were, thigh to thigh, sitting in the middle of the Botanical Gardens, watching a movie under another balmy summer night’s sky.
Raphael held his linen jacket up to her with an It’s yours if you want it expression on his face. He was so earnest. And kind. Not to mention knee-wobblingly gorgeous.
“Megarooni gorge”, as her friend Kelly would say. Kelly would’ve been slipping into that jacket and climbing onto Raphael’s lap in the blink of an eye. Kelly had confidence.
Maggie...? Not so much. Just the thought of climbing onto Raphael’s lap reduced her insides to a jittery mass of unfulfillable expectation.
So she waved off his kind gesture, mouthing, No, thank you, all the while rubbing her hands together and blowing on them as she did.
Nutter. What are you doing?
“Please,” Raphael whispered, and his French accent danced along the back of her neck as he shifted the silk lining of the coat over her shoulders. “I insist.”
“Merci.” She braved the tiniest soupçon of French as she pulled the jacket and Raphael’s spicy man-scent closer round her. She mentally thunked herself on the forehead. Why was she acting like such a dill?
As if the answer wasn’t sitting right next to her on the open-air theater’s bleacher seating, looking like a medical journal centerfold.
Raphael Bouchon, Casablanca and the glass of champagne he had insisted upon buying her while they were waiting for the film to start were all adding up to one thing: the most embarrassing exchange student reunion ever. Besides, it wasn’t like a first date, when—
Whoa!
It’s not a date. This is not a date. You are showing an obviously bereaved, gorgeous friend from high school around Sydney. That’s. It. The fact that his arrival coincided with a non-refundable ticket to the Starlight Cinema and the most romantic film ever is sheer coincidence. And practical. Waste not, want not. And that includes Raphael.
At least that was what she’d keep telling herself.
Along with the reminder that this movie ended with a friendship. Nothing more.
She looked down to her fingers when she realized she was totting up the number of short-lived boyfriends who hadn’t made the grade over the years. Expecting anything different when everyone had been held up to The Raphael Standard was hardly a surprise. Inaccessible. Unattainable. Dangerously desirable.
And here she was. Platonically sitting next to the man himself. Not flirting. Not reveling in the protective comfort of his jacket around her shoulders. Not trying to divine any hidden meaning behind the chivalrous gesture no one had ever shown her before. Nor was she sneaking the occasional sidelong glimpse of his full Gallic lips. The cornflower-blue eyes that defied nature. The slightly over-long chestnut hair that all but screamed for someone to run their fingers through it. Someone like her.
And yet...
The mischievous glint in his eyes that she remembered so vividly from high school hadn’t shown up once tonight. And even though he’d only just turned thirty, the salt and pepper look had made significant inroads into his dark brown hair. The little crinkles beside his eyes that she might have ascribed to smiling only appeared when his eyebrows drew close together and his entire visage took on a faraway look, as if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d found himself almost twenty thousand kilometers away from home.
It didn’t take a mind-reader to figure out that his relocation halfway around the world was a way to put a buffer between himself and some dark memories. This was not a man looking for a carefree year with a Down Under lover.
Not that she would’ve been on his list of possible paramours. She wasn’t anywhere close to Raphael’s league. The fact that she was sitting next to him at all was a “bloody blinder of a miracle” as her Aussie rules footie-playing brothers would say, midway through giving her a roughhouse knuckle duster.
Sigh...
Maggie feigned another quick rearrangement of her hair from one shoulder to the other, trying to divine whether Raphael was genuinely enjoying the al fresco film experience. Or cinema en plein air, as he had reminded her in his chocolate-rich voice as her rusty French returned in dribs and drabs. There hadn’t been much call for it over the years.
She swung her eyes low and to the left. Yup. Still gorgeous.
As opposed to her.
She was a poorly coordinated, fashion-challenged dork in contrast to Raphael’s effortlessly elegant appearance. Not that he’d said anything of the sort when he’d first caught sight of her at their prearranged rendezvous point. Rendezvous? Get her! Far from it. He’d even complimented her on her butterfly print vintage skirt and the “land girl” knotted top she’d dragged out of the back of her closet. Not because it was the prettiest outfit she owned, but because it was the only thing that was ironed apart from her row of fastidiously maintained uniforms.
Appearances weren’t everything. She was proof of that. Freckle-faced redheads were every bit as competent as the next person. Well...maybe not literally, seeing as the person sitting next to her was a surgeon and she was “just” a paramedic. Anyway, her hair was more fiery auburn than carrot-orange. On a good day.
When they’d first met, in the corridors of the Parisian Lycée, she’d shaken off her small-town-girl persona and found the butterfly she’d always thought had been living in her heart. Well...a nerdy butterfly. Raphael had been every bit as nerdy as she back then. Or so she’d thought. But he’d called it...academically minded. He had been the best friend of her host’s brother and she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.
Her mother had been right when she’d cheekily told her daughter to keep her eye on the “Nerd Talent.” Now, at thirty years old, Raphael was little short of movie-star-gorgeous. His tall, reedy body had filled out so that he was six-foot-something of toned man magnificence. His chestnut hair looked rakishly windswept and interesting. He looked like a costume drama hero who’d just jumped off his horse after a long ride along the clifftops in search of his heroine.
Whether his cheekbones were über-pronounced because of the weight he claimed to have lost on his travels or because his genes were plain old superior was unclear. Either way, he was completely out-of-this-world beautiful.
Even the five o’clock shadow that she thought looked ridiculous on most other blokes added a rugged edge to a man who clearly felt at ease in the most sophisticated cities in Europe. Although she would bet her last dollar he’d do just fine in the Outback too. His body confidence spoke of a man who could change a car tire with one hand and chop wood with the other.
Not that she’d been imagining either scenario. Much.
Those blue eyes of his still had those crazy long black lashes...but shadows crossed his clear azure irises more often than not...
As if feeling the heat in her gaze, Raphael looked away from the flickering screen, giving her a quick glance and a gentle smile as she accidentally swooshed her out-of-control hair against his arm. The most outlandish hair in Oz, she called it. If she wanted it curly it went straight. Straight? It went into coils. Why she didn’t just chop it all off, as her brothers regularly suggested, was beyond her.
Again she stared at the half-moons her nails had pressed into her hands. After her mum passed it had seemed as if her hair was the one thing she had left in her life that was genuinely feminine. So she’d vowed to keep it—no matter how thick and wild it became.
“So!” Raphael turned to her, with that soft, barely there smile of his that never quite made it to a full-blown grin playing upon his lips. “Did you have anything else in mind?”
Maggie threw a panicked look over her shoulder.
Like holding hands underneath the starlit sky?
Gazing adoringly into one another’s eyes in between soul-quenching kisses?
She glanced at the screen and to her horror realized the credits were running.