Mackenzie's OQ Secret Santa

Regina rolls her eyes. Not the first time she’s heard that. “Lots of things will kill you,” she reasons after blowing a plume of smoke away to the side. “And I only smoke in Paris.”

“How cliché of you,” he teases, reaching for her free hand and weaving their fingers. He’s put on gloves; it’s chilly, but her hands are bare, so she lets him cocoon one in the warmth of his. There’s a clutch of butterflies in her chest for which she mentally berates herself. She’s not a schoolgirl.

Get a grip, Mills.

She clears her throat slightly, takes another quick drag, and tells him on the exhale, “I smoked when I was studying abroad here. Started here, and quit not long after I got back to the States.  It’s not Paris without a pack of menthols.”

He snorts. “Not even Gauloises? How terribly un-French,” and she finds her mouth twitching into another smirk.

“I was twenty; give me a break.”

“Oh, alright,” he relents dramatically, his thumb rubbing along the knuckle of her index finger in lazy passes, pace easy as they make their way through the gardens. She wonders if he’s taking her anywhere particular – she hadn’t asked. He’d said dinner, she’d said yes, and then off they’d gone. Spontaneity has been serving her well so far, after all. Why give it up now? “I suppose we all had a few ill-advised ideas in our university years.”

“Mm, and what were yours?”

“Wiser than menthols,” he taunts her; there’s light enough left to see his dimples flash. But then he sucks in a lungful of cool air, breathes it out and confesses, “I chose the safe path that was expected of me, instead of the one that called to me.”

Her heart twists, squeezes like it’s wrapped in a fist as his words hit home. “Yeah, I’ve done that,” she murmurs almost to herself, adding, “I’d take the cancer sticks any day,” before drawing the cigarette to her lips for another pull.

“Touché.” His grip tightens for a moment, relaxing again. “What would you have done, then? If you’d chosen your own path.”

“I’d have stayed.” Her words are soft, but not quiet, tinged with sadness and regret, grief and heartbreak. “Here in Paris. I’d have stayed, and married a particular man, gotten a masters, a doctorate, a teaching post or maybe a curatorial position...“

“Sounds perfectly respectable,” he reasons, and that’s what’s always burned her, of course. It was a perfectly respectable life plan. To most people.

She drips with bitterness she cannot swallow even after all these years, as she replies, “And yet.”

“Not so, in the eyes of a parent?” he guesses, correctly.

“My mother,” Regina explains. “She always valued influence. Practicality. Art was… frivolous. Why would you want to teach a bunch of co-eds about some old drawings when you could walk a city block and know it’s there because you said it should be. To be honest, she wasn’t thrilled with city planning, either, but…” Wool-clad shoulders lift and fall. “It was a compromise.”

“It sounds interesting, at least. Challenging. I’d imagine most of us don’t give much thought toward what goes into making a successful city.”

It’s true. Urban planning is something the average person definitely takes for granted – but that’s fine. That’s as it ought to be. Means she’s doing her job, right, she supposes.

“You’re not wrong. And it could be worse. I don’t hate it, I’m just...”

“Burned out,” he finishes for her, and Regina nods.

“I haven’t taken a break in…” She’s not sure. Ages. Months. Not since Daddy’s funeral, she thinks, and that was last fall. More than a year. “Too long.”

“Until now.”

Her head bobs slowly, as she echoes, “Until now.”

Regina flicks ash off the end of her cigarette, her fingertips icy enough to make her consider abandoning it before it’s spent. It’s cold enough to have snowed today, can’t be above thirty, and there’s the occasional gust of wind like the one that just chapped against her cheeks and slithered between neck and scarf to coax a shiver through her. She’s glad for the knit cap on her head, for the stylish-but-warm boots keeping her toes toasty, for the warmth of his hand enveloping her own. For the way he steps just a bit closer, his arm pressing against hers now as they walk.

She probably should have brought something heavier than the peacoat. But she’ll manage; it’s not that cold. And the company is good. The conversation, too.

In that vein, she continues, “What about you? What did you do, before this?”

