone to see you as anything other than a woman who got things done.”

  “You remember what I was wearing?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. He grinned. The moonlight made it look like a pirate’s smile, all roguish charm and mischievous intent, and I felt my insides melt. “Aidan introduced us, and when I shook your hand, your grip was cool and dry and firm. Then you looked me right in the eye and said, ‘There aren’t any hot wings here,’ and then you walked away.”

  I cringed. “Oh man, I was such a jerk. I’m sorry. Truth? I was totally threatened by you and your success with that viral challenge and felt the need to establish dominance.”

  “I know,” he said. “It was totally hot.”

  I burst out laughing. Then I sighed. What was I supposed to say?

  “Working together makes this really complicated,” I said. “This whole thing would be easier if I had fallen in love with Marcellino again.”

  He frowned. “But you couldn’t, because even though Marcellino is the perfect man, he is not the perfect man for you. I am.”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked, both charmed and affronted by his arrogance.

  “Because I fell in love with you on the other side of your greatest loss, your deepest grief,” he said. “I fell for the strong, determined, driven woman who you’ll always be, and I love you exactly as you are.”

  I felt my throat get tight. He cupped my chin, bringing my gaze up to his.

  “Chelsea, you’re trying so hard to be who you were before your mother died,” he said. “But you can’t be her. That woman died with your mom.”

  A tear coursed down my cheek, and he tenderly wiped it away with his thumb.

  “That was the girl Marcellino and Jean Claude and Colin fell in love with, but you’re not her anymore,” he said. “You’re a woman who has suffered tremendous loss and found the courage to keep going.

  “That’s what makes us perfect together. We understand that pieces of our hearts will always belong to those who are gone. For us, love and loss are forever entwined, making us love more cautiously but also more deeply,” he said.

  I was openly crying now. “I can’t,” I gasped. “I don’t want to be the person on the other side of my grief. I want to be the person before the loss happened. I want to be her.”

  “I know, darling, but you can’t. You’ve been fooling yourself that if you become that person again, you can slyly keep your pain tucked way down deep. The truth is you’ve been hanging on to your grief as if it’s the last part of your mother that you can hold on to, and you can’t move forward, because you’re afraid if you let it go, you’ll lose her forever.”

  It was true. I knew it, but I shook my head in protest. He ignored me.

  “I’m telling you right here, right now, that you won’t ever lose her,” he said. “You can move forward and be the woman on the other side of loss. You can be her with me, because I understand it. I know this is true, because I was the same with Jess. You have to let the grief go.”

  “I can’t,” I cried. “I don’t want to.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re brave enough. I know you are,” he whispered. He smoothed the hair back from my face. “Trust me that it will be all right. I’ll hold you through it. I’ll keep you safe, I promise. Be with me, Chelsea. Tonight. Here and now, in this moment, let the past go and choose me.”

  It felt as if I were ripping a part of myself out, root and stem. On a torrent of tears and sobs that shook my shoulders and left me feeling weak, I reached deep inside of myself and felt the pain, the sadness, the anger, and the grief, all the emotions that I’d been hanging on to for so long, as if they would keep my mother with me. Jason was right: they didn’t. But it still felt like a fresh loss.

  With a moan of distress, I let it all go. I imagined my grief and pain soaring out of me up into the dark night sky to find a new home in the stars above. I expected to feel hollow, bereft, adrift without the anchor of sadness I’d been chained to for so long. Instead . . . I felt free.

  With a gut-wrenching sob, I threw my arms around Jason’s neck and pressed my face into his chest. Tears were running down my face, which was undoubtedly puffy and blotchy. I pulled back and used the skirt of my dress to wipe my face clean. My breath was coming in great gulps, as if I’d been held under water almost to the point of drowning and
had just broken the surface and could breathe again.

  Jason pulled me back into the circle of his arms. He rested his cheek on the top of my head and whispered words of comfort while he ran his hands up and down my back in a gesture meant to soothe. It didn’t.

  I slid my hands up the front of his warm chest. I pressed my palms against the nape of his neck and pulled him close so that I could press my lips against his. I kissed him, long and deep, with everything that I felt.

