Blame It On Paris

His. Hers.

The clothes fell in a matching heap.

And so did they.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE STIRRED the next morning before Will. Half-awake, she slowly became conscious of the pale sun filtering through the screen, the first horn on the street, a tufty breeze, the sounds of a sleepy Paris coming to life. She stayed cuddled up to Will, not wanting to move, not wanting to think, just wanting to absorb the feel of her lover… until she felt his gaze on her face.

'You're awake,' she murmured.

He was studying her, not with sleepy eyes but with an ultraquiet expression. 'You're still feeling guilty,' he said.

She didn't try lying. Didn't have to lie. not to Will. 'That's my life,' she admitted. 'By everything I've ever believed this is wrong.' Yet she added softly, 'But I've never even remotely felt this way about anyone. Just you.'

'So does that make it wrong or right?'

'It makes it something I can't walk away from.' She felt his thumb brushing her cheek. Her eyes wanted to close, to absorb the simple intimacy. 'How about you?'

Suddenly he sat up. 'Oh. no. We grilled Will for dinner last night,' he said wryly. 'It's gonna be all about you today.'

Before he went to work, she got a complete, complex list of instructions. Directions. Money. Key. Food. Stuff she could do, stuff she couldn't. Places she could go, places she needed to steer clear of. 'This is a city, remember. You can't go smiling and saying hi to strangers on the street.'

On and on. 'All these orders,' she grumped.

He chuckled, but he stopped smiling at the door. He knew her schedule for the day. To pick up the wired money from her mom. then to head for her father's old neighborhood. It was the latter that clearly bothered him. 'Kelly, the neighborhood where you're going…it's more than safe. You won't have to worry about that. But maybe you should wait to do this until I get home from work.'

'Heavens, no.'

It was the second time Will had expressed uneasiness about Kelly visiting her dad's old neighborhood alone. She did all her chores, felt enormous relief when she had her own money in her hands, fumbled around with public transportation, picked up a sandwich from a French bistro and made it to her father's old house just before noon.

When she stepped out of the taxi at the corner. Will's uneasiness shot back into her mind. It seemed especially crazy, once she saw the neighborhood.

She'd expected…well, anything. An old house, some kind of neighborhood where families raised kids, schools close by, maybe a corner grocery store.

She'd never expected…elegance.

Her step slowed and then stopped when she reached the exact address. Architecture wasn't her thing, but she was pretty sure the style of the Rochard house was Beaux Arts. Long stone steps led up to a multiple-arched doorway. A couple of lions framed the entrance. It wasn't the Smithsonian. It wasn't even a castle. But it was a darn fancy house, three stories of marble and stone.

She stood there, bewildered, racking her brain to make sure this was the correct address. Without the old letters, she couldn't be positive-but she was. She'd read and reread those letters a zillion and a half times.

All she'd really wanted to do was see the house, see the neighborhood. Maybe in the back of her mind, she thought she'd find someone to talk to, someone who could tell her about the Rochard family…or that she might be able to walk around, see the school her dad might have walked to, see the church he might have attended on Sunday.

Now she took a step toward the house…stopped again.

Suddenly it wasn't so easy to simply go up and knock on the door, but then she noticed the carved emblem on the door. An intricate vine shaped into the letter R. Her lips firmed. Maybe they'd throw her out, call the gendarmes, slam the door in her face. But she'd come all this way. and no matter what happened, she couldn't just turn away.

She marched up the steps, took a breath for courage and knocked softly. Then knocked again.

She was about to knock a third time, when a man opened the door. The look of him startled her so much that her jaw must have dropped ten feet.

He looked around her age, give or take a few extra years. Rich brown hair, thick, with a little unruly wave. Tea-brown eyes. Slim to the skinny side, fine boned, medium height.

'Bonjour' she began in her schoolgirl French, telling herself she had to be an idiot to think they looked so much alike. 'I'm sorry to bother you. Je m'appelle Kelly Rochard. Je sais…this sounds… odd…but the thing is, my father-mon pere-grew up at this address. His name was Henri Rochard. I wonder if there is any chance someone in the house might have known the family or anything about him…'

Her voice trailed off.

She'd expected her stumbling language to be a problem… Instead, her appearance seemed to provoke the man in an entirely different way. She didn't stop talking because she ran out of things to say, but because he started to look so…angry.

Red flushed up his neck to his cheeks-the same icky-splotchy red that happened to her when she was overheated or upset.

And then he let loose a torrent of words, far more than she could possibly keep up with. She caught menteusse, which she was pretty sure meant liar. When he yelled. 'Ca va barder,' Kelly was pretty sure there was going to be trouble, and instinctively started backing up.

She recognized another term-les couilles-that in another universe might have made her laugh. She believed he was suggesting that she had balls, which wasn't just an anatomical impossibility, but a curious thing to insult her with besides. He spewed out a few other choice words, all in the same angry tone. Vache. Chameau.

She'd backed up four more steps when another man, about the same age, showed up in the doorway, clearly curious about what all the commotion was about. They talked to each other, a mile a minute, for a few seconds, and then the second man looked at her. Really looked.

And suddenly no one was talking.

WILL HEADED HOME, wiped from a killer workday and annoyed by the frazzle of traffic…yet still feeling his pulse jump when he finally parked in the driveway, knowing he was going to see Kelly.

The damn woman. In just a few short days, she'd managed to irritate him, challenge him, exhaust him. She poked her nose where she wasn't wanted or invited. She could outtalk a magpie. She was the last kind of woman he even wanted to be near.

But he couldn't wait to see her.

He'd connected with her twice that morning, so he knew she'd gotten the wired money, knew she was headed on her 'dad quest' after that. He'd intended to catch up with her in the afternoon, but business nonsense kept intruding on his time.

He always intended to spend a lazy workday with his feet propped on the desk. But his boss was such a…well, such a baby. Yves had come from the country with big hopes of selling his gourmet cheeses-some so outstanding he'd caught the attention of several famous chefs. Yves had outstanding products but no clue what to do about them.

He'd needed a brand. A marketing strategy. A manufacturing and production and advertising and distribution plan.