“I was a lawyer.”

Well, that’s not at all what she would have guessed. Regina gives him a look of mild incredulity.

“A lawyer?”

“Yes.” Those dimples are taunting her again.

“So you went to university,” she clarifies, and he Mmhmms, “and then law school...” His grin widens as he confirms, Yes. “And then said screw it all, I’m moving to Paris to draw tourists in museums.”

His smile dims a shade at that, head shaking as he frowns slightly and corrects, “Moving to Paris to draw beautiful things. And paint, and…” He trails off, licking his lips (she wants to do that, she thinks, and then she tells herself to rein in her hormones and takes another drag on her cigarette). “I was a criminal defense attorney. Like my father before him, and his before that. It was simply what was done as a Loc--” He stops suddenly, clears his throat, then continues pointedly, “In my family.”

Regina grins, warns, “Careful,” before she takes a last drag on her cigarette and stubs it out.

“I caught it,” he assures, eyes dancing with humor as he lifts their joined hands to his lips for a brief kiss. He lets them drop again, lets hers go completely so she can fish her own gloves from her purse as he adds, “Our anonymity is safe,” and then continues with his tale. “My mum passed when I was young, Dad right before I took my bar exams.” She murmurs a sympathetic apology, reaching for his hand again, then, both for the return of his warmth and the hope of any comfort in hers. “It was a long while ago, now.”

“Still hurts,” she says softly, and he looks at her, really looks at her for a moment, and sees without words what she’s saying: Me, too. Mine are gone, too. He nods in acknowledgement, gives her a sad little smile, one that she returns.

“It does,” he agrees, the moment holding for another breath, and then breaking as he inhales and continues, “Anyway, I had a job all lined up at my father’s firm. And I took it, of course. Continued the family legacy, and all that. So for the next few years, I spent all day in the ugly things. Murder, and extortion, and the like. It was… soul-crushing. Focusing every day on the worst things that people can do to each other. I needed a break, and so I took one. Came here, for that week. After that, it never felt right - sitting at a desk, or working late nights in a conference room, standing in a courtroom and trying to mask the ugliness of a person so that the world wouldn’t see. I hated it.”

“So you left.”

“I did.”

Her shoulder brushes his, not entirely accidentally, and he bumps back against her almost immediately, lips pulling into a smirk. So much for being subtle, she thinks.

But she might as well go with it now, so she moves a half-step closer, until her arm rubs against his with every step, biting the bottom edge of a smile for a moment before she says, “To show the world beautiful things. Like dissatisfied city planners with hat hair.”

He laughs at her, his smile wide (he has nice teeth, she thinks, and then she wonders who thinks that about someone? Her, apparently...).

“Exactly,” he chuckles, leaning in toward her to add, “Although I find your hair quite fetching.”

“It looks better when it hasn’t been snowed on,” she insists, another gust of wind whipping at them and making her reach for the lapels of her coat, tipping them up around her scarf, tugging it closed more tightly at the neck.

He frowns, then, declaring, “You’re cold.”

“I’m fine,” she dismisses. “It’s just the wind.”

Still, he’s undeterred, using their joined hands to draw her in until she’s pressed against his side, then wrapping an arm around her shoulders. It frees her hands to tuck into her pockets - her cozy, body-warmed, fleece-lined pockets. Which means that she is, yes, considerably warmer, especially when his hand rubs up and down her shoulder a few times before settling in place.

She smiles sheepishly at him, murmurs, “Thanks,” and breathes in that warm pine scent of him now that she’s close enough to really get a good whiff again. God, he smells good. She wants to bury her nose in his neck and drown in it. And maybe taste that spot just beneath his ear while she’s at it.

“A lady should never be uncomfortable,” he tells her, like it’s gospel, like it’s bare fact.

They fit well – he’s taller than she is, especially in her flat boots, but not so much taller that she feels like a shrimp. She slots in just right against his side, and they fall into step together, lapsing into meaningless conversation as they walk the last several yards of the Tuileries.

