Blame It On Paris

'Uh-huh. You picked up the French flirting thing really well. But onward…here's the plan for the day. I don't have to go to work, because work, after all, is irrelevant to life. But I do have a couple things I should do there. So you could either come with me- shouldn't take me more than an hour-or you can stay here for that hour. After that, well, you can't be in Paris and not do certain things.'

'Like…?'

'You're a girl, so you have to do a parfumerie or two. Then there's the old Halles marketplace near the Centre Pompidou. That's like hell on earth. You know. Shopping. Little shops, zillions of them. If you like cooking stuff, Le Creuset is there. Or Sabatier knives. Or copper cook ware…'

'Please don't look at me when I'm drooling. It's embarrassing.' She made a vague gesture. 'You'd actually shop with me?'

'With you, yes. With anyone else, no. Then after that…well, you have to see the Marmottan Museum.

God knows, there are a hundred museums around here. But that's the one with the Monets. Then there's the Musee Rodin, which I swear is seriously cool. Then there's Sacre-Coeur. I don't know if it's a mortal sin to be a Catholic and miss Sacre-Coeur, but it's gotta be close. And we have to hit a garden or two. Boulogne or Tuileries or Monceau. It's spring. The gardens here are an absolute.'

She looked at him and kept on looking. He was beyond good-looking. His eyes alone were mesmerizing. Not dark blue, not light blue, but kind of a clear, lake-blue. He had such a strong, sharpjaw-a measure that he was more stubborn than a bulldog, she realized now. And she figured he wore that rumple of blond hair a little on the long side to illustrate that he didn't care, was a lazy wastrel type.

He wasn't a lazy wastrel type.

When she didn't immediately respond to his plan, he hesitated. 'I know, Kel. You didn't really come here to sightsee. And I don't even do sightseeing. But the thing is, you've had a major stress load. So you've got to balance it. You're stuck waiting until some things happen, like getting your passport back-'

'After which. I have to go home.'

'I know you do. So we have to schedule your time, find a way to make the most of it.'

Truthfully, Kelly didn't need to do another thing to know she'd never forget a second of Paris…or a second she'd spent with him.

'But,' he said, as if that single word were a sentence in itself.

'But?'

'But maybe you have something else you want to do? Or something you want to add to that agenda?'

She nodded. 'I'd like to do everything you said. Will. But I'm afraid I can't think, can't do much of anything, without doing something more about my father. What to do. I don't have a clue. But right now, I'm just feeling…'

When she couldn't come up with a word. Will said. 'The French have a word. Derailler. Feeling derailed. Thrown off track.'

'Exactly.'

'Okay.' He thought. 'So we'll start out the day at my work. Leave there, hit a library, research some background information about your father. After that, you can decide if you want to try to make another face-to-face connection. If you do, I'll go with you.'

Very casual, her Will, she mused. He never made anything sound serious. Certainly there was no protective tone in his voice, but that quality was there. From the instant he'd met her, he'd relentlessly found ways to help her with each and every mess she'd landed herself in.

'I need to do this alone, Will,' she said gently.

'Why?'

'Because it's my problem.'

He made a Gallic gesture. 'How can my being there make it any worse? It's already awkward and upsetting. And if I drive you, we'll be able to cut and run and go get drunk on bad wine if it turns out wrong. Why not have some company if you're going to be miserable?'

'That's like saying you should get a tetanus shot if I'm stuck getting one. There are some things you shouldn't ask someone else to share.'

'Damn right. I'm not volunteering for the tetanus shot, so don't even try asking.'

'I wasn't!'

But somehow it all ended up just like he said. It was a long day of discovering Will was a manipulative son of a gun. He used charm and subterfuge and tricks-like ignoring her, or agreeing to something she'd said and then just bulldozing in the same direction he'd planned from the beginning, or kissing her every once in a while. Out of the blue. In a way that bamboozled her thought train so completely that she forgot whatever she'd been staunchly arguing about.

Even before noon, Kelly had his newfound character flaws inked in her brain. Her mother loved quoting the old saying, make a fool of me once, shame on you…make a fool of me twice, shame on me. So Kelly planned to have her guard up tight before Will was ever successful with those underhanded methods again.

But she changed her mind in the afternoon. Some of his underhanded, manipulative methods seemed to unexpectedly work out.

By then, of course, they'd been to his work. She'd met Yves, his boss, a little guy with a fuzzy head of hair who treated Will like a god. And then there was the receptionist. Marie, who clearly ruled the office with gum-popping efficiency and a snappy tongue. There were only a handful of others-it wasn't that big a facility-but whenever or however Yves had hired Will. Will was clearly the one making the business decisions. All of them.

'You realize you're running the place?' she asked when they left there.

'Not really. Yves has outstanding products. And he's a good guy. He just never had Business One-O-One.'

'Will. You're doing a lot more than Business One-O-One for him.'

That was one of the times he kissed her. Right in the middle of the street-and God knows, the traffic was homicidal on a Paris street during a workday. At the time, she forgot that she'd been trying to get him to talk more about his job, to explain the complete lie he'd told her. He had so clearly said that he couldn't stand going into his father's business, that he wanted nothing to do with business ever in his life-when she saw for herself that business was as natural for Will as milk for a baby.

After that, though, he rushed her off into an elegant old library, where they hung out in the research section, diving into old Paris newspapers. Normally research was her bread-and-butter, her love, and being nosy had always been a boon in her job. but she'd never tried researching anything in French. Or had a reason to experience research directly in another country.

After the research binge, Will insisted on feeding her. He picked a bistro in the Latin Quarter, where they had something called Bresse chicken, washed down with a liter of wine.

'I don't drink during the day,' she objected.

'You haven't had anything to feel guilty about so far. You know you won't survive a whole day unless there's something you're wringing your hands about. So guzzle it, baby.'

She didn't want to guzzle it. She needed a clear head to process all they'd learned about her father and the Rochard family. Her head was already reeling and dizzy, long before she'd had the first sip of wine.

'Will,' she said, 'he's rich.'

'I'd call that a pretty good understatement,' Will said. 'The French would use the word rupin. As in, filthy rich.'

'You knew.'

'Not knew. The Rochard name is too common here to be sure your family was one of the badass rich ones. But the address made it pretty impossible for your father to be basic middle class. No one can afford that community who isn't pretty much rolling in it.' He refilled her wine, and when he saw a pastry tray circulating, motioned for the waitress. 'You ready to call him?'

'In a minute.'

'Kel, there's no point in postponing this if you want to see him again directly. You only have a few days.'

'I know, I know. And if there's any chance he might be willing to see me today. I need to call immediately. But, Will, I'm still dizzy. And it's not the wine.'

In her job. Kelly had tracked enough missing persons and stolen identities to know how to get to the bottom of