I’m stretching my legs in the airy foyer of the Pompidou Center, fighting the temptation to check out its Dadaism exhibit. But the purpose of my being here isn’t art. It’s work.

My main work, that is.

I’m at the Pompidou Center tonight—just as I was last night and I will be tomorrow night—because its well-provisioned library is open until ten p.m. That means I can come here straight from the office and toil on my thesis for full three hours.

Tonight, I’ve been particularly inspired. Not only did I manage to track down an elusive thirteenth-century source, I also did quite a bit of writing. Oh, to hell with false modesty. I did a huge amount of writing and—wait for it—finished Part II of my thesis.

Go Mia!

As of today, exactly half of my dissertation is done, ready to be shown to my supervisor, and used for conference papers and journal articles. On top of that, I’m a whole month ahead of the deadline Professor Guyot and I had agreed on.

What can I say?

Mia Stoll rocks.

Some day she’ll be a recognized authority on the harlots of medieval Paris. No, think bigger! She’ll be the world’s biggest expert on women in medieval France.

I turn around to head back to the library and collide with someone’s broad chest.

A very familiar chest.

“Hey, Rudy,” Raphael says, putting his arms around me and planting a kiss on my mouth.

My lids fall as I savor the scent of him and the feel of his lips against mine.

Wait… what is he doing here?

I draw away. “Weren’t you supposed to be in Rio?”

“I came back two days early.” He shrugs. “The work was done so there was no point in lingering.”

“No point in lingering in Rio?” Man, he’s jaded. “Didn’t you say you wanted to explore the city?”

“I did. And I was planning to… but then…” He gives me a crooked smile. “I realized I missed my Ferrari.”

I stare at him in incredulity. “Let me get this straight. You left Rio two days early because you missed your car.”

He nods.

“Poor lovesick man.” I give his upper arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Does your Ferrari feel the same way about you?”

“She won’t say—seeing as she can’t talk—but she lit up when she saw me earlier.” He beams.

I beam back. “That’s a good sign.”

“So, how’s the study coming along?”

“I just finished part two.”

“Madame Stoll.” He takes an imaginary hat off. “That deserves a celebratory dinner.”

I just grin, feeling ridiculously proud of myself.

“Speaking of dinner, have you eaten yet?” Raphael asks. “I’m starving—came here straight from the airport.”

“I grabbed a sandwich on the way from the office.”

Hang on a sec…

Did he just say he came here straight from the airport? I thought he’d gone home first to check on his Ferrari, which “lit up” for him?

Raphael pulls a face. “A sandwich doesn’t count as dinner. How about that place on rue Rambuteau we went to last week?”

The place that serves Kobe steaks for the price of my monthly rent and swarms with movie stars, some of whom greet Raphael with a “Hi, baby, we should get together sometime.”?

No, thanks.

“You go ahead,” I say. “I’m in this crazy productive flow tonight. I want to write some more.”

“Not even George’s at the top floor of this building?”

I shake my head.

He looks around and takes a step toward the escalator. “Follow me.”

Intrigued, I do as requested.

Turns out he’s leading me to the mezzanine café.

“Unless you have serious and well-justified objections,” he says, motioning me to a table by the balustrade, “I’ll order your favorite brownie and chai latte and something more substantial for myself.”

He spins around and heads to the counter before I get a chance to utter my objections.

Honestly. Men.

When he returns with an overflowing tray and I sink my teeth into the brownie, I feel a lot less peeved at his unceremonious ways.

“Do you have your laptop?” he asks.

“Of course.” I point at my backpack on the floor. “I’m not crazy enough to leave it in a public library unattended.”

“Will you show me an interesting passage from your new chapters?”

Every time he asks me to do that, I get inexplicably excited.

So I pretend to be miffed. “Are you suggesting my thesis has passages that are boring?”

“Yes,” he says, unfazed. “If it didn’t have any, it would be a Stephen King novel.”

He does have a point.

I open my laptop and scroll through my new chapters.

Hmm…. All of it looks interesting to me…. OK, how about this one?

I turn my screen toward him and point. “Read this bit.”

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the sex worker had no legal status and wasn’t even allowed to speak for herself in court. But her right to be paid for her services was firmly established and protected in Norman laws. The influential English canonist Thomas of Chobham, who had studied in Paris in the 1180s, wrote: “It is wrong for a woman to be a prostitute, but if she is such, it is not wrong for her to receive a wage. But if she prostitutes herself for pleasure and hires out her body for this purpose, then the wage is as evil as the act itself.”

“Ha!” he says, looking up at me. “So this Thomas is basically saying it’s a mild sin if a woman has sex for money, but it’s a really nasty sin if she does it for pleasure. Right?”

“That’s not exactly what he says, but you aren’t far off the mark.”

“Well, I’m glad medieval canons are dead and buried now, at least in this part of the world.”

“I’m not so sure.” I narrow my eyes. “What do you pay an average male auditor versus an average female auditor?”

“At DCA,” he says with visible pride, “male and female auditors get equal pay for equal work.”

“OK, then how about male and female staff, all categories included?”

He runs his hand through his hair. “That wouldn’t be a fair comparison.”

“No? Why?”

“Because…” He hesitates for a second. “OK, I’m going to be blunt about this. We don’t have any women in the top management. And we don’t have many male assistants.”

I nod. “Still a long way to go even for this part of the world, huh?”

He chews his sandwich in silence.

I study his serious face. “You’re suspiciously thoughtful.”

“I’m trying to picture myself living in medieval France where all pretty young things who don’t sell their bodies are chaste.”

“And?”

“It’s terrifying.” He widens his eyes in mock despair. “As a man who’s not interested in marriage, I’d have to either grin and bear it or pay for sex.”

“Something tells me you’d go with the second option.”

He smirks. “I’d probably have loyalty cards from brothels all over the country.”

“What if you were a medieval woman and you weren’t interested in marriage?”

“I’d become a harlot,” he says without hesitation.

Of course.

“What about you?” he asks.

I don’t hesitate either. “I’d become a nun.”

“Really? I didn’t realize you shared your mother’s passion for Jesus.”

“I don’t, even though I do think he was an admirable individual.”

“Then why a nun?”

“Well, for starters, taking the vows was the best escape route for a woman who didn’t want to marry the man her parents had chosen for her—or any man at all.”

He nods. “I see.”

“But it isn’t just that. Career options that were open to a nerdy medieval woman—even wealthy ladies of the manor—were extremely limited.”

He slaps his forehead. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? A woman wasn’t supposed to be smart, right?”

“Right, unless she became a religieuse.”

I pick up the last crumbs of my brownie and then lick my fingers.

He opens his water bottle.

“A religieuse,” I continue, “could read philosophical treatises to her heart’s content. She could have opinions, and write, and engage in intellectual debates.”

“I get it, really,” Raphael says. “What I don’t get is that you’d forego sex for intellectual debates.”

“No pain, no gain,” I say.

“Your life credo?”

“Not a credo, more like a rule of thumb.”

“My life is ruled by a finger, too,” he says. “But it’s not a thumb.”

I screw up my face, expecting the worst.

True to form, he holds up his middle finger. “It’s this one.”

“Prick,” I say.

“And proud,” he says with a grin.