‘She sounds like a wonderful person.’ Keeley knew her lips were trembling. She should ask the question now. She should ask Ethan the name of the girl, and pray she was wrong. But the raging fear that she wasn’t wrong, that she already knew the answer, was overpowering everything. She wanted so much to be wrong. She didn’t want confirmation. Because if she had confirmation it would open up a whole different avenue of discussion that once travelled down could not be retraced.
‘She is,’ he answered softly.
‘Were you in love?’ Keeley asked. Say no. Please say no. Say the grey eyes in that photo weren’t yours. She was holding her fingertips together, crushing the pads against each other.
‘No,’ Ethan breathed, his lips forming a smile. ‘No, never in love. Not like that. The best of friends. She… has a piece of my heart, and everything she has given to me is something I can never repay.’
He looked so sad now, so lost. All Keeley ached to do was reach out to him, to let him know how special she thought he was. But if she did that, if she made that deepest of statements now, here by the cosiest of fires in the most comfortable of places, full of Ethan’s eclectic personality and sizzling masculinity, there might be no going back.
‘I do not think I have ever been in love the way it is described in books or in TV shows,’ Ethan admitted. ‘Have you… ever been in love?’
Keeley was finding it increasingly difficult not to show everything she was feeling in her body language now. She knew she had never felt with anyone else the way she felt here next to him. Could she admit that out loud? Erica invaded her thoughts then and the promise she had made her friend. All in. Every time.
And then there was Bea. Forthright and pragmatic even in love. You liked someone, you told them. You got on with it. Bea had never been afraid to live her truth. It felt like Bea and Erica were both staring hard at her now, pleading with her to say what she felt.
‘I think love might be what’s happening to me now,’ Keeley breathed. She looked into Ethan’s eyes, breath catching in her throat. ‘I think it’s frightening… and uncontrollable and it… doesn’t discriminate between people who are ready for it and people who had no idea it was going to happen.’ She took a harried breath. ‘I think it might be meeting someone unexpectedly and… chasing a penguin… and finding hidden Paris and raising a dog from the dead…or maybe even… riding extinct animals on a carousel…’
‘Could it be… showing someone your very favourite café without worrying they will not see it the same way as you do?’ Ethan asked. ‘Or, maybe, feeling more in tune with someone than you have ever felt your whole life as you look through trunks and shelves and baskets at a flea market.’
He had edged closer to her. Keeley could feel his knees pressing so lightly against hers, the sofa no bigger than a not-very-generous loveseat. ‘Is it thinking about making postcards?’ she asked him. ‘Of places that don’t usually have postcards?’
‘I think perhaps it could be all of those things,’ Ethan whispered. ‘And maybe so much more.’
Nothing else mattered, did it? Nothing except the delicious sugar-coated sensations that were caramelising her heart. Keeley reached for him, wanting to feel if the beat of his heart was echoing hers. With a trembling hand she touched his chest and, as her fingertips connected with the fabric of his shirt, he tipped forward, placing his hand on top of hers. Now she was breathless, motionless, simply still and able to recognise the thrum of his core exactly as urgent as her own.
Keeley gazed at him. It was like somehow she had known him her whole life. She took in the way his slightly wild crop of hair never quite looked the same, the tiny crinkles at the corner of his beautiful eyes that increased when he laughed or concentrated hard, his firm jaw and those oh-so-smooth lips. Looking at him, being with him was like coming home to a familiarity no one had let her know existed out there, ready only for her.
‘Keeley,’ Ethan said, a hitch in his voice.
She didn’t want to speak anymore. She wanted to be a little selfish. She wanted to believe this was somehow meant to be.
She leaned into him, in no doubt of what she wanted, connecting their lips in a kiss that sent crackles of heat right the way through her. And Ethan’s response only sent her temperature soaring higher. He returned the kiss she had started and it was like before on the street – strong, sensual, passionate – yet this time the intensity seemed to have increased ten-fold. This wasn’t a kiss you broke away from. This was a kiss you leaned in to and made last.
It was Keeley’s fingers that moved to buttons first and hastily, keeping their mouths together, she began to unfasten Ethan’s shirt. Her heart might have been jumping a jive, but her mind was clear. There was nothing she wanted more than to move this on a level. Except she still didn’t know. And maybe she did need to know before this went further. She drew her mouth away from his, breathless, knowing her pupils had to be as large as giant chocolate buttons as she regarded him, shirt half on-half off, his hair even wilder now her fingers had raked their way through it. ‘Ethan,’ she said.
‘Oui.’
She could see the deep concern in his face, almost as if he felt he had done something wrong. Perhaps this was the kind of complex that someone who had obviously brought himself up had hanging over him all the time. But this vulnerability and exposure of his inner self to her only fuelled her feelings for him.
Keeley reached for his hand, interlinking it with hers. ‘What was the name of the girl? The one who has a piece of your heart?’
He squeezed her hand and kept his eyes on hers. ‘Crevette,’ he answered. ‘Ma crevette.’
Not Ferne. Definitely not Ferne. The absolute relief quickly mixed together with total joy at his reply and Keeley kissed him again, hurrying to relieve him of his clothes. She discarded his shirt and looked in appreciation at his trim torso before resting her lips on his shoulder blade, then kissing a pathway down his chest.
‘Keeley,’ he said, raising her head with one hand and looking deep into her eyes. ‘You are sure?’
It was a gentleman’s question and Ethan was every inch the gentleman even if he did not realise it. She smiled and kissed his mouth again. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She palmed his face again. ‘Show me your bedroom.’
Needing no further reassurance, Ethan scooped her up in his arms, holding her tight as she kissed him again, and he carried her out of the room.
Fifty-Four
Place de la Bastille, Paris
‘Today, nothing remains of the prison,’ Noel began the next morning. ‘In my opinion this is a good thing. I feel if the ruins did remain, then Paris would be inundated with tourists wanting there to also be cardboard cut outs of Russell Crowe or Ann Hathaway for them to have selfie photographs with.’
Rach drew in a breath, looking like she was also inhaling snowflakes that were dropping at pace from heavy grey clouds above them. ‘Why did we agree to this particular sightseeing expedition at stupid o’clock?’
Keeley stifled another yawn. ‘Because Silvie arranged it for us and she’s meeting us for lunch. And she paid for our whole trip here and—’