Love Like Ours

by Sophie Love

  He seemed puzzled and frowned.

  “Felix!” Keira cried.

  “Oh,” Cristiano said. But he was still frowning. “I don’t understand. What’s not to get? The fact Bryn has a boyfriend?”

  “Well, yes, that. But also the fact that he’s so old!”

  Cristiano clearly didn’t think there was anything strange about that at all. “They’re both adults,” he said.

  “Debatable,” she laughed. “Bryn is basically a child.”

  Cristiano tutted. “Let your sister be happy.”

  He was right. She shouldn’t judge them.

  Keira relented. “Sure.”

  They headed onto the subway and took the train to Mallory’s apartment.

  “I can’t believe you’re leaving again,” she said, hugging Keira as they entered the apartment.

  “I know,” Keira said with a sigh.

  Her excitement was starting to wane again now that reality was hitting. Another long flight across the world. Another new country. Another month of writer’s block.

  A sudden thought hit Keira then. She gasped aloud, surprised she had not thought of it sooner.

  “I’m going to miss Thanksgiving!” she wailed. “Oh mom, I’m so sorry. I know you had plans.”

  Mallory looked downcast. “I never thought you’d make it in all honesty,” she said. “I assumed something would come up and I know how important your career is to you.”

  Keira felt immensely guilty. She’d lost sight recently of the important things in life. Her mom had booked her in for Thanksgiving ages ago. She was sad to be missing it.

  “Perhaps Felix will want to take your place?” Cristiano suggested.

  “Felix?” Mallory asked.

  “So you didn’t know about him either?” Keira said. Then she broke the surprising news. “Bryn’s seeing someone. An older someone.”

  Mallory looked stunned. “It must be serious if we haven’t heard anything about him.”

  Keira laughed. It was a good point. Bryn was usually very vocal about her conquests, even in front of their mom!

  They all took seats at the table.

  “What do you want for dinner?” Mallory asked.

  There was a sudden twinkle in Cristiano’s eye.

  “Let us cook for you,” he said.

  “I couldn’t,” Mallory replied. “You’re my guests. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “We’ll be eating out for a month,” he told her, “And I love to cook. Please. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

  Mallory paused as she deliberated it. Finally she nodded. “You don’t need to ask me twice!”

  Cristiano and Keira cooked for her mom, and it made her feel better about not being there for Thanksgiving. But as soon as they were back around the table, Cristiano brought the subject up again.

  “Did Elliot even think of Thanksgiving when he booked the Paris trip?” he asked Keira, ladling some chickpea stew into her bowl.

  “Elliot? I doubt it. He only thinks about work. But it wouldn’t have slipped past Heather. She’s a stickler for attention.”

  Cristiano moved on to Mallory’s bowl. She smiled with gratitude as he filled it up with the deliciously smelling, hearty, traditional Italian stew. “And she wouldn’t have mentioned it to him?”

  Keira shrugged. “Probably not. Her job is to do everything he asks her to. Even though she’d have been aware they were making me work on a public holiday she wouldn’t challenge him on it.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Mallory said, sighing. She blew on a spoonful of stew that she was holding up to her lips. “I know you love your job but you mustn’t let your company exploit you.”

  Keira shook her head. “It’s not like that,” she began.

  But she was quickly interrupted by Mallory who had taken her first mouthful of Cristiano’s stew.

  “OH MY GOD! This is INCREDIBLE! Darling, marry this man immediately. A man who can cook this well is a keeper. Cristiano, you need to train to be a chef.” Then she blushed and looked at them both blinking at her with shock. “Sorry, Keira, you were saying?”

  Keira cleared her throat. “I was saying that of all the writers on staff, Viatorum are giving me all the best assignments. I’d be ungrateful to not take them. Not to mention the possible promotions.”

  “I think some companies make you think they’re doing you a favor by making you work too hard,” Cristiano said.

