Perfect Strangers

26

“What if you just told me if what I said is somehow related to your work?”

His eyes widen. He repeats gruffly, “My work.”

Why does he look so surprised? “Yes. Your art. Those portraits you drew, Perspectives in Grief. Death is kind of a thing for you. Right?”

A muscle in his jaw flexes over and over. He stares at me so hard I think he could ignite me with the heated intensity of his gaze. When it finally comes, his response is careful.

“Let’s say it’s…a touchy subject.”

I study his expression, convinced he’s telling me the truth, and also that he doesn’t want me to push it any farther.

Watching him waiting so tensely for me to speak, I decide I don’t want to, either.

I already know death has touched him somehow, the same way it’s touched me. There’s no need to exhume the graves.

“Okay.”

His eyes are wary. “Okay?”

I nod. “We’ve already agreed we’re not going to share our sad stories. I get that you don’t want to talk about yours, because I definitely don’t want to talk about mine. So…okay. From now on, if either of us doesn’t want to get into the details of something, we’ll just say, ‘touchy subject.’ It’ll be our safe word. Safe phrase, technically. Deal?”

The thundercloud over his head evaporates with dizzying speed, leaving his shoulders relaxed and his eyes smiling. Pulling me close against his chest, he says in a throaty voice, “What do you know about safe words, sweetheart?”

The heat in his gaze tells me that he knows an awful lot. “I’ve…read about them. In books.”

He murmurs, “Have you now?” and presses his face against my neck, gently biting the muscle above my collarbone. This time when he cups my ass, it’s with both hands.

Then he kisses me until almost every thought is eradicated from my mind.

Every thought except the memory of how his eyes changed so quickly from light to dark when I said he killed me.

I have the sneaking suspicion that one’s going to stick with me for a while.

“A book store?”

Standing beside me in the dappled shade of linden trees on a quiet, cobblestone avenue, James smiles and squeezes my hand. “Not just any book store. The book store. Shakespeare and Company is probably the most famous independent book store in the world.”

I gaze at the quaint shop across the street with its green awning and matching trim, rustic yellow sign, and weather-beaten book stalls lining one side of the small plaza in front. It looks like a place time forgot.

“I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s all right. But I have to warn you, you’ll fall in love with it as soon as we walk through the door.”

He tugs on my hand and pulls me away from where the taxi dropped us, on the left bank of the Seine, a stone’s throw away from Notre Dame. A small crowd of people mills in front of the store, browsing through the outdoor book stalls and chatting, sipping espressos from the café next door. The building the store is housed in appears centuries old, a tall stretch of pitted stone with crumbling corners and a white façade mellowed to ivory with age.

As soon as we pass through the glass-paned front door and a bell somewhere out of sight jingles merrily, I’m flooded with the most wonderful sense of connection, like I’ve been plugged into a socket and have started to hum with energy. I feel as if I’ve come home.

It’s the smell.

Books—especially old books—have a smell all their own, a sweet and musky scent warmed by a hint of vanilla that floods the brain with good memories and good feelings. I stop in the entry and close my eyes, inhaling deeply.

I exhale and open my eyes, drinking in my surroundings.

The shop is crammed to the ceiling with shelves of books. Narrow passageways lead away from the entry to a nest of other rooms. A wooden staircase winds up to a second floor. Dusty chandeliers cast warm light over red velvet draperies and the occasional leather chair, their seats cracked and worn.

In a voice like you’d use in church, I say, “This is heaven.”

Standing beside me, James chuckles. “Told you. C’mon, let’s look around.”

He nods to the lovely blonde behind the register, then leads me down a passageway. Stenciled on the soffit above us an inscription reads, “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”

I trail my fingertips over spines as we pass shelf after shelf of books, until we turn a corner and stop in a quiet alcove. I glimpse a copy of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov shelved next to War and Peace by Tolstoy.

“The Russian section is my favorite,” says James, coming to stand close behind me, his chest against my back. He grasps my upper arms and dips his nose into my hair, inhaling deeply the same way I did when I walked in and smelled all the delicious books.

“That’s good news. For a minute there, I thought you were leading me straight to Hemingway.”

I pluck The Brothers Karamazov off the shelf and open it, lifting the pages to my nose for a sniff. Sighing in pleasure, I look at a random line and read it aloud. “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

“Indeed,” murmurs James into my ear. He slides his hand down my arm, over my hip, and between my legs.

I freeze. My heart takes off like a rocket. Through small gaps in the shelf in front of me, I see other people browsing in the front of the store.

I whisper, “James.”

His strong fingers delve into the gap between my thighs, gently rubbing. “Hmm?”

“Someone will see us.”

“Maybe.”