“New York, originally. The city.”

“Is that where your family still lives?”

He shot her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. “You know full well my dad’s not living there anymore.”

Yeah, she did know that. Not exactly the most sensitive way she could have phrased it. “Right.” She cleared her throat. Tentatively, she prompted, “And your mom . . .?”

He let out a short bark of a laugh that sounded pained. “Who knows? Could be in New York. Could be in Argentina or Shanghai, for all I know.”

Casting a glance over his shoulder, he sped his pace even more as they passed a clump of slow-moving tourists, and dammit all. This hill was steep, and his legs were a hell of a lot longer than hers. The bastard didn’t even seem out of breath.

“Jesus,” she finally said, giving up. She let her hand slip from his waist as they hit another set of stairs, not even caring that the family they’d just passed would now have to get around them. Her thighs burned, and she grabbed her chest, winded. “What the hell are you running from?”

All at once, he froze. And she almost missed it. The way his eyes widened and his mask of casual flirtatiousness evaporated, leaving this wretched, surprised expression. Betrayal and hurt, and . . . she didn’t even know what. As fast as it had appeared, it retreated, and he blinked a couple of times, brows furrowing. “Excuse me?” he asked.

What the hell? She just wanted to know why he was walking so damn fast, and . . .

And then it struck her all at once. She’d been needling him and needling him, and without even meaning to, she’d tripped right over the truth.

He was here, in Paris, thousands of miles from home, avoiding her questions about his life because he was running away. From what, she couldn’t guess, but from something. Something big.

She swallowed hard, and her voice cracked. “Literally. I meant, literally.”

“Oh.”

The grin she’d been waiting for made a valiant attempt at surfacing on his face but ultimately couldn’t quite seem to manage it. Looking away from him, she put her hands on her knees, hunching over to take a few good deep breaths. Silence hung over them, low and sticky like the air felt after their uphill jog. When she dared glance up at him again, he was leaning against a railing, arms crossed in front of him.

And clearly determined to ignore everything he’d unwittingly revealed in the last few minutes.

“You good?” he asked. And he didn’t sound distant, precisely. Just guarded in a way he hadn’t been. It felt more like the show he’d been putting on that first day, picking her up and buying her coffee and trying to be so debonair.

Trying and succeeding.

She nodded, standing up straight again. “Yeah. I’m fine. So long as you don’t do your Road Runner thing and take off on me again.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself.”

Ignoring the group of people currently passing them, he held out his arm to her, and she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. He felt warm and solid and dependable.

It was deceiving. How many times had her mother told her—you could never really trust a man. Especially not one that could do better than you. She swallowed hard. It didn’t matter how open Rylan seemed sometimes. This was a man who wasn’t telling her everything.

Arm in arm, and at a much more reasonable pace this time, they set off up the hill again. They talked idly about the things they passed and how far it still looked to the top, but it was superficial, allowing a wide berth around whatever they’d nearly stumbled into a few moments before.

She kind of hated it.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the stairs gave way, and he steered her to the right.

And suddenly her feet didn’t hurt and her lungs didn’t burn. “Wow,” she murmured absently.

“Told you.”

He hadn’t been lying. The basilica itself stood off to the side, but it barely fazed her, because they were on the top of the world, the sky was blue, and all of Paris lay beneath their feet.

“Come on.”

Taking her hand, he wandered through the crowd, somehow managing to find a clear place against the railing to look out over it all. Urging her to stand flush against the fence, he stepped in behind her, hooking his chin over her shoulder, his chest warm against her spine.

“Do you have a camera?” she asked. If she’d known this was going to be so spectacular, she would have insisted on going to her hostel first so she could grab hers.

“Don’t worry about it.” He shook his head and held her closer. “We’ll worry about it later. For now, just enjoy it.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She wanted some images to remember this moment by, but also to use as references for paintings she might do someday. But what was the point of remembering a moment she was too busy recording to be a part of?

She needed to soak this in.

Fact was, she had a lot of things to worry about. Between the progress she’d been hoping to make with her art and the decisions facing her as soon as she got home and all these twisty-turny feelings Rylan was awakening in her . . . her head and heart were more than full with troubles.

But then something happened. He rubbed her hand and stroked his fingers up and down her side, the steady rhythm of his breathing making the noise of her thoughts and the rest of the world die down. Just a little bit. Just enough for a warmth to replace them. For her to give in to being surrounded by so much beauty.

They stood there together a long, quiet time before he squeezed her close and pressed his lips to her temple.

“There are a lot of reasons why I’m here, in Paris.” His voice was gruff, but it was honest. “Not all of them are the best reasons. But what matters—what I prefer to think about—is that I am here. In this moment, in this spot.” He bent to place a soft, more lingering kiss against her cheek, then whispered beside her ear, “With you.”

Just like that, the wariness she’d donned like armor mere minutes ago faded away, his words worming their way past her defenses. She didn’t even care that it was a line. It didn’t sound rehearsed. It sounded true.

And in that instant, that was all that mattered to her, too.

chapter TEN

Rylan was a bastard. First, for misleading Kate about where he came from in the first place. Second, for being so damn evasive all afternoon—for keeping his cards so close to his chest every time she asked him about his past. He’d given enough away already, but the details she seemed so eager to ferret out of him were getting too real. This had become a vacation for him, too, a respite from the tedium he’d settled into. A chance to not have to think about all the things he’d left behind.

Third and finally, he was a kinky motherfucker of a bastard for what he was about to do right now.

“Come on,” he said, guiding her with a hand at the small of her back. They’d reversed their trip up to the top of Sacre Coeur and were down in Montmartre proper again, which she had loved. But she hadn’t seen all of it yet.

“Where are we going?” She laughed, a high, warm sound that he was glad to hear again after everything had gotten so serious there for a bit. She’d better still be laughing when she saw where they were going next.

“You’ll see.”

It was a subtle transition, the way all the kitschy shops and little cafés gave way to the area’s red-light district. The first couple of places they passed with dildos in the window, she didn’t even seem to notice.

But then her steps slowed and her eyes narrowed.

“Rylan,” she said, all warning.

Damn, he was a bastard. And this was going to be way too much fun.

“You know what brought Toulouse-Lautrec to Montmartre, right?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Whores, dancing girls. It’s part of the experience.”