  Keira felt torn. She did put her work first. She always had. Work was her way of making more of her life than her mom had been able to after her dad left her in the lurch to raise two kids alone. But so far Keira’s plan hadn’t exactly panned out. She didn’t even have her own apartment. She was living out of cases. Maybe she was letting Viatorum exploit her.

  “I bet you’re still using that old laptop, aren’t you?” he added.

  Keira thought of her trusty brick of a laptop. She’d had it since college. The company had never provided her with one. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that they should.

  “Maybe I should negotiate next time,” she mumbled.

  But she remembered the conversation she’d had with Elliot. There wouldn’t need to be any negotiating. After this assignment things would be different. She’d have more control. Things would be on her terms. It was always a case of short term hardship for long term gain. Her short term hardship had just happened to have lasted twenty eight years and counting…

  They finished up the meal and Keira was glad to have spent more time with her mom. Thanks to Cristiano, she was realizing how much she ought to appreciate her family. Shane, too, had been very close to his family. Both of them were rubbing off on Keira for the better.

  Mallory stood to collect the dishes then, but Keira intervened.

  “Mom, why don’t you put your feet up?” she said, taking the plate from her hands. “We’ve got this.”

  By the look on her face, Mallory was clearly touched. She went to watch TV with a fresh glass of her beloved rosé wine.

  By the time Keira and Cristiano had scrubbed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, Mallory was snoring softly. Keira wrapped a blanket around her and kissed her forehead. Then she and Cristiano retired to bed. They had to be up very early tomorrow and wanted as much rest as possible before what was bound to be another busy month in a country foreign to both of them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Early the next morning, Keira got up first and left her room to take a shower. She saw her mom had moved from the couch. The blanket lay discarded, her wine glass left on the coffee table.

  Keira showered and headed back into her bedroom, waking Cristiano up. He was a groggy as usual in the morning, and seemed to sleep walk his way out her room and to the shower. While he was gone, Keira dressed in her comfortable travel clothes, dried her hair with a dryer, and put on some makeup. Then she wrote her mom a note saying goodbye, thanking her for her hospitality, and placed it on the coffee table.

  Cristiano came into the living room then, leaving a trail of drips behind him as he scurried into her room. Unlike Keira, it took him about five minutes to get ready after a shower, which was perfect timing as the cab was due to arrive any minute now.

  She peered out the window and saw the yellow cab pull up.

  “Cristiano,” she called, softly. “It’s here.”

  He appeared at the door, his looks miraculously transformed from a sleepy, soggy mess into a Hollywood actor. They left the flat — Cristiano carrying her heavy case — and climbed into the back of the cab.

  They headed to JFK airport. Despite the early hour, the airport was incredibly busy when they got there. They weaved their way past sleepy families and stressed businessman, then queued for a long time at security. It took so long to get checked into their flight that their gate number was already showing up on the display board.

  “No time for breakfast?” Cristiano said with a fake pout. “You promised me bagels and coffee.”

  Keira checked the time. There was still fifteen minutes befor
e their gate closed. She slung her bag down.

  “If my baby wants bagels for breakfast, my baby gets bagels for breakfast.”

  Then she hurried off, darting through the crowds to the nearest vendor. She got them both the same thing: toasted bagels filled with egg, cheese, bacon, guacamole and sriracha sauce, and two large, double shot cappuccinos. She made it back to Cristiano with just five minutes to spare.

  “Ta da!”

  They joined the dwindling queue at the gate and made it onboard pretty quickly.

  Keira felt very groggy from the lack of sleep and wasn’t paying much attention as she settled into the window seat. It was only after a minute that she realized there was a kid in the row in front, pressing her face through the gap between the seats. Her face was all squished up in an amusing way. She had beautiful brown eyes and olive skin, reminding her of Cristiano. She wondered if that would be what their child would look like if they ever had one. Never before in her life had she given much thought to starting her own family, but Cristiano had mentioned it at the photoshoot, and everyone kept going on about marriage. The seeds had clearly been planted in her mind…

  She munched her bagel, loving every last bite of it, and realizing once they were in Paris that their fast food options would be incredibly limited. But she was excited to try French cuisine, too, if not a little nervous. All she knew about French food was there was a ton of meat and fish, and that they weren’t squeamish about which parts of the animal they ate. Or which animal they ate period!

