The Little Antique Shop Under the Eiffel Tower Read Online Free PDF

three weeks, Lilou.”
    She shot me a glare. Joshua had taken a selection of antiques from the secret room, including a very rare piano, very
expensive
piano, promising me they were off to good homes, people he’d known forever. Payment to follow. The sale would fund our ‘grand plan’.
    And the buyers were French people, he said. Trustworthy.
    In that flurry of love, I had believed him. Of course I had.
    It was the greatest shock when I stumbled on them at an online auction and confronted him about it.
Non, non, non
, he mimicked my French accent,
remember your messages? The antiques are mine as you said so many times! Au revoir, Anouk. It was fun while it lasted.
    Ambushed.
    And fraught, the gendarmerie couldn’t help me. They said I’d gifted them to him. They had proof. Text messages that came from my cell phone, saying those exact words. Joshua was clever. He’d been ribbing me, he called it. Teasing me about ‘gifting’ my treasures and like the lovestruck idiot I was, I played along by text, waiting months for these so-called buyers to pay. By the time I realized what he’d done, he was on the arm of another woman. Antiques vanished. And those texts came back to taunt me.
    The grand piano once owned by Fania Fénelon
is yours! A gift from me to you. Love Anouk xxx
    It was the cold, calculating way he did it that struck fear in me – the thought that a man could fake a love like ours broke something inside of me. I begged, yelled, pleaded for the gendarmes to listen to me, but they gave me a bored stare, and asked me to come back with more proof, like I should do their job for them.
    Joshua and I had planned to pool our resources and were going to buy the best antiques, build a museum, so the world could clap eyes on such rare beauty, and not just people who could afford such luxuries. In order to do that, we had needed to sell some bigger pieces to fund it, and then source the most famous, the most illustrious of what France had to offer. Little did I know, he was selling them to amass
his
fortune… He’d played
me
like a piano, knowing instinctively I’d fall for it because it was a lifelong dream of mine to open a museum for cherishables.
    The thing that hurt the most was that I did love him. When it all came to light I realized I had been in love with a ghost. Joshua wasn’t who he portrayed himself to be. The man I loved didn’t exist. The one who held my hand as we slept, or woke me with butterfly kisses, was a charade. So if I held myself at arm’s length from the world, that’s why, and I wasn’t going to be apologetic about it.
    Sadly, Joshua was still working the antique circuit, so I ran into him often, which felt like a stab wound to the chest.
    Lilou gave my hand a pat, dragging me back to the present moment. “Three weeks might be my limit with a guy, but that’s because I haven’t found anyone who makes me want more.” She lifted a shoulder. “I know what that crétin did, and the fallout that remains. I’d strangle him if I knew I could bury his body and get away with it.” Her eyes blazed at the thought. “All I’m suggesting is ease yourself back into the dating game with a few one-night stands. Pick a rugged type, one that has commitment-phobe written all over him, and go from there…”
    “Lilou! I couldn’t do that. Non. I need to know more about a man before I let him sprawl all over my cotton sheets…”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Oh God, because they’re some kind of special antique material? Fine, swap the sheets for a cheap supermarket brand for one night!” Her voice rose with every inflection.
    A waiter hovered close by, refilling the wineglass of a woman at the table beside ours, and overfilled it as he concentrated hard on us out of the corner of his eye. Ruby red wine spilled over, staining the white tablecloth. The woman gasped, and the waiter wrenched his gaze away, apologizing profusely to her.
    Lilou jerked a thumb in his direction. “Prime example: