Page 113 of My Best French Wedding

“That seems so limiting.” He let go of her hand to gently draw his thumb along her cheekbone. “You need a reason? Kiss me because you want to. And it’s been too long. And I’ve probably been in love with you for ten years.”

She rose onto her tiptoes, holding on to his shoulders. “Probably?”

“I’m trying not to scare—”

She cut off the rest of his sentence with her lips.

The next time his conscious brain surfaced, Hildy’s dress was pushed up around her hips and he had backed her against a tree. It took Walter several breaths to remind himself that ravishing Hildy in the woods was not the plan. The first time they slept together was not going to involve bark burn.

He eased back a step, gesturing between them. “You can’t tell me there’s nothing there.” Walter reached into his pocket and pulled out a note. He’d spritzed it with his cologne for the full effect.

“What is this?” she asked warily.

“An invitation.” Walter felt as if he’d handed her his heart instead of a folded square of paper. “The ball is in your court.”

38Hildy

THE DAY OF THE PRESCOTT-SCHAFER WEDDING

TAMNIÈS, France—I’ll be waiting for you in Room 9.

That was it: the full contents of Walter’s supersecret message. Except not really, because there were a lot of invisible layers at play. This was clearly a callback to the note she’d left him all those summers ago. Apart from the room number, obviously—and the fact that it smelled like grown-up Walter instead of seventeen-year-old Hildy’s excessively sweet perfume.

She also doubted he’d answer the door in a lacy purple nightie.

Ifshe knocked.

Assuming he was really committed to the reenactment bit, Walter was basically asking her to have sex with him. Except they weren’t clueless teenagers anymore, which honestly sounded like a bonus. Hildy had no desire to relive the nerves and fumbling of her actual first time, much less their thwarted hotel hookup.

Back then, her motive for taking that step with Walter had been a muddle of affection and attraction alongside a healthy dose of wanting to get it done, so she could be an official member of the Sexually Experienced Club. The idea of sleeping with Walter affected her in a very different way now. It was grounded in her body, an immediate rush of heat at the thought of his nakedweight on top of her. Or underneath; the image varied. While that mental movie played out, it was easy to ignore the faint alarm bells ringing in the background.

Until she remembered that this wasWaltershe was fantasizing about, sweating and moving and breathing. If she did this with him, Hildy would be letting her guard all the way down. Which was a lot scarier than dropping her panties.

She slid that trepidation to one side of the scale. On the other, there was the fact that she wanted this—wantedhim—a lot.

Hildy was still contemplating during her long, scented bath, and the meticulous moisturizing that followed. (Things she would have done anyway, due to the thigh-high slit on the dress she planned to wear later, at the “real” wedding that was actually a dupe.)

Could it be that Walter was right about their past not being a toxic dumpster fire? He was good at getting to the heart of a story—at least as a reporter—which made it hard to dismiss his argument out of hand. Plus, it was appealing to think she hadn’t been the bane of his existence.

As for Walter’s role inherlife… if she looked past the hurt, Hildy could admit that some of the hard parts had been good for her. Without Walter’s judgment in the back of her mind, she wouldn’t have worked so hard to become independent. It would have been too easy to rely on her family’s money, even at the cost of compromising her vision. Hildy might not have startedLife, Styledif she wasn’t so determined to prove she could do it. And she wasfiercelyproud of that magazine—the way she imagined a mother who actually wanted to raise her child would feel about a beloved daughter.

There was a staircase in her brain, one step leading to another and then another. If she hadn’t been a blight on Walter’s prospects, and vice versa, it opened a window onto a different view of her past. Maybe waking up every day bouncing out of her skin at the thought of seeing him again wasn’t the worst mistake of her life.Did that mean she could have it back? All the spark and delight and wonder? When she tried to remember how it felt to be that young and innocent, Hildy pictured Fiona and Robbie frolicking through the meadow, all soft and fresh and full of hope.

Except turning back the clock to their teenage dream wasn’t an option for Hildy and Walter. She’d been partly right too, about the lingering marks of experience, but being older and wiser wasn’t all bad. Hildy liked this version of herself, a little sharper and more sophisticated. And she was not indifferent to the adult edition of Walter, with his confidence and a strength that went beyond the physical.

At the same time, Hildy had a hunch that underneath the good hair and tailored clothing, traces remained of their younger selves. She wasn’t sure if it was a remnant of her adolescent brain that kept drawing her back to Walter or something less immature. Either way, part of her could not stop wondering:Maybe this time?

“Hildy,” Walter said when he opened the door. It sounded more like a sigh of relief than a greeting.

He moved to the side, and she stepped past him. EightAMwas a funny time for an assignation, but since when had they done things in the normal order? There was enough light filtering through the drawn curtains for her to see the trail of rose petals leading to the bed. Music played faintly in the background.

Her throat tightened. Walter remembered. More than that, he’d made an actual effort to recreate the scene.

“When did you do all this?” Hildy tried to sound unaffected even though she was melting on the inside.

“Before the wedding.”

“So, in the middle of the night?” She had a vision of him creeping through the hotel garden plucking rose petals under cover of darkness.