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He gives me an odd look. ‘You didn’t talk to him about it at all?’

‘What was there to say? I sent him a text before I left saying that it wasn’t working out for me, and I’d prefer to go to Paris as a single woman.’

‘Hang on!’ he says. ‘I seem to remember you dating some guy in Paris.’

‘André,’ I say, not quite meeting his eye.

‘I know that look,’ he says. ‘Don’t think you can hide anything from me.’

‘I’m not!’ I protest.

He lifts the wine bottle. ‘Tell me everything or I’ll pour you another glass of this.’

I move my glass out of his reach. ‘Perhaps I may not have been entirely honest about André.’

He looks delighted. ‘You made him up?’

‘Oh, he existed, all right. He was the son of my host family. I got to know him and his girlfriend pretty well while I was over there.’

‘I’m impressed!’ says Brandon. ‘A ménage à trois? That’s very French.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. André and Francine took me to see all the sights, and we usually took some selfies.’

He gives me a mock stern look. ‘I don’t remember seeing three people in all those pictures you posted on Facebook.’

‘They must have been the ones Francine took,’ I say.

‘I’ll check.’ He opens his phone and starts scrolling through it.

I reach out and take it from him. ‘Fine – I may have cropped them a little.’

‘You sneaky thing! I take it that was for this guy’s benefit?’

‘For mine, really. It felt easier and cleaner if he thought I’d started seeing someone else. I didn’t want him messaging me and stirring it at all up again.’

‘I understand,’ he says gently. ‘Your pride was hurt.’

He’s right. I was utterly humiliated when Alex went off with Suzy. But I’d have died rather than let him know that. All I wanted was to show him that I’d moved on too and wasn’t giving him a second thought.

‘You’re sure you don’t need that wine, after all?’ asks Brandon.

‘I’m fine. Honestly, I am. I haven’t thought about my time in Paris for years.’

‘Poor André,’ he says with such a comical look that I burst out laughing.

‘You think he’s still pining for me? He sent me an invitation to his wedding last year, so I imagine he’s got over me by now.’

He considers me carefully. ‘Aren’t you a dark horse? Are there any other fake French fiancés I need to know about?’

‘Not fiancé,’ I say. ‘That would have been far too complicated. It was a brief holiday romance – beautiful while it lasted.’

‘That was wise,’ he says. ‘Your mother would have been planning the wedding before you’d even got back from Paris. Did she know about it?’

‘She did. I wasn’t going to tell her, and she doesn’t use Facebook. But she kept going on about Alex and wanting to know what was going on with us. So, I told her about André. She was quite cut up when it all came to nothing.’

‘The bar’s about to close,’ he says. ‘We’d better get going. All I can say is that you’re a terrible daughter.’

He sees my face. ‘I’m only joking. It was a wonderful idea, and no one got hurt.’


Tags: Rosemary Whittaker Romance