The Art of French Kissing (5 page)

Guillaume’s first single was due to hit airwaves next week, so there would be plenty of buzz built around the star by the time the junket rolled around.

“Emma, this guy is gold,” Poppy said on Tuesday as we laid out photos. We were trying to select two to send out with the advance press packet. “Millions of women are already in love with him.”

In fact, I’d half fallen in love with him myself by the time we were done poring over his pictures. As I already knew from the dozens of photos I’d seen of him in
People
,
Hello
, and
Mod
, he had dark shaggy hair, deep green eyes, broad shoulders, and the kind of perfectly chiseled features that you expect to see on Michelangelo statues, not real human beings. Women all over the world were going crazy for him, and his breakup with Dionne DeVrie had only excited the public appetite. But would his sound measure up as Poppy had claimed?

Thursday afternoon, I had my answer. Before we left work for the day, a courier delivered our first copy of the “City of Light” single, hot off the press, and we popped it into the CD player at Poppy’s desk excitedly. It would be Poppy’s first time hearing the final recorded version of the single, but at least she’d gotten to sit in on some of Guillaume’s studio sessions, which was why she was so awed by him already.

It was my first time hearing Guillaume at all.

The song, which he had written himself, was hauntingly beautiful. Poppy was right—it was reminiscent of Coldplay and Jack Johnson, with perhaps a little James Blunt thrown in—but there was no doubt that Guillaume Riche was in a class all by himself.

“Oh, my God,” I said, gazing at Poppy in wonder when the song finished. “We really do have a star on our hands.”

I’d never felt something so strongly in my life. It suddenly made sense that KMG was willing to invest so much in Guillaume. His voice was incredible, the lyrics were gorgeous, and the melodies were so pretty that they gave me goose bumps. It was a totally new sound, familiar yet ultimately like nothing I’d heard before.

That night, Poppy took me to a bar in the fifth arrondissement called the Long Hop. It was, she explained, a bar that catered to Anglos like us. But, Poppy added with a smile, it was always populated with lots of Frenchmen, too.

“It’s classic,” she told me as we walked through the entryway beneath the fluttering flags of our homelands. “They think we British and American girls are so gullible, we’ll fall for their smooth talk. But don’t be fooled, Emma. They’re just as bad as men anywhere else.”

I gave Poppy a look and didn’t bother reminding her that I obviously wasn’t here to pick up any guys, French or otherwise. Surely she knew I was in full-on mope-about-Brett mode.

Inside, the Long Hop was dark and smoky, with a hardwood bar framed with a list of chalk-written drink specials, a pool table in the back, a stairway to a small second level, and a room full of twentysomethings packed in like sardines. Vintage beer posters and signs decorated the shadowed walls, and blond, study-abroad American girls in jeans and heels tried desperately to look more French by tying scarves around their necks while talking to Frenchmen, who were, amusingly, trying desperately to look more American in jeans, Nike and Adidas shirts, and sneakers. Music—mostly in English—pumped from the speakers, making it hard to hear. Half of the dozen flat-screen TVs around the room were tuned to soccer matches, the other half to a rotating mix of concert footage and music videos. The Eagles’ “Hotel California” ran effortlessly into Fergie’s “London Bridges,” which pumped seamlessly into Madonna’s “Material Girl.”

“Let’s find a place to sit!” Poppy shouted over the music. “There are a lot of hot guys here!”

I hid an amused smile and followed her around the room, where she unabashedly looked guys up and down and returned their glances with a confidently sexy stare. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to look at guys that way again. Not that I was sure I ever had. It sounded strange, but it was hard to remember what going out had been like before Brett.

“According to
Smart Woman, Stupid Men,
you have to exude confidence to attract confidence,” Poppy whispered as we walked. I shook my head and tried to hide my amused smile.

We settled on a ledge near the dance floor, and right away Poppy excused herself to get us drinks. She returned—after five minutes of flirtation with a tall, floppy-haired blond bartender—with a gin fizz for herself and a Brazilian lime-and-sugarcane concoction called a caipirinha for me.

“To your visit to Paris!” Poppy said cheerfully, holding her glass up. “And to you discovering the art of French kissing!”

I held my glass up and clinked it against hers uncertainly. “What exactly are you talking about?” I asked after we had both taken a sip. I tried not to feel insulted. “Things may not have worked out with Brett, but Poppy, it wasn’t because I didn’t know how to kiss!”

Poppy laughed. “No, no!” she said. “I don’t mean
actual
French kissing. I mean kissing Frenchmen!”

That didn’t clarify things at all. “What
about
kissing Frenchmen?” I asked. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

“Well,” she said dramatically, leaning forward and lowering her voice, “I’ve decided that the best way in the world to get over an ex is to date as many Frenchmen as possible and chuck them before they chuck you!”

“You’re telling me that you want
me
to date a bunch of Frenchmen?” I repeated incredulously. I looked suspiciously at her glass. What was in that gin fizz of hers anyhow?

“Exactly!”

“And then dump them?”

“Precisely!”

“And this is supposed to make me feel better?”

“Voilà!”

