My One Week Husband

by Lauren Blakely

  “Does that sound like a good plan?”

  No idea what the plan is.

  “Sounds fantastic,” I say, figuring I can wing it.

  Sort of like how I deal with these flare-ups of attraction that happen when I’m around her.

  I manage.

  I’ve been wildly attracted to her since we met, and I’ve never acted on it.

  I need her too much. Anything more than a late-night fantasy would be the height of foolishness.

  Risk is one thing, but I abhor stupid decision-making.

  As we step off the train an hour later, I slide my aviator sunglasses on and crook my lips into a grin. “Let’s go see if this hotel is as naughty as we expect it to be.”

  She casts me a glance. “I’m not sure hotels are naughty. It’s more that the people staying in them are.”

  I couldn’t agree more—and last night, thinking of her, I definitely was. “You have me there.”

  We sail into the boutique hotel, where I scan the lobby, mentally recording every detail, then inquire about a room.

  The front desk manager says one is available right now, so I check in, perusing the restaurant, the bar, and all the amenities as we go, making our way to the elevator and up five stories.

  Once we’re off the lift, we head into the room, but we have no plans to stay, only to appraise it.

  I unlock the door, open it, then say, “After you.”

  “Always such a gentleman.”

  Once inside, Scarlett oohs and aahs, her gaze landing on a mirror on the wall. It’s sleek and modern, and positioned perfectly for a crystal clear view of any and all bedroom sports.

  The mirror screams sex.

  Her lips form an O. “That mirror is so decadent.”

  I move behind her, meeting her gaze in the glass. “I trust you’re thinking about decadence for one thing and one thing only?”

  She hums a yes. In her reflection, I swear I can see trysts and liaisons flickering across her green irises.

  This woman.

  What would she do if I were to reach my arms around her, unbutton her blouse, and let the fabric fall down? How would she respond if she were revealed to me in the mirror?

  Would she want to be watched? Would she want to see how I look as I undress her, as I slide off all her clothes, as I run my hands along her soft, delicious flesh?

  She’d see the truth of my desire.

  The way I crave her and crave control at the same time.

  If we existed in a parallel universe, I’d worship her as I put her on her knees. I’d adore every inch of her skin before I tied her up, had my way with her body, and fucked her into blissful oblivion.

  Get a grip.

  I blink away the dirty thoughts.

  I must focus.

  But it’s hard when she tilts her head and seems to be considering something in the mirror.

  It’s hard, too, when I don’t want to tear my eyes away from the beauty with the sculpted cheekbones and full red lips.

  “What are you thinking, Scarlett?” I ask.

  She meets my gaze in the mirror. “This one is so much better than the one at our hotel in Avignon.”

  “So you’re a mirror connoisseur?”

  She nods, looking a little guilty. But it’s not a bad sort of guilty. Rather a dirty, delicious sort. “I am.”

  Then abruptly she blinks and wheels around, almost as if she’s been thinking something she shouldn’t while she was gazing in the mirror.

  She clears her throat and gestures toward the lavatory. “I should go check out the bathroom.”

  “Go forth.”

  She heads there, then gasps. “I’m going to retire right here, right now.”

  Laughing, I follow her. The bathroom is sumptuous, with marble tile, thick towels, and a clawfoot tub.

  “I love a clawfoot tub,” she says in a reverent whisper. Then, like a good investor, she heads to the bath, sits on the edge, and turns on the water, testing, I presume, to make sure it doesn’t come out rust colored.

  “It’s perfect,” she says, then turns off the tap and whirls around.

  She loses her grip, almost slipping.

  “Oh!” she cries. Her skull heads toward the tap.

  I lunge toward her as she stretches out her arm to brace herself on the edge of the tub, but she whacks it on the tap.

  Hard.

  “Ouch,” she yelps, grabbing her forearm, her face wincing as I reach for her.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  She tries to wave me off, her tone stoic. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  But the furrow in her brow, the pain in her eyes tells me she’s not.

  “You’re not fine,” I say. “You just smacked your hand on the tap. I know what it’s like for a hand to be . . .” I don’t finish the thought. The scar on my right hand tells the story. Her eyes soften, drifting down to the mark. I ignore the sad look in her irises. “We need these hands of yours to work. To operate your spreadsheets,” I say lightly.

  Despite my scar, my hands work just fine.

  For nearly everything. There’s only one thing I want to do with them that I no longer can. But that thing has nothing to do with women, or strength, so I lift her up, scooping her into my arms.

  Her eyes widen. “Why are you carrying me?”

  “You’re wounded, woman.”

  An eye roll is her reply as I carry her to the bed and set her down on the edge of the king-size mattress. “I’m not damaged.”

  “Of course you’re not damaged. But you did whack your arm.”

  “My hand too,” she says, softly this time.

  I crouch in front of her, reaching for her. “Let me see it.”

  “Are you a doctor?” she counters, but she lets me inspect her injury.

  “I’m the doctor in the room,” I tease.

