We introduced ourselves. Salman said he was a businessman and real estate developer with homes in Europe and the Middle Eastern nation of Qia—where he was from—who spent the warmest parts of the year in France to escape the infernal heat.

“I just turned thirty-three, and one of my life goals is to climb the Matterhorn,” he finished.

“The Matterhorn, really?” I asked in surprise.

“I like to hike,” he said with a solemn nod.

“Impressive.” Still unsure if he was single, I made a stab at finding out without making it too obvious that I was asking. “You mentioned having a nephew—how old is he?”

“Fourteen,” Salman said. “I definitely enjoy being the fun uncle. And what do you do for a living, Cassie? I feel like I’ve told you all about myself, but I still know nothing about you.”

“I work as a reporter for a newspaper in Phoenix.”

“Really?” He raised a skeptical brow. “I sometimes forget people still do that.”

“We do,” I snapped. My defenses instinctively flared whenever I felt my profession was being criticized. Recently, I had gone on a date with a man who’d informed me that writers and journalists needed to get “real jobs.” The date had ended quickly. “Do you not read the news?” I asked.

“Mostly online,” said Salman. “It seems like print journalism is on its way out.”

“And yet, we need it now, more than ever,” I countered. “If we ceded journalism to TV, there would be no reporting, just entertainment.”

Salman smiled with a condescension that was somehow warm instead of infuriating. “I can see you feel very strongly about this.”

“Well, it’s my vocation. I don’t do it for the money. I went into journalism because I felt there were wrongs in the world that needed to be exposed, and journalists are uniquely capable of doing that.”

Salman went on smiling, and I paused, feeling flustered. It was hard to form an intelligent thought when he looked at me like that—like he wanted to come over and make out with me right in the middle of the restaurant.

“You must feel very lucky to have found steady work.” He tugged at one of his sleeves’ cuffs, with its mother-of-pearl buttons. “I understand it’s very hard to secure a job in print media, these days.”

“I do consider myself fortunate.” Recently, the staff at the newspaper had suffered through another round of layoffs. Some of my closest friends had been laid off and forced to find different jobs. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to do this forever. I’d like to. I’m good at what I do.”

“And what do you do for fun?” There was a teasing intimacy in his voice, as if we were two friends who had run into each other after a long separation. “Or do you not have fun?”

“No, I have fun sometimes,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t sleep at my desk.”

“That is exactly what someone who sleeps at their desk would say.”

“Guilty.” I raised my hands in surrender. “No, but in my free time I’ve been working on an academic book examining a twelfth-century book of Persian fairy tales. It’s called The Book of the Hundred White Doves, have you heard of it?”

“Yeah, I grew up reading that!” Salman’s eyes gleamed with surprise. “It’s like the Arabian Nights.”

“It is! Though a lot creepier, I think. I told my father that I’d been reading it and apparently, he kept a copy in his office. Isn’t that so funny? I’ve never really known this man, and yet his fingerprints are all over me.”

“Why did you never know him?” he asked. When I became quiet, he was quick to add, “We don’t have to talk about it if it upsets you.”

“It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does,” I said sadly. “How does one grieve for a person they barely knew?”

“His death must have been recent. I’m sorry for your loss,” said Salman with a sincerity that almost redeemed the cliché phrase.

I nodded, not wanting to tell him just how recent.

“My own father died unexpectedly my first year of business school. He was crossing the street and got hit by a bus, poor man. I was in London at the time and had to fly straight home for the funeral. It was the first time I had really thought about death. Up until then, it had just been an abstraction, the sort of thing that happened to other people in other families. Not mine.”

I nodded, remembering the moment of personal revelation that had occurred at my mother’s death. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. You must have been very close to your father.”

Salman shrugged. “He was flawed, like all parents. Growing up, I barely saw him—he left most of the parenting to a nursemaid, who came to feel as close to me as a parent. He seemed to think his chief role as a father was getting me ready to take over the company once he was gone.” He laughed bitterly. “I sometimes feel like I was raised more by business textbooks than by him.”

There was a quiver of frustration in his voice as he spoke of these old grievances which he still seemed to be holding onto. Something in his story resonated with my own experience of fathers, and I felt myself being moved with sympathy toward him.

“Do you ever feel like maybe new parents should be required to take a class or something, on how not to hurt their kids?”

“If there’s a class for driving, there ought to be a class for parents,” said Salman. “I think of parenting as sculpting a statue. If you don’t hold the chisel just right, you’ll end up doing some serious, perhaps irreparable damage.”

“That’s a perfect way of putting it. Absent fathers sure can make a big impression, considering how little they’re actually around.”

