What’s mine is hers.”

Amber’s gaze immediately goes to my inger in search of a ring, and a sharp pang of discomfort pinches my chest. I shove my hand behind my back, out of sight, but I feel sideswiped 69

again at the idea of marriage. We’ve never even talked about it, and that hits me hard.

Chris snags my hand and pulls it between us. “I should be so lucky,” he replies, as if Amber has spoken her silent question, his voice low and emotional.

Has Chris just said he wants to marry me? In front of Amber?

Seven

Stunned, I turn to face Chris, my hand settling on the warm wall of his bare chest. “What?” I ask, certain I’ve misunderstood.

We’ve never talked about marriage, but I ind I can barely breathe waiting for his reply. Chris as my husband? I’ve never dared to consider it really happening.

The look he gives me is both tender and hot at the same time, illed with the promise of far more than the next sexual adventure we both forever crave. “Don’t look so surprised, baby.”

“We just . . . You never . . .”

“We will. When the time is right, we will.”

For one slice of an instant I see the trepidation in his eyes, and I understand. He’s just made sure both Amber and I know how serious he is about me, but he doesn’t really believe I’ll ever marry him.

I press up to my toes, my hands lattening on his shoulders, 71

and I whisper in his ear, “Nothing can change how much I love you.” I lean back to let him see the truth in my eyes, and pure anguish lashes in his. He is touched by my claim but he doesn’t believe it to be true. It’s amazing how far we have traveled together, how the tables have turned. Not so long ago, I questioned if he could ever truly need me—and now, it’s he who questions me in the same way.

I start to whisper his name, but his ingers slide under my hair and he brings my mouth to his, one sultry slide of his tongue licking into my mouth. The sound of Amber clinking things around loudly breaks through the passion spiraling between us and Chris pulls back, his ingers tracing a strand of my hair, the air between us thick with unspoken words. “We’ll talk later,” he promises. “Ready for that cofee?”

“Yes,” I choke out, uncomfortably aware of Amber all over again. “Cofee is good.”

He drapes an arm over my shoulder. “Then let me start by showing you our impressive collection of plain white mugs.”

We turn toward the cabinet, but not before I catch a glimpse of Amber staring at us. No . . . at me. And the look is pure hatred, the kind of look Ava gave me weeks back when she’d seen me in the deli with Mark. I’d been stunned by the hostility in her face, since she’d always been friendly to me before. The comparison between that moment and this one shakes me to the core, and my nails dig into Chris’s back where my hand has settled.

He glances down at me and his too-sexy mouth twitches, all signs of his darker side gone. “Save that for when we’re alone, baby.”

I glower at him, thinking there is a lot we should save for when we’re alone. Amber hates me for sure now, and despite what Chris said, I’m pretty sure she’s in love with him. “You were showing me the collection of white mugs?” I prod, my ingers pressing against the spot where I’d dug my ingernails, warning him to behave.

“I was,” he agrees. “And who would want to miss that?”

Amber says something in French and Chris turns to her.

“English, Amber. Sara doesn’t speak French.”

“Oh,” she comments. “That’s going to be fun for her.”

Her. Like I’m not even here. I sigh inwardly, knowing I have to put a stop to this. Though I’m not confrontational, I left my doormat status back at my father’s house.

I accept the cofee Chris pours me and set my cup on the island across from her, forcing her to deal with me. “I’ll learn.”

And this time I mean it. I will not be crushed by a language barrier. “You’re American, right? Surely at some point you had to.”

Chris joins me on the opposite side of the island across from Amber and sets cream on the counter. “Yes, she was once as American as apple pie.”

Amber’s brows dip. “I’m still American, but unlike you, I’ve embraced French culture.”

He loves Paris but he doesn’t embrace French culture? I want to explore this, but Amber is already moving on. “Learning French sucked. I hated every second of it, but you really have to learn, to spend any substantial time here. Believe me, I found that out quickly.”

