Blame It On Paris

by Jennifer Greene

  Will had intervened. Kelly had a major conniption about his paying all that rent for her, but she obviously had to have her stuff. And whether or not she realized how bad the neighborhood was, he did. The other boarders looked like they were fresh out of jail or rehab. By contrast, Kelly looked milk-and-honey fresh. Leaving her there would be like leaving a kitten in a jungle.

  So now all her gear was in the back of his car, safe enough, but she'd just gotten more agitated as the day wore on.

  "I have to call my mom again. I have to reach her. And then I promise, I'll return all the money I borrowed from you immediately."

  "This may be killing you, Kelly, but it's not killing me. And I know you'll return the loan. Quit having a stroke."

  "But I don't borrow money. From strangers. From anyone."

  "Think of it from my perspective. If I were in a bind in a foreign country. I'd like to think someone would step up and help me."

  "But not like this. You've given up the whole day. Your work. Your place. And you're still stuck with me."

  "You know what? You need a drink. We both do."

  She opened her mouth as if she were going to object to that, too, but then…for the first time… she suddenly seemed to open her eyes. Forget the all-consuming anxiety that had been eating her up.

  A few moments later, he wrapped her hands around a glass of wine. A Syrah from the Rhone Valley, red as a ruby in the fading daylight.

  She took a sip without looking, likely without tasting.

  The boat had just started moving, the buzz of Paris traffic and tourists fading away. The other cruisers fell silent, too. No one could seem to help it on these Seine riverboats, even the Parisians. Paris really was the city of lights…and as dusk fell and the monuments lit up, so did all the ancient bridges. Those diamonds of light glittered in the Seine.

  They passed the Musée d'Art, but all the good stuff was a distance away yet. The guide would do his tourist thing, identify the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre and all the usual great historical stuff…but that was later. Dinner was now. Wine. The lights. The textures and sounds of Paris.

  At some point he accepted being in just a wee heap of trouble. Denial wasn't doing any good. You couldn't pretend you weren't in a swamp if you were knee-deep in mud. He wasn't in mud. He was just suffering from a mighty, mighty pull toward her.

  He'd get over it. he assured himself. He'd just met her. for Pete's sake. What was the harm in an evening together? So he liked looking at her. Liked the itchy charge of chemistry. Liked those liquid brown eyes of hers. So?

  Once they were seated for dinner, she did all the tourist-sucker oohing and aahing for the Tour Eiffel, Jardin des Plantes, the Louvre, Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

  Notre Dame was on Île de la Cité, though. And he knew she'd get into Notre Dame because of being a South Bender. But by the time they'd passed the real Dame, he'd ordered a second bottle of wine, a Puligny-Montrachet from 2002, and they were almost finished with the fabulous flammenkueche.

  "What is this dish again?" she asked.

  "Well…it's kind of a cross between a pancake and a pizza. It's got cream and herbs and ham and cheese. You like it?"

  "You've watched me gobbling it down and you have to ask? It's to die for. Like nothing I've ever tasted before. But I think one taste of escargot is enough for me."

  "Hey, you came all the way to France. You might as well try all the French things you can."

  "True," she murmured.

  Everyone on the cruise was more dressed up than them. They'd never had a chance to change. Hell, Will hadn't even come up with the impulsive idea to do the cruise until late in the day. But now, as they wandered back on deck-Kelly wanted a clearer view of the cathedral on shore, and God knew, they were both stuffed from dinner and needed a walk- she shivered in the sudden damp night breeze.

  Her pants and thin V-necked sweater weren't warm enough. Her throat was bare, no jewelry at all, just her skin glowing in the moonlight and distant city lights.

  He didn't put an arm around her, but he shifted closer. Close enough so their shoulders and arms touched, a way of simply offering some of his body warmth. But his heartbeat thought there was an implication because his pulse leaped like a pole vault.

  Or maybe the leap was caused by the way she suddenly looked at him.

  Music from the live trio playing inside drifted back to their part of the boat. He heard it. but like the buzz of other passengers' conversation and bursts of laughter, all sounds seemed to be coming from miles away. Every nerve ending in his body focused on her.