They talk about dinner – not about where, but what. Or rather, what sounds good, in general. He dislikes duck, she discovers, something she considers terribly unfortunate for a man living in a city where he can find such exquisite duck confit; he can’t believe she turns her nose up at strawberries, of all things. They agree on espresso – it should be hot and strong and available from first light to the toll of midnight. And chocolate, although he prefers white, and she dark.

By the time they emerge on la Place de la Concorde, the light is gone, only streetlights and the faint idea of stars above to illuminate their way. She looks up at him in the lamplight as they wait for a traffic light to change, and he glances down to meet her gaze, smiling blithely.

His arm tightens slightly along her back, pulls her in a little closer, and she doesn’t miss the way he breathes in, wets his lips.

Oh.

Oh, yes.

He’s going to kiss her.

And more importantly, she’s going to let him.

Regina presses her lips together for a moment, hopes they’re not too dry, then darts her tongue out to dampen them. He watches, his mouth twitching slightly, and the air grows thick. Charged. Her breath deepens.

Those blue eyes flick away from hers for a moment, and then he rasps, “Light’s changed,” and is stepping toward the crosswalk, Regina stumbling along with him, guided by his arm at her back.

What?

She’d been sure he was about to kiss her, had been positive of it. The moment had been right there, and now they’re scuttling across several lanes of traffic and she is very confused. He wants to kiss her, she’s fairly certain of that. Has suspected for a while – not a hard thing to speculate of a man who spends half an hour drawing you and then God knows how long weaving through tourists and talking about art with you, walking through a twilight park, warming your hands, warming your shoulders.

Is it the cigarette? she wonders, swallowing anxiously. Was Mother right? She tastes like an ashtray, and it’s a turnoff, no matter what he’d said?

Or maybe he just thinks she doesn’t want to be kissed. She knows she can be a bit… frosty. Can sometimes go too far in the sass, and leave people – men – people – thinking she’s not interested.

But he must know she’s interested. She’s spent the whole afternoon with him, is letting him take her to dinner. She’s been flirting in a manner she is fairly certain qualifies as “shamelessly.”

Maybe he just needs a little push. A little permission. It’s not her favorite thing – a hesitant man – and he hasn’t struck her as lacking an assertive streak up until now, but maybe he’s just being overly polite. Considerate. Chivalrous even.

So, as they hit the Champs-Élysées, she steels her own guts, and cranks up the flirting, making her position perfectly clear with, “You can, you know. Kiss me. I don’t mind.”

One side of his mouth curves up for a moment, and then he frowns pleasantly and dismisses, “Nah,” and adds, “I'm waiting. After dinner, perhaps.”

Her brow furrows.

“You’re waiting?”

“Yes.”

Well, that’s… silly.

“May I ask why?”

“Certainly.” His arm falls from her shoulder, grazes against her ass as it rounds back between them and urges her hand from her pocket, grasping it in his again and then letting clasped fingers swinging between them like a pendulum. “You see, once I’ve kissed you, then I’ve kissed you.”

“I...see?”

“Mm.” That pendulum swings up and up, bringing leather-clad fingers to his lips for a kiss much more chaste than the kind she was hoping they’d be sharing right about now. “And while I’m quite certain that I’ll want to keep kissing you, that first kiss will be over. And to be honest, I rather enjoy the anticipation. So for now, I’m quite content to walk with you, and eat with you, and to want very, very badly to kiss you. In fact, I’m going to spend all of dinner wanting to kiss you. And, if I’m lucky, dessert. And then, m’amourette, then I will kiss you, possibly goodnight.”

Oh. Well. Well, that’s… Her cheeks are flushed, and not just from the chill, her palms warm inside her soft-lined gloves. He’s certainly a smooth talker, her charming stranger.

That second-to-last word sticks with her, though, has her brow lifting in question and challenge: “Possibly?”

She catches sight of his dimples in the glow of streetlight as they pass beneath it.

“You did catch the part about how certain I am I’ll want more than one kiss, yes?” he teases, and then she’s smiling, too.

