An Autumn in Paris Read online

  An Autumn in Paris

  Alix Nichols

  Foreword

  Dear Reader,

  Are you a fan of timeless movies like “Sabrina” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or do you prefer sexy romance books? Or both?

  In any case, you’ll find An Autumn in Paris deeply romantic and just as deeply satisfying.

  Escape to Paris, and let this sweet, fun and sensual tale give you all the feels!

  Much love,

  Alix

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  Books by Alix Nichols

  SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCES

  Keepers of Xereill

  The Cyborg’s Lady (prequel novella)

  The Traitor’s Bride

  The Commander’s Captive

  The Dragon’s Woman

  CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES

  Standalones

  The Devil’s Own Chloe

  Amanda’s Guide to Love

  An Autumn in Paris

  SERIES

  La Bohème

  Winter’s Gift

  What If It’s Love?

  Falling for Emma

  Under My Skin

  You’re the One (companion novella)

  The Darcy Brothers

  Find You in Paris

  Raphael’s Fling

  The Perfect Catch

  Clarissa and the Cowboy (companion novella)

  Playing to Win

  Playing with Fire

  Playing for Keeps

  Playing Dirty

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alix Nichols is an unapologetic caffeine addict and a longtime fan of Mr. Darcy, especially in his Colin Firth incarnation.

  She is a USA Today bestselling author of sexy, riveting romances that “keep you hanging off the edge of your seat” (RT Book Reviews) and “deliver pure pleasure” (Kirkus Reviews).

  At the age of six, she released her first book. It featured highly creative spelling on a dozen pages stitched together and bound in velvet paper.

  Decades later, she still writes. Her spelling has improved (somewhat), and her books have topped bestseller charts around the world. She lives in France with her family and their almost-human dog.

  Copyright © 2018 Alix Nichols

  Editing provided by Write Divas

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part II

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part III

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Cyborg’s Lady

  Part I

  Daniela

  1

  Two beautiful yellow-red leaves drift down from a tall linden tree, pirouetting next to each other. They descend in perfect unison, but their moves are unsynchronized, and they never touch.

  Maybe they’re having a private rave party.

  I halt to watch their progress.

  Unlike the human raves I’ve seen, this botanical dance is full of grace, subtle beauty, and decorum. That’s how Belle Epoque courtships between tailcoat-wearing gentlemen and wasp-waisted ladies were conducted, I imagine. The elegant couple would spend weeks strolling up and down Champs-Elysées and talking, before he dared to brush his fingertips against her gloved hand.

  Only, this courtship is doomed.

  When the star-crossed sweethearts hit the sidewalk—just a hair’s breadth apart—I shovel them into my garbage bag.

  Autumn in Paris with its gray skies and nature’s decay always fills my heart with equal parts melancholy and anger. In other words, I hate it.

  Picking up the broom, I resume my work, determined not to let anything or anyone distract me. The goal is to finish cleaning outside and get started on the hallway by the time those heavy clouds overhead decide to relieve themselves on the city.

  A man walks in my direction. I don’t look up. When his feet come to a halt next to my broom, I hazard a guess that it’s the chairman of the condo, Monsieur Dubos.

  “Hello, Dana,” the man says.

  I freeze. There’s only a handful of people who call me Dana. Monsieur Dubos isn’t one of them. He addresses me by my full name, Daniela. Besides, that voice…

  Slowly, I straighten my back and look up.

  The man isn’t Monsieur Dubos. It’s Nico.

  I grip the broomstick like a weapon. “Hello.”

  “You don’t look happy to see me.”

  I say nothing. He’d been gone four years, and I was hoping I’d never see him again.

  “How’s Liviu?”

  “Fine.”

  “Where is he?”

  I shrug. “At school. Where else would he be at this time?”

  “Still upset, eh?” My ex-boyfriend smiles and shakes his head. “Except, it’s me who should be angry. If memory serves me right, you whacked me so hard I ended up in a hospital.”

  “Except,” I say, mimicking his expression and tone, “if memory serves me right, you ended up in a hospital because you were drunk and you fell and hit your head.”

  “After you punched me and kicked me out in the middle of the night.”

  Bile rises in my throat. “Shall I count all the times you hit me before that incident?”

  He raises his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “There’s no need. I’m not here to settle old scores or poke old wounds. I’m here with an offering.”

  I narrow my eyes.

  “Three tickets to a stand-up comedy on Sunday afternoon.” He pulls said tickets out of his pocket and waves them in front of my face. “You, me, and Liviu.”