  "I can't believe I'm really here, really seeing this."

  "You mean the real Notre Dame?"

  She chuckled. "The one in South Bend is real, too. Which is funny, because we're here, yet this is the one that seems like a fantasy. It's all so…magical."

  The old cathedral wasn't remotely magical, he thought, but she was. And when another spring breeze whisked at her hair and made her shiver again, she didn't fight his arm scooping around her shoulder, nudging her closer.

  He knew at that instant they would sleep together.

  "You said you'd been in France around four years now? So all these monuments and museums are old to you. You've probably been inside Notre Dame a zillion times."

  "Museums, yeah. But Notre Dame, I've never been there."

  "Really? But it's so beautiful."

  "Yeah, well, might as well get this right on the table. I'm allergic to churches. Especially Catholic churches. My dad had two career goals for me. One was to become a priest, which he must have realized was highly unlikely when he found me sleeping with the babysitter when I was fourteen. I'm pretty sure that incident set off my Recovering Catholic phase. I'm still in it."

  "Hard work, this recovery?" Humor glinted in her eyes.

  "You can't imagine. I've had to be really vigilant. Guilt sneaks up on you when you're not looking. You see a nun, you get this instinct to stand up and recite catechism. You have to fight it all the time."

  "You're so funny," she murmured.

  "Yeah, so they say."

  She cocked her chin. "I 'm a rebel in a different way."

  "Yeah? What way?"

  "I stayed with the Catholic fold. Have to admit that. But my senior year, I was suspended from school, almost didn't graduate. Kind of staged a party at a friend's house. The party got a little out of hand. Ended up with a car in the swimming pool in the backyard."

  "Uh-oh."

  "A major uh-oh. My friend was the dean's daughter."

  Will winced on her behalf.

  "Yeah," she said. "So don't be thinking I'm a saint."

  "Oh, no," he assured her. "I took one look at you and thought. Now there's a wild woman. A hard-core rebel."

  "A lot of others don't seem to recognize it."

  "Imagine that." A strand of hair drifted across her cheek, mesmerizing him. for no reason that he could imagine. "I attended Notre Dame, actually. The university. Since we're confessing sins and all."

  "That's quite a biggie."

  "It was my dad's choice of school. Naturally. Played tight end." He added. "That's an offensive football position."

  "Like there could be anyone raised in South Bend who didn't know that. Only darn, we can't talk anymore now that I know you're a god."

  "Not. Team didn't do well in those years."

  "Ah. And that was all your fault?"

  "Probably, I know it's sacrilegious to admit it, but I wasn't that into football. It was just a way to get a scholarship, so I could pay my own way."

  "A scholarship? To Notre Dame? There's another wow. I'm impressed."

  "Good, good. No one else is, so I'm glad you are." He still hadn't brushed away the silky strand of hair on her cheek, but he was thinking about it nonstop. The moonlight. Her cheek. Her eyes. That strand of hair. "It was an athletic scholarship, not an academic one."

  "I get it. You don't want to take credit for having a brain, just brawn."

  "Actually, the o
nly thing I wanted credit for was paying my own way, however I could do it. Didn't have to jump for anyone else's strings that way."

  "Who was trying to pull your strings?"

  "Are you always this nosy?"

  "Always," she warned him. "It's what I do for a living."

  "You make money being nosy?"

  "Yeah, that's me. I've got a title. Forensic accountant. Sounds like I do taxes for the dead, doesn't it? But no. My job's tracking down creditcard fraud. To most people, I suspect it's not too thrilling. Some might even call it tedious. But if you're really, really nosy, and like prying into people's lives and stuff that's none of your business… well, it's probably the perfect job."

  "Okay." He lowered his head.

  "Okay what?"

  "Okay, I've waited as long as I can possibly stand it."

  "Waited for what?"

  "To taste you," he said. And then did.

