“I still don’t get it,” Jeanne said, tightening her in-line skates around her ankles.

Amanda rolled her eyes. “And yet it isn’t complicated, even for a waitress.”

“Ha-ha. I must be a particularly dumb waitress, then.”

Amanda pulled her wrist guards on and turned to Jeanne, not daring to stand up from the bench on her own. “OK. Which part of my extremely straightforward explanation do I need to repeat?”

“Hmm. Let’s see.” Jeanne pinched her chin. “You’ve found a partner to practice rollerblading with. Your first practice session is scheduled for tomorrow. And yet you need a prepractice session with me. Right?”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“You’re good at this. You can teach me the basics.”

“What about this ‘partner’ of yours? Can’t he teach you?”

“He’s a total beginner like me.”

Jeanne raised an eyebrow. “What’s the point of practicing with a beginner?”

“The idea is that we’re equally bad, so it won’t be too embarrassing for either of us.”

“Why do you need me, then? It’s my only day off this week, and I’m stealing two hours of it from Mat.”

Amanda hesitated. “I’m hoping you’ll teach me to fall with a modicum of grace . . . and dignity.”

“Who did you say your partner was?” Jeanne narrowed her eyes.

Amanda looked away. “Just an acquaintance. You don’t know him.”

“Does he have a name?”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, he’s in town for only a month.”

“How come you’ve never mentioned him before?”

“Because he’s not important.” Amanda held out her hand. “Now will you pull me up, please?”

Jeanne shook her head. “Stand up on your own so I can spot the mistakes.”

Amanda took a breath, lifted her body from the bench, and slowly straightened her legs. She maintained the upright posture for a few seconds, all her muscles tense and her back unnaturally stiff. But the moment she tried to move, she tripped and landed hard on her backside with her feet over her head, her arms flailing, and her mouth spitting the vilest curses in the French language.

Jeanne crouched next to her. “Does it hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Amanda rubbed her derrière. “You see my problem now?”

Jeanne smiled. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise you’ll be gliding like a swan on a lake tomorrow. Your beau might still get to witness a graceless fall or two.”

“He isn’t my beau.” Amanda glared. “He’s just an acquaintance.”

“I’m so sorry. Your nameless acquaintance might still see you in a ridiculous position.” Jeanne shrugged with an exaggerated nonchalance. “But it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t matter, right?”

With that, she pulled Amanda to her feet. The two spent the next hour skating up and down the majestic Esplanade des Invalides. Jeanne made elegant U-turns, effortlessly negotiating curbstones and barking instructions. Amanda rolled a few meters on stiff legs, took a tumble, scrambled to her feet, and tried again.

When they finally pulled off their skates and settled in at a sidewalk café, Amanda’s leg muscles and several random body parts ached. She whimpered and pressed her glass of iced tea to one sore calf and then to the other.

“You never told me why the CEO fired you,” Jeanne prompted, picking up her soda.

Amanda sighed. “Can we just say it was the pinnacle of a series of harebrained decisions he’d made since taking the reins of ENS?”

“What kind of decisions?”

“Downsizing R&D, for starters. You don’t do that when you’re in the energy business. Things evolve so fast—if you aren’t cutting edge, you die.”

“I guess you told him that?”

“Of course I did. But he just laughed me off.” Amanda pulled a face, imitating Julien Barre. “ENS, Mademoiselle Roussel, needs more marketing—not more research. Pff.”

“Was that your only difference of opinion?”

Amanda chewed her lip. “No.”

“I’m listening.”

“Two months ago Julien decided ENS should acquire one of our competitors. He announced it during a staff meeting. Said he was sure he’d get the board to OK the operation.”

“Why am I getting an inkling you didn’t think it was a good idea?”

“Because it wasn’t! We buy small, innovative start-ups. There’s no point in absorbing an established company almost as big as us. I told him he was biting off more than ENS could chew.”

“Did you tell him that in front of everyone?”

“Well, yes. It was during the staff meeting. I was hoping others would support me.”

“Did they?”

Amanda shook her head. “Not a single department head, manager, or engineer. A bunch of cowards, that’s what they are. They only care about their own careers and don’t give a shit about the future of the company.”

“Did you try to talk to Julien in private afterward? Explain your reasoning?”

“I did . . . and it didn’t go well.”

“Let me guess—you ended up insulting him?”

Amanda brought her glass to her mouth and kept it there.