I took a deep breath. Clearly I wasn’t getting through. “Poppy,” I began patiently. “In case you’ve forgotten, I just got out of a three-year relationship with a guy I was engaged to. And I’m only in Paris for five weeks. I’m not exactly looking for another boyfriend here.”

“Who said anything about a
boyfriend
?” Poppy wrinkled her nose at the last word, as if it were somehow distasteful. She paused for a moment and intently studied a tall dark-haired guy in a striped, collared shirt and designer jeans who passed us by without a glance.

“I thought
you
did,” I said, confused. I focused on pretending that I didn’t notice the very attractive dark-haired guy in the striped shirt giving me the eye. Or the blond guy nursing a Guinness in the corner who was staring at me. Or the muscular black guy shooting pool near the dance floor who kept glancing my way and smiling.

“Boyfriends are more trouble than they’re worth,” Poppy said with a shrug. “Who needs them? I’m just talking about a lovely date or a good snog, Emma.”

I couldn’t imagine that any of the men at this bar would want to snog me—or do anything else with me, for that matter. “I’m not exactly Audrey Tautou,” I said, rolling my eyes. In fact, with my somewhat stringy blond hair, wrinkle-rimmed blue eyes, and less-than-lithe figure, I was pretty much the polar opposite of the doe-eyed brunette gamine.

“Oh, rubbish.” Poppy waved dismissively. “You’re gorgeous. Besides, just by virtue of your Americanism, you’re fascinating to these men, you know. We Anglos are quite different from French girls, you know. And guess what? These Frenchmen? They are rather fascinating, too.”

“They are?” I asked, casting a glance at one cigarette-smoking slender guy, dressed head-to-toe in charcoal gray, who was giving Poppy—or rather her on-display cleavage—the eye.

“Absolutely,” she confirmed. “They are nothing like those duffers back home in our countries. They know how to treat women. They wine us, they dine us, they actually fall in love with us without getting all effed up because their friends think they’ve no bollocks. They speak romance as a second language. If you’re going to get back on the horse, Emma, these are the guys you want to saddle up with.”

“But I don’t
want
to get back on the horse,” I said stubbornly.

“Sure you do,” Poppy said. “You just don’t know it yet. And there’s no better place to start than right here.”

Chapter Four

A
n hour later, Poppy was deep in conversation with the cigarette-puffing guy in head-to-toe gray while I was being chatted up by a sandy-haired French guy named Edouard.

“Ah, I know Floreeda!” he had exclaimed when I told him where I was from. His accent was thick and his speech, slow and careful. He blew smoke out of his mouth, took another drag of his cigarette, and grinned widely. “Ze land of Meeckey Mouse,
oui
?”

“Er, yes,” I said, stifling a cough. “But there’s lots more to Florida than that.”

“I know!” he said, his broad smile growing even wider. “Beaches everyvhere!
Le jus d’orange!
Sunshine every day!”

More cigarette puffing from him. More coughing from me.

“Um, something like that,” I said, neglecting to mention the storms every summer afternoon or the fact that in Orlando, I’d been forty-five miles from the closest beach, or the fact that I drank Tropicana, not fresh juice from some mystical grove out back. I imagined it was much like the fact that many Americans envisioned all of France as one big baguette-eating, beret-wearing country surrounding the Eiffel Tower.

“So, you would like to see Paris
avec moi
?” Edouard asked carefully, resting his right hand on the banister behind where I stood and leaning forward in a way that was clearly meant to be seductive but seemed more like an invasion of my personal space. Not to mention my personal lung capacity. “I can give you ze tour,
non
?” he asked with another giant exhalation of smoke. He grinned again.

I coughed. “Um, no thank you,” I said, taking a discreet step backward. Unfortunately, the whole bar seemed to be swirling with smoke, so stepping out of Edouard’s cloud just meant stepping into someone else’s. I took a long sip of my third caipirinha of the evening and reminded myself to be polite. “I just got here today,” I added. “It will take me some time to settle in.”

“So Saturday, maybe, heh?” he pressed, leaning closer. “I take you on a peecnic, perhaps? Paris, it is such a romantic city.”

I stared at him for a moment. This was so different from an American conversation, where the guy would have asked for my number, strolled casually away, and failed to call for three days—all as a means of expressing interest in me.

“Maybe another time,” I said finally.

“So, I can to have your phone number?” he persisted.

I paused. “Um, why don’t you give me yours?”

He frowned. “That is not normal.”

I shrugged, not quite knowing what to say.

He hemmed and hawed for a moment but eventually scribbled his number on the back of a gum wrapper and handed it to me.

“I hope you will to call me, pretty lady,” he said.

I forced a smile, took the gum wrapper, and excused myself, backing out of his haze of smoke as he stared after me, seemingly confused that his advances hadn’t been successful.

I walked back over to Poppy, who cheerfully informed the gray-clad guy that we’d both like another drink. As he hurried away, she leaned in and whispered to me, “So? How’d it go with that guy you were talking to? Any snogging potential?”

I shrugged. “He had bad breath. And he smoked the whole time I talked to him.”

Poppy laughed. “You’d best get used to that in this city,” she said.