  I ask where it hurts, and she points to her wrist, frowning. I run a thumb gently along that tender spot, that tantalizing place that can drive a woman wild.

  If you touch her just right.

  Which it seems I am doing, since Scarlett’s breath hitches.

  “Daniel,” she whispers, her voice perhaps betraying her. “I’m fine. I swear I’m fine.”

  I tuck my finger under her chin, lift it, and meet her gaze. “Are you sure?”

  She nods, her eyes a little glossy. “I swear I am.”

  “Let’s be certain.”

  I lift her wrist to my face, my eyes on hers. Waiting for a sign. Waiting for more.

  “Yes, please.”

  So I bring her wrist to my lips and press a kiss to my business partner’s skin.

  She lets out a low moan.

  A groan works its way up my chest, and I swallow it down as I dust my lips over her pulse point.

  I close my eyes, inhaling her, savoring the scent of her skin, of her lotion, of her Scarlett-ness.

  I should move away. But she’s right here.

  Images of last night’s fantasies flicker before me, along with the moment just now in front of the mirror, and how she looked at the reflection of her and me.

  I open my eyes.

  She nibbles on the corner of her lips, gazing down at me as I look up at her.

  Is she thinking the same thing I am?

  One kiss.

  One taste.

  That’s all.

  I tamp down the groan in my throat as I breathe in.

  Then, I take the next step.

  I stand, gently take her uninjured hand, and carefully tug her up.

  I reach toward her hair, tucking an errant strand behind her ear, testing to see if she’ll make that sound again.

  That gasp. That hitch of her breath.

  She does. It’s sensual and erotic, and it goes straight to my cock.

  I do the thing I’ve thought about doing for the last few years. The thing I’ve prided myself on resisting. I move closer, lean in, and press a kiss to her cheek.

  It’s the same type of kiss I’ve given her every t
ime we greet each other. But this time, I linger. I don’t back away. I simply brush my lips across her cheek and whisper, “All better now?”

  She nods against me, grabbing my shirt, gripping the fabric. “All better.”

  She steps away, runs her hand down her sleeve, glances at the clock, and says, “Now we really need to catch the train back to Paris.”

  As we leave, I catch one last glimpse of us in the mirror as we walk past it. We look like we always do—confident, assured, on top of the world.

  But also . . . frazzled.

  Both of us. She seems thrown for a loop.

  As for me, a small sliver of regret twinges in my chest. Was that my chance? To haul her into my arms, cover her lips with mine, and kiss her until she melted beneath me, until she begged and moaned?

  Was that my chance to kiss her until she can hardly take all the pleasure I could give her?

  That’s what I would do if I touched her—focus my ample sexual energy on her. Make sure she’s drowning in orgasms. Touch her in ways that make her writhe, moan, call out my name.

  In ways that give me the control I long for.

  Perhaps I do regret stopping.

  But regret is a familiar emotion.

  I’ve battled it many times and lost on nearly every occasion.

  But I shouldn’t regret resisting a bad idea. And it is a very bad idea—a far more regrettable idea, and maybe a disastrous one—to introduce my business partner to how I like it in the bedroom.

  We leave the hotel, returning to Paris to meet Cole, our other business partner.

  Pretending we didn’t nearly kiss in the South of France.

  But then, pretending is what I do best.

  5

  Scarlett

  That evening, freshly showered and dressed after the train ride, hand and arm thankfully unbruised after the faucet incident, I crank open the tall windows of my seventh-floor flat overlooking Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower.

  The evening light filters in, and I inhale Paris.

  It smells like home.

  It smells like memories—the good ones, that is.

  Maybe even memories that extend so far back they come from other lifetimes.

  If that’s even possible.

  I turn around, stride through my kitchen, and tap the cover of a paperback I recently finished—the story of a man who meets a woman he loved forty years ago, a woman who died in a boating accident one summer. It’s a heartrending tale of the possibility of living again and again, meeting the same lover over and over, but at the wrong times for both of you.

  In this story, it takes the man and woman eighteen generations till they reconnect. My heart squeezes, like it did while I was devouring this tale of out-of-sync love.

  I don’t believe in reincarnation.

  Not of people, and not of souls.

  Yet I do believe we can have connections to people, and especially to places that almost feel as if we could have lived there in another lifetime.

  Paris is that for me.

  Paris is my soul mate. It speaks to some deeper, ancient part of myself, of my soul.

  It’s the lover I’m destined to meet again and again.

  This city centers me, as if I have lived here before, as if I was destined to return to it.

  I can still recall with crystal clarity the first time I set foot here.

  When I was eight, my scientist parents brought me here for a research conference, and after they presented on gene mapping, we wandered.

  I skipped down the Rue de Rivoli, traipsed through the Jardin des Tuileries, and climbed up onto a mint-green stool at Ladurée to order a chocolat chaud. I ordered it in French.

  The server was most impressed. “C’est bien,” she told me.

  My father snapped a photo of me, gap-toothed and grinning at the server. He captured another shot minutes later of me wearing a chocolate mustache and licking my lips. My parents still have those pictures framed in their Manhattan home.