  With his first taste of her, the first kiss…Will heard the music. It was a woman singer with a low, smoky voice belting out a haunting ballad. All the other sensory details around him suddenly came into focus. The endless lights of Paris rippling in the black waters of the Seine, the waves lapping at the boat. He turned to Kelly, as if he were spinning her in a waltz. And kept turning. With his lips glued on hers.

  She tasted like the rich, warm wine they'd been drinking.

  And like innocence.

  Her hands climbed up, up his arms, then up around his neck and hung on, as if she were dizzy from all the spinning. Or from him.

  Will thought this had to be the stupidest thing he'd ever done…and then went back for another taste.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SWALLOWED UP. That's how she felt. Wrapped in Will's arms, absorbed in his kiss, the scent of him. taste of him, look of him.

  In some part of her brain, Kelly recognized they were still on the boat, that the music had stopped playing, that the engines had quit, that the other passengers were noisily gathering their belongings and descending the gangplank.

  And still, she seemed to be dancing with Will. To unheard music.

  To scents she'd never experienced before. To textures she'd never imagined-like his tongue.

  His wicked, wicked tongue.

  Her fingers fisted around his neck, not clenching so much as holding on. Her balance felt increasingly threatened, as if she was precariously a blink away from falling, awash in silver dizziness.

  The image of silver dizziness almost made her laugh. How ridiculous was that? She'd never been fanciful. She'd always been practical, the kind of woman who ran her life on facts, numbers, reality. For darn sure, she didn't go around looking to do wrong things. She suffered enough guilt day by day trying to do the right things.

  Only just then her conscience couldn't seem to scare up any sense of doing wrong.

  And the silvery dizziness made perfect sense to her.

  And so did kissing Will. Being taken in by Will. The scent of him swarmed her. surrounded her, mixed with the silky black water of the Seine and the lights of Paris and just him. Her stranger. Her clean, warm, sexy stranger. Herexotically sexy stranger…

  "Monsieur? Mademoiselle?" A staff member patted Will on the shoulder. His expression was tolerant, gentle, as if he was used to regretfully interrupting lovers-this was Paris, after all. The vision of two people lost in each other was nothing new to him.

  But it was new to Kelly…and judging from the dazed, dark look in Will's eyes, it wasn't an everyday occurrence for him, either. Finally, Will stopped moving, as if realizing that the only two people still swaying to music were them.

  The night had turned downright chilly, midnight chilly, except when she was circled in his arms. And when he dropped his arms, he still didn't look at the uniformed guy, but only at her. His voice was thicker than smoke, lower than blues. "We're going back to my place."

  "Yes," she said, as if it were the only word she knew, the only word she could say.

  Even at that moment, she knew he wasn't referring to her having no other place to stay. He wasn't offering her his couch.

  And she wasn't leaping to offer excuses-too much wine, too much dinner, too much of an exhausting, terrible day, too much Paris.

  She knew what he was inviting.

  She knew what she was saying yes to.

  Where it had taken almost an hour to get to the port where the cruise began, it seemed only minutes before they were back at Will's place, hauling her suitcases from his trunk. He'd left no lights on. She plunked one case right inside the hallway; he dropped the other two. He'd barely closed the door before leaning her against the hard surface and leveling another kiss on her. This one happened to be a whole-body kiss, involving his chest, his knee, his tongue, his hands, his erection. His soul.

  And hers. It wasn't totally her fault she couldn't stop kissing him. Lonesomeness poured off Will in waves. This just wasn't about horniness or chemistry or that kind of nuisance stuff. He tugged at something in her. something huge. A loneliness. A yearning. A need to be with someone-someone who filled up the emptiness. Someone who mattered. Someone who touched her. Not on the outside, on the inside.

  He did stop for breath once, but only to grumble. "If you say no now, you'll kill me."

  At that moment, her thin sweater was flying somewhere over her head. His right shoe was gone. Her knee had regretfully connected with a wall. Neither had turned on a light yet. but the glow of streetlights below was starting to infiltrate the darkness. She could see the fierce shine in his eyes. Feel. see. the tension in his body, in his face.

  "What if I want to say no?"

