A Wedding in Paris

by Barbara Bretton

  Story of her life, Shannon thought with a degree of resignation.

  She watched as a smile slowly unfolded along Josh’s lips. Behind her, she could almost feel Taylor radiating approval and interest. She did her best to block Taylor’s view.

  “Now that you mention it,” Josh replied, “yes, there is something wrong with my room.”

  Not that she could do anything about it, Shannon thought, but it only seemed polite to ask. “What?”

  “The view.”

  His eyes swept over her and she had the distinct feeling of being touched. All over. She’d never felt quite this strangely vulnerable before. Jet lag? Paris? Feeling sorry for herself? Had to be one of those three, none of which had anything to do with the good-looking man whose presence coincided with the formation of multiple goose bumps on her flesh.

  “It’s much better here,” Josh was saying, his eyes sweeping over her face. And then he grinned. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  Damn it, now she felt a blush forming. Just what she needed. Shannon cleared her throat and tried to sound distant. She succeeded only marginally. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but why are you here?”

  “To take you up on your sightseeing suggestion.”

  Shannon drew a blank. All that they had talked about was high school and math. Was she forgetting something? “Excuse me?”

  He was nothing if not genial. Robert, when pressed, would snap out his responses, as if she were stealing from him precious time that couldn’t be replaced.

  Why was she doing this? she upbraided herself. Why was she comparing Robert to other men when she was beyond that stage? As if to ground herself, she fingered the back of her engagement ring with her thumb.

  “Earlier in the lobby,” Josh told her, “when you were quelling the masses, you said we were here to take in the sights. I thought you might like some company.” He raised his eyes toward Taylor. “Unless you’ve made other arrangements—”

  She had a sharp, legal mind, able to remember and summon the most obscure details at will to back up arguments. She took pride in the fact that she could think on her feet. Why, then, did her brain feel like leftover mush that had been standing on a stove for three days?

  Shannon looked at Taylor’s suitcase on the floor, grasping for straws. “Well, um, I was just about to unpack—”

  “Go,” Taylor urged, placing both hands against her back and all but pushing her out the door. “I can unpack for you.”

  Okay, maybe there was no harm in going sightseeing with Joshua. After all, he was an old friend. Shannon looked down at what she was wearing. She’d put on a pair of jeans and an old hunter-green tank top because the room was so warm.

  “I’d have to change,” she began a little uncertainly.

  “Why?”

  She spread her hands before her. “You don’t want to be seen with me like this.”

  He grinned. “Ask me.”

  Was it the heat in the room? Joshua seemed to be fairly radiating with sensuality. Why didn’t you come with me, Robert? Again, she glanced down at her outfit. Somehow, it just didn’t seem to fit with Paris. It fit with sitting in a hotel room, counting minutes until the ordeal she was faced with was over.

  “It doesn’t bother you that I look like I’m cleaning out the garage?”

  “My garage should be so lucky.” He took Shannon’s hand and drew her across the threshold as if he were gently coaxing her along a tightrope wire. “Come on, Paris is waiting.”

  As Shannon turned, Taylor tossed her purse to her. “You heard the man, don’t keep Paris waiting.”

  The next moment, the door was firmly shut behind her.

  Talk about obvious, Shannon thought in dismay. She knew that Taylor disliked Robert, but this was really awkward. “She’d do anything for a little privacy.”

  Headed for the stairs, Josh laughed. “I know exactly how your sister feels. I’m in a room with two of the Fellini cousins that I’m not quite sure made it onto the evolutionary chart.”

  She bit her lower lip, trying not to laugh. “You know, there are other places to stay besides this inn.”

  They were drifting down the stairs now and he was completely focused on her as he shook his head. “Short notice.”

  Maybe, but there had to be a room somewhere. A decent-size one. She imagined that money wouldn’t be a factor for someone as successful as Gabe had told her his best friend was. “They can’t all be booked.”