Jeanne gave her foot a light kick under the table. “Come on, woman, spill the beans.”

“He wouldn’t listen.” Amanda sighed.

“So you said something outrageous to get his attention, didn’t you?”

“I may have asked if he wanted to acquire a large company to . . . compensate for the size of his private parts.”

Jeanne’s jaw dropped. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord.” Jeanne shook her head. “It’s endearing, actually.”

“What is?”

“I never thought of you as a crusader.”

Jeanne’s remark gave Amanda pause. Her, a crusader? No way. “I’m just smarter than him. I think long-term, like Nathan Lannaux used to do. That’s how he built and grew the company. It’s the only rational way.”

Jeanne smiled. “You miss him, don’t you? He was more than a boss to you. He was your mentor.”

“It’s just . . . his death was so sudden. He’d never had any health issues, and then bam—a massive heart attack—and he was gone. He was only fifty-eight.”

Jeanne patted Amanda’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Oh crap. Amanda’s eyes welled up, but she wouldn’t break down, not even in front of a friend. Jeanne was right; Nathan had been more than a boss to her. Even more than a mentor. He’d been a father figure—someone who cared about her like her dad used to do. Both men had died abruptly and in the same way. She hadn’t had the chance to say good-bye to either, and that was particularly hard to stomach.

After her dad passed, Vivienne had remarried within a year, and Amanda had been stuck for the rest of her teenage years with a conceited buffoon for a stepfather. She’d felt the absence of her dad keenly, and the wound was fresh for years—until Nathan appeared in her life.

And now, yet another clown had taken his place.

Jeanne drained her glass. “How’s your job hunt?”

“Maddening. Dead end after dead end. I suspect the bastard has blacklisted me with everyone in the industry.”

“You could apply for assistant jobs. I’m sure they’ll fall over themselves to have you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. I’m vastly overqualified for that kind of job. Besides, the thought of running into people who used to be below me is unnerving. They’d have a field day.”

“Honey, why don’t you come and work at La Bohème for a while? Just a few hours a day, until you find a ‘proper’ job?”

Amanda winced. “I’ve never waitressed before, and I don’t intend to begin now.”

“What’s wrong with waitressing?”

“Nothing. It’s just . . . ” Amanda pressed her lips together just in time to stop the words too low-class for me from escaping them. “I’d suck at it.”

Jeanne didn’t contradict that statement.

Back at her apartment, Amanda made her favorite Greek salad and carried her plate to the living room for a cozy dinner in front of the TV.

Her mission for the afternoon had been accomplished. She could now in-line skate a little and was a lot less clumsy than before. Granted, she was still far from her desired swanlike elegance, but she was no longer a bull in a china shop.

Only her “straightforward” initiative didn’t seem so straightforward anymore, in light of Jeanne’s teasing. The thing was, Amanda couldn’t deny that had she planned to go skating with any other male acquaintance, she wouldn’t have cared about her lack of grace.

Was she slipping? It had been a week since she and Kes concluded their pact. They had jogged in the André Citroën Park every morning—not too early since Kes needed some sleep after his late-night casino sessions. His furnished rental turned out to be only a ten-minute walk from Amanda’s apartment, which was rather convenient. They’d been to the swimming pool twice, and they’d seen Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown—the first movie on the Almodóvar retrospective program.

They’d also gone for drinks and even had a couple of quick dinners. But she’d made sure to keep things light and friendly, thwarting the slightest romantic overture Kes attempted. Extreme vigilance was in order, and not only because Kes couldn’t be trusted not to try to charm her. The main reason was her increasingly evident vulnerability to his charm.

She’d lost count of the times lust had stirred in the pit of her stomach merely from looking at him. It happened in various places: once in the darkened movie theater when they’d shared a tub of popcorn and their fingers had brushed accidentally, often in cafés when he’d stared at her with blatant desire—an unabashed need tinting his beautiful eyes, and always at the swimming pool when he’d sauntered out of the men’s changing room wearing only a pair of jammers that hugged his muscled ass and athletic thighs.

But whenever she wondered if she’d made a huge mistake accepting his offer of companionship, she told herself she could handle it.

The abyss between them was too big and the potential complications too undesirable for her to slip. Besides, she had her nightly fantasies to take the edge off. They were wild, infinitely satisfying, and perfectly safe.

And that was as far as she’d ever go with him.