French Kissing

by Nancy Warren

  Now they were gone, and her time with Holden was down to hours.

  “I wish we had more time,” she said when at last he drew back, and she managed not to cling.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “But,” she said, forcing a smile, “I’ve got stories to file and work piling up in New York.”

  He nodded. “And I’ve got a business in Oregon.”

  “I know.”

  “Come back to my hotel for a bit. I’ve got something for you.”

  She should refuse, she knew that. There weren’t many hours left until she had to be on that plane, but she figured she’d have years to sleep and not many hours left with Holden, so it was a no-brainer.

  They walked back to his hotel and, once in his room, he handed her a gift-wrapped box. At first she thought it was clothing, but when she held it, the box was too heavy. More like a book.

  He seemed a tiny bit nervous as she removed the wrapping. Inside, the box had the name of a photography studio here in Paris. She lifted open the box and saw that it was a photograph album. A beautiful one, in midnight-blue leather with a gold lock and key. On the cover he’d had printed the words One Night in Paris.

  Using the tiny gold key, she unlocked the album and opened it.

  “Oh, Holden,” she said, feeling a rush of heat wash over her as she saw the first of the pictures he’d taken of her that magical night.

  He came and sat beside her. “I wanted you to have something to remember our time together, and one of the most amazing nights I’ve ever spent.”

  She turned each page slowly, thinking how much artistry was in each photograph, and how much passion. She could feel the sexuality burning through the pages. Even though she was naked, or near-naked in many of the photos, it wasn’t shame or embarrassment she felt but awe that Holden had seen and recorded her most intimate self. His feelings were expressed as though he’d spoken them aloud. She felt his pleasure in her body, the way he’d touched her with his photographer’s eye told her everything she needed to know.

  He loved her.

  The last picture was the only one of the two of them in the album, and she thought it would be the one she turned to most in the days and weeks to come, when she thought back on this glorious time. The picture showed them in the Jardin des Tuileries pressed together, so their silhouettes seemed to merge in shadow. His body, strong and muscular, hers soft and supple, the statue looming over them and the darkness of trees around them.

  She sat looking at that last photo for a long time. She felt him looking at her while she stared at the two of them in that intimate pose. She wished she had the words to express to him what he’d given her in these pages, but then, she thought he knew. “This is beautiful. The whole week—it’s all been so…”

  “I know.” He kissed her and she felt the familiar rush of heat tempered with the sadness of knowing this was their last time together.

  There were ways to say I love you that used no words. It was in the way he slid her zipper down slowly, kissing his way down her spine in its wake. It was in the way he eased the dress off her body and, instead of tossing it onto the floor, laid it on the chair because he understood clothes mattered to her.

  She was wearing her favorite new bra-and-panties set, gossamer-thin black silk that was so sheer it was more like shadow than fabric.

  “I love the way the light hits your breasts just here,” he murmured, brushing the highlighted peaks. “And the shadows here,” he said, kissing the valley between.

  Emotion seemed to make her skin more sensitive, her blood pound faster.

  She began undressing him, taking her own sweet time with buttons, treating herself to the emerging view of his muscular torso, while his hands touched her through lingerie, teasing them both.

  When she got his jeans open she couldn’t resist reaching down and wrapping her hand around his cock, enjoying all that heat and hardness so soon to be inside her.

  As though following her lead, Holden slipped a hand into her panties and stroked her clit in rhythmic circles until she was boneless and light-headed. Even as she fell backward onto the bed on a cry of release, she kept her grip tight around him, tugging him with her so he fell on top of her.

  He scrambled out of the rest of his clothes and she kicked off her heeled sandals, then he came to her and slipped her panties off. When he came back to her, she felt a lump form in her throat as he held her gaze, his eyes dark and serious while he entered her with quiet ceremony.

  As their bodies moved together, as their mouths met, she felt the absolute perfect happiness of this moment tinged with the sadness of knowing it would soon be gone.

  When he cried out against her mouth, it sounded like a shout of protest.

  AT FOUR she rose. The cab was coming at five, and with this flight she’d be in her office in time to put in most of a day’s work.

  When she got out of the shower, Holden passed her a cup of coffee.

  “You should have gone back to sleep,” she told him.

  “Nah. I like to drag out my goodbyes.”

  She put on her stockings. “I wish it didn’t have to be goodbye.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not easy to keep up a relationship with so many miles between us, Manhattan.”

  “Come to New York,” she said suddenly. “Come and let me show you my favorite restaurants. We can walk in Central Park and do the museums and see theater and ballet and opera.”

  He scratched his cheek and the sound of stubble rasping against his fingernails sounded ridiculously sexy to her. “Opera, huh?”

  “See how the other half lives.”

  “Or you could come to Oregon. I can show you sights you’ve never seen in your life. We’ll kayak with sea lions, cook the fish we catch over an open fire, watch the sun rise from the top of a mountain.”

  “Mountains, huh?”

  He grinned at her, a little crookedly, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Or we kiss goodbye and know that we’ll always remember one of the greatest weeks of our lives.”

