Blame It on Paris (11 page)

“And I had magic answers for those things? How would you like it if you found out your mom had slept with a married man? And I don't even know if she knew. But
he
sure as hell knew he had a wife and kids when he seduced my mom. And then to just drop out of the picture before even wondering if she could be pregnant—although, of course, maybe he did know. Maybe he thought she'd get an abortion. Or maybe he didn't care. Or maybe she didn't tell him. I mean, how does he get credit for suffering more shocks than me?”

Her hand reached out from under the jacket again. He handed her another tissue, and hoped that'd be enough, because there were no more. Ten more minutes and they'd be home. Ten more. She just had to hold it together for ten more.

Finally they got there, but he'd barely squeezed into the parking place before she'd flown out of the car. When she yanked off the jacket, he saw her face.

She'd stopped crying by then.

She'd stopped talking.

Usually that made him feel grateful, but now he wished she'd chatter up a storm. The look on her face killed him. The gorgeous eyes and nose were all red. No color in her cheeks at all. She looked so damned…sad. Sad and lost. From the inside out.

“It's okay,” she said. “Don't look so scared. I know I was having an emotional fit, but I'm through now, honest.”

Maybe she was, but that didn't really help him. He started to say something, then realized, for the dozenth time in the past hour, that he didn't have a clue what to say. What she needed. What would help.

He'd been rescuing his sisters—and other damsels—since he was in diapers. Granted, he was fed up with that. But for the first time in a blue moon, he actually wanted to rescue a female, and he didn't know how.

He turned the key, pushed open the door. She ran inside first, and said, “I'm going to call my mother.”

He'd barely hung up the keys and scooped up the mail before she returned from the living room.

“Well, that's not going to work. I dialed. But then I hung up. Darn it, I can't talk to her. Not until I'm a lot less upset and can be a whole lot clearer about how I want to bring all this up.”

When she scrubbed her face with a tired hand, something snapped in him. That was it. He'd had enough. He crossed the room in four long strides.

She saw him. In fact, she cocked her head when she saw him slamming across the room, but she still looked surprised when he suddenly grabbed her. When he lifted her up, she just naturally wrapped her legs around his waist for balance, which enabled him to take off with her down the hall at a hell-bent pace.

“Will—”

Yeah, yeah. He could guess all the crap she wanted to say. She was miserable. Not the right time. Not in the mood. And he didn't pull cavemen stuff, because he wasn't a caveman type. That Rhett Butler scene in
Gone with the Wind
where Gable carts Scarlett up the stairs—not for him. He liked to know he was wanted ahead of time. He liked an engraved invitation. He hated sticky stuff, never dove in until he'd thoroughly tested the waters, got queasy when he thought of pushing a woman to do anything.

But this wasn't like that.

That was more like…a guy had to do what a guy had to do.

She wasn't crying anymore today. He couldn't fix her complicated life. In the long run, probably it'd all work out, anyway. It was just now, this week, this day, these past hours, that had her so twisted up and confused. It would have helped if Henri Rochard had at least given her a hug. Or said a simple hello to his daughter. Or said something, anything, the son of a bitch, that indicated he noticed that she was a beautiful woman. Beautiful, interesting, wonderful, independent and courageous.

Okay, so she wasn't so courageous at just this second.

But that was the point.

That was precisely the reason why, right then, he dropped her on the bed. Dove in. Dove on.

Strips of hot afternoon sunlight striped her face, so bright she had to close her eyes, which made it all the easier to kiss her long and hard.

She didn't reject the kiss. Didn't scream or rant at the behavior or anything, but she didn't do much of anything until he took her tongue.

Then, suddenly, she unraveled. All that miserableness seemed to gather up inside her, transform into another kind of energy altogether. That long kiss he was coaxing from her turned into a bite—a bite coming from her—and then she was pulling, yanking on his clothes.

He twisted around to help her, only his movements enabled her to climb on top of him instead of the other way around. She'd played the inciter before, but not the aggressor. It wasn't so easy for her, being vulnerable that way, admitting what she needed, going after it. She was raw-new at it, elbows appearing where no one wanted them, her knee threatening his groin, her hair tangling in his fingers…amazing, how all the awkwardness inspired them both.

At least it inspired him. And for sure she was responding.

Her skin needed cherishing, he thought. And once he had her naked, he obliged. The curve of her shoulder. The tender crease under her breast. The inside of her thigh—oh, mama. She all but sprang off the bed for a tongue there, and hell, he hadn't even started.

 

T
HE SHARP
,
HARSH
ribbons of sunlight seemed to soften. Outside, traffic started to quiet down. The air stilled…. They must have napped after the first time, because when he opened his eyes next, the ambient light was the fuzzy violet of dusk.

She was draped over his body like a blanket, her cheek carved into his shoulder. He turned his head, kissed her forehead.

It was enough to wake her. “You hungry?” she murmured sleepily.

“Beyond belief. I could eat a pair of steaks.”

“Me, too.”

Big talk, he noted, for a woman who stretched like a lazy cat and then curled right back on top of him and closed her eyes again.

“Will?” she murmured.

“Hmm?”

“You make it all go away.”

“Make all what go away?”

The piker was only pretending to be sleeping. She eased up, her eyes open and alert and aware, her mouth still swollen red from all that endless kissing. “I have a lot to face. A lot I have to figure out. But the way you love, Will…at least the way you love me…makes me feel whole. In every way.”

