French Kiss (25 page)

“I should get back, too. I owe you, Kaz,” Johnny said, understanding his friend had come to help without regard for his own schedule. “Next time, it’s my turn.”

“Glad I could be of help. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Funny how life gets in the way of friendships.”

“We both have more on our plates than we did when we were hanging loose in our twenties. Kids”—Johnny grinned—“or soon-to-be kids, work”—he shrugged—“and more and more work.”

“If you settle down with your tree house lady, maybe you’ll take a vacation and come see us.”

Johnny liked the way Kaz referred to his wife. Maybe Kaz was right about recognizing when a woman was the best. Maybe he should have sense enough to see the light himself. “You and your wife come and visit us sometime, too,” he offered.

“Us?” Kazuo drawled.

Johnny grimaced. “Fuck you.”

Kazuo grinned. “It happens to the best of us, bro.”

“Piss off. I’m not even sure I can get my head around the idea.”

“Tell me about it.”

“That’s not fucking helpful,” Johnny grumbled.

“Do I detect an actual romantic state of mind?” Kazuo said with a smile. “Surely not.”

Johnny blew out a breath. “Fuck if I know. But I do know if I decide to get married again, it’s gonna be for all the right reasons. If it means figuring
out this love and romance stuff
”—he grinned—“I’m gonna have to figure it out.”

“I recommend diamonds as a means to possibly solving your dilemma,” Kaz offered. “I suggest you bring home a large one for Nicky. I know this very good jeweler.”

“Forget it.”

“It can’t hurt to look. Gustav will open his store for us.
I’
m a good customer.” He lifted his flute with a smile. “To the blissful state of matrimony.”

Johnny raised his glass and grinned. “No way.”

T
he next afternoon, as Nicky left her office
at the end of the day, she sa
w Johnny leaning against her
car, a handsome Japanese man with long black hair standing next to him. She instantly understood the man must be Kazuo.

Both the men were smiling.

Which meant, she hoped, she could stop worrying.

She’d been mega-tense in Johnny’s absence, his phone call at Chez Panisse unsettling, even more so his lack of explanation and quick departure. What made it even worse was the fact that she couldn’t call any of her friends or family and whine to them about her fears. If she even mentioned the
word
gangster
to her family, they’d get on the first plane, fly out here, and drag her back home.
Gangster
was only a movie word in Black Duck. As for her friends
…
she wasn’t quite ready to tell them she was maybe in love after a week. They’d think first, that she was out of her league,
and second, that a man like Johnny Patrick wouldn’t remember her name in another week.

Which might be true.

So she’d been forced to stew and fret all by herself.

And apparently all for naught, she cheerfully noted as she walked up to the men. They were both dressed casually in slacks and dark T-shirts. Johnny looked gorgeous as ever, and his friend could have been the Japanese Bruce Lee, he was so incredibly beautiful.

It just went to show that worry could be a real waste of time.

“You weren’t gone long,” she said, approaching them with a smile.

“I was in a major hurry to get home.”

If ever there was a heartwarming smile, she’d just witnessed it, Nicky thought, all her apprehensions swept away in an instant by Johnny’s smile.

“Nicky, I’d like you to meet Kazuo Fukuda, Kaz, this is Nicky. Nicole Lesdaux to be exact,” Johnny added, curving his arm around her shoulder and drawing her close.

Kazuo grinned. “Johnny spoke of nothing else but you.”

“You two must have gone to the same charm school,” Nicky said, ligh
tl
y. “But thank you. I adore flattery.”

“Kaz just stopped by for a minute to meet you. He’s heading back home.”

At Johnny's lifted hand, Nicky took note of a black Mercedes and driver waiting at the curb.

“My wife has a dinner party I have to be back for,” Kazuo explained. “I’m trying to talk Johnny into bringing you to Tokyo soon.”

The casualness of his remark struck her with a far from casual impact. Her pulse began beating violently. Did that mean her relationship w
ith Johnny was more than say…
a weeklong affair? Or was Johnny’s friend just being polite?

“I told Kaz we’d try to work something out,” Johnny said.