“I did.”

“So that ‘possibly’ depends on you, milady,” he explains, drawing their joined hands behind his back, until she’s looped around his waist, and then he encircles her shoulder in solid warmth again. “And just how many kisses you let me steal from you.”

“Ah.” A lot, she thinks. She’s going to let him steal a lot of them. But in the meantime, “Well, let’s worry about dinner first.”

His chuckle is as warm as his body against hers, makes her warm, too, right through the middle and lower down.

And then he tells her, “Of course.”

§§§

They pick a place on the Champs-Élysée, and she wonders at such a stereotypically touristy locale, instead of some delightful local hole-in-the-wall, but he tells her it’s better for people-watching, and she can’t very well deny that.

The street is festooned in twinkle lights, festive and bustling despite the slickness of the footstep-melted snow coating the sidewalk. She wishes for a moment that it was summer, that they could find somewhere to sit outside and watch the people pass, enjoy the weather. But it’s too cold for that now, so they seek out a place on the street with a good menu, and decent prices, and he requests a seat near the window. It’s as close to outdoors as they can manage, but they needn’t have bothered. They could be tucked away in a quiet corner booth in the back for all the attention they pay to anything outside of their own table.

They order wine - she orders a glass, he suggests a bottle to share instead, and she figures why not? She’s on vacation, and she has a feeling, a very strong feeling, that she’s going to do something ill-advised but very enjoyable before the night is out. No point in staying sensibly sober when she has no desire to be sensible in the first place. And it’s good wine.

Her fingers toy with the smooth glass of the stem, twirling it this way and that as they get into a discussion about what a shame it is she’s not here long enough for them to take in the Musée d’Orsay together, what a shame she’s visiting Christmas week, and they both dance around what he must know as well as she does: the museums are only closed on Christmas Day; they could go in the morning. But dinner is one thing, making plans “for the morning” implies quite another, or at the very least requires commitment to something past the next hour or two, so she doesn’t suggest it, and neither does he.

Somewhere in the midst of a conversation about the museum’s lesser-appreciated works (Degas, at the moment), and whether either of them has actually consumed absinthe (they have, both), his hand makes its way across the table, his fingertip coasting along the edge of hers. It’s a miniscule touch, a tiny thing, but she feels it immensely, the slow, teasing tickle. It’s enough to coax her hand open to the tabletop, his fingers following the blooming descent before linking loosely with hers. They’re restless, or rather, simply not still, toying with her fingertips, stroking with deceptive nonchalance between her knuckles while they talk. But it’s not accidental, she doesn’t think it can be. He likes the anticipation, after all, and as light as it is, the touch is stirring, arousing.

Distracting.

She’s not sure how she manages to follow the conversation when he swirls a figure-eight across her palm with his index finger, telling her something about the delectable use of light in Starry Night Over the Rhone.

“I’ve always preferred it to The Starry Night,” she admits. “But maybe that’s because you see that one so much more often.”

“Mm,” he agrees into his wine, anointing her palm with a cross. “Familiarity breeds boredom.”

Ain’t that the truth, she thinks.

So much in her life has become familiar, routine, and while it’s a comfort sometimes, it’s also… stagnant. Which is why she’s here. In Paris. Shaking up the snow globe, as it were. She hadn’t planned for her Parisian reset to involve a gorgeous man, to involve even the possibility of taking a lover, but the idea is sounding more and more appealing the longer she sits here, endlessly stimulated – both intellectually and otherwise.

“In life, as in art,” she murmurs, and he lets out a single, soft chuckle. A sort of agreeable hmph, and traces the fleshy part of her palm, just beneath her thumb.

“And are you bored, milady?” he questions, tilting his head slightly, blue eyes narrowing.

Regina smiles, and answers back, “Not just now.”

§§§

Regina means to sip slowly, but somehow she’s downed most of her first glass of wine by the time the waiter comes to take their dinner orders. She orders duck, just to spite him (because she has a weakness for duck confit), and stops him from ordering mussels with a grimacing confession that she’s allergic. He switches to lamb, and then they’re left alone. Just them, and the wine, and the sexual tension.

