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I nod and go back to plating. Not because the food needs more attention but because looking at her face right now hits in a way I hadn't calculated for.

She slides onto a stool at the island, and I set her plate in front of her. My own sitting in front of me.

She takes a few bites of the egg and then fruit, obviously pleased by the way her head sways ever so slightly when she likes what she's eating. Another thing I've noticed over the almost seven months I've been in contact with this woman.

"I want to take you somewhere today," I say.

She looks up from the croissant she just broke in half. "Where?"

"Villefranche-sur-Mer."

The half croissant stops before her mouth has a chance to taste it.

I watch it happen in real time. The recognition, the shock, the cascade she never bothers to hide. Her eyes go bright.

She knows what this means. She knows I know what this means.

I arranged the car this morning. Called the concierge and asked for a convertible with no driver, because I knew this needed to be just us. Her father's story from the rehearsal dinner. The peaches. The easel. The painter who told him his flirting needed work. The village where her parents met.

I heard the story and filed it. But this one didn't stay filed. It kept surfacing. After all, this is why she picked Cannes for our honeymoon. She wanted to see it.

"How —" she starts, and then stops. Because she already knows how.

"You don't have to," I say. The careful edge in my own voice. The out I'm offering. "If it's too much. If you'd rather —"

"Yes," she says, her back straightening immediately, almost as if she's ready to bolt for the door.

I stop.

"Yes, I want to go." Her voice is smaller than usual. Shaky at the edges. But certain. "I want to see it."

"Good," I nod. "I arranged a car from the resort."

"With a driver?"

"No. I'll drive."

She stares at me. "You're going to drive?"

"I thought it would be easier. We can stop where we need to. It gives us a little more freedom."

"Yes but... in France?"

"The roads aren't complicated."

"You just don't seem like the type to —"

"To what?"

"To do things yourself when you could pay someone else to do them."

I set my coffee down. Look at her.

Before my life as the Kauffman head of the family—before the driver, before the black car idling outside every building I walked into —I used to drive myself everywhere. Conrad Kauffman still wanted to ensure the name showed wealth. We were all given expensive cars, expensive schools, anything to signal superiority. But behind the wheel was one of the few places that was actually mine.

"I don't pay for everything," I say. "Just like fucking you on the jet last night. Some things I want to do myself."

The words come out carrying more than I intended. Her jaw drops but neither of us addresses it.