“Great,” I muttered. Now I could add lung cancer to my list of things that would go wrong because Brett had broken up with me.

“Don’t take things so seriously,” Poppy chided.

I made a face at her. “I think I’m ready to head home whenever you are,” I said after a moment, glancing around at the burgeoning crowd of cigarette-smoking Frenchmen on the make and the giggling American girls batting their eyelashes at them.

“No,” Poppy said simply.

“No?”
I was sure I’d heard her wrong. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re not going home until you’ve made a date for tomorrow night.” She fixed me with a firm stare.

“What?” This hadn’t been in my plans for the evening. Or for the foreseeable future, for that matter.

“Were you paying
any
attention to me earlier when I told you about Frenchmen?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“All I remember is something about horseback riding,” I said crossly.

Poppy laughed. “I believe you’re referring to getting back on the horse.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled.

“Look, Emma, if you’re going to stay with me this month, I’m not going to let you sit around and mope about Brett.” Poppy was suddenly very serious. “You have to get back out there. In
Secrets of Desirable Women
, Dr. Fishington writes that your chances for finding love decrease by six percent for every week you refrain from dating after a breakup.”

I stared at her for a moment. Although I didn’t believe in her self-help mumbo jumbo, I couldn’t help doing the calculations in my head. It had been four weeks since Brett and I broke up. By Poppy’s inane theory, that meant that my chances at love had diminished by almost a quarter.

“That’s ridiculous, Poppy,” I said, wishing I felt as confident as I sounded.

“Emma, French guys are the best,” Poppy continued, ignoring me. “It will build your self-esteem. Besides, when’s the last time you’ve just been on a
date
that you didn’t intend to turn into a relationship?”

I opened my mouth to respond but thought better of it. I considered her question for a moment. Even before Brett, every guy I’d dated had turned into a boyfriend, at least for a few months. In fact, I couldn’t even remember a time when I’d gone on a series of meaningless first dates. But wasn’t dating supposed to be all about finding Mr. Right?

“You’ve just been racing into relationships, haven’t you?” Poppy continued, evidently reading my mind. “The French call it the quest for
l’oiseau rare
—the rare bird, the perfect man. You were like that the summer we lived together, too,” she added triumphantly.

I stared at her. Was she right? I’d gone out on exactly two first dates that summer. One, with a British guy named Michael, had resulted in us having drunken sex at the end of the night and me falling head over heels for him, which scared him away inside of five weeks. The next date I’d had, with a banker named Colin, had resulted in a three-month relationship that he finally broke off after I’d moved back to the States, citing the difficulty of doing long distance.

“So?” I mumbled.

“So . . . ,” Poppy said, drawing the word out. “Maybe you need to simply
date
without trying to make it a race to girlfriend status.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out.

“You’re at your sexual peak, you know,” she added.

“Um, what?” I asked, wondering how this was relevant.

“Yes.” She nodded with confidence. “According to
Sexy Time
by Dr. Boris Sudoko, a woman’s sex drive peaks between twenty-nine and thirty-five. Now, I’m not suggesting you sleep with anyone. But there’s no better time in your life to feel attractive and sexy. Frenchmen are the best remedy for heartbreak.”

“You realize you’re insane,” I muttered.

“Yes, of course.” Poppy thought for a second. The guy in gray was on his way back, balancing three drinks and smiling at Poppy.

“Look,” she said. “What if I see if this guy Gérard has a friend that he can set you up with? And the four of us can meet tomorrow for a drink? Not a date, just a drink.”

“You know I don’t want to,” I said.

“And you know that’s mostly irrelevant.”

I made a face at her and was about to respond when Poppy’s cell phone began ringing to the tune of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”

“Bollocks,” Poppy cursed. She blushed and, casting a quick look at the approaching charcoal-clothed guy, scrambled for the phone, which was sticking out of her purse.
“Allô?”
she answered, sounding very French. I watched as the color drained from her face. She spoke a few more sentences in rapid French and hung up, looking distressed. “Bollocks!” she exclaimed again, slamming her fist down on the bar in frustration. The guy in gray glanced at her, set two of the drinks down, and hurried away, shaking his head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked with concern.

“It’s work,” she said tersely. She reached for a drink and took a big swig. “We have to go.”

“Work?” I repeated in disbelief. I checked my watch. “But it’s almost one in the morning!”

“Well, technically we’re on call all the time.” She made a face. “That’s what happens when you run your own agency.”

I just stared at her. “What on earth could we possibly have to do at one a.m.?” At Boy Bandz, I’d been “on call” two nights a week, but there had never been a middle-of-the-night incident I’d had to respond to. Our boys were usually tucked away in bed by eleven, probably with their night-lights on.

“It’s Guillaume Riche,” Poppy said tightly, leaning forward and lowering her voice. “Véronique from KMG just called. There’s apparently been, er, an incident.”

“An incident?” I asked.

“Véronique didn’t explain,” Poppy said. “She just said we needed to get to her office immediately. We need to do some damage control.”

Damage control? I opened my mouth but didn’t have time to respond before Poppy grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the exit.