Page 1 of Tender Offer (Chance at Love #3)

Madison

Fifteen Years Ago

C ould this day get any worse?

The answer is a group of tourists stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to take pictures of a window display.

My silver sandals dig into my heels as I skid in a last-minute attempt not to pummel a grandmother in awe of a mannequin. I narrowly dodge the older woman with gunmetal curls and a disposable camera pressed to her cheek, but I collide with a bony shoulder.

“ Désolé !” I shout to the tall brunette. Then I suck in a labored breath and speed walk into a swarm of people on Boulevard Haussmann who are moving at a snail’s pace.

Of all the days.

The sun reaches over the buildings lining the street to wet my brow. I’m a mess of sweat and frustration.

A wrong-way ride on the Paris Métro put me four extra stops away from the Galeries Lafayette and a fashion show starting in three minutes. The Friday event speaks to my love languages: couture and free.

I have $600 of available credit, and it has to last the next two months.

My part-time internship won’t pay much, but it will give me some wiggle room to tour the area and afford the occasional meal I don’t whip up in my tiny apartment kitchen.

A croissant is a treat I can barely afford, not without worrying if it will blow my budget, but today it was a must for the metro ride.

I had to make it here on time after skipping lunch.

Me and my hunger are arriving fashionably late.

A gap between a man draped in an untailored suit and a woman in a sundress appears in time for me to push through one of the many glass doors and into the historic department store. I stumble inside and gasp.

Wow.

The Galeries Lafayette could fit every Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade attendee under its glass dome.

Visiting New York City is still on my wish list, but I imagine nothing compares to a building this size.

It’s the love child of the Colosseum and the Marigny Opera House.

I’ve never seen anything like it. The grandeur. The luxury.

With a tug to the strap of my powder-blue satchel, I step further into the temple dedicated to style and high-end living.

You need to move if you want to make it.

A swarm of shoppers pours out of elevators—surely it’s a fire hazard. The sweeping staircase is another no-go unless I hike up my skirt and sprint to the fourth floor. How does Sarah Jessica Parker skip across Manhattan in Manolos and still look cute?

I’m in a Carrie outfit now, one of many affordable knock-offs I curated for this trip.

Thrift store finds and visits to Wet Seal and Charlotte Russe in Baton Rouge on weekends I could borrow the car went a long way.

My blush tulle skirt channels Sex and the City for the affordable price of $9.

99. What few designer pieces I do have are from clients who wanted to toss them in the trash. The trash .

One of these days, I’ll have money to spend on labels and not live a life of hand-me-downs.

Living in my sister Dominique’s shadow was stuffy enough without having to wear the bland clothes she called “fashion.” You’d be surprised at how many drugstore shelves you’d have to stock to afford Revlon and slip dresses.

I did it for years, and I’m not going back. For now, I’ll fake it until I make it.

Mama taught me how to use a needle and thread at an early age, and that’s come in handy as a stylist. I’ve worked hard over these last two years to make a name for myself. It’s why events like this fashion show are important.

If only I wasn’t so late.

I peek at my watch again and sigh. What’s the point?

Rushing to one of the busiest shopping destinations on a Friday afternoon wasn’t smart. But I didn’t put on these Payless shoes for nothing.

Window shopping and sampling perfume that costs more than a semester of college threads the hours together.

Three pass in a blur, lifting the sun from the center of the all-seeing dome through a kaleidoscope of colors.

I still have a few hours until it’s too dark to read street signs.

My glasses are back in my apartment, and I forgot to pack my contacts.

I leave the Galeries Lafayette as I came: tired, a bit blind, and clinging to the hope that something will work out.

It’s too late to join Tammi, my roommate for this trip, and the other study abroad students. A tour of Paris on a multicolored double-decker bus is not my idea of a fun Friday night, but it was a gamble to skip it for a twenty-minute fashion show. Clearly, the risk didn’t pay off.

