Blame It on Paris

“I’m engaged. Did I mention that?”

“Yeah, you did. What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing. Nothing. You’ve really got an interesting place.” But interesting wasn’t the word for it. One look, and she labeled it bachelor lair. The whole place shouted single guy on the prowl.

His flat took up the second floor of an old building. She could only see so much from the narrow hallway, but there seemed to be a bunch of rooms, all small. The main living area, off to the right, had long, thin windows; old, rich woodwork; carved tin ceilings. He’d left the French doors open a crack, leading to a step-out balcony. The sunlight and erotic, exotic breeze drifted through the open door.

Well, possibly it was just a plain old spring breeze, and possibly her mind had totally invented the erotic, exotic thing, but Kelly didn’t think so. Reality was that sex appeal poured off Will in sheets.

She tried to concentrate on being nosy, which should have been natural for her. The living room was tiny, with a soot-stained corner fireplace and an elegant tiled hearth. The couch was old leather, all wrinkled and soft. The Persian rug looked seriously ancient, thick and fringed, in reds and dark blues. One wall had built-in shelves, with books heaped to the ceiling.

The dust wasn’t more than half an inch thick, and Will swooped a shirt off a chair. “Look around, make yourself at home, okay? The bathroom’s off to the left. I need to call work, and I’ll start some coffee. Then we’ll concentrate on what you need to do from here.”

He squeezed her shoulder as he ambled past—an erotic, exotic squeeze, totally inappropriate for an engaged woman.

Or more likely it was her response to him that was inappropriate. Splashing her face with cold water right then seemed a great idea, so she took off for the bathroom.

Naturally, she nosed around. The toilet had an antique pull chain from the ceiling—interesting, once she was sure she could make it work. The white pedestal sink and tub were the old-fashioned kind with feet. He used a straight razor, she noted. Didn’t have much in the medicine cabinet but deodorant and first-aid stuff and one medicine. She thought it was for colds, nonprescription and more than two years old; he should have thrown it out. It was outdated.

Her conscience chided her for being so shameful, but really, nosing around was better than musing that the tub was big enough for orgies. Not that she’d ever participated in an orgy. Or spent a lot of time thinking about them. Or planned to take up thinking about them.

Impatiently she splashed her face with cool water, then grabbed a navy-blue towel to dry off. The towel was almost the size of a bedsheet. A thick blue rug covered most of the marble floor. No question that Will liked the color blue and his creature comforts.

She opened the door, which gave her away with a telltale creak.

Will immediately called out, “Across the hall and one door down. I’m in the kitchen.”

So…it wasn’t her fault she got to see more of the apartment en route. To the left, an archway led to an alcove. Impossible to guess what the odd-sized space was for, but Will had squished in a small desk, lamp, chair, laptop, so it worked as a miniden. Still, it wasn’t ordinary. The walls had some kind of linen-like finish; the carved ceiling looked hand done. Everywhere, the creaky floors were covered with old Oriental rugs. Nothing seemed new. Everything about the architecture seemed older than a few centuries, practically older than America. Will’s love for blues and comfortable textures followed through everywhere. And he might not be into dusting, but he was basically a put-away tidy kind of guy.

“What? Did you get lost?” He stepped out of the kitchen.

“No. I’m just dawdling around. No amount of guilt ever seems to stop me from being nosy. And I love your place—it’s really interesting.” Looking around had also given her a chance to catch her breath. Maybe she didn’t have a full-bore grip yet, but the adrenaline had finally quit pumping. “Will…thank you for helping me. Really, thank you.”

“Yeah, well, I stumbled around plenty when I first moved to Paris. Might have gotten into real trouble if a few people hadn’t offered a hand. Anyway…” He turned away, started pouring steaming water into pottery mugs. “Did he hurt you?”

She blinked. His tone was so casual that she almost missed it, but then Will wasn’t an in-your-face kind of caretaker. Instead he was subtle, found a way to slip in a disturbing question and get it out of the way. Most strangers wouldn’t have cared, much less made the effort to steer into a potentially awkward problem.

She thought that just maybe her attraction to him was more than ordinary old sex appeal. Damned if he wasn’t coming through like a seriously good guy.

