Sinful Promises (EBOOK)

Chapter One

My September tour finished with a whimper. I wasn’t blessed with any steamy action. I didn’t do anything exciting or new, and I certainly didn’t add any more firsts to my list. And, on top of all that, with each passing day after Roman had stood me up at the Oktoberfest beer hall, he became more and more aloof with me.
Maybe it was because I was avoiding him as much as possible. Maybe it was because Lydia was in his face all the faaaarrrking time. I mean, seriously, that woman was on a mission.
Or maybe it was because every time he asked me what was wrong, I’d repeated the same response. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
I was far from fine though. I felt like my guts had been ripped out and stomped on. Just seeing Mr. Perfect made me angry. And sad. And it left me totally messed up.
When I saw him with Lydia, them laughing together and touching each other, fury rose in me like an evil ghost, scaring the bejesus out of me over how jealous I was.
Oh, I fought it.
I fought it with clenched teeth and clamped fists and wine. Lots of wine. And way too much chocolate.
Roman and I were never meant to be together. That was a cold, hard fact I could not ignore. If something crazy happened, and totally off-the-fucking-rocker crazy like us hooking up, even if it was for just one night, it would ultimately end in excruciating heartache.
I would never do that to myself again. Never.
It wasn’t until after I’d finished the tour with Roman and I woke the next day in London, with the sun on my face and the bedsheets strangling my legs, that I reached utter clarity over how to deal with him.
It was like my dreams had forced every broken piece in my emotional puzzle together and made me whole again.
I knew what I had to do—stop pretending that I was falling for him.
It was a stupid idea anyway. Love did not exist.
It was best for Roman too. He was a good man. He deserved to find someone special—a Miss. Perfect just like him.
What was that saying? If you love someone, set them free.
I didn’t need his sisterly-love looks shackling me with stupid notions of his affection. And he didn’t need me shackling him.
I wanted to see him happy with another woman, someone without the kind of baggage I was carrying around. Someone who could live in the same country as him.
It was like an enormous anchor had been lifted from my chest, and I could breathe again.
From now on, I was going to do what I should have been doing—focusing on seeing and experiencing as much as possible with my remaining time in Europe. My to-do list was enormous, and wasting energy on my stupid emotions over Roman was monopolizing my time.
When I told Zali my decision, she seemed relieved.
She’d even listed a couple of items that I absolutely had to do before I was kicked out of Europe, and to my surprise, not all of them involved sex.
During my ten-day break, I did as many fun things as I could. I’d seen enough museums and art galleries to last me a lifetime. It was time to focus on London’s quirky historical attractions. London had been an inhabited city for over two thousand years, so it had plenty to offer.
I had coffee and an apple tea cake at an underground café that, a couple of centuries ago, was a public toilet. It sounded stupid and utterly gross. But nope. It was fascinating and tastefully done. The ancient urinals were overflowing with thriving succulents and the two-hundred-year-old wrought-iron entrance was incredible.
I bought some rooibos and vanilla tea from a tea shop that had been operating from the same location for over three hundred years, and they had the paraphernalia to prove it.
I went to a Roman temple that was rediscovered in 1954. How anything that grand could get lost in a city like London was beyond me.
I even went to prison. The Clink was a jail that operated between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. It was hard to believe that this jail was shut down eight years before the first colony had even settled in Australia.
It reminded how much I was not looking forward to returning to the country on my passport.
Maybe it was time I started thinking about where I would settle next. I had to go to Australia to start with. That was a given.
But nothing was tying me to the land Down Under after that. Not even my dying mother.
It struck me as strange that I hadn’t heard from her for two weeks. I didn’t even want to think of reasons why that was so. I had enough going on without adding her situation to my overactive brain.
* * *
The night before I left to go back on tour, I sat down with Edna and Dave and told them that I had to move out of their little rented loft soon. Edna actually had tears in her eyes. I hadn’t realized how much they’d enjoyed having me around. And it wasn’t just my money they were going to miss.
When she hugged me afterward, it was a big booby-squish one. It was kinda special. I imagined it would be the type of hug all fabulous aunties would give—something I’d never had in my life.
It truly hit home that this was real. In about three months, my time in Europe would come to a screeching halt. I had to make the most of it.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
By the time I arrived for my first day of work in October, I was itching to get going. I’d researched all the places I wanted to see on this tour, and I didn’t plan on wasting a single minute. If I stuck to plan and managed to tick off the twelve things I’d put on my list for the next twenty days, then I’d be on track to see just about everything on my list before I left Europe.
I was even proactive in booking a couple of tours in advance—that way I had no excuse not to make the most of my final days.
The demographic of my October group was like nothing I’d had before. We had twenty-eight people on the tour, and twenty-six of them were men.
Yay for me.
Not so yay for Roman.
But it was just like Roman to take our tour’s imbalance in his stride.
The two women, Paula and Carla, were from Spain. They were young, had more energy than sugar-crumbed five-year-olds, and were out and proud lesbians. It only took five minutes in their company to see just how happy the two of them were. They were on this tour to have fun, and if the first day with them was any indication, they were destined to succeed.
I wished I had even half the amount of confidence these two had. They were exciting to be around and didn’t mind being the center of attention. With twenty-seven men on the tour, including Roman, they were sure to get it.
At the end of my first-night speech at the hostel rooftop bar, the young lovers announced they were off to check out the Eiffel Tower and promptly headed toward the elevator with their arms draped across each other.
Roman offered to take the men out on the town, and after the majority of them accepted, he turned to me. “You want to change your mind and come with us, Red?”