  "Then say it. Just know, you'll kill me."

  "And what if I say… take me right here, right now, Will. Only love me like no one has ever loved me, or don't mess with me at all."

  He muttered a curse word. Or a prayer. "Not a smart thing to say if you want a guy to stop, Kel."

  "No?"

  "No. So don't say it to any other guys. Ever. Okay?"

  Well, hell. He didn't give her a chance to answer. Next thing, he was walking her backward down the dark hall, stopping once to yank his shirt over his head, then to heel off his other shoe. Eventually they bounced off enough walls to pass the bathroom, past all the rooms she'd seen before, into one that she definitely hadn't. Still, even in the dark she knew it was his bedroom. It smelled like his soap. Like the fresh air blowing in the cracked window, like…like him.

  Like an exotic, sexy, unbearably masculine man. A fantasy man.

  A lover.

  She didn't get naked easily. There'd only been Jason for her, and it had taken him four years to talk her out of all her clothes. Her procrastinating hadn't been about morality so much as prudishness. She liked her clothes on. She didn't like messiness.

  All in all, she'd long figured out that she just didn't have that big a sex drive. Everybody couldn't, after all. She thought sex was important-like meat and potatoes. A staple of life. Needed. A serious thing.

  But certainly nothing on a par with cyclones and tsunamis.

  Yet that seemed to be how it was with Will. All explosive risk and wicked need and unbelievably soft romance.

  He kissed a slow path all the way down to her toes, then trailed back up again, lingering between her thighs-and embarrassing the devil out of her. He gave her no time to work up a royal prudish fit, which she'd always been very good at.

  The feather bed was all rumpled and warm, like him. Beneath, the mattress was hard as a board- maybe it even was a board-but thankfully there were all those soft covers to melt into. Or possibly that was Will she was melting into.

  "Maybe you better hold on to the headboard. Kel. I think this could get a little wild."

  "Urn. Did I mention ahead of time that I only do good-girl sex?"

  "I don't think you mentioned that today yet, no."

  A breeze fluttered in the dark room, chilling her overheated skin when he flipped her on top of him. They weren't joined yet. but she could feel how it was going to be.
Scary. Delicious. "You get a thrill on roller-coaster rides?" she murmured.

  "Nope. But I'm going to get a thrill when I ride you. You ready?" He raised an arm, fumbled in the bedside drawer.

  "Condom?" she asked. And got the first serious tone from him she'd heard in hours.

  "You don't have a problem with that, do you?"

  "Hey, don't insult me."

  A flash of a smile in the dark. And that was it…the last time she had a coherent thought.

  A zillion sensations bombarded her senses. The sterling shadows on the wall, the profile of him riding her, the strength and bold, primal sexuality of him. How she felt…beguiled…spun into a whispery web of touch and taste and need. The texture of their skin, shiny as wet varnish, silky with sweat. Her lungs gasping for breath. The howl of a siren outside. A flash of lights inside, deep inside her. when this crazy, lofty, silver-sharp climax took her over, took her under.

  When it was over, he fell back, pulling her half on top of him as if refusing to be separated even for an instant. She lay there, slaked, eyes closed, still trying to catch her breath. She felt him pulling up the covers, the stroke of his hand on her back, the cuff of his knuckle when he tucked the sheet around her neck, sealing all the airholes. He murmured something silly and throaty and low, like, "Who knew?"

  As if he never expected she'd be such a red-hot mama.

  Before dropping off to sleep, she remembered thinking. Damn, I was. I really was.

  At least with him.

  SWEET, WARM RAIN DRIZZLED down the windows. Horns and sirens heralded the new day below. A child's laughter echoed from the street. Beneath the feather comforter, she couldn't remember feeling snuggled so safely, so securely. Her cheek seemed embedded in Will's shoulder. Her arm was loosely, possessively, draped around his bare waist. His chest hair nuzzled her very warm, very bare breasts.

  But none of those things were what woke her up.

  Guilt woke her up.

  Huge, sharp, ear-drumming, shame-sucking heaps of guilt.