And then she tried to answer the question. “I’m bound to have a few bruises show up tomorrow, maybe even a nasty one on my neck. But I don’t need a doctor. Nothing serious.” Yet suddenly she needed to snug her arms tight under her chest. “I have to admit, though, that I keep feeling…weird. I was never mugged before, never had anyone touch me with the intent to hurt me. I can’t seem to shake it off. There’s just a high…ick…factor.”

“Sit. I was going to make coffee, then figured that was stupid. You need caffeine like a hole in the head. So it’s tea. French-style. With a bunch of sugar. Sugar for shock, right?”

“Actually, I never need an excuse to use sugar, but that’ll do.”

The kitchen was mostly copper and blue, with white trim. There was no dishwasher, and no place for one, she noticed with shock. The sink was messy, but cleaned fairly recently, and the counter just looked typical of a guy, dishes reproducing since the night before. Her scrutiny kept picking up details. A small fridge, a couple bottles of unopened wine, the luxuriously sexy smell of fresh bread, a heap of fresh fruit in a bowl. The eating table only had room for two chairs, was hardly big enough to put plates on, but it overlooked the boulevard below, the whole view of thick, old trees, the steady snake of cars and street traffic. Sunlight ribboned through fresh green leaves.

“Ever since I got here,” she murmured, “I keep seeing the same things I could see at home. Cars. People. Buildings. Spring flowers and smells. But somehow it’s incredibly different.”

“It’s Paris,” he said, as if that explained everything.

And maybe it did. Heaven knows her response to Will was unlike her response to any other stranger. She couldn’t seem to pin down a reason. Maybe being mugged had just thrown her normal reactions off-kilter. Maybe shock and fear just made her senses more acute, inflamed her emotions.

And maybe burning her tongue on the hot tea would distract her from these idiotic thoughts about him.

“Better,” she pronounced, after she gulped down three long sips of the strong brew.

He leaned against the counter. “Okay, I figure we’d better organize a plan of attack here. Obviously the first priority is getting you a new passport. Somewhere, do you have your original passport number, and other ID like a birth certificate or driver’s license?”

“Well, I did have. But that stuff was all in my purse.”

“Okay. But did you leave that kind of information with someone back home? Like a copy of your passport?”

She nodded. “I left some obvious information in an envelope with my mom—the address where I’d be staying, copies of credit cards, a copy of my birth certificate. I’ve never traveled outside the country before. It didn’t occur to me that I’d need to do more than that.”

“Normally, you wouldn’t. So the first thing you want to do is call your mom, get her to fax that information here. By then we should have the police report. That’s the stuff we need to take to the consulate, get the process going to get you an immediate temporary passport.”

She frowned. “Temporary?”

“Well, if you want a regular passport, it’ll take a while. The bureaucracy here is no faster than it is in the United States. But you can fly home right away with a temporary, no waiting or hassle.”

“And that would be great,” she said slowly, “but I don’t want to go home immediately. Will, it wasn’t my fault this happened. And I didn’t come here on a whim. I’ve waited a long time for a chance to make this trip.”

“Okay…well…” For a long moment, he studied her, as if suddenly realizing she hadn’t come here to Paris just to do the tourist thing. “The way you’d attack a new permanent passport takes basically the same steps. Get the ID records, then the police report, then go to the consulate. If I remember right, a regular replacement passport’ll cost you around eighty-five, ninety bucks. But I’d be amazed if the paperwork went through for that in less than two weeks, and it could take longer.”

“But as long as I could get money wired here, replacement credit cards and all that, there’s no reason I couldn’t stay?”

“I’m no expert, Kelly, but my understanding is that, yes, you’d be fine as long as you stayed in France. It’d probably be pretty dicey to leave the country without an active passport in your hand.”

“That’s okay. This is the only place I wanted to come to.” When she swallowed the last sip of tea, she realized that the adrenaline had quit pumping; the shakes had disappeared. Talking to Will, being with Will, she’d forgotten the mugger. Yet, when she met his eyes, her heart rate still seemed determined to heat to an edgy simmer. “You know a lot about this,” she said.