  The flight crew went through their safety announcements as the plane taxied to the runway. Then Cristiano put his hand over Keira’s.

  “Time for another adventure,” he smiled.

  “I wouldn’t want to be doing it with anyone else,” she murmured back.

  They kissed as the plane engines roared loudly. Then they were thundering along the runway, picking up speed. Less than a minute later they left the ground and took to the air. It was a sensation that was now becoming quite familiar to Keira, more familiar even than the sensation of her own bed! She was glad that there was just one more assignment before things would change because she wasn’t sure how long she could keep putting herself through this kind of stress. As exciting as it was to see the world, and to earn a living from writing like she’d for so long dreamed of doing, there was a downside to how tiring it all was, and how disruptive it could be to her life. She didn’t want to live out of a suitcase forever.

  As Keira mulled over these thoughts, she began to feel extremely sleepy. Clearly two shots of coffee in her cappuccino was not enough to combat the early start.

  “Do you mind if I nap?” she said, looking over at Cristiano.

  To her surprise she discovered he was already fast asleep. She smiled as she gazed at him. He always looked so beautiful and peaceful as he slept. She sometimes didn’t believe he was real.

  She snuggled up close to him, letting the sound of his soft breathing lull her off to sleep, and to a dreamland made of clouds.

  In her dream, Keira was dressed in a beautiful white dress as she glided through the sky. Cristiano floated along beside her, his arms outstretched like a bird, or a white eagle. Keira looked left and saw a young girl with Cristiano’s colorings; dark hair, dark eyes, naturally tanned skinned. Keira knew without asking that it was their daughter. The three of them soared through the clouds with a bright sun warming their skin, feeling calm and completely at peace.

  The clouds started to turn gray and Keira knew it was about to rain. She gestured for her picture perfect family to descend through the clouds, and felt her stomach flip as they began to drop closer to the earth. As they burst through the clouds the world appeared beneath them. Keira saw the Eiffel Tower, the glass pyramid of the Louvre, and heard the sound of a rain.

  She jolted awake, finding herself on the airplane. It was dim inside, thanks to the rain hammering against the windows. She looked across and saw Cristiano was still asleep. In the seats in front of her, the little girl who had made an appearance in her dream was pressing her face in the space between the chairs. Keira laughed to herself, recalling the dream.

  She grabbed her battered laptop from her bag and opened up a new document. Then she wrote the title of her new piece.

  In The City of Love, Can Love Last?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Keira and Cristiano stepped out of Charles de Gaulle airport hand in hand, excited for their next adventure together. The sky was an ominous gray and rain fell in sheets, but the weather did little to dampen their excitement.

  The taxi Heather had arranged for them pulled up to the curb and they both leapt inside out of the rain.

  “You’re staying in La Marias?” the driver asked them over his shoulder.

  Keira checked her itinerary from Heather. “Yes, at Hotel St. Martin.”

  The driver nodded in affirmation. “That’s a great neighborhood to be in. We call them arrondissements. There are twenty in Paris, radiating in a clockwise manner from the center. Marias is in the third and fourth arrondissement. Your hotel is right beside the Seine river.”

  Keira felt a thrill of anticipation rush through her.

  The freeway looked unremarkable, but freeways always did. It was when they made it to the outskirts of Paris, some thirty minutes later, that Keira really began to get the sense of being in a new country.

  Paris had a remarkably flat skyline, the Eiffel Tower being the only high structure. There were no skyscrapers or big wheels, no fly-overs, observation towers or whacky architectural constructions. It was as if building work in Paris had ceased a hundred years ago.

