Read What If It's Love?: A Contemporary Romance Set in Paris (Bistro La Bohème Book 1) for Free Online

misery. But Gerhard
was in no hurry to end their relationship. And she didn’t have the guts to do
it herself. Which was when the idea of a research trip to Paris turned into a
plan to move there.
    Lena closed her laptop and waved for the check. She wanted to leave before
Rob emerged from the staff room and shattered her resolve. This newfound
freedom of hers, this unattached bliss—it was too precious to throw to
the wind. She should protect it at any cost.
    Especially when all she had to do was stay away from a handsome Frenchman
named Rob.
    * * *

Vanves was one of the Parisian
suburbs where Tsvetaeva found refuge during her long French exile. It was
residential and dull. Lena wandered through its streets, trying to imagine how
they looked in the 1920s when Tsvetaeva lived here. Those years weren’t a happy
time for the poet. She was separated from her friends and her husband,
struggling to provide for her children, and unable to publish her work. She was
stuck in French suburbia, too bourgeois to return to Bolshevik Russia and too
poor to move her family inside Paris. A fish out of water.
    It was midafternoon when Lena fetched her laptop and settled in La
Bohème to work on the translation she’d started the day before. It wasn’t a
difficult poem, with one notable exception: the word careless. In
Russian it implied a bit of recklessness, a touch of irresponsibility, and a
dash of sweet silliness. All at once. Lena hadn’t been able to find a good
French equivalent yet.
    She ordered her third café crème—desperate
times required desperate measures—opened all her thesaurus apps and dived
in.
    Rob stole a glance at Lena. She sat at her favorite table, her hair
pulled back in a loose ponytail, eyeglasses on her forehead. He rubbed his
neck. Should he finally introduce himself, now that he’d spent over a week
blathering to her about everything and nothing? The dilemma had weighed on his
mind for a couple of days now. On the one hand, he and Lena were clearly
reaching a critical point in their acquaintance when people learn each other’s
names—or go their separate ways. Actually, they were already way past
that point. Had he spent half that time with any other girl, he would’ve found
out not only her name, but also her phone number, her favorite music bands, and
probably the flavor of her lipstick.
    On the other hand, this was not a normal situation, at least not to him.
    Talking to Lena is a job, Rob reminded himself for the umpteenth
time.
    Sure, and her being cute as a button is entirely beside the point, a sardonic voice in his head retorted.
    He looked at her again. Her hand rummaged through her handbag—no
doubt for her glasses—while she squinted at the laptop screen, oblivious
to the world.
    It’s just a job to pay my tuition , Rob repeated his mantra. I can’t screw this up .
    He approached her. “I believe what you’re looking for is on your head.”
    Communication had become so easy between them. One little remark would
lead to another, and before they knew it, they would be knee-deep in an
animated discussion about polar bears or Daft Punk. This time round, they ended
up analyzing the latest twist in a TV show they both liked.
    “I must say I didn’t find that turn of events entirely plausible,” she
said.
    “I agree, but I don’t think the director’s goal was to be plausible. It
was to take everyone by surprise. Including himself.”
    “Sorry to barge in on your cozy chat, but your time’s up.” Jeanne made
big eyes at Rob and then turned to Lena. “This young man’s coffee breaks have
been stretching beyond what’s decent since you began to frequent the bistro. He’d
better get a grip before Didier tells the proprietor.”
    She held out her hand. “I’m Jeanne, by the way, Rob’s sister in
arms—or, rather, in plates. And you are?”
    “Lena. Very pleased to meet you, Jeanne.” Lena shook hands with her and
then turned to Rob. “So you would be Rob, then?”
    He tried