  “This is the busy season as far as tourism goes and besides, the wedding is taking place here.” Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he shrugged nonchalantly. “So it’s a little inconvenient. It’s only for six days. I’ve been in worse conditions.”

  The rooms were small, basically airless and, from what she’d sampled, the mattresses doubled as rock beds for the local flower gardens. “Been to prison, have you?” she quipped.

  He laughed again. She found the sound warm and oddly thrilling. “You still have the same sense of humor,” he noted.

  Not lately, she thought. Thinking back about the past few months, she realized that she’d had precious little to find funny. Life with Robert was so serious, so focused, so driven. It had taken the humor out of life.

  But she wasn’t about to complain about Robert or even mentally list his shortcomings. She knew that was only the hurt feelings talking. Robert was a good, decent man who was going places. He needed her.

  She smiled at Josh and nodded. “Some things never change.” She took a deep breath as they walked out the front door. “So, what would you like to see first?”

  “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  She had no idea why that sent another warm shiver up and down her spine. But it did.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN SHANNON AND Josh decided to take in the Eiffel Tower, Paris’s most famous symbol, after first seeing the Arc de Triomphe, Shannon had suggested they go the usual tourist route and take a tour along with the group of people gathering near a booth.

  But Josh quickly vetoed the idea. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” he challenged.

  These days, she liked things laid out for her, all neatly fitted into their proper categories. Josh was, she knew, remembering the Shannon she used to be. The one who had tackled life full-tilt. The one who’d love to have fun.

  When had that stopped?

  Even as the question came to her, she refused to examine the all-too-painful reply.

  Instead, she shifted her eyes to Josh’s face. The look in his eyes was magnetic and too hard to resist. “Just what do you have in mind?”

  Her question brought an answer to his mind that he knew was best kept to himself. Because what he was thinking had nothing to do with an age-old Parisian symbol and everything to do with her. “Exploring the tower on our own,” he told her. “Without a guide.” Putting an arm around her, he drew her away from a crowd that was getting ready to do just the opposite of what he was suggesting. “We can pretend we’re natives, that the tower is practically in our backyard, a sight to be taken in every day and taken for granted.” He winked as he took her hand in his, leading her to an elevator. “Like New Yorkers with the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.”

  “I’ve been to the Empire State Building,” she countered as she stepped onto the elevator ahead of him. She didn’t add that she had been around five years old at the time.

  Josh moved closer to her as the doors shut. The space was crowded with tourists. She tried not to notice how close he was, or the rays of pleasure that seemed to generate from that closeness.

  “How about the Statue of Liberty?” he wanted to know, his breath tickling her ear.

  Goose bumps insisted on forming again. She stared straight ahead. “I take the Fifth.”

  Shannon felt more than heard his laugh. Turning, she saw him wink again. Because that caused a second, strong ripple in her stomach, which she silently told herself was due to the altitude and not his proximity, she turned forward again.

&nb
sp; It didn’t help check the ripple when he brought his head down again and whispered in her ear, “Caught you.”

  The sharp intake of breath occurred before she could harness it.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  Yes, something was wrong, Shannon thought. Very wrong. She shouldn’t be here with another man, even a harmless one from her past. Certainly not having this strange, strong—okay, romantic—reaction to him.

  Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t a hundred-percent sure just how harmless Josh McClintock actually was. Joshua McClintock had been, but that was years back. This new, improved version, this “Josh,” well, she wasn’t so sure about things. Because if he was harmless, then why was she having these feelings and reacting this way to him?

  The elevator brought them to the top of the venerable structure and suddenly she was looking at all of Paris, laid out before her like a feast for the eyes. She couldn’t contain the excitement she felt.

  Or was that Josh creating these feelings within her? She looked at him in wonder.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head and looked away again. “Nothing. It’s just so beautiful,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” he said softly, looking at her. “I know.”

  A need for self-preservation and to keep things the way they were supposed to be had Shannon backing away from Josh and pulling out her cell phone.

