Free What If It's Love?: A Contemporary Romance Set in Paris (Bistro La Bohème Book 1) by Alix Nichols

on her. He seemed fully focused
on getting her from point A to point B with as little shoving as he could
manage. She couldn’t detect a hint of a caress in the way his palm enveloped
hers. His fingers were perfectly motionless. He’d taken her hand for purely
practical reasons, she told herself.
    But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he held her. She closed
her eyes. His skin was warm—almost hot—against hers, and his hand
gloriously big. Ooh, the bliss. It was as if all the nerve endings in her hand
had been bared and primed. How else could she explain the intensity of the
pleasure that flooded her senses from such a trivial touch?
    She opened her eyes—the bench was now within arm’s reach.
    “Excuse me,” Rob said to someone Lena couldn’t see. “Could you step aside
for a sec, so my friend could climb on top of this?”
    He gave her a little push and, once she stood on
the bench, released her hand. It took her all her strength not to say, “No!”
    When Cyril finished his last encore and the applause died away, the
arrows on the clock above the bar pointed at five to two. Lena jumped off the
bench and gave Rob a bright smile. “Cyril is really good. I liked his
songs just as much as the classic hits in the second part.”
    He grinned. “I may be tone deaf but I have impeccable taste in music. I’m
glad you enjoyed the performance.”
    “I’ll buy his album tomorrow.” She began to rummage through her bag. “Shall
I call us a cab?”
    Rob glanced at his watch. “If we run to Trocadero right now, we can catch
the final light show of the of day on the Eiffel Tower. It’s special.”
    Lena didn’t need much convincing to prolong their evening together.
    They got to the plaza just as the sparkling lights on the Iron Lady
across the Seine burst into a magical show.
    “We can sit over there.” Rob pointed at the vacant spot on the steps
leading down from the plaza, and they wedged themselves between two groups of
camera-wielding tourists.
    “Hold your hand out, like this,” he said, stretching his own arm. “You
see? It looks like you’re touching the tip of the Eiffel Tower. I can take a
picture of you, if you want.”
    Lena whipped out her phone. “Let me take one of you first.”
    She was giddy with excitement. “So how is this show different from the
others?”
    “During the regular evening shows, the background yellow lighting never
goes off. But now it’s more like fireworks.”
    They sat in silence for several minutes watching the lights dance.
And then, within a second, the Eiffel Tower was swallowed up by the night. The
effect was spectacular.
    Lena turned to Rob. “Wow.”
    She didn’t want to go home. Sitting here, in this warm summer evening, so
close to Rob that their thighs nearly touched, made her feel acutely alive. It
was a wonderful feeling.
    “Which one is your favorite Cyril song?” she asked.
    “Let me see . . . The one about the stray dog.”
    “Oh yes. What was the refrain?” She recited, “ Grooming is for poodles.
Training is for hounds —”
    Rob joined in, singing off key. “ I traded my leash for dignity. Got
any scraps, anyone? ” He smirked. “During my first three years in Paris,
that’s pretty much how I felt about my life.”
    Lena didn’t dare ask why.
    “Which one’s your favorite?” he asked.
    She stretched her legs. “Hmm. ‘Maybe I’m the One’. . . I guess.”
    “What about ‘The Clown’?”
    “Urgh. It made me feel uncomfortable. But it’s nice to know I’m not the
only person on Earth who’s scared of clowns.”
    He chuckled. “I won’t be offering you circus tickets then.”
    “God forbid. I completely freaked out both times my parents took me to
the circus when I was little. When I wasn’t terrified of the clowns, I was
afraid the lions will eat their tamer, or the acrobats will fall off the
trapeze and break their necks.”
    “You should try bungee jumping as immersion therapy,” he said.
    She made