The walk back to my apartment’s stocked refrigerator will sacrifice my feet. These heels were comfortable hours ago, but now they’re running on fumes and half a prayer. That leaves spending money on a dinner that will cost a week’s worth of meals.

Paris’s ninth arrondissement is a medley of buildings spanning long, angled streets.

It has a mix of department stores, museums, and banks.

Not to mention Palais Garnier, the historic opera house.

Nothing that regal was ever in the cards or my family’s bank account growing up.

Still, I remember reading about it in The Phantom of the Opera .

I lived two hours from New Orleans and dreamed of attending a fancy opera in a custom gown with glittering diamonds coating my neck.

That bubble burst, and so will the blisters prickling the bottoms of my feet if I don’t find a place to sit soon.

Getting lost in the district’s boulevards is surprisingly easy when you don’t know where to go. My BlackBerry is laughing at me from where it lies next to my glasses on my nightstand. It’s turned off to avoid roaming and data charges and is only for emergencies.

Heather once racked up a $500 bill during a spur-of-the-moment trip to Lisbon over spring break. Never once did she bat an eye about forgetting to sign up for an international plan.

Unlike me, my college roommate can afford it, as well as the summer yacht trip around the Mediterranean she’s currently enjoying.

Her father is too occupied with the demands of a Hollywood exec to care about his daughter ditching her year abroad to run off with a six-two model with perfect cheekbones and three middle names.

Heather would still have more than half a year in France if she didn’t blow off the trip, but her lack of interest is my ticket to calling Paris home until next spring.

We met during our freshman year at Bodie University.

I was in a scramble to revamp my closet, which needed a resurrection, and she complained about her father subjecting her to a dorm.

What style I did have on display caught her eye.

One compliment turned into Heather telling a friend, who told a friend.

Before I knew it, I had a growing clientele of Bodie trust fund kids, who paid monthly styling fees for me to plan their outfits. It covers what’s left of my tuition but not this study abroad trip in Paris—let alone a $500 cell phone oops for trying to find a place to eat.

My $35-a-month prepaid cell plan is nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

I keep it for clients and to call home, not that the latter is quick to answer.

My parents refuse to part ways with the landline we’ve had since I was a kid.

Their promise to be more available while I’m in France means Dominique is at the library twice a week to check her email.

Daddy is always on the boat, and Mama is “too old to be learning that technology.”

I stop in front of a restaurant on Rue Chaptal. The menu in the window does not suit my appetite or wallet. Mawmaw, rest her soul, is turning in her grave at the thought of me entertaining two pieces of lettuce as a meal.

“ Moun ka manjé ca ?” she’d say about those scraps passed off as a gourmet meal. My grandmother passed away six years ago, when I was sixteen, but she always kept us fed on rice dressing with leftovers. I miss her, but Mawmaw will have to understand tonight.

The farts in my stomach passed the point of embarrassment. Never mind that my toes are seconds from scraping the concrete like in a Flintstones episode. With all the miles I put on these cheap shoes, I need a break.

There has to be something still open that doesn’t cost a small fortune and comes with a piece of bread.

Frog legs are acceptable. They’re a delicacy back home, next to gator and boudin.

I’m losing hope with every restaurant I pass, but I did not come all this way to give up. On this district or on Paris.

The swap for me to take Heather’s place wasn’t easy. It was a race for me to get a passport and the proper visa, but I did it. Heather and I both pursuing business degrees meant I could keep the courses she selected in play. The school agreed, and off I went.

Mama had a fit about me leaving the country, but she didn’t raise no fool. The host university here still calls me Heather, but I’ll answer to Coco Chanel if necessary.

I’m here. Beyond the edges of the small city I’ve called home since leaving for college two years ago.

I love my family, but I want more than the life waiting for me back in Breaux Bridge.

None of them have ventured beyond the city limits in years, outside of the occasional visits to Lafayette and New Orleans.

I was always different, reaching beyond what was in front of me to touch possibilities. I want more—the glitz, the glamour, and everything that comes with it.