Outside of Aisha, it was rare for me to meet anyone who made me feel so understood, who I could open up to so quickly. I was beginning to feel very fortunate that I had accidentally taken this random seat. Perhaps there was something more than coincidence in it.

“When he died, I realized I had wasted all this energy trying to get him to love me. And for what? I took a year off and moved to a slum in Kolkata, where I served the poor in a soup kitchen. The rest of the family thought I had lost my mind.”

“What brought you back?” I asked.

“Knowing that if I stayed any longer, my heart would be utterly broken, seeing the difficulties I did, day in and day out. Selfish, I know,” he said.

“Sounds rough. I get that. Some of the articles I’ve written have been heart-breaking, and they’ve really gotten to me.”

“And what about you? What brings you to Paris?”

“A death in the family,” I said shyly.

The funeral was far from my mind, like something that had happened in another life. Imperceptibly at first, I had been drawn into the life of a stranger. I wanted to go on watching him punctuate his sentences with a stab of his fork in the air and thoughtfully stroke his sharp jawline for the rest of the night.

I wished there were more men like him in my own country—men who were perfectly confident in themselves and yet refreshingly free of any masculine posturing.

And perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps I was emboldened by his story about his own father, but over the course of the next hour—in between sips of delicious merlot and bites of the best steak I’d ever had—I told him a little about my own family and how I had been taken in by my aunt after my mother’s death. Salman’s eyes gave a pained flicker at that, as though he yearned for that kind of closeness.

He continued to press me with questions, and at some point, I realized I had been talking since roughly the invention of language. I could feel my face blushing in horror that this impeccably dressed and exquisitely handsome man was cheerfully tolerating my inane rambles.

Though the wine had befuddled my brain, a glimmer of self-awareness lingered. I was being every cliché woman in a rom-com. I hadn’t been in Paris for more than a day and already I was falling for some sensitive stranger. On the day of my dad’s funeral, no less. His ghost was undoubtedly appalled, if he even cared about me at all.

“Would you like to take a walk together?” he asked as we finished our meal.

“Here?”

“I was thinking more outside. I don’t think the wait staff would appreciate us promenading the dining room and getting in the way.”

“Where would you like to go?” I asked.

“I guess that depends on where you want to end up.” Was he flirting with me? Because it really sounded like he was flirting with me.

“I could go for a walk,” I said, turning around in my chair and beginning to stretch. “I could use the exercise.”

“Same,” he said under his breath. “And I can think of a few ways to get it.”

Yep, he was definitely flirting with me.

I giggled and threw a hand over my mouth, amazed by the brazenness of the come-on. Or had I read too much into it? My neck reddened as I realized I wouldn’t mind him leading me into one of the hidden Parisian alleys and making out with me until we were both too out of breath to carry on.

“This feels like one of those movies where a man meets a woman in some sparkling European city,” he said as we took our coats, “and they only have a few hours to spend together. You didn’t really think I was going to let you go as soon as we had finished eating, did you? We may only have this one chance.”

I wanted to speak, but my tongue seemed to be having trouble moving. He was wasting no time framing our relationship in the most romantic terms. I felt both flattered and annoyed because my heart was swelling with false hope.

If I reached over and kissed him, which I was dangerously close to doing, there was no telling how he might react. But he couldn’t push me away, surely—not the way he was talking.

He led us out onto a rain-soaked sidewalk where a man in a gray suit stood playing the saxophone and a vendor hawked fresh-roasted chestnuts.

As we passed row after row of department store windows where mannequins in classy attire watched us with envious eyes, we shared our favorite stories from The Hundred White Doves: the one about the man whose eyes could pop out of his head and become a couple of dogs that guided him in his blindness; the one about the dying woman who visited her children in a faraway town and arrived at the moment of her death; the one about the beloved pet goose, accidentally slain for a feast, that was brought back to life by the song of a pipe. Salman had read them all and could recall them with a familiarity that was astonishing.

“Growing up,” he said as we watched a green truck pass slowly in front of us, “I always loved the one about the woman who was secretly a gazelle in disguise. And she married a young merchant but never told him her secret. Do you remember?”

“I do.” The truck having passed, we walked along the crosswalk. “For one hour every day, she became a gazelle again, and when that happened, she went and hid in a back room. And she warned him never to go into that room, because on the day he did, their marriage would be over.”

“But, of course, he did,” said Salman with a pained look, as if describing a personal loss. “They always do.”

“Which you could have seen coming from the beginning of the story.” We paused under a yellow striped awning outside of a bookstore. “Any time a fairy tale warns a character not to do something, it’s a sure bet they’ll end up doing it before the end of the story.”