I’d already told him what I’d booked for tonight, so his question was halfhearted at best. Yet I had a strange feeling he didn’t really want me along anyway. Maybe he was taking the guys to a titty bar or something. There were plenty to choose from around Paris.
I waved my hand as if shooing him away. “Are you kidding? You boys are trouble.” I grinned. “I’ll be just fine on my own, thanks.”
Roman did a curt nod and as he walked away, a pang of disappointment washed over me.
It was as unexpected as it was unwanted. I hated that he had that effect on me.
When we said our goodbyes in the lobby, I strode in the opposite direction to him, heading toward the meeting point for the first item on my to-do list. At the corner, I stopped at the pedestrian crossing with a rowdy bunch of people and when I turned to glance back at the hostel, Roman was still there . . . looking at me.
My heart skipped a beat at the expression on his face. It was a look of longing. A look that suggested he’d rather be with me.
A look that had butterflies dancing across my belly.
It was also a look that played a cruel joke on my heart. I’d thought my heart was clamped shut with a flashing do not disturb sign on it.
But he was still disturbing it.
Angry with myself, I spun around.
When the crossing light turned green, I merged in with the crowd and walked as fast as I could without breaking into a sprint.
My legs were a quivering mess by the time I reached Statue équestre d'Henri IV in Pont Neuf. I hadn’t moved that fast in way too long and my ragged breath proved it.
I really should take better care of my health.
Maybe I’d get more time to do stuff like that with my next career move. Whatever that was.
I couldn’t believe the scheduled meeting time for the tour was nine-thirty. Although it suited me perfectly, it was still so late. I presumed it was a clever ploy to keep the numbers down.
Within two minutes of my arrival, two couples congregated near the mounted soldier statue with me, and we quickly established that we had booked the same tour. In the space of five more minutes, our guide and six more people joined our group.
Clearly, I was wrong about the late start time deterring people.
Maybe it was only me who considered nine o’clock bedtime.
Some of the best tours were walking tours. The Ghosts, Mysteries, and Legends Night Walking Tour of Paris ticked a few boxes for me. Not only did the itinerary include fourteen significant sites, but it also promised a spine-tingling experience tour that would reveal the city’s sinister side.
I’d already seen one such sinister side of Paris in the form of Pierre – the cheating fucking bastard. It was time to replace him with another.
Our guide, Victoria, was a young Parisian local who was as passionate about history as me. Her stories were animated, and although I figured some of them were slightly embellished for our benefit, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
It was wonderful to be on the receiving end of a great tour for a change, and not have to worry about anyone else but me.
It was one of the major upsides of being single. I could do what I wanted when I wanted. Well, not exactly when I wanted. I still had a job to do after all.
Victoria took us off the beaten path I usually traveled in Paris, and as we scrambled down a set of narrow, steep stairs that were disfigured with rugged graffiti and crushed Pepsi cans, the hairs on my neck bristled. I would never have taken this route if I hadn’t been with a group of people.
At the bottom of the steps, she led us to a pillar on the Pont Neuf Bridge which had a square plaque that was written solely in French, and other than the name on the plaque and the date at the bottom being eighteenth of March 1314, I couldn’t read it.
“Does anyone know who Jacques de Molay was?”
I shot my hand up.
“Yes, Daisy?” She sniggered at me.
Shit. I’m such an idiot. I tugged my hand down and fighting the blaze of embarrassment curling up my neck, I cleared my throat. “Grand Master Jacques de Molay was the last of the Knights Templar.”
“Correct.” She turned her attention from me to the rest of the crowd.
“Molay and several other knights were charged with sodomy and blasphemy. But of course, these charges were just a ruse to have them arrested. You see, the Knights Templar had amassed a huge amount of wealth and both King Philip the Fourth and Pope Clement the Fifth, were not happy with the amount of influence the knights had. Anyone know what happened to Jacques de Molay?”
“He was burned at the stake,” I blurted.
“Correct again. Right over there, in fact.” She pointed across the river to a finger of land that jutted out into the water opposite us.
“They built a pyre over on Île aux Juifs, and at sunset, in front of a large crowd—people loved to see public executions—both Molay and Geoffroi de Charney, another Knights Templar, were burned to death.”
She turned to me. “Do you know what Molay did while he was burning, Daisy?”
“No,” I lied.
She grinned, seemingly happy that she could divulge Molay’s curse to me. “Even while the flames were burning his flesh, Molay continued to protest his innocence. He is said to have shouted a curse on the king and the pope, declaring that both men and all their descendants would die within one year and one day.”
“And did they?” One of the young women in the group asked, all wide-eyed.
“They sure did. Both died within a year of Molay’s execution. But it took a further fourteen years to kill off the king’s entire lineage.”
Ha! Victoria had taught me something—I hadn’t known that last bit about the curse.
In fact, as we walked from one historical hotspot to the next, I learned much more about this city’s dark and violent history than I’d expected to. Germany had owned up to its horrific past, and thanks to Hitler, they had such a burden in that regard.
But they made the material accessible with free museums, monuments, and detailed information of the atrocities.
The French, however, liked to pretend they were pure and that nothing like that had happened in their history.
We strolled the cobblestone streets between the Louvre and the church of Saint-Germain. And as I inhaled delicious scents of garlic and melted cheese from the nearby restaurants that were still full, Victoria told an engaging tale of the St. Bartholomew’s massacre in 1572.
There was no way to tell if she was telling the truth or not. Then again, history has always been subject to bias depending on who is doing the retelling. According to Victoria, the places she took us to were just the tip of Paris’s dark past.
By the time I flopped into bed at midnight, my body was weary, and my head was spinning with a whole world of history I hadn’t heard before.
But it was worth it. Night one of this tour and I’d already ticked off one of my to-do-list items.
Yay me. I’m off to a good start.

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