Coming to Paris is a new chapter in a story I’ve yet to write.

A break in the buildings appears. I peek into an open walkway with trees sheltering an aged path from the sun and see a modest cream property with sage shutters. All hope dissolves. It’s not a quaint restaurant among rustic, wrought-iron buildings in the city’s bustle. It’s…a museum?

My overworked heels crunch against gravel on my way to the glass-paned double doors.

The museum, which is focused on romantic life, houses antiques and paintings.

I can’t douse any of them in Tabasco sauce and eat them.

Love is nice, but I want food. Still, I step inside in search of a place to sit and rest my feet.

“Like what you see?” a voice asks in French, breaking through the silence. It’s low, a touch above a whisper, and very close.

My eyes lift from the portraits of women in gilded frames to the source, which is blessed with a perfect pair of lips.

The bottom one has some weight to it and rests above a small patch of dark hair on his jaw.

Warm honey skin peeks out from a crisp white shirt.

A sequence of buttons draws my eyes up to a trimmed mustache, then to the sharp blade of a nose, and finally to cognac-colored eyes that are fixed on me.

The yellow parlor room is now two sizes too small, thanks to the presence of this runway model in the wild knocking the breath from my lungs. If he doesn’t pout in front of a camera for a living, he should find an agent. His stare alone is stifling.

A brow raises in wait. I haven’t answered him, and I get the sense he isn’t in the habit of repeating himself.

My “No” lacks any outward sign that the man next to me, in a navy suit tailored to his form, has zero effect on me. He’s not close enough to breach any personal boundaries but is thickening the air with his spiced cologne.

I steal another glance, this time at his near-black hair, which is thick and perfectly styled. There’s a curl at the edges, teasing the texture of its natural form.

“Do you like what you see?” I say in a tone that would make Miranda Priestly proud. My breath steadies to keep my pulse from pounding like shoes in a dryer.

No one except statues should have erect nipples in an art museum, but thank God for padded bras.

Two dimples peek out at his nod. “Very much so,” he says.

I redirect my attention to the antique table in front of me. Brass hardware. Tapered legs. It’s a beautiful piece, like some I’ve seen in the antique mall on Bridge Street back home. Vintage furnishings don’t turn me on. Gorgeous men do, and that’s not the point of this trip.

“Did you need something?” Steel anchors my question, catching him off guard.

He considers me under a fan of black lashes. My sandals have three-inch heels but still put me half a foot below his gaze. Seconds pass, our eyes locked in a standoff.

Remember Lauren Conrad .

When life presents you with a choice between a fashion internship in Paris or renting a house with your raggedy, unbrushed ex, choose Paris every time.

My ex was far from a scrub, but I refuse to allow anyone or anything to distract me while I’m here. Present company included.

Men like the one next to me, who’s silently calculating my measurements, are nothing new. The gold cuff links, the fitted suit, and a desire for a plaything on his arm—someone seen and not heard—come with the tax bracket.

I’m from the bayou, but I wasn’t born yesterday.

“Have dinner with me.” The fire in his eyes casts an amber glow as it sweeps over my collarbone and up to my lips. “Tonight.”

Arrogant .

“I don’t dine with strangers,” I say, matter-of-fact.

The edge of a smile curls the corner of his mouth. “We should fix that.” He extends a hand that comes with an expensive watch attached. “Preston.”

Preston can’t be more than a few years older than me, but he has an aura of importance and responsibility. There’s a hunger in his stare, a hunger that has to do with more than just food.

I am no one’s conquest, but I can do dinner. My credit card will send a handwritten thank-you letter.

I place my hand in his, reveling in the softness of his touch and the circle his thumb rubs across my skin.

Preston is the kind of man to make you sing ’90s love songs in a dark corner after he breaks your heart, a heart he promised to cherish.

He’s gorgeous, obviously loaded, and maintains the most unnerving eye contact.

My promise to not lose sight of why I’m in Paris takes new form. I look him in the eyes and lie to his face.

“Heather.”