Kate shot me the same look of astonishment almost everyone did when they heard I wasn’t rolling in the Everly millions.

“How’s that even possible? You got paid for EVERLYday, right?”

“I was young and stupid and had a lot of people in my ear giving me all the wrong advice,” I admitted.

“What about your parents? Where were they during that time?”

“Believe me, they tried to tame my wild ways, but back then, I didn’t listen to anyone besides Rhys, and look at where that got me.”

I glanced over at Elliott. For the first time all day he seemed to be invested in our conversation, not just recording it.

“You weren’t stupid, you were in love. We’ve all been guilty of making poor decisions in the name of love.” Kate refilled my champagne flute, and I downed the glass in one gulp before stepping back into the dressing room. I slipped out of the Balmain number and handed it to one of the personal shoppers.

“We should wrap things up. Our guide’s meeting us at Coco Chanel’s apartment in about an hour for our tour. Let me close out here,” Kate said, holding up her small pile of purchases. “Can you flag down the driver, and I’ll meet you both outside?”

I spotted our driver, who was parked on the other side of the street, and Elliott and I crossed over the Rue de Sèvres to meet him. The driver opened the door to let me inside, and Elliott jumped into the front seat, probably so he didn’t have to make awkward chitchat while we waited. A few minutes later, Kate approached juggling a handful of shopping and garment bags, putting all but one in the trunk.

“31 Rue Cambon, s’il vous plaît,” Kate told the driver as she slid into the car. “Here,” she said, passing me the garment bag. “This is for you.”

“For me?” I slowly unzipped the garment bag, revealing the incredible Balmain dress inside. “Kate! It’s too much, I can’t accept this.”

“Of course you can. Heart Restoration Project’s shaping up to be a hit, and we have you to thank for that. You and Bastien.”

“This is way too generous.”

“Generous nothing, it’s called friendship.” Kate rolled down the window. “Is that the apartment building?”

“Non, Mademoiselle, c’est le Musée de la Résistance nationale, the museum of the French Resistance,” the driver translated.

“Excusez-moi, excusez-moi, can we pull over here, s’il vous plaît?” Elliott asked the driver excitedly.

“Here?” Kate questioned and looked at her phone for the time. With urgency in her voice, she said, “Well, we don’t really have time to stop if we’re going to make our tour at Chanel.”

“What if I just make a quick pit stop and meet the two of you over there?” Elliott asked.

I turned to face Kate and said, “Actually, I’d love to go too. Is there any way to squeeze it into our day?”

Kate hesitated before responding, “I mean, I guess if you really want to visit a museum more than Coco Chanel’s apartment? You know her home’s not normally open to the public. I set the tour up as something special for us,” Kate said, a tinge of disappointment in her voice.

“We’ll be a half hour at the most, an hour, tops. I think we might be able to find some useful nuggets for the show. I promise to make it quick,” I pleaded.

She pressed her lips together into a smile. “Yes, of course, go. This is your day. I’ll try to hold off going to the exclusive Chanel boutique without you, but no promises,” she teased before turning more serious. “As much fun as this trip has been, I still need all this footage for the show, so Elliott, you stay close to Plum, and be sure to film the rest of the day. Can you both be back at the hotel by five for our spa appointment? We need to be sure to check in promptly, or else they double charge. Or I suppose I could cancel the spa too, if that’s what you really want?”

“No, I don’t want that. Don’t cancel. I’ll be there, and I promise Elliott will film every mundane moment,” I said, crossing my heart.

“Go, have fun. I’ll see you back at the hotel—five sharp. Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, arrêtez-ici, s’il vous plait,” Kate called to the driver.

The car pulled in front of the museum’s entranceway, and the driver opened the door to let me out. Elliott had already hopped out and hustled up the front steps. I followed him, hurrying to catch up, but stopped halfway. He looked over his shoulder and then, puzzled, came down four stairs to meet me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I held out my palm. “What do you say, temporary truce in the name of Château Mirabelle?”

“Deal,” he said, shaking my hand and sending a warm tingle up my arm. Our eyes met for a second before letting go. “Actually”—he stepped a bit closer, and I craned my neck up to look at him—“I’m . . . I’m surprised and dare I say impressed that you’d sacrifice your trip to Chanel to come here. Maybe I was wrong, and you do care about this thing?”

“And I am excited to hear you admit you’re wrong. I promise to cherish that nugget in the deepest recesses of my heart until the day I die. I do care about Château Mirabelle—and these people. I know my résumé. And I know the kind of person I must’ve seemed like. I almost can’t even blame you—if all I had to go on was what was shown on the screen and in the papers, I’d have a pretty poor opinion of me too.”

“Plum . . .”

