Cherry Sunrises~ Excerpts

Scene from Chapter 1

Chapter One

8:01 a.m. February 14, Paris, France

Nikki Rainiers rests against the wooden slats of the bench, cool against her back even through the wool of her coat. Her eyes are on fire from lack of sleep as the first distant rays of the morning bounce off the steel of the Eiffel Tower, but she can't bring herself to look away even for a moment. A tear slips down her cheek.

"Mon amour, why are you crying? It's a day for lovers, not for tears." Henry sits beside her as a few snowflakes drift from the sky. He reaches to brush them from her hair. "They stand out, like the dandruff, on dark hair. I cannot have it."

Nikki closes her eyes and tilts her chin to the sky, her phone clenched tight in her fist even though the battery died hours ago. A warm arm slips around her, tugging her to his side.

"Have you been here through the night? You look terrible."

"I came out here a couple of hours ago." She sniffs and gazes at the tower. I've watched a year of sunrises reflect off those beams, and it's still the most beautiful sight I've ever seen.

Henry clicks his tongue and wipes another tear from her cheek, his thick brows bunching above dark eyes. "Redness does not flatter any eye color, let alone those like cacao."

She snickers. Leave it to a photographer to call out a girl's flaws. Nikki curls one corner of her mouth, the words she has to say to the first friend she made when she came to Paris lodged on the tip of her tongue. Tilting her head, she studies him, the way the sunlight bathes his ebony curls and catches the strong plains of his face, his skin a rich caramel.

He nudges her. "Tell me, snow angel, what troubles you?"

"I'm going home."

Henry reels away as if she'd slapped him. "Mon Dieu, why return to nowhere when you can live in the city of your dreams?"

She rests her head on his shoulder while the email scrolls through her mind. "My grandparents were married for sixty-four years."

"Were but—oh."

Silence blankets them, broken only by the muffled sounds of traffic on Fifth Avenue. Nikki watches a girl of three or four break away from her mother to play in the snow. "Grandpa passed and before anyone could contact me, Grandma followed him." Her lip trembles and her vision clouds. "The shop is mine now."

"Bah!" he grunts. "So? Let another person take the puny shop in the middle of l'état de la pomme de terre."

"Did you call Idaho the state of the potato?"

"You cannot say it's a lie."

Shaking her head, she pulls away. "For the record, it's the potato state, not the state of a potato. Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to run my grandparents' shop. They started it together and raised me there. I love Paris, but Cherry Sunrises is where I belong."

He scowls and crosses his arms. After a moment, he relents and pats her knee. "We each have a duty to our dreams, no?"

"Oui."

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