  “How come there are no skyscrapers?” Keira asked the driver. “I’m so used to cities being filled with glass.”

  The driver laughed. “Not here. There’s a law that prohibits buildings from being built any higher than the sixth story within Paris. It’s in order to preserve the character of the city. It’s only out in the urban areas that skyscrapers are allowed to be built. You’ll see them come into view soon.”

  As he drove past the city threshold, taking them into Paris proper, Keira began to understand why. The character of the city had indeed been well preserved. The skyscrapers their driver had mentioned were far in the distance, fourteen in total, and they were perfectly aligned in a way that added a greater sense of organization to the feel of the city. From where they were currently positioned, it felt a little bit to Keira like she was in the past looking forward to the future.

  Inevitably they hit traffic. Then they were crawling through a long, dark tunnel that blocked their entire view. But finally they emerged out the other end into the center of Paris. The sky was still gray, the rain still lashing, but it didn’t detract from the beauty of what they could see.

  “Isn’t this incredible?” Cristiano gushed, squeezing Keira’s hand.

  She nodded, feeling as awestruck as he looked. The majority of the buildings were made of gorgeous cream-colored limestone. They were all tall and narrow, all four or five stories high, all with the same gabled roof and black wrought iron balconies. It created a real sense of uniformity and harmony. The sidewalks were very wide, paved and tree lined. The rain had created a mirrored layer on their surface, reflecting the orbed street lamps.

  They reached the Seine, which was wider than Keira had anticipated, then drove along the road next to it before pulling up outside their hotel. Keira glanced up at the six story high building, marvelling at the history in its architecture.

  Cristiano fetched her case from the trunk, then they thanked their driver and headed inside.

  Elliot must have felt very guilty about what had happened to Keira in Naples, because this place was literally the opposite. The foyer of the hotel was like something out of a film; elegant and exquisitely decorated. It was more like a ballroom than a hotel reception! The ceilings were high, painted the same cream color as the walls and matching uplights. The marble floor had a diamond shaped pattern upon it, leading up to a matching marble desk. Even the
elevator doors completely blended in, designed to look like polished wood.

  Keira checked them in with the receptionist, collected their keys, and returned to Cristiano.

  “We’re on the fifth floor,” she grinned, waving the keys at him. “Which means… views!”

  They took the elevator — which had a thick, red carpet and Art Deco style buttons — and emerged on the landing of the fifth floor. When they found the room, Keira could hardly contain her excitement. Viatorum had gone all out with this place!

  Cristiano opened the door with his arm, allowing Keira an unimpeded look of the inside of the room. Looking at the interior she was so stunned she practically stopped breathing.

  The room was painted a calming cream color, and the bed was a wooden four-poster with luxurious silk covers and pillows. The windows — which stretched the length of the room and from floor to ceiling — were framed with chic gray curtains. Keira could just make out the sight of a bistro table and chairs on the rain splattered balcony the other side. The walls were adorned with black and white framed photographs of Paris.

  Keira hurried inside and leapt onto the bed. “This is incredible!” she bellowed.

  Cristiano laughed. She watched as he wheeled her case in and closed the door behind them.

  She flopped down to sitting, and rested her chin on her fist. “Don’t you just love it? Isn’t it the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen?”

  Cristiano smiled at her as he paced towards the bed. “I can think of one thing that is more gorgeous,” he purred.

  Keira felt a flame of desire lick at her insides. Cristiano sat down beside her and took her face gently in his hands. Then he pressed his lips to hers, in that soft yet passionate way that was unique to Cristiano. When he pulled away she felt the absence of him like an ache, and yearned for more.

  “We’ve got the rest of the evening for sightseeing, don’t we?” Keira asked. “We don’t need to go out right this second?”

  Cristiano raised his eyebrows. “I think we can spend a bit of time settling in.”

  Keira grinned. They scrabbled up the bed, heaving back the covers, before tumbling into them, tangled up together.