“No, really. I get it. Maybe I even was that girl when I made the crack about sitting in coach when we left LA. But being here and experiencing the world this way . . . it’s like I’m seeing it, really seeing it, for the first time. I’ve probably been to more countries and cities than I can count, but did I ever get to know them? The people? What makes a place unique and special? Never. But Maubec is different. I’ve come to care about it. About Agnès and Pascal. Even crotchety Monsieur Grenouille. Is that crazy?”

He nodded and scratched at his chin. “No. Not crazy. Strangely . . . I feel the very same way. Look, I had my mind made up about you from the start, and that wasn’t fair. I see that now. So truce accepted. Now, let’s go and see what else we can uncover to solve this mystery of ours and do our best to get you back to Kate on time. Don’t want to piss off the boss.”

Though over the past few weeks, I’d grown to find Elliott’s gruff demeanor weirdly comforting, the sight of the smallest smirk that crossed his lips was a reassuring sign that we were finally starting to find some middle ground.

“Yeah, hurry your ass up, I didn’t blow off Chanel for nuthin,” I poked back and hurried up the stairs, leaving him in my wake to catch up.

Without hesitation, Elliott lifted his camera to his shoulder and tracked me as we hurried into the Resistance Museum and over to the ticket window. Grabbing a handful of brochures off the counter, I skimmed through them, landing on a pamphlet about a newer exhibit called Vines and Victory, the Role Provence Played in the Resistance. I held it up to the plexiglass information window. “This? Où? Where?”

“Ah oui, follow the signs that way and turn right. You cannot miss it,” the volunteer instructed.

“Merci,” we both called, speed walking as respectfully as we could to the exhibit.

Following her instructions down the narrow hallway into the retrospective, I was immediately drawn in by the photos, testimonials, and maps detailing the Provence region’s involvement in the French Resistance. Elliott and I wandered over to an exhibit about Camp des Milles, an internment camp in Aix-en-Provence for political dissidents, artists, intellectuals, and people to be deported to Auschwitz.

According to a quick Google search, the camp was about an hour from Maubec, so it was pretty likely Luc and Imène Adélaïse had been taken there following their arrest. We might be able to find out what happened to them if we were able to visit. We separated to cover more ground, and I jotted down as much information as I could on the scraps of paper and pamphlets I had on hand before noticing the time. We’d blown well past the one-hour mark, and it was almost five o’clock.

“Why are you still filming!? Move your ass—Kate’s going to kill me!” I cried as we scurried down the steps out of the museum. “Here,” I said, thrusting my pile of notes at him once we climbed in a taxi. “We should try to go to Camp des Milles. I think it may be where the Adélaïses were taken.”

Elliott looked impressed with my discoveries. He glanced over my notes and tucked them deep into his jacket pocket as the taxi pulled up in front of George V. We quickly hopped out, and Elliott paused to anchor his camera atop his shoulder, pointing it in my direction.

“Seriously?!” I gawked at him with the camera still on me. “I know Kate said to film everything, but we’re so late and I doubt anything significant is going to happen between us getting out of this cab and me making it by the skin of my teeth to our spa appointment.”

But Elliott, already filming, was still hot on my tail and wasn’t missing a beat. He probably just didn’t want to be caught without his camera in hand when we met up with Kate. I rushed over to the concierge desk to ask for directions to the spa, and that’s when I spotted him, my heart practically exploding in a single beat. His arms were wrapped around the tiny waist of one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.

Rhys was standing in the middle of George V.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I leaned against the concierge desk at the entranceway of George V, hoping it would help support my trembling frame. What the hell was Rhys doing in Paris, and who was the leggy redhead on his arm? God, he looked good, though. The sleeves of his tight-fitting, white button-down were rolled just past his muscular forearms, showing off a new tan—no doubt fresh from Saint-Tropez or some other exotic destination on the Côte d’Azur. He pushed his fingers through his tousled hair, revealing sun-kissed strands that glistened under the lobby’s swanky lights.

The redhead kissed him softly on the cheek, and a sweet smile swelled from Rhys’s lips. He pushed a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses off his face, and for just a moment, our eyes locked. His face split into a wide grin as if I were an old college buddy instead of his ex-girlfriend of half a lifetime. As excited as he looked to see me, I was pummeled with a sense of dread that almost knocked me off my feet. I had exactly three seconds to decide whether to turn and run, or face him and his new arm candy head-on. Too late, they were already striding over, his swagger and magnetism cutting through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. I moistened my lips, shook out my shoulders, and smoothed my hair down behind my ears.

“Plum, what are you doing here?” he offered casually, as if we were stumbling into each other at a supermarket in West Hollywood.

I blinked hard. “Rhys? Wha . . . What are you doing here?” I scanned the room, and my face grew hot as I noticed all the hotel guests who now had their phones and cameras pointed in our direction. Flashes snapped and the familiar red lights of video recording illuminated through the space, and a spell of dizziness rolled from my stomach to my head.

Rhys looked over his shoulder toward them and then back at me. “I’m here with Anya,” he answered, like I was supposed to know exactly who she was.