When I turn into the living room, I find Elise has curled up on the couch, her shoes on the hardwood floor, her legs tucked under her, and she’s flipping through a travel magazine. The bouquet of flowers Erik bought her is in a vase on the table, and I like that she tracked down a vase on her own and didn’t let the flowers wilt.

She drops the magazine on the table and gives a sympathetic smile.

I smile back, and for the first time with her, I’m honestly not sure where we stand. From the start, we’ve been carefully circumscribed, with lines neatly drawn. But my brother’s outlandish suggestion has knocked me outside those lines, and I’ve no clue how Elise feels about Erik’s wild idea or if she even feels anything about it at all.

“I can’t thank you enough for being there tonight. You were incredibly helpful.”

She frowns. “I feel terrible for what happened to him. It’s awful.”

I sigh. “Yeah, me too, and it is awful. But I didn’t want to ruin your night, even though Erik really did appreciate you being there.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” she says softly, and this is the new side to Elise I saw tonight. She has a caretaker in her, and I couldn’t have predicted that.

“And I appreciate that you were with us. I needed it too.”

She gestures to the black-and-white photographs framed on my wall, then to the couch, a table, and the few books and magazines that rest on it. “I see your home is quite fitting for you. It looks as if everything has been imported directly from Scandinavian Design.”

I laugh and sit next to her on the couch, glad her sense of humor is still intact. “I’m not sure if you know this, but being a dual citizen of Denmark and the UK, I’m legally required to buy all of my furniture from that store or from IKEA.”

“A treaty, is it?” she asks, and perhaps I do know where we stand. Where we’ve always been—firing off words and wit, trying to impress the other.

I nod solemnly. “Jointly agreed upon by all of the Scandinavian countries. We can only furnish our pads with our most famous exports.”

She points to the glass door that opens onto a view overlooking the arrondissement. “I kind of like that your place isn’t terribly Parisian, yet you have that stunning window and what looks like a balcony.”

“I can’t complain about the view.”

She doesn’t respond. Instead, she looks at her watch, and slides her feet into her shoes.

Now that—that I understand. That means she’s not taking my brother’s request seriously at all. I breathe a little easier, since that means we won’t have to have a difficult conversation, but I breathe a little harder too, since it means I’ll have to find another way to sort out the mess he’s made of the business.

But it would have been such a perfect solution. Erik keeps the company. Elise and I have three months of fun and sex, and I get to spend more than just Friday nights in her glorious company.

No.

I need to stop thoughts like those. All they’ll bring is complication to what is a nice and easy, linear situation. And that’s the way we like it.

My phone buzzes. Rather insistently. Grabbing it, I check just in case it’s some crisis from someone else.

Instead, it’s a meme from my cousin Oliver. Laughing, I show it to Elise. A gif of Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy saying WTF. “I should answer this. It’s Oliver.”

Oliver: Your brother, AKA my nutter cousin, just texted a photo of himself in bed with a pillow saying he’s marrying a dictionary. I’m assuming this is just an average night in Paris for you two tossers? Or does it have anything to do with the actual legal stuff I discussed with him?

I glance at Elise. “Best that I reassure him.”

“By all means.”

I tap out a reply.

Christian: We can go full legal eagle in the morning. Until then, all you need to know is this—uni-style bender.

Oliver: Oi. Everything makes perfect sense now.

I set the phone down, look at Elise. “Done. Didn’t want to worry the New York contingent of the family.”

She waves to the door. “Of course not, Though I should probably go now that you’ve got him back home. Unless you want to talk . . .” Her tone is gentle, inviting, and I meet her gaze. Her brown eyes are earnest, stripped of teasing.

“I didn’t intend to drag you into any of this, Elise,” I say, reaching for her hand. And then, because I don’t actually want her to go, I tug her close so she falls next to me on the couch.

“You didn’t drag me into anything. I volunteered to be a part of all of tonight. And I don’t regret it.”

I tuck a strand of her dark hair over her ear, my heart thumping a bit harder. “You don’t regret the madness you’ve been sucked into?”

She shakes her head. “Madness is my middle name.”

I take a deep breath. “I’m glad the Ellison brothers haven’t scared you away.”

“I assure you, I’m not easily spooked.”

“So . . . can we put this all behind us?” I offer, since surely that’s the only way I can manage to keep up the status quo with Elise.

“We can put it behind us.” She takes a beat, fixing me with an intense stare. “But what if I told you I didn’t think his suggestion was absurd?”

16ELISE

I should be shocked at the certainty in my bones. But I’m strangely not surprised at all that his brother’s suggestion felt like the most right and true idea I’ve heard in ages.

Because I’m mad. I’m brimming with righteous anger for his brother. For the most underhanded cards ever dealt to a man. I can’t let that woman—and I wouldn’t know her from Eve—win by preying on Erik’s love for her.

I set my hand on Christian’s thigh. “I want to help you. I want to help you and Erik.”

He drags a hand through his hair, his eyes registering surprise. He swallows and quietly asks, “You do?”

“Yes. Do you want to help your brother?”

He gives me an incredulous look. “Of course I do. But there has to be another way around it.”

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I read his nerves incorrectly. The last thing I want is to push this on him, simply because my moral compass is hugely offended by Jandy’s double cross, which poor Erik never saw coming. I know what that’s like—being blindsided by someone you thought would love you and only you forever. And this is my opportunity to save Erik from some of the pain I went through.

“Then, by all means, I’m sure you’ll find it, and you won’t have to resort to this way around.”

He grabs my hand. “I’m not saying it would be a terrible solution. That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean?” I ask evenly.

Don’t get emotional, Elise. This isn’t your battle.

Besides, this isn’t an emotional decision for me. It’s a practical one. At the tea salon, I didn’t think it was wise to accept his offer of help with the account, but now I can see we both would benefit from a revision to our arrangement. The truth is I’d love his insight on the travel industry, and I suspect he’d love to help his brother stave off this Machiavellian machination.