Gabe shrugged. “Guillaume always manages to get himself out of things,” he said.
I groaned. Sometimes Gabe was infuriating. Every time I’d been called by my office to respond to a Guillaume emergency, Gabe had acted like it was no big deal. One of these days, he was going to be wrong. I wished he’d stop acting like his charmed brother had nine lives—although I had to admit that so far, that had proven to be the case after all.
In the ten months I’d been back in Paris, everything had gone relatively smoothly up until now. Véronique had reluctantly given me my old job back, as it appeared that I did, somehow, have the ability to get Guillaume out of the many disastrous scrapes he routinely got himself into. I’d moved back to my old desk at the office and back into the spare room in Poppy’s flat, which had relieved her to no end, because it meant she had someone to share the rent with. For her part, she was still going out with random Frenchmen occasionally. But Darren had been visiting her every few weeks, and she had confessed just a few days ago that despite herself, she thought she might actually try to have a relationship with him. I’d even seen a stack of her self-help books in the trash can, under some used coffee grounds, one day last week.
As for me, my string of random Parisian dates had ended, as I was fully absorbed with Gabe. The more I got to know him, the more compatible I knew we were. We had even taken a trip back to the States last month so that he could meet my parents and I could meet his mother, who still lived in Tampa. Jeannie and King Odysseus had even liked him; Odysseus had temporarily ceased the launching of milk-sodden breakfast cereals to play some sort of complicated French patty-cake game that Gabe patiently taught him.
But now, no matter how well things were going, I half wanted to push Gabe out of the balloon. He wasn’t exactly helping matters.
“Guillaume!” I yelled across. “Our balloon operator is going to tell you how to float west out of Paris and then lower your balloon into a field. You have to listen!”
I nodded at the operator, who gave me an incredulous look and turned to Gabe. Gabe shrugged and said something to him in French. The balloon instructor spoke rapidly back. In the ten months I’d been in Paris, I’d enrolled in French classes and was picking up the language of my new home. But my education hadn’t progressed enough to allow me to understand the quickly spoken words of someone with a thick country accent who was currently speaking over the hiss of a propane burner.
Gabe said something else in rapid French to the operator and then added, “Allez-y.” Go ahead.
The balloon operator heaved a big sigh then shouted several unintelligible sentences to Guillaume, who grinned, waved, and yelled, “Merci, monsieur!”
“Guillaume!” I exclaimed in frustration a moment later when it became evident that he was making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to land his balloon. “What’s wrong with you? Do you know how hard it’s going to be for me to get you out of this, if you don’t wind up killing yourself first?”
“Oh, Emma, you worry too much!” Guillaume yelled back cheerfully. He fired up his burner again, and his balloon rose a little higher. Our operator shrugged and followed him, trying to stay at an even altitude so that I could scream at him adequately. Not that it was doing any good. At this rate, Guillaume would be floating toward the upper atmosphere within the hour.
“You’ll probably wind up in jail if you don’t get killed!” I shouted. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
“Not really!” Guillaume yelled back. He came to the edge and leaned over to look at the ground. I almost had a heart attack as his basket wobbled back and forth. He looked back over at us and grinned. “Hey, Gabe!” he yelled. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
There. Finally. Maybe my boyfriend would actually step up and try to talk some reason into his lunatic brother for a change.
“Come on, Gabe!” I urged softly without turning around. I was still watching Guillaume wobble in his basket. “Say something!”
“As a matter of fact, there is something I’d like to say!” Gabe finally yelled across to his brother.
“It’s about time,” I muttered, still watching Guillaume.
“Okay, Gabe!” Guillaume said cheerfully. “Let’s hear it! What is it?”
“I’d just like to ask Emma if she’ll marry me!” Gabe shouted back.
It took me a second to register what he’d said. “What?” My response came out in a gurgle.
“Would you marry me, Emma?” Gabe asked.
I turned slowly and saw Gabe kneeling awkwardly in the wicker basket of our balloon, holding a little jewelry box with a silver diamond ring inside. My jaw dropped, and my eyes filled with tears. But I quickly blinked them back.