Chris glances down at me. “She came here as a teenager, like I did, and American students aren’t welcomed with open arms.”

“Kids are cruel,” she agrees, surprising me by showing a vulnerable side.

I’m not sure I want to see her as human, which isn’t nice.

There’s no healthy reason to feel this jealousy . . . aside from the fact that she’s gorgeous and has a long history with the man I love. Oh, how I hate this insecure side of me.

“. . . but that was ages ago,” Amber says, inishing a sentence I didn’t hear, standing at the cofeepot, all long, lean, and beautiful, illing her cup. “You need a one-on-one tutor if you want to learn quickly.”

“She’s right,” Chris agrees. “We’ll get you someone lined up, if you want?”

“I’d like that,” I say, and I don’t miss how he’s asked me rather than ordered me, when only a short time before he was dominant and I was submissive. It’s the balance of respect and dominance in Chris that makes him so very dif-ferent from other dominant men, of whom there have been many in my life. “We need to ind a really patient person who knows how to teach someone who doesn’t learn other languages well.”

“That would be Tristan,” Amber suggests. “He teaches English. I’m sure he can teach French.”

“No,” Chris says and his eyes meet Amber’s. “Tristan is not tutoring Sara.”

“He’s much better than some stufy teacher who will cram rules and subject matter down her throat. He’ll get her street-slanging it in a week.”

“No,” Chris repeats, and there is a low, dangerous quality to his voice.

Ouch. Who is this Tristan and why does Chris want me to stay away from him?

Amber returns to her chair. “She can’t even speak to Sophie, Chris.”

“Who’s Sophie?” I ask.

“The housekeeper,” she replies, surprising me when her deep blue eyes meet my light green ones. “She doesn’t speak English.”

“Amber,” Chris warns, and he turns to me. “We’ll get by the language stuf, baby. And Sophie only comes once a week.”

The doorbell rings and Chris glances at his watch. “I guess I can’t wonder who the heck would be here at this time of the night, since it’s three in the afternoon here.” He sets his cup down and glances at Amber. “It’s more a question of who even knows I’m here.”

She holds up her hands. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t have time to tell anyone.”

I stand up as he heads down the stairs. “Don’t you need a shirt?”

He glances over his shoulder. “Wanna give me that one?”

“Get your own,” I call back, smiling, as he disappears around the corner. But as I turn back to the table and ind myself alone with Amber, it fades quickly. For several seconds we just stare at each other and the silence eats away at the few nerve endings this day has left me with. I can’t stand the empty space, so I blurt out, “Who’s Tristan?”

Her lips curve like a cat that’s about to capture a canary, with me soon to be a feather in those lips. “A tattoo artist I work with,” she explains. “A wickedly sexy, talented one. Cus-tomers wait for a good two months to get his ink.”

This tells me nothing of why Chris wouldn’t want me around Tristan. But I’m guessing it must be his connection to Amber, and maybe hers to the BDSM world. I want to be as far away from that topic with her as possible, and I say, “You did Chris’s dragon. It’s brilliant. You’re quite gifted.”

Her eyes register surprise and then pride. “Yes. I did it many, many moons ago, and it’s still some of my best work. I was . . .

inspired. It was a coming of age for both him and me.”

“It certainly shows in the work,” I manage, past a knot in my throat caused by her sentimental tone that reaches beyond sex to a deep history of friendship, and yes, passion.

She tilts her head and studies my face, and something lares in her eyes that I don’t understand. Her gaze drops and travels over what she can see of my body, and the hot, sultry inspection is as far from hate as it gets. “You know,” she purrs, her dark lashes lifting, “I could ink that beautiful pale skin of yours with a dragon to match Chris’s. It would be . . . breathtaking.”

I can feel heat spreading across my chest and up my neck.

Is she coming on to me? No, that’s pure craziness. I’m confused and uncomfortable. One minute she’s looking at me as if she wants to kill me, and the next like she wants to strip me na**d again.

