Free From Paris With Love by Samantha Tonge Page A

she hangs out with, often in St Michel.’ Cindy shrugged. ‘I’m one of the honoured few to meet them, even though Monique and me ain’t that close. Talk about intellectual, honey. My idea of a protagonist in a story is Snow White or Mulan. Needless to say, the majority of them turned their noses up at Disneyland Paris.’
    At that moment, Edward stuck his cute possum head around the kitchen door. I went over and kissed his lips.
    ‘Just think,’ I murmured, ‘tomorrow we’re off work and it’s our first day together, alone in the romantic French capital. I’m so excited! Tree-lined boulevards, blue skies, fancy pastries, the awesome skyline… We can spend the whole day together, just you and me.’
    Pierre had given us the whole weekend as our first two days off – said it wouldn’t happen again, but that Saturday and Sunday were the busiest days of the week and we weren’t quite ready, after just a few days, to cope.
    A pained look crossed Edward’s face. ‘Oh. Erm… Huge apologies, Gemma. I didn’t think you’d mind but Monique invited me – I mean,
us
, of course– out to a late lunch with her friends. They sound like a terribly interesting bunch, made up of singers, writers and who knows? Moni said to meet them tomorrow…’
    Moni?
    ‘…at two o’clock,’ he continued, ‘in a jolly nice district of Paris called…’
    Don’t tell me – St Michel.
    My stomach twisted. I’d been not one week in Paris and already faced a beautiful, intelligent, artistic – and highly slappable! – love rival.

Chapter 7
    Slow, quick, slow quick, our bodies mirrored each other’s moves… Edward ran a finger down my back. My heart raced as his hips rhythmically thrust forwards and our mouths almost met…
    Then the music stopped and the judge gave us ten out of ten. Despite what naughty
you
may have thought, I was simply daydreaming about Edward and me performing the salsa on one of my favourite TV dance shows.
    Why? Because as we emerged from the St Michel Métro station, Edward told me that this part of Paris was also known as the Latin Quarter – cha cha cha! We’d got up early and thankfully the night’s heavy rain had stopped, leaving me with an irrational urge to walk through all the puddles. I’d suggested to Edward that we visited Notre Dame. Desperate as I was to go shopping, I put his interests first. It had nothing, at all, to do with wanting to prove myself interested in the intellectual stuff favoured by a certain new French female acquaintance.
    Notre Dame wasn’t far from St Michel. We had until two o’clock and wow… Actually it was awesome. Prettily built, despite the creepy, kind of reptilian gargoyles staring from every angle…
    ‘This Catholic cathedral was built between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, on this Île de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine river which runs through Paris,’ Edward had said, as if reading from an information leaflet. ‘The magnificent organ inside has over seven thousand pipes. There are ten bells and the wonderful statue of the Virgin and child. Plus…’
    Oh dear. I tried, really I did, but kind of switched off and thought about that animated Disney film,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. History wasn’t my thing and beautiful as the Notre Dame was, I hadn’t wanted to spend ages inside admiring the stained glass windows and altar. Yet Edward was amazin’ and if we ever got chucked out of Chez Dubois he could easily earn us a living as a tour guide.
    My stomach twisted. Since crossing the Channel, and for the first time since we’d got close, I was having serious doubts about the romantic combo of him, an aristocrat, and me, a former pizza waitress.
    Having finally dragged Edward away from his beloved cathedral, we walked to St Michel. As the fresh air hit us, I pulled my coat tighter and hugged my leopard-print bag tight under my arm – apparently St Michel was a notorious spot for pickpockets. Alongside a group of tourists, I