  Nico’s willingness to include my son in something is a first. He’d never do that while we were together, always arguing it would ruin the fun. It’s not that he hated Liviu or ever hurt him—which would’ve been an immediate deal breaker for me, by the way—he just saw Liviu as a nuisance.

  “Wait, there’s more.” He thrusts his chest out. “The show is at Le Grand Rex.”

  He pauses and surveys my face for a reaction to his largess.

  “It’s your favorite place in Paris, right?” He smiles smugly. “See—I haven’t forgotten.”

  Nico grins, no doubt expecting me to melt, overcome by a heat wave of gratitude. Aww, isn’t he thoughtful? Isn’t he freaking
magnanimous, inviting his ex and her son to the iconic movie theater? Which, indeed, happens to be my number one favorite place in Paris…

  Would it be terribly rude if I grabbed two of his tickets and said, “Thank you! Liviu and I would love to go to Le Grand Rex, without you.”?

  “Thanks, but I can’t,” I lie. “I already have plans for Sunday.”

  “Do you, now? What plans?” His lips and eyes tighten, and his fake magnanimity gives way to a much more familiar expression.

  I recoil.

  As if catching himself, Nico gives me a forced smile. “Come on, Dana, it’s unlike you to hold a grudge… If you’re pissed off that I stayed away for so long, you shouldn’t be. I was sobering up and pulling my shit together. Got a new job now, better pay. You can’t blame me for that, can you?”

  “I’m not blaming you for anything,” I say. “I just don’t want you back in my and Liviu’s life.”

  He gives me a long, hard look. “Nah. It’s the anger talking. I’ve watched you from afar the last couple of weeks. It’s just you and Liviu in the loge. And you’re not seeing anyone.”

  “How’s that relevant?”

  “You’re sad and lonely, chérie, and I’m the solution to that.”

  Should I even bother explaining to someone so full of himself that I’d rather spend the rest of my life “sad and lonely” than with him?

  I roll my eyes. “You as a cure is worse than the disease. Bye, Nico.”

  “Your loss,” he grits through his teeth and shoves the tickets back in his pocket.

  As he walks away, it starts to rain.

  I tell myself he got the point. He tried, met with resistance, and gave up. There’s no need to feel scared or even apprehensive. Didn’t he say he had a brand-new life? He wouldn’t want to risk that for a concierge—a building janitor—would he?

  Besides, I really need to finish here before this drizzle turns into full-blown rain.

  Did I mention I hate autumn? It always drops poisoned gifts into my life. Like Nico five years ago. And much worse before that.

  In November twenty-nine years ago, the wall between Eastern and Western Europe fell in Berlin. It was a good thing, no doubt, but it also caused riots at home in Romania. My uncle, Mami’s only sibling, was killed.

  That same autumn, in a Bucharest hospital, Mami gave birth to me. She was all alone. My father had dumped her as soon as she told him about the pregnancy and her own mother was too crushed by her grief.

  A week after I was born, our neighbor Mrs. Radu, delivered Marius, the purest, sunniest human being to have ever graced the earth. And then one early autumn day, seventeen years later—

  I suck in a breath. Not going there now.

  Picking up my bucket and broom, I rush inside. As I start washing the granite floor, I promise myself to do a better job fighting my autumn blues. If I were on my own, it would be all right to sulk all day for the rest of my life. But I have a son. All I want is for him to be happy.

  Baloo gives an enthusiastic bark from inside the loge. The fluffy little pooch must’ve caught a whiff of my scent. I smile. That dog, adopted to reward Liviu for his good grades last year, is a much better remedy for my “sadness” than Nico could ever dream to be. Which reminds me, Baloo has an appointment with our new vet at ten.

  I glance at my watch. It’s twenty to ten.

  The old vet, Dr. Vannier, could make you wait for thirty minutes, but he was also cool if you showed up a little late. I have no idea what kind of relationship the new doc has with time. Maybe he’s just as relaxed as Dr. Vannier, or maybe he’s much more fastidious.

  In any event, it looks like polishing the hallway mirror will have to wait until this afternoon.

  2

  Corinne, the vet’s assistant, lets Baloo and me in.

  Baloo resists, and I pick him up. The poor thing has clearly recalled his previous visits and the associated unpleasantness. Corinne motions me to a cluster of three chairs in the corner of the reception area. I sit down and set the anxious little fur ball on my lap.

  “How’s Dr. Vannier enjoying his retirement?” I ask Corinne.

  “He’s loving it.” She goes behind her desk and opens the laptop. “Remind me of Baloo’s surname?”

  “Fieraru,” I say, giving her my family name.

  She types it in and pulls up Baloo’s file. “I have it. The doctor will be with you in a moment.”

  Corinne pushes her chair back to the wall and sucks in her tummy so she can open her little desk’s drawer and rummage through it for something.

  The practice is tiny. When I brought Baloo here for the first time, and Dr. Vannier stepped out into the reception area, it was hard not to smile. The old vet was short. Very short. So, the size of his practice fit him. The downside of this clinic’s size is that there’s no room for equipment to do more than routine procedures.

  In August, only a couple of weeks after we got Baloo, he got sick. It was just an abscess—an infected gland—but it wouldn’t go away on its own, and it could’ve killed him if we did nothing. Dr. Vannier charged me three hundred euros for the tests, meds, and the minor surgery he performed on the little fellow.

  To his credit, he’d warned me up front it might cost less if I went to a bigger clinic or hospital. But Baloo had refused to drink for two days. He was so sick, worrying Liviu to tears, that I didn’t want to waste more time.

  Well, today, it’s just a regular checkup, so I don’t expect it to be expensive.

  “Does Dr. Brousse charge the same as Dr. Vannier?” I ask Corinne.

  “Less,” she says. “He’s just starting out as a clinic owner. He worked as a mobile vet before. Thomas’s goal for this year isn’t to turn a profit but to build a loyal client base.”

  I must’ve inadvertently raised my eyebrows at “Thomas,” because Corinne adds with a smile, “I know, I never called my previous boss by his first name. But this one is only thirty-two—same age as my oldest son. When he asked me to call him Thomas, it was easy.”

  My hands combing through Baloo’s fur to soothe him, I try to imagine what our young new vet looks like. My mind helpfully conjures the image of the stubby Dr. Vannier, just with more hair on his head.

  The door to the exam room opens, and Dr. Brousse steps into the reception area.

  Hot damn.

  My mouth hangs agape before I remember to close it.

  All right, so he does have more hair than Dr. Vannier, but the resemblance to my mental image stops there. The new vet is Dr. Vannier’s opposite. Tall, lean, muscular and darkly handsome, Dr. Thomas Brousse is the kind of man you expect to see on a TV screen, not in a vet’s office.

  He runs a hand through his thick, disheveled hair and gives me a nervous smile. A dimpled nervous smile.

  Is he for real?

  “Madame Fieraru?”

  We exchange polite greetings.

  His kind gaze settles on my fuzzy charge. “And this must be Baloo.”

  Baloo responds with a friendly wag of his tail.

  Dr. Brousse’s eyes shift to me. “We opened today, and Baloo is our first patient.”

  I smile, unsure what to say.

  He points to the exam room. “Please, follow me.”

  I remove Baloo’s leash, pick up my purse, and fling it over my shoulder. Seizing the opportunity, Baloo jumps off my lap. Lightning fast, he scampers under the chair, close to the wall.

  Muttering an apology, I hunker down. “Come, Baloo. This is just a checkup. The doctor won’t do anything unpleasant this time.”

  I hope that my tone will calm him enough to come out on his own.

  While I’m negotiating with Baloo, Dr. Brousse turns to Corinne. “Do we still have two surgeries scheduled for today?”

  “Yep. No one canceled.”

  “If there’s a complication, would you be able to stay a little late?”

  “Not a problem,” Corinne says. “My husband doesn’t cook, but he doesn’t mind eating late, either.”

  �
�Why don’t you order takeout for your family from your favorite place?” he offers. “My treat.”

  “Why, thank you. What about you? Can I get you something, too? Any preferences?”

  He hesitates for a second before waving his hand. “Yes. Just one more of whatever you’ll be ordering.”

  “Number 12 rue du Faubourg Montmartre, right?”

  He nods.

  Ah, so the doc lives on my street. A neighbor, then. And possibly single—

  Oh, please! Why am I even listening to their exchange? And why, for heaven’s sake, am I drawing such preposterous conclusions?

  Embarrassment heating my face, I quit trying to reason with Baloo and drag him out.

  “No surgeries for you today, Chewie, I promise!” I hold him—wriggling and hyperventilating—to my chest.

  “Chewie?” Dr. Brousse heads into the exam room. “That’s a cute nickname. Are you a fan of Chewbacca in Star Wars?”

  I trot after him. “My son is.”

  We stand across the stainless steel exam table, and he gestures for me to set Baloo down on it.