Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel Read Free Page B

guy named Scotty from Geometry called every day during Spring Break asking me when I was going to break up with Mathew. His goal in life was to take me out on a date. Me—somebody’s personal goal. I mean, how flattering is that!
    On the last day of break, Scotty showed up at my front door with a giant chocolate chip cookie with my name in swirling pink letters. Custom designed. It was so sweet! But I had to break his heart, gently.
    Sera told me, “I think I would have given a guy who actually baked for me at least a chance.”
    “You can’t go on a date with another person when you’ve got a boyfriend!”
    “But how do you know Mathew’s so perfect unless you date other people? You hardly know anybody else. Mathew’s the only guy you’ve ever been with.”
    I hate it when Sera says things like that. She can be so infuriatingly right.
    My thoughts are pulled back to the present when a bell above the door jangles and a new customer hurries inside, stopping abruptly right before he crashes over me. “ Pardon, pardon, mademoiselle !”
    The French hottie guy—okay—I have to stop thinking about him as the “hottie,” but it’s hard not to because he earns the title so naturally. The boy speaks in rapid French and the older gentleman answers in even faster French. They lose me completely. This is going to take more translation than my little dictionary is capable of.
    Then the man kneels at my side and begins looking at my foot!
    Bakery boy explains, “This is Doctor LaCroix. He is one of our regular customers and wants to examine your foot. Do you think you broke your ankle?”
    “Um, je ne sais pas ,” I say, trying to sound sophisticated even though my ankle does hurt a little bit, but it’s the truth. I really don’t know if I’ve seriously injured myself, but there’s no way I can walk to the bus now, let alone sprint.
    The tour guide will have to send a taxi for me. Wait, Robert has no idea where I am. But Sera does. She’ll tell them. Or will she? She might assume I boarded through the rear door at the last second. We’d done that before and ended up in different seats for some of the daily excursions. Okay, no problem. I can telephone. Where’s my cell?
    “My bag,” I say, groping around the floor.
    “You should lie still,” the boy says to me, concern clouding those pools of steaming chocolate. My thoughts are running away with me. I blame it on the trauma of my fall and the pain, which is clouding my thought processes.
    Doctor LaCroix tenderly touches the skin around my throbbing ankle. I sit up and wonder if it’s swelling. “ Glaçon, s’il vous plait, ” he says.
    The bakery woman brings an ice pack and a damp towel so I can wipe the sticky cream off my hands and face.
    “ Merci ,” I tell her, noticing that she has the same chocolate brown eyes as the French boy.
    Doctor LaCroix speaks again, so fast my head is spinning and my stomach makes a strange twisting sensation.
    “I’m feeling a bit sick,” I murmur, wanting to lie back somewhere, but the floor is really hard. And cold. Instantly, the boy pulls off his sweatshirt, rolls it up and tucks it under my head for a pillow. He and the doctor are still going at it a hundred miles an hour in their perfect, nasally French.
    “He says you may have sprained it,” the boy finally informs me. “You need to go to hospital and get X-rays. We will pay for it of course.”
    I shake my head weakly. “No problem. I have insurance.”
    Those candy bar eyes smile and I’m dazzled all over again. Can a simple smile be making me faint? He’s just a bakery boy. A foreigner. How much can we possibly have in common? There weren’t any cute French boys that night on the Arc de Triomphe. Not one. So where’d he come from?
    “You were injured in our store and we will take care of you.”
    “But—”
    “No more arguments.”
    “Okay. D’accord ,” I remember to add and feel a tiny moment of pleasure. The fall to the floor hasn’t