Blame It On Paris

alone.

Yet when the door opened, Will was tempted to gape. Maybe before, Kelly's story had seemed halfway like a fairy tale to him. but the man who opened the door was somewhere around his early sixties. His hair was distinctly brandy-brown. He was tall, no pansy in build, but still unusually fine-boned. And he had brown eyes so startling they made you want to stare. Like Kelly's. Exactly like Kelly's.

He had a thin mouth, sharply defined. Like Kel's.

He had the same perfect skin.

His nose was bigger, but the slant of cheekbones and the shape of his chin…hell. They were all Kel's.

No one could doubt the relationship. And from the sudden change of color in Henri Rochard's face, he realized exactly who Kelly was.

'Bonjour. Et vous etes…?' Henri looked at him.

Will introduced himself. Rochard took his measure, then ushered them into a room off to the left. Double doors led to a front parlor decorated with heavy drapes, crystal, antique chairs, lots of ornate gold work. It looked to Will as if the room was done in one of those Louis periods. Louis XIV or whatever.

He had ample time to look around, because Henri's attention was on Kelly. He could barely take his eyes off her.

'Demitasse?' he asked, inquiring whether either of them wanted coffee.

'Non, merci,' Kelly said.

She finally let go of his hand, but likely only because her palm was slicker than a slide. Henri motioned her to sit in a chair close to him. She opted for a love seat that looked harder than a rock, but at least he could sit next to her.

'Kelly…' Henri started to say, his voice so low he sounded hoarse. 'This is difficult. Ce n'est pas facile…'

'It's not easy for me, either. Could you just tell me… Did you know my mother was pregnant? Did you knowI existed? What really happened between you and my mother? What-'

Henri looked at Will for the first time, showing a hint of humor.

'Kel,' Will said gently. 'I think you might want to give him a chance to answer one question before you pelt him with the next thirty.'

Yet Henri spoke up, with his own agenda. 'You will need a DNA test.'

'Why?'

Again, Henri looked at Will. 'To verify if we are relative. Related.'

'You look at me-I look at you-and you can doubt the relationship?' Kelly said disbelievingly.

'Non. Not exactly. But legally, there must be verification. And I would appreciate knowing why you came to France now. How you found me, how you knew about me.'

'I knew about you from my mother! But I thought you died before I was born. That's what I was told.'

'Then how did you happen to come here? If you thought there was no one to find, no father.' He steepled his hands, sank into a chair that seemed to swallow him.

'I had three letters that you wrote to my mom- I thought this was after you two were married, that you'd gone back to France for some reason and my mom had stayed in the United States. Now…well, I'm just saying that I thought you and my mom were married…' Kelly's voice caught. 'But that was another lie, wasn't it? You were never married.'

'Non. Ce n est pas possible. A marriage was never possible.'

'Because you were already married?'

Henri took a long, slow breath. 'Oui. Because at the time I met your mother, I had a wife and two sons. Divorce was never even a remote option.' Again, Henri glanced at Will, then quickly returned his attention to Kelly. 'Where are these letters?'

Kelly stiffened up like a coiled spring. 'You think I made them up?'

'Non, non. No sense for you to invent this. You had to have means to know this address, to know about me. So I am asking you. Where these letters are.'

Henri revealed little emotion in his expression, but from his language. Will could readily discern he was upset. Henri was fluent enough, but when Kelly said something that troubled him, his English seemed to deteriorate. And his eyes never left Kelly's face, as if he couldn't stop looking at her.

Will kept trying to read the man. There seemed more suspicion than any fatherly love in his behavior, but that didn't seem totally odd under the circumstances. More than anything, Henri simply acted as if he'd been thrown by a wallop of a shock from his past, and he was doing his damnedest to determine what it meant, what to do about it.

Kelly, on the other hand, had turned into one hundred percent estrogen. She was absolutely clear about where she was coming from. She suddenly had a live father in her life. All the lies she'd been told were being painted with bold strokes, the color of anger. And loss. And feelings of abandonment. And plain old temper.

She rose like a tight spring when he brought up the letters again. 'Do you think I'd use them? To blackmail you or get money out of you? Henri… Dad…for God's sake. I don't even know what I should call you! Whatever. Try and get it through your thick head that I don't want anything material from you. I just wanted to know something about who my father was. That's the only reason I came here. To get a sense of family, the part of my blood I never had a chance to know. I'm not here to cause you any kind of trouble-'

When Kelly stood up, so did Henri. And just as fast. Will lurched to his feet. Kelly had tears spitting from her eyes.

'Kelly,' her father said calmly. 'I want you to have a DNA test.'

'You want a DNA test? Fine. I'll have your test and then you can shove the results where the sun doesn't shine.' More tears. She whirled around, bumped into Will, whirled back again. 'If you don't want a daughter, believe me, you don't have one-'

'Kelly. I didn't say that. Ma chere-'

'You haven't asked me one thing. About my life, who I am, what I do. You don't want me in your life. I get it. It was mighty inconvenient for me to show up-'

'Mighty-' Henri looked at Will.

'Maybe not the easiest thing to translate,' Will murmured.

'You think this is inconvenient for you?' Kelly ranted on. 'I didn't know you were alive. I'm just finding out that my mother apparently had an affair with a married man. That she fabricated a whole life about you that wasn't true. You think that's convenient for me? I've got brothers. My God, I have family. Only apparently, thanks to you and my mother both, I'll never have a chance to know you. Or my brothers, who seemed to hate me on sight.'

Henri shot Will a frantic glance now. Kelly was clearly talking too fast for him to completely follow, but like any man-and certainly a Frenchman-he recognized a woman's meltdown when he saw one.

'Kelly. Ma chere. I have perhaps not handled this well-'

'Damn right, you haven't. You've handled this totally badly. And that's just fine. But I'm not going to stay here and get beat up for something that was none of my fault, none of my doing. And damn it! Those letters were the only thing I ever had from you!'

This time she spun around and headed for the door, clearly intent on leaving immediately.

As it happened, she aimed for the wrong door- some door that led deeper into the house.

But Will cut her off at that pass, did a defensive play he'd learned in football, scooped her under his arm in a shielding position and redirected her toward the front door. 'I think it's probably best that we cut this visit short,' he said to Henri.

'This is very, very difficult-'

'Yeah. But it's not going to get better right now.'

'I can talk to him. Don't you talk to him. I can handle this myself.' Kelly said.

He knew she could. But there was so much anguish on her face, and her voice was so thick with tears, that he figured she needed out of there. Now. Any way he could get her out.

And that worked. Sort of. Except that once he had her stashed in the car and immersed in the fury of rush-hour Paris traffic, she put her spring jacket over her head. That was goofy enough, but underneath she was crying. Not