She almost fainted.
Work something OUT—
like—
WOW.
Did this mean Cinderella
dreams really came true? Did
this mean she wasn’t crazy to
move from instant infatuation to instant
something else
way more profound
?
Okay, okay, take it easy. Johnny was
just talking about a trip to Japan. Like a trip to Paris.
He
probably took trips with women all the time. “Tha
t’
d be great,” she said, ultra-casually, like she might respond to a comment about car insurance, say, or a Disney movie.

“Stay in touch, now.” Kazuo glanced at his watch. “Duty calls,” he added with a grin.

The men shook hands, then Kaz shook Nicky’s hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you. I can see why Johnny wanted to get home.” Then with a wave, Kazuo strode away.

“You sure know a lot of different people,” Nicky said, as Kazuo stepped into the Mercedes sedan and the driver shut the door behind him.

“Yeah, I do.”

Silence.

Okay. She wasn’t going to get an explanation for either Kazuo or their trip.

“I don’t know how much to tell you.” Each word fell into the silence with grudging unwillingness.

She was thinking maybe she didn’t want to know when his jaw was set like that and each word he’d uttered had clearly been
said against his will. Then again that line about curiosity killing the cat wasn’t just a baseless phrase. “How about the truth? You went to scout some new band, didn’t you?”

“Not exactly. I can’t actually tell you the complete truth.” Disclosing Kaz’s father’s business was off-limits for one thing; there was no room for negotiation there.

“You’re kidding—right? What about
‘t
he truth will set you free?’
”

“
‘
Truth is stranger than fiction,’ would be more appropriate to this situation. Look, the whole incident and trip is over. I’d rather just forget it.”

“Now, you’re freaking me out. What kind of bizarre trip did you go on?”

“Are we going to have a huge fight about it if I tell you?”

“It depends on what you tell me,” she said, the green of her eyes taking on a sudden coolness.

A tic fluttered along his jaw line, he exhaled an inaudible expletive, and understanding some explanation was required to temper that coolness in her eyes, he finally said, “There was no band to scout. We went to get Yuri off your back. I didn’t want him to frighten you again. That was it.”

“Why couldn’t you just say that?” Although even as she said the words, she knew how she would have freaked out had he told her.

He shrugged. “I just didn’t want to get into it after your”—he hesitated—“bad experience with Yuri.”

“Because I would have tried to stop you.”

“I figured.”

“You were right. They have guns. Oh, God, don’t tell me you had guns, too.”

“We mostl
y just talked.”

She was smart enough not to ask him
to
parse
mostly.
She’d always been susceptible to nightmares. But
it
would go a long way toward mitigating any future nightmares
if she
knew whether he’d been successful in convincing Yuri
to stay away.
“So is he off my back?” Like could
she sleep
in
her
own
house again?

“Yep. He’s out of your life.”

“Wow. That’s
good news. And Kaz must have gone along
to
help.”

“Yep.”

“And Yuri just said okey
dokey, and you came home.”

“That’s about it.”

That wasn’t a credible answer, not with a man like Yuri. Just to make sure, she said, “And no one was harmed in the encounter?”

“Nope.”

“Crap,” she said, half pissed that Yuri might still be in the picture and half pissed that Johnny thought she was that stupid. “You actually expect me to believe that Yuri rolled over as easy as that?”

“We were able to exert pressure on him. No violence was necessary.”

“But you would have used violence,” she said between her teeth, wondering if she’d gotten herself mixed up in a situation that could only end badly. Like with blood involved.

“No—I wouldn’t have,” he lied. “Relax.” He started to reach for her, and she slapped his hands away.

Christ, was Johnny mixed up in a way of life beyond the music he produced? Should she start running like hell? “I don’t feel like relaxing,” she ground out, par
t snappish, and mostly sullen. “
This is all messing with my mind big-time. I l
ive a simple life, or did until—
”

“I know. I’m sorry to get you mixed up in any of this,” he quietly said. “And look, I don’t want to fight about my going to Zurich. The trip was a one-shot deal—sorry, scratch that phrase. It was a set of circumstances that will never be repeated. Never. Okay?” He bent low so their eyes were level. “Yuri is out of our life. I promise. There’s just a lot of people I have to protect, so I can’t explain every little detail.”

