CHAMPAGNE FIZZES ON MY tongue as I lift the flute to my lips, tilting it back. Comfortably full but not to the extent that I feel as if I'm ready to take a long nap, I set the glass down and glance at Antonio. My mother and Thyra begged off dinner a while ago, finishing their tartes tatins and heading out to explore the city together. Now it's just me. And Antonio. Along, after so long being apart.

He glances at his watch as if he has somewhere to be afterwards. My heart twists. I said he was a changed man. He's spent tonight proving it to me, and we managed to scare off the Martell goons that have been following me around. Well, he did most of the intimidating. I think I just did a lot of ineffectual shouting. What if he has some appointment after? Maybe he's not just in Paris to see me.

Right. Because he flew economy class next to your mother to come and, what? Do another drug deal?

"I had a great time tonight," I pluck up the courage to say, breaking out of my own reverie.

"So did I." Antonio toys with one of his cufflinks, and I realize he isn't impatiently waiting for the night to end. He's... nervous? "I'm glad you enjoyed it, because the night isn't over yet."

"That so?" I choke on air. "What are... we... doing?"

If I had any lingering doubts about Antonio caring for me, he stands up from his seat with a look of alarm, crossing the table to pat me on the back. "Are you okay?"

Now I finally manage to regain my composure when he reaches my side. His cologne wafts toward me, the scent of something musky mingled with sandalwood. It's nice. I cringe at my own awkwardness: my face is red, I'm sure, and I'm out of breath and sweaty. "Fine. I just... choked."

"Are you sure you're fine?" He frowns.

"Just fantastic," I say, taking a sip of water. It goes down smoothly, thank God. "What are your plans for the rest of the night?"

Antonio keeps his hand on my shoulder, warming me through my satin top. "Well, I thought we could go for a stroll by the Seine, if you're feeling up to it."

Not what I expected, but it does sound perfectly romantic. "I would love to."

"Excellent." He drops his hand from my arm, tucking both of his into his pockets, before thinking better of it and extending a hand toward me. "Then, let's be on our way."

Coquettishness is not my strong suit, and so, when I spy a roughly square shaped block in his pocket, something seizes me to ask him, "What's that?" Probably because the last time he proposed, it was with copious amounts of blood, gunfire, and a dead body in the vicinity.

Antonio glances down in the direction of my gaze. "My... phone charger?" He pulls the white square cube from his pants pocket. "I left it here after the plane ride. What did you think it was?"

Very sure that if I wasn't already blushing, I would become an even deeper shade of red, I stutter out, "Nothing."

"Alright then." He still offers me his arm. I take it, ignoring the presumptuous nature of my interrogation. Of course he didn't fly to Paris to propose to you, Christina. He's just discovered you're alive.

Love is in the air, indeed.

Lord Jesus, come quickly.

I blow out a long breath. It's just a walk by the River Seine. Nothing more, nothing less.

IT'S NOT JUST A walk.

Well, it may be a walk, but it's one of the most momentous walks of my entire life.

On the plane ride here, I asked Linda for her permission to marry Christina. When she noticed the charger in my pocket--thankfully, I stashed the ring in an inner pocket of my suit jacket--I nearly had a heart attack, however.

What if all my plans were to fall apart right now?

"Wow," Christina breathes, looking at Paris at night, the lights sparkling over the water, the star-studded outline of the Eiffel Tower. "It's so beautiful."

"Yeah." My eyes land on her for a moment, her flushed cheeks and awed expression. "It really is."

We walk hand-in-hand in silence for a few moments, the smells of cigarette smoke, baking bread, and something sweet and delicate filling the air as we stroll past other couples and families, children darting forward and backward between their parents. Barges float by on the water, some laden with tourists and their flashing cameras, others with cargo.

"Christina," I say suddenly. "Thank you for defending me to your--to Priscilla and Joanna."

She glances up at me, craning her neck. "Of course."

"You didn't have to. Lord knows I've given you no shortage reasons to believe the worst of me, but... thank you, for believing better. For believing that I could be a better man."

Christina slows to a stop. People flood around us like salmon swimming upstream, but as she takes my hand, we might as well be the only people on this cobblestone path. "Antonio, I believed you'd changed, but more than that, I believe that God is capable of changing you, and transforming you, and teaching you, just as He has done for me."

Something warm melts in my chest, spreading through my body. "Christina... I believe that, too."

She beams. The expression touches me in ways I can't articulate, and I lean down. "Do you remember the first time we kissed?"

Christina nods, her face a breath away, a heartbeat away from mine. "How could I forget? It was my first kiss."

I blink slowly. "I never knew that." I wouldn't have kissed her so suddenly, so rudely, so abruptly, if I had known that it was her first time. Certainly not in a back alleyway of Cavalli's, with the DEA hot on our tail.

She smiles, a soft, secret thing playing at the corners of her mouth. "Do you regret it?"

"Well, now that I know it was your first time, I think we should rectify that."

Tilting her head to one side, Christina raises an eyebrow, her red lips parting. "What do you mean?"

"I mean... we should have a do-over."

"Well, it is the perfect setting for a first kiss," she says, but she's not looking at the surroundings, her brown eyes fixed on me. She takes a step forward, the toes of her shoes brushing mine.

I pull her closer to me, one hand resting on her waist, and the other twining in her hair as I bend down, touching her mouth to mine. She smells like roses, tastes like fine wine and sugar, and this kiss is everything I wish our first could have been. I want to make a thousand promises to her, everything I should have said before, everything I should have done before, the man I should have been. The man I want to become. The man I will be.

I wrap my arms around her, and her fingers twine behind the nape of my neck. When we finally break apart, I hear soft violin music. A busker has set up shop a few metres away, playing the soft strains of La Vie en Rose.

Christina is flushed, toying with the strap of her watch. She glances up at me. "That was a great first kiss."

I smile. "It is the City of Love."

"It's not just that."

"No?"

"It was you. It's always been you."

We stay there, hands interlocked, looking at one another, for an interminable moment, until La Vie en Rose ends and the violinist takes up another song. I recognize the chords faintly: Amazing Grace.

It feels like a sign. I take a deep breath and drop to one knee, pulling out the ring box from my jacket. "Christina... will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

She claps a hand to her mouth and uses the other to smack me on the shoulder. I barely feel the sting of the impact. "You-!"

That wasn't exactly the reception I was hoping for. "What?"

"I thought you weren't going to propose! Who keeps a charger in their pants pocket?" She's half-laughing, tears in her eyes. "It was all a decoy?"

"I didn't put it here on purpose," I say. "I asked your mother for permission on the way here if that's what you're so worried about."

She laughs harder. I'm not sure this proposal is going any better than the first.

"It's a real ring?" Christina finally says. "This isn't some... elaborate fake proposal?"

"Christina Jane Martell, I flew to Paris, with your mother, all the way across the Atlantic, to ask you to marry me. But if it's too soon, for you, I completely understand--"

"Yes! Yes, I'll marry you."