The conversation shifts to allergies, to the sadness of living in New England and being unable to partake of crab cakes, or lobster rolls, or clam chowder. He’s allergic to bees, and welts up like a golf-ball any time he falls prey to a mosquito. She suffers with ragweed and mold.

And all the while, his fingers trace the map of her hand, her own twitching beneath him from time to time, until finally dragging themselves to lazy life, her thumb strolling the length of his, short nails scraping gently over his wrist as it passes. She manages to draw a shiver out of him with that last one, and grins, oddly triumphant, as she watches the little ripple trace through him.

He’s unashamed, unapologetic, his expression softening as he studies her face for a moment, before murmuring, “You are so beautiful. Truly. I could look at you for days.”

It would be cheesy if it wasn’t so sincere; as it is, it’s just… hot. Flattering. Bolstering.

Her first thought is a terribly inappropriate, Would you like to?, but she doesn’t lend voice to it for obvious reasons. Instead she draws her hand back almost reluctantly, and offers a quiet, “Thank you,” as she reaches for the wine. “If you weren’t so attractive, that might be a little creepy,” she adds, unable to tamp down the urge to tease.

He flashes her those dimples again, and says, “Then I should thank my father – God rest his soul – for my good looks.”

Her brows lift.

“But not, clearly, your modesty.”

He laughs softly. “I’ve not had much cause for that in a long while, no, I suppose you’re right. Besides, I rather enjoy flirting with you, and while subtlety has its place in flirtation, I find candor and boldness to be much more pleasant in the end.”

“Well, then I’m surprised you didn’t say you wanted to peruse L’Origine du Monde,” she shoots back, pleased at the rumbling laugh that the comment draws immediately. His dimples deepen, head shaking back and forth as he grins.

“You really are delightful,” he tells her. “Bold, and audacious. Quite a woman, milady.”

Blood flushes pleasantly into her cheeks, and she thanks heaven for dim lighting so he cannot see how much the compliment thrills her. She lifts her glass in a little toast, and volleys, “And you’ve only known me for an afternoon.”

“Best afternoon I’ve had all year,” he swears to her, and it’s a surprise to realize that she agrees. After months of monotony, she feels finally like she’s come alive. A part of her long-dormant, long-private – the quiet-Saturday-afternoons-at-the-MFA part of her – has awoken and stretched cramped limbs, muscles vibrating with the need to run full-tilt toward a rare equal. She has the distinct feeling that when she leaves this man, that precious, yearning part of her will want to curl back up and lie in wait again, so she feels the urge to make this as memorable as possible.

She wants to walk into the European Paintings wing a month from now, a year, or more, wants to stand in front of Renoir’s Dance at Bougival and imagine that bearded man is this one. Wants to remember the taste of his kiss, and the pressure of his hands, the soft rasp of his beard against her neck.

She wants to take him to bed. It’s reckless and foolish and not at all something she does – sleeping with men whose names she doesn’t know, whose names she flat-out refuses to know; men who will not be in her life more than a few days, if even that; men who openly pursue her and God knows who else – but tonight she wants to be a lover in Paris.

Nothing more, nothing less.

A woman, enamoured with a man, who is enamoured with her.

She wants to spread herself out like the Odalisque, and let him bask in her just the way she intends to bask in him.

She is done saying no. For the rest of the night, her answer is yes.

Decision made.

Of course, as much as they both appreciate bluntness, there’s something to be said for playing it coy. For making him work for it, even though he has already won. For flirtation.

So Regina says nothing about her newly arrived decision, simply tells him, “After dinner, let’s get dessert somewhere else. Walk a little more. Make the afternoon into an evening.”

He’d had his wine halfway to his lips again, hesitates for just a moment, long enough for her to wonder if he’s realized her intentions after all, but the smile he gives her is more pleased than lustful.

“I think that’s a fine plan, m’amourette,” he says, before lifting his wine the rest of the way.

His little fling, she translates to herself.