From Paris, With Love. Samantha Tonge

if Teddy didn’t find her own date.

      “Well?” he prompted.

      “I think we should think this through more. For example, we don’t know much about each other.”

      “We’ll go on a few dates and come up with our story.”

      “How are we going to handle the holidays? You said this would be over by Christmas. A lot of planning goes into the family holidays.”

      “We’ll have everything in order,” he told her.

      “All right,” she said on a sigh. “Conditions.” Teddy wasn’t convinced this would work, but she’d give it a try if it had the possibility of giving her a few free months from her mother’s relentless pestering.

      “What conditions?”

      “We go on these dates and we talk about the implications of this approach. We think this through.”

      “Agreed,” he said.

      Teddy believed he wasn’t really thinking it through. “I mean, with the same consideration you give to your investments, you give to this plan.”

      He took a moment to consider it. Then he nodded and said, “Will do.”

      “Here it is,” Mr. Restonson said.

      Teddy turned. The gallery owner was a few feet behind her. She’d nearly forgotten about him in light of Adam’s plan. She wondered if he’d heard them.

      Moving across the floor, Teddy met him in the middle of the room. “It’s huge,” she said when she saw him carrying a package longer than her arms. The painting had been wrapped and she couldn’t tell what the picture was, but she could see its size. No way could she take that on the train back to Princeton.

      And her mother knew it.