She really liked his unreserved promise about it being over, but all the rest about not being able to tell her everything and people to protect made her uneasy. “You’re like—not connected, are you?” she nervously asked.

He laughed so hard and so long she was beginning to get rankled all over again when fighting a smile and wiping the tears from his eyes, he said, “Word of honor, babe. I’m not connected.”

“For sure?” Could she ask him to swear on a stack of Bibles or something equally inane.

“For sure,” he said without a hint of a smile this time, without a glint of amusement in his gaze, with such earnestness, she knew he was telling the truth. About that at least, if not about the Yuri stuff. And if he was really protecting other people, she didn’t expect him to jeopardize that trust? Did she?

The honest truth was that she
would
like him to tell her everything. Like bare his soul to her, like they did in really hokey movies.

The reality was she’d known him a grand total of seven and a half days and really couldn’t expect much more from him than a certain civility given to a woman he’d slept with.

Jeez, that was one harsh reality when she was trying her damndest not to even think about being in love with him after so brief a time.

“Hey, are we good now?”

He was giving her that unbelievably sweet smile that could, like, charm the pants off of
th
e world’s biggest ice queen. “Yeah, we’re good.” She smiled. “And I should thank you for dealing with Yuri. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Anyway, it was very brave of you.”
A vast
understatement, but she didn’t know where the line
between fantasy and
real life actually met in that scenario.
And maybe he was right. Maybe
she’d be better off not knowing.
She’d
lived through
a
real-life nightmare with Yuri once already. She didn’t need a repeat.

All Johnny wanted was for this conversation to be over. So much so that he did another brave thing. He decided to give her what he had in his pocket.

“Kaz bought some jewelry for his wife while we were in Zurich,” he abruptly said, his voice brisk and hurried, as though having made up his mind, he wanted to get through what he was going to say as quickly as possible. “This jeweler does some special work apparen
tl
y, so as long as I was there, I got you this.” Pulling a small velvet box from his pants pocket, he snapped the lid open with his thumb. “What’d you think?”

“Holy Christ!”

He couldn’t get a read on her wide-eyed expletive, or maybe he wasn’t up to speed when it came to giving out engagement
rings. “Is that good—or not good?”

“It’s huge!”

“Kaz says his wife likes huge, no pun intended,” he said with a faint smile, feeling better because Nicky was grinning ear-to-ear now. “Try it on.” Slipping the diamond ring out of the box, he lifted her left hand, and slid a ring the size of Rhode Island on her fourth finger. “I was thinking about maybe a long engagement
though
…
so we can get to know each other, if you know what I mean. Like no sense diving off a high dock into shallow water and breaking our necks because we haven’t given this a little thought. Although I’m sober and straight this time, so I’m guessing it’s a whole lot different than last time—but”—he half-smiled again—“just in case.”

Now she knew what was meant by flummoxed. It was part numbness, part hearing a voice from nowhere saying
You
better check this one out,
part fantasy Hollywood script. She swallowed and said in what she’d hoped would be a normal tone of voice but turned out to be a whisper, “Is this a marriage proposal?”

A long, long,
long
silence this time. Apparently she wasn’t the only one spacing out.

“If it’s okay with you,” he finally said, “yeah, I guess that’s what you’d call it.”

Even as the little voice inside her head was screaming
Will you shut the fuck up!!,
she attempted to rally her rational faculties. “We don’t know each other very well,” she pointed out. “Or hardly at all,” she added, nudged by the small, incorruptible bit of her sanity that wasn’t dancing in the streets shouting
Hallelujah!

“What I know about you,” Johnny softly replied, every syllable rich with sexual innuendo, “I really like. But”—he shifted his stance marginally as though responding to the significance of her statement—“I hear what you’re saying. I suppose you should m
eet my parents and brother…
somewhere down the road.” The masculine code of family obligation in action. “And we’ll go see your family, too. But Jordi’s
th
e only one that really counts as far as any decisions I make,” he added, his daughter viewed through a very different prism. “And she likes you, I can tell. So we’re good.”