“Not a lot. But I lost a passport once. And I’ve been living in Paris for the last four years, so naturally I’ve learned a few survival tricks.” He shot her to Will a wry grin. “You can take it to the bank—from replacing credit cards to getting money wired to getting the cop report and the application, you’re going to learn a whole bunch of French swearwords over the next couple days.”

She chuckled, but she thought it was about time to stop gazing into those sexy blue eyes and move her butt. For Pete’s sake, right now she didn’t have a brush or deodorant or even the means to buy herself lunch.

Will had been a hero, but he certainly owed her nothing. He’d already gone the long mile to help her out. “Okay,” she said brightly. “If you’d just let me use your phone…”

He gave her a look she didn’t understand. Then he steered her into the room with the balconies and the high tin ceilings, handed her a phone and left.

She appreciated the privacy. But twenty minutes later, she was pretty close to curling up in a ball under a couch. Any couch.

Will showed up in the doorway. “Not doing too great?”

She sighed. “I couldn’t seem to make a direct connection, so I had to use an operator. She didn’t speak much English. Or want to.”

“Yeah. You’re in France.”

“Got past that. But my mom wasn’t home. I tried her landline, her cell. Twice. Left messages. Twice.”

“Okay.” He scratched his chin. “I thought you said you had a fiancé.”

She straightened. “I do.”

He looked at her. She wasn’t sure what he was thinking, why a sudden silence fell between them, but whatever wheels were turning in that interesting brain of his, he suddenly seemed to come to a decision. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

FOUR HOURS LATER, Will still wasn’t sure what he was doing. She wasn’t his problem, he kept telling himself. And once she brought up the fiancé, he’d normally have backed off faster than lightning.

It had taken him a long time to cultivate an irresponsible, don’t-give-a-damn, love-’em-and-move-on kind of lifestyle. Poaching was a bad idea. Not because it was right or wrong but because it was inviting trouble.

Only this was different. Really. The thing was, Kelly kept bringing up this so-called fiancé, but the infamous fiancé wasn’t the one she wanted to call for help, wasn’t the person she’d left records with, wasn’t the person she wanted to ask for money.

As far as Will could tell, if the fiancé existed, he was in the toad class.

Maybe that didn’t totally explain how they ended up at Pont d’Alma on the Left Bank, with Will forking over major euros at the ticket counter, but by then the day had been so irretrievably awful that he needed a pick-me-up.

“A boat ride?” she questioned.

“Neither one of us has had food all day. You have to be hungry by now.”

She was intently trying to read the signs. “This is for a riverboat cruise of the Seine?”

“Yeah. One of the worst tourist traps in the whole city. But we were close.” A complete lie—he’d driven forty minutes out of his way. But she didn’t know that, and who cared, anyway? “It’ll get your mind off the rest of the day. That was quite a scene at the your hotel.”

The understatement of the year, he thought. When he realized her lodging was in the 20th arrondissement, he almost had a heart attack. Times three.

“Well, I thought I’d researched places to stay quite intensively on the Internet. This one looked clean in the pictures. And it was the cheapest I found, for sure. And when I looked up the area, it said the place was going through a major renewal, so I just didn’t expect it would be quite so…”

“Rough.” He put it in spades as he ushered her up the gangplank of the riverboat.

“It was okay. Mme. Rossarde seemed nice enough last night.” Kelly lifted exhausted eyes. “Not like this afternoon.”

“In French, we’d call her…un peau de vache.”

She thought. “The side of a cow?”

He chuckled. “Well, literally, it means hide of a cow, I guess. Meaning…tough. Unyielding. A bitch,” he clarified. The fiasco at her hotel kept replaying in his mind. He was still on a steam. The damn woman hadn’t wanted to give Kelly her clothes or anything else unless Kelly came through with a week’s worth of rent. This, after being told Kelly’s passport and money had been stolen.

Will had intervened. Kelly had a major conniption about his paying all that rent for her, but she obviously had to have her stuff. And whether or not she realized how bad the neighborhood was, he did. The other boarders looked like they were fresh out of jail or rehab. By contrast, Kelly looked milk-and-honey fresh. Leaving her there would be like leaving a kitten in a jungle.