  22

  ONE OF THE GREATEST weeks of their lives, she thought as she fell back into the routine of her job, her apartment, her friends and her usual life. Paris had been the greatest week, not only because she’d met Holden and cracked an international crime ring, but also because she’d found her other family. At last.

  She and Claudia e-mailed almost every day and talked on the phone every week or two.

  She had a sister.

  Today there’d been an e-mail waiting for her when she got to work. Dear Kimi, I am glad that you are no longer jet lagged. I feel as though I have terrible jet lag. Of course, it’s only a broken engagement. I refuse to say heart. I am sure I never really loved that man. I intend to believe that, anyway, until it is true.

  She sounded so down that Kimi wished she could do something for her.

  Before she’d completed the next thought in her head, she pressed Reply. Dear Claudia, I have a fantastic idea. Come to New York. You’d love it here. I’ve got plenty of room and we could…Her fingers paused above the keyboard. They could what? They were two women from different worlds who barely knew each other. Did she really want her depressed Italian half sister as a houseguest?

  Yes, she thought with a flicker of excitement. She did. We could shop, eat wonderful food and ignore all men. Think about it. She glanced at the clock on her computer. I have to go now, I’m having lunch with my mother. You must meet my mother, she’s impossible to describe, but I think you’d like each other.

  Normally, Kimi and her mom had dinner together every couple of weeks when they were both in town, it was a chance for two busy career women to catch up. But, after her Paris trip, they’d decided to fit in lunch as soon as they could.

  “He’s still handsome,” her mother sighed over moo-shoo pork on Mott Street as she looked at the photos Kimi had brought of her father. “Claudia’s a good-looking young woman too. Not as pretty as you, of course, but there’s definitely a resemblance.”


  “I want you to meet her. I invited her to come to New York.”

  Her mother’s brows rose. “You’re not planning a parent trap, are you?”

  Kimi laughed. “No, Mom. I can’t even imagine you and Giovanni together. Not even when you were young. How did you two ever get together in the first place?”

  “Sex. Of course.”

  Kimi rolled her eyes. “I figured that part out, thanks. But, in a campus crawling with guys in Birkenstocks quoting Emily Dickinson, how did you end up with an Italian business major?”

  Her mother pushed her gray-and-black hair over her shoulder. She was, as she liked to tell Kimi, aging gracefully, but the silver-and-black threads in her hair were stunning and it was a look that people were currently paying a fortune for in New York salons.

  At fifty her mom remained beautiful in an earth-mother way. And, though she’d sworn she’d never marry, Kimi knew that Evelyn’s toothbrush was rarely the only one residing in her bathroom. Currently, the guy with the wooden-handled, hemp-bristled toothbrush was a philosophy professor named Bryant. Kimi thought he was a pompous windbag, but her mom said he was great in bed and had an unexpectedly quirky sense of humor. Whatever.

  She could almost see her mom sifting back through the years and her various lovers to reconnect with those few months almost thirty years ago.

  “I suppose the simple truth was, not that opposites attract, which is patently ridiculous, but that sometimes we have a powerful sexual attraction to someone with whom we have no other possible way of connecting.” She shrugged and the shisha mirrors woven into her jacket—hand-crafted by fair-trade female artisans in India—flashed. “I can’t explain it. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

  Kimi sat back and regarded her mother. “I think it just did.”

  “Oh, good. Tell me all the delicious details.”

  “You know, you’re more like a girlfriend than a mother.”

  A wicked grin answered her. “I tried my best to be a good mother, but I have to say it was a relief when you grew up and I could relax and enjoy you as a friend.”

  Kimi laughed. It was true. They loved each other, but they did a lot better now that they didn’t share a roof. “I guess you and I are a perfect example of people who love each other but have nothing in common.”

  “But I never loved Giovanni. Anyway, that’s old history. Tell me about your wildly inappropriate lover.” She slipped a snow pea into her mouth. “In Paris of course?”

  She nodded. “His name’s Holden and he’s a private investigator. We worked together—well, I guess I helped him do his job, and we busted a couture theft ring, which you already know.”

  Her mother was watching her carefully. Not much got past her. “And?”

  “And it was fantastic,” she wailed. “But he lives in Oregon and he’s an outdoors guy. You know, hiking boots and lumberjack shirts.”

  Her mother’s lips twitched. “No designer suits and Italian loafers?”

  “His designer is Eddie Bauer. His hobby is photographing wildlife.” She leaned in and dropped her voice as though relating a dirty secret. “He camps. In a tent.”

  Her mother hooted with laughter. “All those years I tried to instill in you other values than which skirt went with which top, in which pursuit I failed mightily, and you fall in love with Jeremiah Johnson. Oh, it’s delicious.”

  She groaned. Not even bothering to deny she was in love with the guy. Trust her mother to home in on the pertinent detail. “What am I going to do?”

  “You’ve got two choices. Forget about him or track him down like the rare and endangered species he is.”

  “What are you saying? A good man is hard to find?”

  “No. I’m saying that a man who doesn’t dress prettier than I do is going to make me—and you—a lot happier than those useless twits you usually go for.”

  A waiter came over with a fresh pot of green tea. Even in the most crowded restaurants in Manhattan her mother always got better service than anyone she knew.

  “I swore after my last summer boot camp for paramilitary feminists in training that I was never going to put on a pair of hiking boots again.”

  Her mother poured the tea. “It was summer camp to build self-esteem and survival skills. Don’t exaggerate. And, like I said, you have a choice.”

  “Yeah…But it doesn’t feel like much of a choice. I can’t stop thinking about him.” Or paging through the album he’d made her. When she got to the last page, she noticed, not their obvious differences, but how well they blended together in the most basic way of all.

  Her mother leaned over and patted her shoulder. “Maybe there’s an Eddie Bauer on Fifth Avenue.”

  She groaned and put her head in her hands.

  “I’m joking, Kimi.”

  “I passed an outdoors store on the way here. I almost told the cab to stop. That’s how pathetic I am.”

  A low laugh and sparkling excitement in her mom’s eyes told Kimi that Evelyn was enjoying this much more than a good mother ought to. “Then you can find it on your way back. I don’t have to work this afternoon. I’ll come with you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m not going in.”

  She was still arguing when the cab dropped them outside the store. There was a yellow mountaineer’s pack in the window, an ice ax and red rope. Ridiculous.

  She followed her mother inside. The place even smelled like tent when she walked in, and of all the sensory recollections stored in her memory bank that evoked strong reactions, the smell of tent was right up there with puke.

  She edged to the door, thinking this was not her place and these were not her people, when a young girl wearing a Team Everest T-shirt and a nose ring came up and asked if they needed any help.

  Her mother, for once, didn’t open her mouth. Clearly, she knew that it was up to Kimi now.

  The salesclerk wore her blond hair in a ponytail, no makeup but clear lip gloss, cargo pants and sneakers. She had the bright eyes and glowing complexion of an outdoors buff, and muscular arms and legs. This was the sort of woman for Holden, not a designer-obsessed fashionista.

  But she’d come this far. She flashed a smile at the young woman and said, “I haven’t worn a pair of hiking boots in more than ten years.” She glanced at her companion. “My mom made me go to these awful wilderness camps for girls—”

  “Wow, cool.”

  “Not for me. Anyhow, I was thinking I should give the outdoors another try.”

  “You totally should. You know, boots are a lot lighter and technically enhanced than they used to be.”

  Oh, great. Technically enhanced hiking boots. Just what she needed. “Look, the truth is, I met a guy. He’s the outdoors type. I wanted to see if I could stand it, maybe for a weekend.”

  The blonde looked her up and down. She was wearing a Dior pencil skirt, an Emilio Pucci blouse from last season, cherry colored Kate Spade bag and Prada open-toed sandals. “He must be some guy.”

  She grinned. “Oh, he is.”

  “Okay. Let’s start with the boots. Your number-one most important piece of hiking equipment. Where will you be hiking?”

  She tossed a helpless glance at her mother, who said, “Oregon.”

  “Okay. You’ll need rain gear.”

  “Rain gear.” Forty minutes later, there was a four-hundred-dollar charge on her card and she owned gray hiking boots, a guaranteed-to-stay-dry-in-all-weather jacket and assorted hiking garb. For four hundred bucks she could have had two Hermès scarves, the Dior sunglasses she’d seen in Saks yesterday, a pair of—no! She had to stop.

  She was doing this. Holden had already proved he could play in her world. Maybe it was time to see if she could play in his.

  After leaving her mother, she returned to her office and wondered if she should have called Holden first before her little shopping spree. They hadn’t spoken since they got back to the States. There was no point in dragging out the inevitable, but she was beginning to wonder if parting was inevitabl
e.

  She thought of the photograph album she kept on her bedside table so it was the last thing she saw at night and the first thing she noticed in the morning. Maybe love was stronger than their differences.

  Or maybe not. There was only one way to find out.

  She called his cell phone. “MacGreggor.”

  And hearing him say his last name had her knowing she was doing the right thing. If his voice uttering one word could make her almost woozy, she couldn’t imagine what Holden in the flesh could do in a weekend. She shut her eyes briefly. Even if Holden and his flesh were in a tent.

  “Holden, it’s me, Kimi.”

  There was a tiny pause. Delighted surprise, she hoped.

  “Kimi. Hi. Where are you?”

  “I’m in my office. But I’ve got an assignment in Seattle.”

  “That’s great, when?”

  “The timing’s flexible,” especially since she didn’t actually have an assignment in Seattle and she’d be scrambling to put one together if this worked out. “I thought I’d take a few extra days and come visit you.”

  “Visit me.”

  She looked at the bag of outdoors stuff that she could swear still smelled faintly of tent. “I was hoping to take you up on your offer to go, um, camping.”

  He chuckled. “Seriously?”

  “Why not? You made those sunrises sound pretty good.”

  “It is so great to hear your voice.” He dropped his to a soft murmur. “I missed you.”

  She smiled into the phone. “Me too.”

  “Figure out your timing and I’ll clear my schedule. How much time can you give me?”

  “I don’t know. A few days.”

  “Five. I’ll need five days to take you where I want you to go.”

  She swallowed. “Five days in a tent?”