“No.”


    He nces toward Rhys, smile widening. “Good to know.”


    The dinner is nearly over when I finally start picking up on the reason I’m supposed to be a buffer. Baptiste’s voice turns casual, nonchnt. “And of the family, Rhys? What’s be of my other cousins?”


    Rhys pushes his ss of wine away. “They’re good.”


    “Henry?”


    “He’s doing well. Busy, but, when is he not?”


    “That’s Henry,” Baptiste agrees. “I remember. Lily?”


    An entirely private smile ys on Rhys’s lips. “She’s doing well. Her son is almost a year, now.”


    Baptiste sighs. “Little Lily, a mother.”


    “Mhm, I know. It was a mindfuck for me, too.”


    “She’s your sister?” I ask, and they both nod. I’m getting to hear about his family. Piece after piece, more of the real Rhys Marchand is falling in line.


    “Parker is good too,” Rhys says. How many siblings does he have? “He’s thinking of buying the yacht club, actually.”


    “In Paradise?”


    “Yeah.”


    Parker Marchand, the one sibling that hadn’te up when I’d googled his name. My curiosity feels like a burning thing inside me, one that I can’t really contain. I force it down with another sip of wine.


    “And my aunt and uncle?” Baptiste asks, draping his arm around the back of the chair next to him. “They nevere to France anymore.”


    Rhys gives a sharp nod. “It’s rare.”


    “My mother misses Eloise.” Baptiste gives an elegant shrug, reaching for his ss. “It’s a shame, really, that siblings should drift apart like that.”


    “It really is,” Rhys agrees, reaching for his own.


    There is so much subtext here, and I don’t know any of it.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    “But,” Rhys drawls, “the good thing is that flights go both ways.”


    Baptiste’s lips quirk, but not with any real humor. “So they do, cousin. So they do.”


    Both of them pause to drink wine.


    I stare at one of the waitresses moving between the tables and try to think of a way to undercut this tension, to turn this thing around. Ie up empty.


    “D’ord,” Baptiste murmurs. And then, in a voice that makes it clear we’re turning the page, he asks me, “and what are your ns for your one night in Paris?”


    “My ns?”


    “Yes. Where is Rhys taking you after this?”


    I nce toward Rhys, but his face is the same inscrutable mask he always wears. “I think we’re going back to the hotel?” I ask him.


    “Of course you’re not.” Baptiste waves for the check. “You’reing out with me.”


    “We are?”


    Rhys sighs. “We can’t be outte.”


    “Oh, I know, I know… but there’s a great bar just around the corner. It’s not even midnight, no way you’re leaving yet.” He grins at me. “Let us show you the real Paris.”


    And unlike with Paolo, I find myself nodding. “Okay. Yeah, let’s.”


    He gets up and stretches, smiling at us both. “Restroom break, like you say.”


    Rhys shakes his heads and reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. “We don’t have to go,” he says quietly.


    “Do you not want to?”


    Another beat of silence. And then, “I do want to see you dance again.”


    We could be anywhere, surrounded by anyone, and I wouldn’t be able to look away from his eyes. They’re dark and unfathomable and tentative. Like he’s offering a tiny bit of truth, and it’s not cloaked in sarcasm or wit.


    I swallow. “Okay, yeah. We’ll do that.”


    Rhys pays the entire bill. When I try to stop him, he just shakes his head. “I invited you out,” he says, returning the ck credit card to his wallet. “It’s only fair.”


    But his eyes aren’t entirely clear, and I don’t know if it’s because of me or because of Baptiste’s convenient restroom excuse after asking for the bill.


    There’s more here than meets the eye, but hasn’t that always been the case with Rhys Marchand?


    Rhys


    Baptiste monopolizes Ivy during the short walk to the nearby bar. It’s not surprising-I’m starting to understand the impulse-but I have to clench my teeth together to keep from interrupting him as he asks what it’s really like to be a model.


    Like it’s a mode of being and not a profession.


    I shouldn’t have epted his text to go out to dinner. The possibility of an evening alone in Paris, perhaps showing Ivy around, drawing out the magic that Paris possesses but is so good at hiding… yeah, that would have been better. But the opportunity has passed.


    I force my clenched fist to rx at my side as Baptiste loops back around to me. Nearly as tall as me, we’d once been thick as thieves growing up. Summers spent in the French countryside had seen us racing on bikes down to the ocean. He’d been someone to discuss French history with that my siblings weren’t interested in. If it wasn’t a painter, Lily wouldn’t listen-if it wasn’t an architect, Henry wouldn’t. Parker didn’t care about history at all.


    But things had changed sometime in our teens, and irrevocably when I left Paris all those years ago.


    “A model,” he whispers to me in French, sping my shoulder. “You’re really living in the fastne, Rhys!”


    “She’s a person.”