  “Something wrong?” Josh asked.

  “I need to make a call,” she told him, a sense of urgency overtaking her. Maybe if she heard Robert’s voice, then these strange feelings undulating through her would stop.

  Josh nodded, moving away to give her privacy. “I’ll be right here, drinking in the sights.” He purposely turned away from her, looking down on a city that had begun to court twilight in earnest.

  Her fingers almost felt as if they belonged to someone else as she tapped the keypad, hitting the familiar cell number. The phone on the other end began to ring. Mentally, she counted off four rings before she heard a pickup.

  Because she knew that her fiancé hated to waste time on the phone, Shannon began to talk fast. “Robert, this is—”

  Before she could finish, the answering machine message came on. She heard his stern, no-nonsense voice—a voice she’d once found powerful and strong—but now just found that it separated him from her.

  “You’ve reached the cell phone of Robert Newhall. I can’t answer right now, but leave a message and I’ll try to get back to you.”

  She sighed. The operative word here, obviously was “try.” She’d been in Paris for more than five hours now and this was her second attempt to reach Robert. Neither try had been successful.

  Still, she left another message. “It’s Shannon again. Just wanted you to know that I landed safely—” if you care “—and that I miss you.”

  The last phrase was not said all that convincingly, she thought as she snapped her phone shut and dropped it into her pocket.

  There was a six-hour difference between Paris and New York. Robert, undoubtedly, was still working, she told herself. He hated being interrupted when he was working. But he’d call her later, she told herself, when he was free.

  “Calling the inn to see how Alexis is holding up?” Josh asked pleasantly when she returned to his side.

  The question made her feel guilty. She should be concerned with Alexis, not Robert. She’d left Robert working—his favorite state of being. More than likely, he’d hardly notice she was gone. She was supposed to be lending Alexis her support.

  Shannon shook her head. “No, I wasn’t calling Alexis,” she told him.

  Josh paused for a moment, observing her. And then he guessed, “He’s not there?”

  Startled, she looked at him, clearly confused. “How did you—?”

  “You look disappointed,” he told her.

  That was the word for it, she supposed. Disappointed. Because she hadn’t reached Robert. “Nothing I’m not used to.”

  “Being disappointed?” Slipping his arm around her, he guided her back to the elevator. She looked like she needed to eat more than she needed the view, he thought. There were two restaurants housed in the Eiffel Tower, one on the first floor and one, Le Jules Verne, on the second. Since he was partial to Verne’s novels, he chose the latter. “You’re too young to be disappointed yet,” he told her as they rode down to the next level.

  “No, I didn’t mean disappointed,” Shannon quickly amended. Didn’t you? a voice inside her asked. She deliberately ignored it. She simply missed Robert, that was all. “I mean I’m used to playing phone tag with him. We’re both lawyers and between our caseloads, sometimes it’s hard for us to connect.”

  At the restaurant, Josh held up two fingers for the maître d’. The man nodded and took them to a table for two. As they sat down, Josh’s eyes never left her. “If you were my fiancée, I’d make time to connect,” he assured her.

  When a waiter appeared, Josh ordered two glasses of red wine. Shannon waited for the waiter to retreat, then said, “When did you learn all the right things to say?”

  Practice, Josh thought, although with Shannon conversation was easy. Maybe because in his mind, hers was the face he’d envisioned every time he’d practiced. With a small laugh, he said, “Came with the growth spurt.”

  He said it so casually, so unselfconsciously, it made her wonder if his former state had ever bothered him. He seemed completely at ease with himself, she noted. It was a pleasant change from Robert’s intensity.

  The moment she thought that, she felt guilty again.

  “You were short,” she agreed, laughing softly, the way a person did remembering a time they enjoyed reliving. And she had loved high school and college. It was just lately she felt as if the fun, the joy, had been drained out of her, as if having fun was just too frivolous for her to contemplate at this stage of her life.

  Sitting back in his chair, Josh raised his wineglass to his lips, observing her over the rim. “Tell me, with all this nonconnecting going on, how did you and your fiancé ever happen to hook up?”

  It seemed so long ago now, not the three years it actually was. “We clerked for the same judge. Robert was different, then,” she said, then shrugged. “Or maybe I was.” And had settled for less. Had she settled? She felt confused and this wine had one hell of a kick to it, she thought. “He seemed so dedicated.”

  Dedicated seemed like a poor word to justify attraction, Josh thought. “So’s a word processor, but I wouldn’t get engaged to one.” A warning look slipped into Shannon’s eyes and Josh knew he’d gone a step too far. So he apologized. “Sorry, none of my business.” He paused to allow his apology to sink in, sipping his wine as he did so. “So, I hear this was a lifelong dream of your sister’s to get married. Paris in the spring.”

  Shannon was grateful for the change in topic and quickly seized it. “Yes, it is.” She thought about how lucky Alexis was. “Gabe’s a really nice guy to go along with all this.”

  Josh smiled. That, he thought, was an under-statement. “He’s crazy about Alexis. If she wanted a slice of the moon, he’d try to book a flight on the next space shuttle to get it for her. Must be nice to love someone so much.”

  Shannon sighed softly as she absently took a sip from her own glass. She felt a little fuzzy—and very, very lonely. There was a hole growing inside her that she didn’t know what to do with. “Must be.”

  “Strange words coming from a woman who’s engaged,” Josh observed.

  He’d started out intent on seducing her. When had he gotten caught up in her life? And where had this indignation about her fiancé’s apparent lack of feeling come from? Why was he feeling so angry on Shannon’s behalf?

  “Isn’t Robert crazy about you?” Josh asked.

  “Robert loves me,” Shannon protested quickly, maybe too quickly. Feeling slightly chagrined, she shrugged and said, “Crazy about me? I don’t think Robert’s actually capable of being crazy about anyone.”

  Not good
enough, Josh thought. Out loud, he said, “He should be.” She raised her eyes to his and he saw the surprise there. “You deserve it.”

  Shannon felt her heart stop beating. And then she felt it go into triple time, racing toward some invisible finish line.

  Reaching across the tiny table, Josh placed his hand over hers. “You deserve to have someone crazy about you, Shannon.”

  One minute they were talking and she was about to protest the very negative picture of Robert that Josh was obviously forming in his mind, the next, they weren’t talking at all. They were kissing.

  Shannon had never been a shrinking violet. She’d dated extensively in high school and then in college. She was no stranger to the pleasures that a relationship could bring. But this was like standing in a pool of water with lightning striking. Her whole body felt as if it was on the receiving end of an electrical storm.

  A hunger sprang up within her that scared her down to the tips of her open-toed shoes.

  The desire to stand up, to feel Josh’s hard body against hers, was nearly overwhelming. She felt as if she was coming apart at the seams.

  Alarms.

  She heard alarms.

  Alarms were going off in her head. No, wait, they were going off outside her head. On the street below. Sirens. Startled, she pulled her head back and dragged in as much air as she could. She was grateful that she wasn’t standing, because she had the feeling that, without support, she would have instantly sunk to the floor.

  The sirens were still blaring, getting louder. She looked at Josh in confusion. “Do you hear that?”

  He nodded, feeling a bit breathless. Kissing Shannon, he thought, was every bit as wondrous as he’d always imagined it would be. “I guess they have fires here in Paris, too,” he told her.

  “Fires?” Why did her brain feel so numb? Why wasn’t she processing anything he was saying? She’d never felt like this when Robert kissed her. My God, she’d never even felt like this when Robert made love to her.

  This was bad, she thought. Very bad.

  The waiter came with their meals and she took the moment to try to pull herself together. As if that was possible, she mocked herself. But she had to try. More than that, she had to execute damage control.