  That trip, more than twenty-five years ago, turned the key in the door of my heart, opening a latent part of me.

  A part that had perhaps always been present inside of me.

  Present as a hum, as a wish, as a hazy dream. To be here. Because I felt like I knew this place, and had for all time.

  That day at Ladurée, I was certain that this city would be my home one day.

  The sights, the sounds, the smells—they belonged to a part of me that perhaps already knew the city. The museums, the shops, the language . . . The way beauty exists on corners in the lines of streetlamps, in the glass of boutique window displays, and on sidewalks in the shape of cobblestones, especially as they glisten after a rainstorm, like they’re made of diamonds.

  This city embraces beauty, and perhaps that’s why it calls to me—the beauty is the yin to my yang. It balances out all the numbers that march through my head.

  Beauty has always been my other passion, whether it’s found in literature, in fashion, in architecture, or in the everyday as I walk through my adopted hometown.

  Paris is mine. It gives me strength. It’s the place I returned to three years ago when my marriage died, burying itself in a coffin of lies. When I discovered what happened with my one-time husband, I could no longer stay in London, where I’d been at the time.

  Paris called to me with comfort. Like a soft hand across your hair when you’re a child and you wake from a bad dream.

  The city was my lullaby, whispering me home after love and life as I knew it had been demolished.

  Perhaps I need that connection to Paris now to erase all these risqué thoughts of my business partner.

  I need my soul mate to ground me.

  With the windows left open, the evening light streaming in, I leave my flat, take the lift down to the first floor, and exit on Avenue de Suffren.

  I head past the Eiffel Tower, then over the bridge that arches across the Seine, slowing to admire the view of the river that cuts through the city.

  The river has secrets. Listen to it.

  That’s what my father used to say when he brought me here after his meetings.

  The river always knows.

  Like the river was a wise old woman at the end of a winding path in the woods, perched outside her home on a bench, dispensing sage advice.

  Yes, that’s the Seine.

  Always telling you what to do if you’re willing to listen.

  Tonight, I stop on the middle of the bridge and gaze over the sunset-soaked water, glittering with the fading rays of the day. Enjoying the view, the pause, the way stopping to listen feeds my soul.

  “Tell me, river. What should I do about this blooming attraction to my business partner?” I whisper.

  I strain my ears, listening as the river murmurs, “You know what to do.”

  If only it were that simple.

  But other things are simple—like taking out my phone, snapping a shot of the ribbon of water, then sending it to my parents, along with a short note in the family chat.

  * * *

  Scarlett: The river is chatty tonight.

  * * *

  My father replies instantly.

  * * *

  Dad: Ask the river if your mother and I should order Thai or Indian for dinner. We can’t seem to decide.

  * * *

  Mom: The river clearly is saying Tom Kha Gai, darling.

  * * *

  Dad: Funny, I hear it whispering about naan and tandoori chicken.

  * * *

  Mom: Wishful whispering, my love. Listen more closely. The river always favors your wife’s choices.

  * * *

  I flash back to the hotel manager with his adage about stories making for a good marriage. With my parents, listening to the wife is the rule my dad adheres to. With a smile, I tap back a reminder.

  * * *

  Scarlett: Dad, don’t forget what you used to say when I was growing up – my wife is always right.

  * * *

  Dad: Except whe
n it comes to dinner choices.

  * * *

  Scarlett: Good luck winning that battle. Personally, I vote for avocado sushi.

  * * *

  Dad: Shocking. Terribly shocking.

  * * *

  Mom: That’s my second choice now, darling.

  * * *

  Dad: I never win the dinner debate. Sigh. Ah well, it’s only dinner. Thai it is.

  * * *

  Mom: Yes!

  * * *

  Loving their interactions, I reply with mom wins again, then turn away from the river, put the phone in my purse, and cut through the Louvre—because I can, because why live in this city if not to have the freedom to walk past the Louvre Pyramid whenever I wish?—then head to a brasserie to meet Cole and Daniel for dinner.

  Business dinner with my two business partners.

  Daniel is only a business partner.

  No matter how delicious those fleeting moments in the hotel were, they are behind us, where they belong. The way his lips grazed my skin, scorched it with a fire hotter than any injury to my wrist . . . I shiver. We’ve always been flirtatious, but that was crossing a line, even for us.

  Lucky we could segue so easily back into being friends, flirtatious business partners, at the drop of a hat.

  Cole waits outside, having snagged a table on the sidewalk.

  I click-clack toward him from one side of the street, Daniel coming from the other, looking sharp in jeans and a button-down that hugs his pecs, his biceps, his forearms.

  Damn him for being such good eye candy.

  His full, sensual lips curve into a grin, and his blue eyes twinkle as he whips off his shades.

  My belly dares to swoop.

  Stupid stomach.

  We reach Cole at the same time.

  “Do my eyes deceive me? Or is it the great Cole Donovan in repose?” The cheeky remark comes from Daniel.