So now all her gear was in the back of his car, safe enough, but she’d just gotten more agitated as the day wore on.

“I have to call my mom again. I have to reach her. And then I promise, I’ll return all the money I borrowed from you immediately.”

“This may be killing you, Kelly, but it’s not killing me. And I know you’ll return the loan. Quit having a stroke.”

“But I don’t borrow money. From strangers. From anyone.”

“Think of it from my perspective. If I were in a bind in a foreign country, I’d like to think someone would step up and help me.”

“But not like this. You’ve given up the whole day. Your work. Your place. And you’re still stuck with me.”

“You know what? You need a drink. We both do.”

She opened her mouth as if she were going to object to that, too, but then…for the first time… she suddenly seemed to open her eyes. Forget the all-consuming anxiety that had been eating her up.

A few moments later, he wrapped her hands around a glass of wine. A Syrah from the Rhone Valley, red as a ruby in the fading daylight.

She took a sip without looking, likely without tasting.

The boat had just started moving, the buzz of Paris traffic and tourists fading away. The other cruisers fell silent, too. No one could seem to help it on these Seine riverboats, even the Parisians. Paris really was the city of lights…and as dusk fell and the monuments lit up, so did all the ancient bridges. Those diamonds of light glittered in the Seine.

They passed the Musée d’Art, but all the good stuff was a distance away yet. The guide would do his tourist thing, identify the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre and all the usual great historical stuff…but that was later. Dinner was now. Wine. The lights. The textures and sounds of Paris.

At some point he accepted being in just a wee heap of trouble. Denial wasn’t doing any good. You couldn’t pretend you weren’t in a swamp if you were knee-deep in mud. He wasn’t in mud. He was just suffering from a mighty, mighty pull toward her.

He’d get over it, he assured himself. He’d just met her, for Pete’s sake. What was the harm in an evening together? So he liked looking at her. Liked the itchy charge of chemistry. Liked those liquid brown eyes of hers. So?

Once they were seated for dinner, she did all the tourist-sucker oohing and aahing for the Tour Eiffel, Jardin des Plantes, the Louvre, Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Notre Dame was on Île de la Cité, though. And he knew she’d get into Notre Dame because of being a South Bender. But by the time they’d passed the real Dame, he’d ordered a second bottle of wine, a Puligny-Montrachet from 2002, and they were almost finished with the fabulous flammenkueche.

“What is this dish again?” she asked.

“Well…it’s kind of a cross between a pancake and a pizza. It’s got cream and herbs and ham and cheese. You like it?”

“You’ve watched me gobbling it down and you have to ask? It’s to die for. Like nothing I’ve ever tasted before. But I think one taste of escargot is enough for me.”

“Hey, you came all the way to France. You might as well try all the French things you can.”

“True,” she murmured.

Everyone on the cruise was more dressed up than them. They’d never had a chance to change. Hell, Will hadn’t even come up with the impulsive idea to do the cruise until late in the day. But now, as they wandered back on deck—Kelly wanted a clearer view of the cathedral on shore, and God knew, they were both stuffed from dinner and needed a walk—she shivered in the sudden damp night breeze.

Her pants and thin V-necked sweater weren’t warm enough. Her throat was bare, no jewelry at all, just her skin glowing in the moonlight and distant city lights.

He didn’t put an arm around her, but he shifted closer. Close enough so their shoulders and arms touched, a way of simply offering some of his body warmth. But his heartbeat thought there was an implication because his pulse leaped like a pole vault.

Or maybe the leap was caused by the way she suddenly looked at him.

Music from the live trio playing inside drifted back to their part of the boat. He heard it, but like the buzz of other passengers’ conversation and bursts of laughter, all sounds seemed to be coming from miles away. Every nerve ending in his body focused on her.

“I can’t believe I’m really here, really seeing this.”

“You mean the real Notre Dame?”

She chuckled. “The one in South Bend is real, too. Which is funny, because we’re here, yet this is the one that seems like a fantasy. It’s all so…magical.”

The old cathedral wasn’t remotely magical, he thought, but she was. And when another spring breeze whisked at her hair and made her shiver again, she didn’t fight his arm scooping around her shoulder, nudging her closer.

