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He catches my gaze across the table. Holds it for one beat.

His gaze drops, then comes back. Not guilt, exactly. More like the quiet awareness that I've just found out and he knows the conversation that's coming later.

I smile. Lift my glass. Play the part.

"Happy birthday," I say, and my voice sounds normal even though my brain is screaming at me that I'm in the most romantic city in the world, on my honeymoon, with my husband, who didn't even bother to tell me that today is his birthday... and we're spending it in a business meeting.

This is, by far, the most "Everett Kauffman" thing he has ever done.

The rest of dinner continues around me while I sit with this new information like a stone in my stomach I can't digest.

He didn't tell me.

We've been sharing a bed. Sharing a villa. Sharing a life, however temporary. And he didn't mention that today—the day we flew to Paris for dinner—was his birthday.

Why not?

After dinner, the table splits naturally. Pierre invites Everett outside for cigars and scotch to discuss terms. Margaux orders us another glass of champagne and leans back in her chair with the satisfied air of a woman who has been through enough business dinners to know when to let the men think they're being important.

Now, with Everett away from the table, Margaux turns back to speaking French since my French is better than her English and I'm always happy to get more practice to improve it.

Speaking French makes me feel closer to my mother. And today, she feels closer than she has in so long.

"So," she says once they've disappeared. "Tell me how it really is."

I blink. "How what really is?"

"Marriage." She smiles. "To a man like that."

I take a sip of champagne and consider my answer carefully. "Surprising."

Her eyebrows lift.

"He's not what I expected," I say. "In good ways. In confusing ways."

She nods slowly, turning her glass by the stem. "Pierre was the same. All business on the outside. All feeling underneath. It took me years to learn the difference between what he said and what he meant." She looks at me with something warm and knowing. "Yours won't take years. I can see the way he looks at you."

My chest tightens.

"How does he look at me?"

"As if you're the only thing in the room he doesn't know how to acquire." She laughs softly. "That terrifies men like them. Things they can't strategize their way into owning. You're a commodity that they can't secure, which means you could disappear... slip through their fingers and they can't do anything about it."

"But I'm not trying to slip through his fingers or disappear. I'm right here."

"I know that, and you know that, but Everett and Pierre grew up quite similarly the way I understand it from Pierre. They both grew up in emotionally stunted homes with transactional relationships from the two people who should have offered unconditional love—their parents."

I don't know the way Pierre grew up but from the little bit of information I've gotten from Everett about his mother, and from the information I know about his father, she's right about Everett's childhood.

"I'm not asking for a transactional relationship," I say, but I guess that's not completely true. It is, after all, how this started. "I just don't know how to break through to him. All he does is work."

"Then give him a better reason not to," she says, pulling her wine glass up to her lips with a lifted brow and then takes a sip.

I don't know what to say to that.

So I drink my champagne and let the words settle.

Pierre and Everett return not long after—Pierre looking pleased and it has me wondering if the deal has finally been agreed to. Everett remains unreadable as usual.