“I mean—to pretend you were Kim.”
She hated how easily he saw right through her, how easily he turned her inside out with a few kind words. “I love my sister. I’ve never begrudged her her success or anything else that she’s achieved.” That was mostly true, except for the man staring at her with an intensity that could crumble her already-weak will.
He nodded, his gaze searing through the false smile she forced to her mouth. She yanked her handbag over her shoulder and stood up, eager to escape.
Leaning his head against the chair, he closed his eyes. She greedily drank the sight of him without the piercing gaze assessing her. “The limo is at your disposal. Do what you want.”
“I don’t want...” He was right. He was going to be a permanent fixture in Kim’s life which meant she had to learn to tolerate his presence without going all hormonal and moony over him. Or at least learn to act normal despite feeling hormonal and moony.
“Were you serious about us spending the day together?”
He shrugged in that I-don’t-give-a-damn kind of way.
“You really are good for my ego.”
“At least I’m not recoiling at the idea as you seem to be.” He opened his eyes and leveled a curious look at her. “Would it help if I said I was mildly looking forward to it?”
“Okay, I can live with mildly,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. “But you have to give up the control-meter for once.”
“The what?”
He looked so uncharacteristically slow that she laughed. “I’ll decide what we’re going to do and you have to go along.”
“And what’s that?”
“Oh, come on, Alexander. This is going to be fun.” She clutched his hand and tugged him up, knowing exactly what he needed. She was getting better at breathing through the thump-thump of her heart as his large brown hand enclosed hers. “You know, doing something spontaneous and crazy, something you can’t control to the last minute, fun.”
* * *
Alexander had never felt such unrelenting curiosity before as the limo took off through the streets of Paris and entered the A1. All through the drive, Olivia refused to reveal anything, literally bouncing in the seat.
He felt like a kid who had been granted a special treat, at least that’s how he imagined he would have felt if he had been a carefree kid. When he moved to lower the tinted windows to get a clue as to their destination, she batted his hand away. “Don’t make me blindfold you.”
He listened with increasing amusement as she chatted on about the time she had spent in Paris before, about the changes in the city, the number of times she had gotten into trouble and not once did the shadow of her disastrous affair mar her lit-up gaze. He had no idea what had changed but he was extremely glad for it.
Grinning from ear to ear, he leaned back into the seat, his curiosity spiking exponentially with each passing minute. He already knew they weren’t going anywhere formal. With her hair tied up in a high ponytail, dressed in denim shorts and a Hard Rock Café tee, Olivia looked unbelievably cute, not that he could tell her that. And she had made sure he had dressed down, too, in shorts and a polo T-shirt.
Today, more than any other day, since they had arrived, they looked exactly what they were pretending to be. A couple honeymooning in Paris with no pressures from the outside world, drastically different from what he would have been doing if Kim were here. Even the reminder of what Kim had done didn’t dilute his excitement.
The limo came to a smooth stop. “You ready?”
He nodded, the eagerness with which he was looking forward to it quite novel in its intensity.
They stepped out of the limo, and a drone of excitement reached his ears. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his shorts, and looked around, a strange little pang clenching and unclenching his gut.
Happy voices and smiling faces washed over him, the buzzing din of it rippling along his skin in an unfamiliar way. Unfamiliar but not grating. He didn’t know what he had expected. But it hadn’t been this.
They were at an amusement park. It was a perfect summer day, and the park was filled with kids and adults making the best out of it.
His first instinct was to turn around and walk away.
He stood unmoving as Olivia waved away the chauffeur and sauntered toward the ticket booths. Almost as if she knew to let the place and the noise around them seep into him for a few minutes. His gaze followed her hungrily as if she was his lifeline. The only time he had been at a park, of any kind, had been on his seventh birthday when he had spent the few hours watching his parents fighting like alley cats and paparazzi parked outside the gates.