Blame It on Paris. Jennifer Greene
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“Uh-oh.” He didn’t mean to say that aloud, but it slipped out. He wasn’t thinking that coherently when he saw her lift the skillet and plop a light, fluffy omelet on a plate for him.
“I’m just going to be part of your life until the money gets all straightened out. And my passport. The stuff I have to have to survive again.”
“And then…” He motioned, waiting for the next part.
But apparently there was no next part. “That’s it. The end of the plan. You’re in Paris. I’m going back to South Bend. We’re not hurting anyone if no one else ever knows anything about this. I mean, you and I could hurt each other. But it’s just about you and me. No one else.”
He took another bite, but he was watching her bright eyes. She’d pulled on a shirt by then. His shirt. A blue one. It made her look like the most feminine bit of fluff ever born. Times ten. Something made him want to argue with the plan, but he couldn’t put a frame on it. It should be exactly what he wanted—sneaky, free sex—yet somehow, the last bite of delectable omelet didn’t want to be swallowed.
“You’re going to shake the fiancé when you go back.” Will didn’t phrase it like a question, although it was. For whatever reason, he needed to know.
She bounced up to refill both their mugs. “Well, that was my theory, too, when I tried to call him on Saturday morning. But now I think that stinks. It would be plain wrong and cowardly to try to say anything serious to him in a phone conversation. So there’s nothing I’m going to do about Jason until I get home.”
He put down his fork altogether. “But then you’re going to shake the guy.”
“Hey. This is the deal. You and I are going to be our own personal Vegas. What’s between us this week stays between us. But there’s no point in doing before-and-after analyses. I mean, you’re not coming home to South Bend, right?”
“Right,” he affirmed.
She nodded, as if to say they were both in agreement.
Only they weren’t.
Will couldn’t very well babysit her all day. She had a ton of stuff to do, all of which was fraught with peril—for a tourist, an American, an adorable woman who was an American tourist, and specifically for Kelly, who didn’t seem to have the directional sense of a stone. But he left her maps. He left her lists. He left her money, his cell phone, his telephone number at work and instructions to check in every two hours so he’d know she was okay.
At the doorway, when he was leaving for work, she interrupted all his considerate help to say mildly, “You really think you’re a lazy, live-for-today, happily irresponsible, completely recovered Catholic, huh?”
Which just went to show, he thought when he climbed into his Citroën, that you could make love to a woman for three days straight and still, she didn’t know you at all.
Twenty minutes later, he parked the car—feeling victorious when he fit into a spot smaller than a dime—and ambled into the office with a lazy stride.
The building was older than the guillotine, dark, crowded and drafty. “Bonjour, m’sieur,” said Marie, of the Antoinette temperament. She ran the place, something he’d realized the day he applied for a job here.
He greeted her, then the office staff in the bull pen, then Yves, the owner. His boss was a prince of a guy, devoted to his family, but he both looked like and had the temperament of a high-strung terrier. Talk about a worrywart. He sprang up the instant he saw Will.
“You managed to connect on the Wisconsin thing yesterday?”
“Yup. No problems. All fixed.” Except for having to do that wrangling on a Sunday, but not like doing a few phone calls at home killed Will.
“Several calls came up early this morning, backup on shipments. Catalog proofs are on your desk. Looks good to me, but if you can get to that today… and that advertising affecting Lucerne and Copen-hagen…”
Will listened a while longer, took it on, then aimed for his office—such as it was. A trailer closet was bigger than his cubicle. There was just enough room for him to drop to the desk chair and wade into the five pounds of files and samples and folders and debris.
Kelly wasn’t here, of course. If she saw the place, she might leap to the conclusion that he was a hard-core workaholic, busier than a one-armed bandit in a bank vault.
That would be the wrong conclusion, of course. From the minute he’d arrived in Paris, he’d committed to become the laziest, most irresponsible slacker on the planet. That was what he wanted to be.
That was what he’d been trying to be since he left South Bend.
THE MOMENT Will left the flat, Kelly felt her smile deflate like a needled balloon. The apartment felt alien and lonely without him.
Still, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a full day of complications to deal with. As soon as she poured a last mug of coffee, she addressed crisis number one by dialing her mom. And this time, finally, Char Nicole Rochard Matthews answered.
“Mom! For Pete’s sake, where have you been?”
“Out gallivanting.” The sound of her mom’s chuckle was as familiar as sunshine. “You were gone, and I had nothing on the agenda for the weekend. Mary and Ann and I got to talking and next thing I knew, the three of us were off on a road trip to Mall of America. We were only gone for three days. What a place that is.…”
Her mom babbled on for a while, as if calling from Paris were as cheap as calling from next door, but eventually she wound down. “Okay, your turn. I can’t wait to hear how Paris is, what’s going on…”
Kelly may have misled her mom about the reason for the Paris trip, but there was no way she could hide her current mess, so she spilled. She made as light of the mugger business as possible and clearly outlined what she needed from her mom—faxing the passport copy, to where, how, wiring money, where and how much, the whole complicated rigmarole. “I hate asking you to do all this junk, Mom, but—”
“Don’t be silly, you goose. I’m so glad you’re all right. The rest of this is just details, and as soon as I hang up, I’ll start getting it all cooking.…” Her mother hesitated, her whole tone changing. “You know, nothing like this would have happened if you’d waited for Jason to make the trip with you.”
Just hearing Jason’s name put a fresh nail of guilt in Kelly’s coffin of a conscience. She sucked down another sip of strong coffee. “Jason didn’t have the time off right now, and I did. Besides which, he never wanted to go to Europe.”
“So why go at all then? I never did understand why you were so insistent on this trip. Spending money you could have put into the apartment. Or your lives together.” Char sighed, then switched gears, both of them well aware they’d already argued about this several times and had gotten nowhere. “Jason’s mother called me. We’re going dress shopping together next week. Neither of us can make up our minds whether we want to go short or long, or what colors, and we don’t want to clash, so we figured going together would be fun….”
Another nail of guilt stabbed Kelly. “Mom…don’t you think you’re rushing it? We exchanged rings. But we haven’t even talked about setting a sure date—”
“I know, sweetie. But you’ve known each other forever. And Gaynelle and I have been talking—behind your backs, of course—for years. We’re just having fun—”
“Mom, wait.”
Finally her mother seemed to hear the serious note in her voice. But when Kelly tried to talk, her throat seemed stuffed with cotton wool. She could hardly get the words out. “Mom, would it kill you if I changed my mind? About marrying Jason. About—”
Her mom laughed before she could even finish the thought. “Oh, honey, I’ve been waiting