My irst instinct is to seek out Chris, but that might be exactly what she hopes for. I have to establish that I will not be pushed around, and do it quickly. Still, I sit there and say nothing. Me. The nervous rambler.

“I have a three-month wait, but I’ll get you in right away,”

she adds, leaning forward to narrow the distance over the counter. “We’ll surprise Chris.”

We’ll surprise Chris? Is she . . . surely not. Or is she? Does she want us to be a threesome? That’s not happening. I don’t share, and if I thought for a moment Chris did, I’d be on a plane back to the States. But she knows him. She’s had sex with him.

Kinky sex.

I swallow hard. Past. Present. Past. Present. I repeat these words in my head, feeling like I’ll be using them a lot in the near future. “No ink for me,” I say, my voice strained with discomfort. “Thanks, though.”

Amber notices; I see the gleam in her intelligent eyes. She’s smart, and that makes her dangerous. She pushes of her chair to stand, a good two or three inches above my ive feet four inches. “Too bad,” she says. “I could have told you all of his secrets while I worked on you.”

I ignore the soft little rasp emphasizing “worked on you.”

She’s deinitely playing some head game with me, and I hate that it’s working a little. Chris is the one to share his secrets with me, but still . . . does she know all the things about him I don’t? Maybe. Probably. Some things, for sure. She’s the one who lured him into the BDSM world. Well, he didn’t use the word lure, and he isn’t the type to be lured into anything. Past.

Present. Maybe he had been the type back then? And Amber certainly is the type to lure someone into something. I almost laugh out loud. This is the man who, as a teen, responded to the French kids’ teasing by beating the crap out of them and getting in trouble.

Amber rounds the island and walks toward me, and I am hopeful she is leaving. Instead, she stops beside me and shocks me by pressing her hand to my bare arm and running it up under Chris’s shirt to close around my bare shoulder.

My gaze jerks to hers and it’s all I can do not to pull back, but I’ve had enough people play intimidation games with me to know not to respond.

“Right here,” she says, her ingers lexing on my shoulder.

“I’ll do a perfect duplicate of Chris’s dragon. It would be delicious fun to re-create it.” Her hand slides away and her lips curve. “He likes inked skin.”

She’s hit a nerve I do not want to exist, and I barely contain a linch. I’m not the daring, beautiful creature that she is and, though I felt quite secure earlier, right now I fear I eventually won’t be enough for Chris.

Her eyes gleam with satisfaction. She knows she’s gotten to me, and I hate that she knows. “I have a feeling you’d be surprised at a lot of the things Chris likes,” she comments, tucking a strand of long blond hair behind her ear. “You know, he’s going to get called for one meeting after another by everyone and their uncle in the art world. That’s what happens the minute he enters the city. You’ll get bored. Stop by the shop if you like. I’m at the Script, of the Champs-Élysées. It’s a short walk.”

She smirks, and even that is pretty. I have a feeling she’d look good with the lu, while I look like something from a zombie apocalypse when I don’t get enough sleep. Like now.

“I’m sure Chris and I will get by that way.”

“Come alone so we can talk about the tattoo,” she encourages.

“Tristan will be there, too. He can give you a lesson.” The cat-that-ate-the-canary look is back, and I’m sure she’s not talking about a lesson in French.

She waves two ingers at me. “Later, ma belle.” She walks down the stairs, and I don’t turn to watch.

I have no clue what just happened. I only know that Amber isn’t going away. Neither am I, so I’m going to have to ind a way to deal with her.

I’m not sure how long I sit at the island in the kitchen, trying to igure Amber out, unwilling to risk another encounter with her before she is inally gone. Not even the idea of her fawn-ing over Chris will lift me from my seat. Finally the need for a shower, and my curiosity over who was at the door and why Chris is taking so long, wins out.

I head to the living room and Chris is entering from a hallway on the opposite side of the room, wearing a white T-shirt and talking on the phone in French. I’ve never been so happy to see the man dressed.