“No one ever seems to listen to good advice,” said Salman sadly. “Not in fairy tales or in real life.”

It was the sort of thrilling discussion I never seemed to have with men in Phoenix. Salman was one of those rare creatures, a businessman whose life wasn’t entirely governed by money. How many other real estate developers could carry on an informed conversation about twelfth-century Persian fairy tales?

As we passed a flower shop displaying lilies and narcissuses, I instinctively pressed close to him, as if afraid of losing him in the crowd and never being able to find him again. That’s how it always was in the stories: young women being offered an extraordinary chance at love and accidentally throwing it away through their own folly.

“How long have you been in Paris?” I asked him.

“Only three years, if you can believe it.”

“You seem so comfortable here. And I feel so comfortable with you. Hard to believe I haven’t known you that entire time.”

“I know.” He turned and rested his eyes on me. “Listening to us talk, you wouldn’t think that we’ve only known each other for a couple of hours.”

Was he being romantic? It was so hard to tell.

“I hope we know each other for a lot longer than that,” I said softly. Normally, I would have been embarrassed at how unsubtle I was being, and perhaps it was the wine, but I didn’t care; I wanted him to know I was interested. If he had suggested getting a room for the night, I would have been hard-pressed to say no.

We kept walking, away from the crowd. A flock of pigeons in a nearby tree furiously beat their wings against the drizzle.

“Have you had many long-term relationships?” he asked.

I laughed lightly. “Do you often ask new acquaintances that?”

“Is that all we are?” He paused with his hands in his pockets, his dark eyes probing my face. “Just acquaintances?”

“After tonight, I’d say we’re friends, at least.”

“At least.” The words seemed to bring him some comfort, for he strode briskly ahead, and I hastened to catch up. “Anyway, you never answered the question.”

“I’ve dated exactly one guy, in college. In retrospect, I think I only went out with him because he was into me, and at the time, I needed someone to love me.”

“Do you, now?”

I paused. “Do I what?”

“Need someone to love you?”

“I suppose it depends on the person.” His face was so close to mine, now, I could have stood up on my toes and kissed him. “If I happened to find the right person, then…perhaps.” I shrugged coyly and kept walking.

“How long are you in Paris for?” asked Salman, trotting up beside me.

“I have a meeting tomorrow, and then I’m scheduled to fly home.” By now, we had reached a bridge overlooking the river, and the reflected lights of the city glittered like a princess’s jewels. “Would you look at all this? I sometimes forget how beautiful the world is.”

“It doesn’t even feel real, does it?” asked Salman. We were standing shoulder to shoulder, looking out on the lamp-dazzled waters. “It’s like a dream we might be having.”

I turned toward him and asked, “Only, which of us is doing the dreaming?”

“It has to be me,” he said quietly, “because I can’t believe anyone so beautiful could exist in real life.”

Looking back, I’m not even sure which of us initiated the kiss. I just know that a second later I was pressed against the stone railing, luxuriating in the warmth of his arms wrapped around me. One hand reached for my waist while the other absently brushed the curls from my forehead.

“I’ve wanted to do this ever since we met,” he said.

“You make it sound like so long ago.” It was a weird feeling, kissing someone I had only just met. And yet…it felt right, somehow.

“Waiting for dinner can feel like an eternity when you’re hungry.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked him.

“God, yes.”

I couldn’t make out the rest of what he said. Any semblance of coherence dissolved in a steady stream of nonsense murmurs as he brushed his lips against my lips, neck, and collarbone. Salman didn’t seem to care who saw us any more than I did.

“Do you want to go somewhere private?” he asked finally.

“Do I ever.”

For a second or two, we were swinging perilously over the ledge of promise. I might have followed him anywhere at that moment—if I didn’t have to be up before dawn the next morning.

“We’ll find a room.” There was an urgency in his voice that could only have been his body talking. “I’ll make your trip worth it.”

Reluctantly, I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Salman, I can’t. Not tonight.”

He paused and withdrew, the disappointment in his eyes forming its own question.

“Not because of you,” I explained. “If it was any other night—if you want to meet tomorrow before I leave…”

“I thought your plane left tomorrow,” said Salman sadly.

I smiled. “Flights can be changed, plans can be rearranged. You think you can hold out for another day?”

“Barely,” he said with a laugh. He raised a warm hand to my cheek and kissed me once, softly and quickly, on the mouth. “I’m ruined for work tomorrow. I’m only going to be thinking about one thing.”

“Extremely same here,” I said, tugging at the collar of his jacket and rising to kiss him again. “But I promise I’ll make your wait worth it.”