Page 22 of Impulse Control
Dominic.
I didn’t look. I didn’t answer. But the memory hit like a train. The first time I met him, with Frankie, and how I’d questioned everything about him. He’d been too young, too dynamic—and yes, I’d admit it, too damnsexy—to be professional.
Yet, he’d been all of those thingsanda damn good attorney. The sharp wit, the casual authority, the way he made the room feel smaller and safer at the same time. And then he called hours later. Calledme. He was straight up, he was calling me and it hadnothingto do with Frankie.
He invited me to dinner. How quickly we’d gone from conversation to… everything. My head spun in ways it hadn’t in months. Ways it still did when I thought about him.
The café door opened behind me, and there he was. Dominic. Leaning casually against the frame, sunglasses already off, that grin that had haunted my memory since the first night, messy in a way that revealed his utter charm. Late twenties, sharp, devastatingly alive in a way that made me forget the world—and René—existed.
“Miss me yet?” His voice cut through the hum of espresso machines and quiet conversation, playful but deliberate,reminding me that he’d been counting the seconds until he could see me.
I swallowed. Heart tripped. Pulse spiked. Words caught somewhere between my brain and my lips. I couldn’t answer without betraying exactly how much I had.
“I see we’re playing the ignore me game,” he said, stepping closer, hands tucked casually in the pockets of his jacket. That casualness was infuriating. Commanding. Magnetic. He radiated all the ease of knowing exactly how he affected me.
“I’m… focused,” I managed finally, trying to reclaim my own tone, though my voice sounded small even to me. It took so much effort to turn my gaze back to the window and to what was going on out there. On people passing by.
“Focused?” He raised a brow, hovering just close enough to remind me how dangerous proximity could feel. “In Paris? Really? With all this,” he said, waving vaguely around, “everything?”
I swallowed again, the memory of our first date threatening to derail me entirely. Dinner, laughter, the way he had leaned in so casually, and then the sheets. My pulse had been a runaway train, my mind a tangle of disbelief and lust, and I’d had no choice but to surrender to it. No matter how far away I managed to escape, the feeling of him in my bloodstream wasalwaysthere.
Now he washere. In Paris. With his devastating grin. With his impossible timing.
“You always do this,” I said, trying to mask the tremor in my chest.
“I do what?” His smile widened, that playful tilt of his head that had made me weak the first time. Every damn time. He slid out the chair next to me and sat. His knee rested against mine. Warm, present, and “Make you notice me?”
“I—” I cut myself off. Because, yes. Yes, he did. And it was exactly the wrong time. René’s lessons about observation, restraint, professionalism… all threatened to crumble into dust at the sound of Dominic’s laugh.
“You know what I think of every time I see you?” he asked softly, leaning closer. Not playful this time. Quiet, intimate. Dangerous.
“No,” I said first, a reflex. Then, on a sigh, admitted, “I can’t seem to predict you so I stopped trying.”
“You’re not a quitter, Rach,” he murmured, then trailed a finger along the side of my hand. “Every time I see you, I think of the day I met you.”
That snagged my attention from the window. Had he just read my damn mind? “Frankie?”
“Notthatpart of meeting you. That was business,” he said with a slow smirk. “Later—the fun part. That was pleasure.” The heat in his dark chocolate brown eyes made me almost forget the bracelet on my wrist from Montmartre, the one René had taught me to see with as much as feel with.
“I shouldn’t—” I started.
“Shouldn’t what?” he said, voice low, teasing, leaving space for mischief. “Be distracted by me?”
I blinked. Yes. Exactly.Distracted.Totally. Professionally impossible, morally reckless, and emotionally thrilling all at once.
“Dominic—” I caught myself, exhaling, “—I’m working.”
“Working,” he said mock-seriously. Teasing me. Not mocking me. There was a difference. Dominic often skated that line so narrowly. “In Paris. With that face.” He tilted his head, assessing me like I was a puzzle he already knew the solution to. “You’re impossible.”
I groaned softly, part frustration, part surrender. He grinned, perfectly aware of the effect. I had no defenses left against him. None at all.
When it came to Dominic Walsh, I saw him the way I always noticed good light. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a tan that caught the afternoon sun just right, as if he’d stepped in from the beach and brought summer with him. His skin held a honey-gold warmth that made him seem immediately approachable, almost disarming, and I could never help noticing how completely it contradicted what I knew of him: the cool, scalpel-sharp intelligence, the precision he carried into his work as an attorney.
Sitting there, elbows on the table and leaning toward me, he looked nothing like a man who dismantled arguments for a living. He was dressed far more casually than usual, suited but softened by Paris in summer. The light-colored jacket hung easy on him, the tie loosened to just hang there with his shirt open at the collar said he’d stopped caring about perfect alignment somewhere between errands and espresso.
His hair was a little disheveled, clearly the result of his own hand passing through it too many times, and that imperfection made him endlessly photogenic. I kept noticing the contrast—the relaxed warmth of his presence against the disciplined lines of his mind—and thinking how rare it was to see both at once. Framed in that light, he felt less like a title or a profession and more like a moment worth capturing before it slipped away.
Yet—just as dangerously, just as perfectly—René’s voice drifted from the back of my mind in quiet reprimand. “Not that. This.”
