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"Okay," she says, moving on though I can see her cheeks flush. "When do we leave?"

"Whenever you're ready."

"Give me twenty minutes."

"Take your time."

She slides off the stool and heads for the bedroom with her coffee in both hands.

I stand in the kitchen for a moment after she's gone. Bare feet on cool wood floors. Morning light through the windows. The sound of the shower running in the bathroom and it takes all I have not to ask if I can join.

Then it hits me that I just took a morning off. For her.

She comes back in fifteen minutes.

White linen sundress. Hair tied back with a ribbon. Canvas satchel on her shoulder but this time she doesn't bring her painting supplies. I assume the bag is for other things we might find along the trip.

The sight of her in the morning light, walking toward me with that bag and that dress moving in the breeze—I file it away. She only agreed to be married to me for a year.

I'm not stupid enough to believe that Aria Taylor would have agreed to marry me if she hadn't been desperate. I wasn't exactly the most charming man over the first six months we knew each other. Though there was a reason for that. To make sure the feelings I'm starting to have never came to be.

I've put on a white T-shirt and linen trousers. Sunglasses hooked at my collar. Keys in my hand. I'm leaning against the silver convertible the resort left in the drive—low and sleek and entirely too beautiful for winding coastal roads, which means it's going to be perfect for them.

I open her door and then close it once she's safely inside. I walk around and slide behind the wheel.

"Ready?" I say.

"Ready."

The engine turns over and I pull out of the drive and onto the coastal road, and within minutes Cannes falls away behind us.

The road hugs the coastline with water on one side, cliffs and cypress on the other. The morning air is warm and the wind catches her hair almost immediately, pulling it free from the ribbon. She doesn't fix it. She leans her head back, closes her eyes, and lets it happen.

I glance at her. Just once. Just a flicker. Then back to the road.

The tension she carries about her father, and about money. About a contract she signed because she didn't have a better option than to marry me for a year—all of it is gone. Her face is unguarded in a way that's only possible when she thinks no one is watching.

I shift gears and the car accelerates around a curve, smooth and controlled. The villages get smaller while the cliffs get steeper and the water gets closer.

Somewhere ahead of us, Villefranche-sur-Mer is waiting.

Because she mentioned it once.

And I don't miss details.

Chapter Twenty-Two

ARIA

Everett pulls the convertible off the road and parks near a low stone wall overlooking the harbor. The village of Villefranche-sur-Mer spills down the hillside with narrow buildings in shades of peach and gold and faded rose, their shutters painted green and blue and weathered white. Cobblestone lanes twist between them, too narrow for cars with a strip of sea below.

It looks like a painting.

It looks like my mother's paintings.

My chest tightens seeing it finally in real life.

Everett cuts the engine and we sit there for a moment in the sudden quiet. Just the sound of the breeze and the distant lap of water and my own heart stuttering like a song skipping its beat.