He knew at that instant they would sleep together.

“You said you’d been in France around four years now? So all these monuments and museums are old to you. You’ve probably been inside Notre Dame a zillion times.”

“Museums, yeah. But Notre Dame, I’ve never been there.”

“Really? But it’s so beautiful.”

“Yeah, well, might as well get this right on the table. I’m allergic to churches. Especially Catholic churches. My dad had two career goals for me. One was to become a priest, which he must have realized was highly unlikely when he found me sleeping with the babysitter when I was fourteen. I’m pretty sure that incident set off my Recovering Catholic phase. I’m still in it.”

“Hard work, this recovery?” Humor glinted in her eyes.

“You can’t imagine. I’ve had to be really vigilant. Guilt sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. You see a nun, you get this instinct to stand up and recite catechism. You have to fight it all the time.”

“You’re so funny,” she murmured.

“Yeah, so they say.”

She cocked her chin. “I’m a rebel in a different way.”

“Yeah? What way?”

“I stayed with the Catholic fold. Have to admit that. But my senior year, I was suspended from school, almost didn’t graduate. Kind of staged a party at a friend’s house. The party got a little out of hand. Ended up with a car in the swimming pool in the backyard.”

“Uh-oh.”

“A major uh-oh. My friend was the dean’s daughter.”

Will winced on her behalf.

“Yeah,” she said. “So don’t be thinking I’m a saint.”

“Oh, no,” he assured her. “I took one look at you and thought, Now there’s a wild woman. A hard-core rebel.”

“A lot of others don’t seem to recognize it.”

“Imagine that.” A strand of hair drifted across her cheek, mesmerizing him, for no reason that he could imagine. “I attended Notre Dame, actually. The university. Since we’re confessing sins and all.”

“That’s quite a biggie.”

“It was my dad’s choice of school. Naturally. Played tight end.” He added, “That’s an offensive football position.”

“Like there could be anyone raised in South Bend who didn’t know that. Only darn, we can’t talk anymore now that I know you’re a god.”

“Not. Team didn’t do well in those years.”

“Ah. And that was all your fault?”

“Probably. I know it’s sacrilegious to admit it, but I wasn’t that into football. It was just a way to get a scholarship, so I could pay my own way.”

“A scholarship? To Notre Dame? There’s another wow. I’m impressed.”

“Good, good. No one else is, so I’m glad you are.” He still hadn’t brushed away the silky strand of hair on her cheek, but he was thinking about it nonstop. The moonlight. Her cheek. Her eyes. That strand of hair. “It was an athletic scholarship, not an academic one.”

“I get it. You don’t want to take credit for having a brain, just brawn.”

“Actually, the only thing I wanted credit for was paying my own way, however I could do it. Didn’t have to jump for anyone else’s strings that way.”

“Who was trying to pull your strings?”

“Are you always this nosy?”

“Always,” she warned him. “It’s what I do for a living.”

“You make money being nosy?”

“Yeah, that’s me. I’ve got a title. Forensic accountant. Sounds like I do taxes for the dead, doesn’t it? But no. My job’s tracking down credit card fraud. To most people, I suspect it’s not too thrilling. Some might even call it tedious. But if you’re really, really

nosy, and like prying into people’s lives and stuff that’s none of your business…well, it’s probably the perfect job.”

“Okay.” He lowered his head.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ve waited as long as I can possibly stand it.”

“Waited for what?”

“To taste you,” he said. And then did.

With his first taste of her, the first kiss…Will heard the music. It was a woman singer with a low, smoky voice belting out a haunting ballad. All the other sensory details around him suddenly came into focus. The endless lights of Paris rippling in the black waters of the Seine, the waves lapping at the boat. He turned to Kelly, as if he were spinning her in a waltz. And kept turning. With his lips glued on hers.

She tasted like the rich, warm wine they’d been drinking.

And like innocence.

Her hands climbed up, up his arms, then up around his neck and hung on, as if she were dizzy from all the spinning. Or from him.

Will thought this had to be the stupidest thing he’d ever done…and then went back for another taste.

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