  The kiss tasted of tears and loss but also of hope and joy. He clutched me to him, breathing me in and holding me with hands that shook. When he scooped me up into his arms, I didn’t let go and I didn’t stop kissing him, but let him carry me through the moonlight-soaked vineyard as if I was the most precious thing in the world to him.

  The part of me that had been hollowed out by loss began to fill with lightness and love. I felt healed. And it wasn’t because I’d found my old self but rather because I’d finally accepted myself for exactly who I was. Jason’s love, his warmth, and his understanding had given me the courage to heal myself. When he set me on my feet outside the door to his guesthouse, he hugged me close and whispered in my ear, “Stay with me.”

  Unable to find the words, I nodded. Jason opened the door and led me inside. He didn’t bother with the lights, but closed the door and pulled me close. He kissed me with one hand tangled in my hair, holding me still, while the other rested on my hip, pulling me close. He kissed me softly, slowly, sliding his lips along mine until he found the sweet spot where we fit perfectly. Then he deepened the kiss.

  I parted my lips, inviting him in, swirling my tongue around his the way I knew he liked. He tasted faintly of wine. I leaned up against him. I couldn’t get enough. I felt as if I were on fire and he was the only thing that could contain the heat.

  I pulled at his shirt, tossing it aside, exposing his skin to my fingers. I trailed my hands up his sides, over his sculpted chest, to wrap them around his shoulders so I could bury my fingers in his thick hair. He groaned into my mouth and put both hands on my hips, pulling me up against him while he kissed me, breaking the kiss only so that he could run his lips down the side of my neck to the curve of my shoulder, where he gently bit down.

  He grabbed fistfuls of my skirt and pulled the whole dress up over my head. I was in my underwear, and the night air was cold against my skin. Jason walked me backward toward the bedroom, kissing me the entire way. His hands stayed busy, taunting, teasing, tickling every bit of me he could touch.

  When we reached the bedroom, he paused, letting go of me to light a candle in a pretty mosaic votive. It shot beams of purple and blue all around the room, and the candle smelled of lavender.

  “I need to see you,” he said, and then he pulled me close again. He held me still, seeming to savor the feel of my lips against his as he repeatedly fit his mouth to mine, kissing me deeply and then doing it all over again as if trying to memorize the way we fit together.

  The aching need I felt for this man was becoming too insistent to ignore, and I broke the kiss and pulled him toward the bed. I wanted to feel the length of him pressed against me, his weight on top of me, and his warmth enfolding me.

  I paused by the bed to help him out of his pants. We let them drop to the floor, and I climbed onto the bed and reclined against the pillows, beckoning for him to do the same. Instead, he took a minute to take me in. His gaze moved over my body as strong as a caress, and I got the feeling he was committing this moment to memory.

  I could feel my face get warm under his scrutiny, but I didn’t cover up or hide. Instead, I took the same moment to appreciate him and how beautifully he was made. But it wasn’t just his handsomeness that drew me to him. His relentless optimism, his cheerfulness, his ability to put it all on the line when it was something he believed in, his commitment to his sister—it was all these things that made me love him. And I did love him so very much.

  When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I reached behind my back and unhooked my bra, pitching it over the side of the bed. My undies went next. Then I gave him a pointed look, and he shucked off his underwear, too.

  When he straightened up, I held up my arms and said, “I choose you Jason.”

  With a hum of approval, he joined me on the bed, sweeping me into his arms and kissing me for what could have been minutes or hours or days. I had no idea. I was so caught up in him. The feel of his hands on my skin, his lips on mine, the way his breath caught when I touched him, as if he was surprised that I wanted him as much as he wanted me.

  I tried to show him, but he kept me off guard. He flipped me over onto my stomach, and his hands kneaded my body from the crown of my head to my toes; every bit of me was caressed or massaged until I was limp and tingly and swamped by desire. When he turned me over, he began to lower his head to my nipples, but I was not having it. I pushed on his elbows, sending him down on top of me. Ah, that was better.

  I allowed him just enough space to slip on some protection, then I settled him between my legs, right where I wanted him, and hooked my legs behind him, arched my back, and pulled him toward me. He tried to resist me, and I knew he was attempting to draw this night out as long as possible, but I simply could not wait another second to be joined. With a quick arch of my hips and tug of my legs, I felt him slide right into me, exactly where he belonged.

  He stiffened at the contact, and I knew he was trying to get control of the situation, but the time for control was gone. I put my hands on his hips and used his body, which he had braced above me, to leverage myself against him.

  He huffed out a breath and said, “You’re killing me, darling.”

  Darling. I turned my head and smiled into his neck. The endearment made my heart squeeze tight. I wanted to be his darling more than anything else in the world.

  But then he lowered his head and took one nipple in his mouth, biting down enough to make me buck up against him. We both groaned at the contact, and then he gave in. He reached below me and cupped my bottom, angling my hips so he could thrust into me as deeply as we both needed. It was everything.

  I felt myself go hot, and when my orgasm hit, it spread through my entire body like shock waves. I clenched so tightly around him, I wondered if I’d hurt him, but with another thrust he was right there with me. I could feel him pulsing inside of me, and it felt as if we really had managed to merge into one being.

  Sweaty, hot, and exhausted, we curled up in the soft sheets of Jason’s bed with his arm anchoring me to him and my head tucked under his chin as if that space had been made just for me.

  “Darling, can we go home now?” His voice was a soft whisper against my ear, making me shiver. His arm tightened about me, enfolding me into his warmth.

  Home. I thought about seeing my dad and Sheri, and for the first time, it didn’t hurt. In fact, I felt a burst of genuine happiness for him. I lifted my head and kissed Jason, surprising him. His sleepy eyes brightened, and he rolled me under him.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  Looping my arms around his neck, I held his gaze and said, “Yes, I want to go home with you.”

  He grinned. It was a wicked grin, full of mischief and delight. Then he kissed me, and I forgot about everything except him.

  chapter twenty-six

  IT WAS THE sound of the songbirds in the trees that woke me, and I smiled. For the first time in as long as I could remember, everything was right with the world, because in deciding to spend the night with Jason, I had chosen him . . . but I had also chosen me. I was finally ready to embrace me.

  What he had said last night was true. I had been clinging to my grief as if it were the last bit of my mother I could hold on to, and I was tired, so tired of being sad. But Jason understood. He knew that my joy would always have a flip side of sorrow, because he felt the same way. What an amazing gift it was to have a person who understood me so completely.

  I stretch
ed in the large bed and rolled over to see if he was awake yet. He wasn’t there. The bed was empty, but the dent in the pillow where his head had been remained. I blinked. I heard the shower running and settled back down amid the soft, warm sheets.

  His phone chimed on his nightstand, and I glanced at it, wondering if it was an alarm. I saw the screen display a message, and I leaned over to read it in case it was something urgent from Severin. Jason had said they were still detained, and I was hoping that everything was all right.

  I lifted his phone and looked at the screen. Sure enough, an alert appeared saying there was a new text message from Severin—well, technically Eleanor, as I knew she did all his texting for him.

  I wondered if they were all right. As erratic as Severin was, he was now two days late in coming to Tuscany. I had the horrible thought that something awful had happened. I glanced at the display. How wrong was it to look at Jason’s phone? Total invasion of privacy? How pissed would I be if he looked at my phone when I was in the shower? Well, if he thought it was an emergency, I’d understand. Reassured, I tapped in the code I’d seen him use. Honestly, the man and I needed to talk about his security—from me, apparently.

  I opened his text app and read the message, but it had nothing to do with Severin coming to Italy. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Eleanor: Following up. When can we expect you and Chelsea in Boston to finalize the proposal?

  What the what? I slumped back in the bed. My sleep-deprived brain was sluggish, and I couldn’t understand what this meant. Boston? But Severin was supposed to be coming here.

  I hesitated for one second but then scrolled through the conversation. I refused to think of it as an invasion of Jason’s privacy. It was work, after all.

  The messages sent my heart plunging into my feet. Dated the same day we had left Paris was the first message from Eleanor.

  Eleanor: Sorry. Change of plans. Mr. Severin has been called back to Boston for an important meeting. Please let me know when we can schedule a meeting with the board upon your return. Thanks.