Well, hell. Dinner would have to wait.

He was already hard. From the sound of her voice, from the lazy winsomeness in her eyes, from her fingertips curled around his neck. Her body was already warm, for him, with him, from him.

He told himself it was so good because he knew her body now. Knew that a certain stroke ignited her sensual core. Knew that the undersides of her breasts were exquisitely tender. Knew that she liked to ride as much as she loved to be ridden. Knew that she was wary of being hurt, because she had this way of tensing right before he entered her, as if any lover or lovers she'd had in the past hadn't taken care to insure she was ready.

Knew that sometimes she liked speed and a fast pump.

That sometimes she liked slow and long and whispered words.

He knew so much about her now. But he had a bad feeling, after they finally crashed from the last rocketing orgasm, that none of those factors explained why it was so impossibly good between them.

It was starlight.

And spring moonbeams.

And Paris.

He closed his eyes, thinking he was so wiped he was going to sleep forever. Yet he didn't sleep for ages, just held her, inhaled her, long after she'd zonked out completely.

It was the magic of
her
that made it so different. So right.

He knew it. And so did his heart.

 

K
ELLY WOKE UP
to the sound of a ringing phone. Eyes still closed, she patted the bed next to her, thinking she'd better make sure Will knew he had a call. But the smooth sheet was already cool, and when she opened one sleepy eye, she found boundless bright daylight. Below, the lusty roar of traffic was near deafening, even if she hadn't realized it a second before. The day had galloped into full gear while they were still snoozing.

At least while
she
was still snoozing.

She pushed away the covers, aware that every private part of her body was tender. Embarrassingly so. So embarrassing that she seemed to have a smile on her mouth that wouldn't quit. Even before coffee.

“Will?” she called, and then chuckled when she saw him standing in the doorway.

Her hero, her lover, her darling, was holding a fresh mug of coffee. He was also wearing only jeans, and the bare feet and bare chest aroused fresh desire in her when, Lord knows, she should be satiated times ten.

“Hey, y…” A teasing greeting was on the tip of her lips, but it died. And so did her smile.

He was just standing there, but something in his expression alerted her to a problem.

“What's wrong?” she asked immediately.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” He brought the mug over, handed it to her and said in a hearty voice, “The call was from the consulate. Your passport's ready. I gave them heaps of praise. They did everything but stand on their heads to get the paperwork moving this fast. They even booked you a first-class ticket home, for the same price as the flight you had to cancel. Tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn. As close to your original departure date as they could get.”

“Oh.” Her cheerful smile suddenly felt as frozen as his. “That's wonderful.” She felt as if her chest had caved in from the blow of a five-ton lead ball. Or a heart attack. Or maybe it was just that her heart suddenly felt broken. “I thought everybody complained about the bureaucracy in France. And here they came through like troupers. Arranging the ticket home was unbelievably nice.”

“I think they felt bad about the mugging. And they didn't want an American going home, whining about the French.”

“I wouldn't have done that.”

“I know, but they didn't. Anyway, it's really great,” he said.

“Really great,” she echoed, and then couldn't seem to speak at all.

She didn't have any more vacation time. Piles of new crises were up in the air—like the knowledge that she had a father and brothers. She also had a life impatiently waiting for her back home. A job, the need to make money. Her mom.

And oh, yeah. Jason. Her fiancé.

She
had
to go home.

It didn't matter how she felt about Will. All she'd shared with him, all she felt for him.

Didn't matter how deeply and insanely and crazily she'd fallen in love with him.

She had to fix her real life. Her American life.

“Well,” she said, and then couldn't seem to remember how to breathe.

“Quit looking like that,” Will said suddenly, swiftly. “We've got one more day. And there are some places you have to see, things you have to do.”

“What?”

“You'll see,” he said.

She'd barely showered and dressed before he hustled her out the door. He bought beignets from a vendor for breakfast, then took her down to an old part of Paris. The sign over the door read Chemist, but she discovered it was really a
parfumerie,
where the chemist created an individual perfume for each customer.

“This is going to be too expensive.” She didn't actually know the cost, because no one had mentioned anything specific. But she'd seen two clients amble in, one wearing an Hermès scarf and the other a Chanel bag, which was clear enough proof the scents weren't cheap.

But nothing could talk Will out of this. Heaven knows, he looked like an antsy tiger in the cage, but he kept talking to the chemist, a wizened little man with a beak nose. Apparently the process began with the chemist asking questions about the woman's natural likes and dislikes.

“I can understand him well enough to answer those questions,” Kelly said.

“No. You don't know about you. Not like I know about you,” Will said, and turned back to his conversation. The chemist did some patches on her skin, testing for pH, but the questions were all about her. What scents were more natural to her—flowers, musk; did she tend to be sexy, sweet, exotic, Oriental, what was her nature?

Will told the chemist that she was elegant. Fresh. No musk, maybe something with flowers, but not heavy flowers-in-your-face. Sexy, but not the kind of scent someone would pick up unless close to her. More a scent just for a lover. Not gaudy, not look-at-me. But something in the scent needed to have a hint of a surprise, something you'd never expect.

“That's how you see me?” Kelly asked.

By then Will had rejected the first scent, insisted the chemist try harder. And then they had it. The exquisite little vial was sapphire-blue, her favorite color, and when the chemist put a drop of the scent on her wrist, she looked up in both surprise and delight. She loved perfumes, but she'd never smelled anything like this.