Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 61922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
I pushed Gerard out of my mind and lost myself in the Louvre. Figuratively, not literally. I knew this museum almost as well as I knew the British Museum. The Winged Victory of Samothrace on her pedestal in the Daru staircase, Venus de Milo in the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities section, Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon in the Denon Wing, and of course, the Mona Lisa.
I peppered Winnie with more information than he’d ever remember, poor chap. Did he know the contents of the Louvre were worth over thirty-five-billion pound sterling and that it would take a hundred days to see every piece of art owned by the museum? Did he know that the Louvre was more than eight hundred years old and according to some, was haunted?
“They say a mummy wanders the halls, and a woman in red roams the garden. I haven’t seen either, but I believe it. These old buildings have seen centuries worth of brutal history. We might be surrounded by ghosts at this very moment,” I commented, casting a sideways glance at Winnie.
Bloody hell, he was lovely. His cheekbones were razor sharp, his eyes glinted with greens and golds, and his lips were lush and full, painted in a pale shade of pink that offset his beautiful olive skin. I’d never spent any significant amount of time with a man who wore cosmetics. Not that he wore much. A bit of color on his lips, cheeks, and liner that made his eyes look impossibly big.
Winnie had the long limbs, graceful stride, and stylish clothing of a runway model. I didn’t know men who dressed, walked, talked, or sparkled like him. It might have been intimidating, but he had a wide-eyed aura of wonder that made him seem approachable. Someone you’d trust with secrets.
Strange sentiment, but perhaps it explained why I’d told him I was gay. That wasn’t something I shared with acquaintances. Actually, it wasn’t something I shared at all.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked, sinking onto a bench in the red room.
“Yes.”
He grinned. “Just like that? No need to think about it?”
I blushed at his teasing tone for no reason in particular. “We all have a spirit. It’s tangible—even though you can’t see it, you can feel it. It’s illogical to think we fade or disappear into nothingness. Of course, that’s not a hypothesis I can readily defend, so let’s keep that between us, shall we?”
Winnie made a zipped-lips motion. “If you could be haunted by a famous ghost, who would it be? I’ll go first…Celine Dion.”
“She’s alive and well,” I reported.
“I know. This is a preemptive haunting request.”
“Can you do that?”
“Of course,” he declared. “My game, my rules. Who’s haunting you?”
“No one, I hope.”
“Play the game, Professor,” he chided with an eye roll. “Who’s it gonna be? An Egyptian pharaoh, a sexy Roman gladiator, or—”
“Charles Darwin,” I replied automatically.
“Why?”
“He was a naturalist, a biologist, a geologist, a—”
“No. Stop. He would bore you to tears, telling you things you already know. He’d probably be better for me. I’ll take Darwin, you can have Celine.” Winnie tilted his chin toward the skylights and sighed dramatically. “The things I do for my friends.”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. He was daft, but he was thoroughly entertaining.
“You’re a gentleman through and through,” I agreed, pursing my lips. “Now let’s continue on to the—”
“No, no. I’m parched and my dogs are barking. I need an art break and an infusion of French bread or a macaron, stat.”
I glanced at the time and did a double take. Blimey! It wasn’t like me to take hours away from my work. For a moment, I couldn’t recall what I was doing at the Louvre at all, but before I could insist on returning to the hotel, Winnie flagged down a guard and asked for directions to the nearest café in the museum.
Twenty minutes later, we sat at a table for two on the balcony next to the balustrade overlooking the gardens with a proper lunch of croque monsieur and quiche lorraine. Don’t ask me what we talked about. The weather; his cat, Liza; his aversion to the color gray; and a detailed account of the sights he wanted to see around Paris, like Versailles.
He’d already done quite a bit of exploring on his own, but he had questions that supposedly only I could answer about Notre-Dame and “that fancy bridge with the pretty lampposts.”
And somehow, an hour later, I found myself strolling along the Seine, pointing out architectural wonders as if I were a native.
Winnie stopped in the middle of Pont Neuf and pointed at the sun dipping low on the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange.
“This is absolutely gorgeous,” he enthused, flashing a winning smile my way. “Thank you.”
“I—you’re welcome. I didn’t do anything, though.”
“Sure, you did. You took a whole day off to show me the city. That’s definitely something.”