Blame It On Paris

That you're-mine glint. The kind of glint no independent woman could possibly find acceptable, yet Kelly melted like ice cream in the tropics. No man had ever looked at her the way Will did. No man had ever invoked the heat between her thighs, the yearning in her pulse, the way he did. No man ever made her feel as if they were two people alone on their own planet, didn't need anyone else but each other. No man had made her feel…

Magic.

'I'm dreaming you, right?' she murmured.

'If so, we're having the same dream.' His slow grin notched up the sizzle another ten degrees.

'But how can you possibly be here?'

'I didn't know how else to find you, Kel. The cellphone number you gave me was for the phone you lost in Paris. I tracked down your address. You didn't seem to be there anymore. I knocked next door, but the neighbor didn't know where you were living, and probably wouldn't have told me if he did know. So the only other lead I could follow was your mom, because you'd mentioned-'

'Will. I didn't mean how you found me literally. I meant…I thought you were never going to leave Paris. And now you're here.'

She moved toward him at the same instant he moved toward her. Lightning couldn't have stopped their surge toward each other. Nothing could have stopped her from flying into his arms.

Except for her mother.

Char stepped between them as effectively as a slap. 'Well now,' she said briskly, 'how about if I brew a fresh pot of coffee and we all sit down and have a little chat together?'

TALK ABOUT WALKING into a hornet's nest. Will couldn't remember a trickier, touchier situation- and in his family, there'd been a hundred.

It had only been an hour ago that he'd knocked on Kelly's mother's door. When the woman opened it, he'd had a strong, positive first impression. It was easy to see where Kelly got her natural good looks. Her mother didn't look old enough to have a fully adult daughter.

A single glimpse was enough to give a guy estrogen overload, but that was okay. He had three sisters. He knew how to handle females.

But five seconds later, the meeting had started skating downhill. She'd looked at him, and before he'd even introduced himself, her eyes narrowed and her back stiffened.

'You're the one, aren't you?'

'Pardon me?' he'd said.

'You have to be the reason. I knew it! I knew something had happened in Paris! So it was you.'

Nothing like shooting a guy before he'd even had a trial. That initial warm, welcoming, very pretty smile turned colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra, as his grandfather used to say. Char had pulled him inside the house, all right, but only because she didn't want him to leave. She'd tracked down Kelly on speed dial, figuratively and literally.

Once Kelly had been located, she got here fast, but not fast enough to save him from a grilling.

He hadn't actually given anything away. It helped to be blood kin to his own relentlessly manipulative family-he knew all those tricks. The thing was, he was wary of telling Char anything until he knew for certain what Kelly had told her mother about him. about them, about Paris.

He didn't have to say much to realize that Kelly was in one heap of a mess.

He forgot all that when she showed up. He forgot everything. Even her mother, who wasn't an easy person to forget. But it was all suddenly there… The thick brown hair swishing around her cheeks. Her eyes, not just brown, but that brown with life and sensuality. The silky, soft mouth.

The way she looked at him. As if he really mattered. Him. Not just a guy or any guy. She looked at him as if he tipped her world in a different direction.

Maybe that reaction was silly and unrealistic and nothing a grown man should be believing, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she looked at him that way.

Rational or irrational, her gaze sent his masculine ego soaring into the stratosphere. Made him feel bigger than he was. Better than he was.

'Mom.' Kelly said vaguely, looking at him, not her mother. 'We're leaving.'

'The coffee'll be done in two shakes,' Char said.

'And thanks so much for making it. I'll call you later.' She grabbed his hand in a way that made him want to grin.

Kelly was no Viking. But she was getting him out of there like a legendary Valkyrie of old. He wasn't afraid of her mom and coped just fine with the grilling, other than worrying that he could slip and somehow make Kelly's situation worse than it already was. But Kelly apparently thought he'd been enduring a real battering and was whisking him away.

She didn't speak until she got him outside on her mother's front porch with the door firmly closed.

'I don't exactly know how we're going to work the logistics of this, but I have a car. And obviously you had to get here by car, too,' she began.

'Yeah.'

'So I don't care which one we take, but we've got to move fast. I'm dying to know why you're here. What's happened with you. But Mom will drag us back inside if we're still here two seconds from now.'

'Easy enough. We'll take both cars, so neither's left here. What's the address where you're living?'

A frown set in as he followed her. Maybe he hadn't been back to South Bend in a few years, but he still knew the area. Initially he was positive he must have misunderstood the address she gave him.

He hadn't.

The house she walked up to had a saggy roof, an unkempt community yard and trash whipping around the window.

She seemed to guess what he was thinking from his expression. 'I only moved here temporarily. Very, very temporarily, I hope.'

'Like that's an explanation? What's going on?'

'Oh, no. You don't get to ask questions until I do. You're the one who showed up out of the blue.' She motioned. 'Come on in, meet my roommate. Skip.'

'Skip?' He bristled up when he heard a guy's name.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open. Faster than a laser. Will's gaze snapped to the guy on the couch. A boy, yeah. Sitting in his shorts in front of a computer, hair unbrushed. feet bare. The general living room looked like a fallout zone-glasses and papers and silverware and shoes heaped all over the place.

'Skip, this is Will. Will, Skip.'

'Hey,' Skip said, and swung around to wave a hand.

Will got it. The bright eyes, the falling glasses, the three whiskers on his chin. The kid really was just a boy. But that still didn't explain why Kelly was living in such a dump, or why her mother had treated him like a hostile witness to an unknown crime.

Kelly detoured into the kitchen, emerged with two mugs of coffee and cocked her head for him to follow her down the hall.

The room where she led him revealed more information. It was shaped like an el. Boxes were tidily piled to the ceiling along one wall, all marked to identify the contents. The two tall windows were so clean the sun glared through. Her bed, a lumpy daybed. was too small but it was mounded with pillows and a deep red comforter that matched the rug on the floor.

The sitting area was just as beaten up as the rest of the house, but she had a couch, a chair; her computer equipment nested on a minidesk. A fake Tiffany lamp offered some soft light. And three unopened cans of paint stood at the door, receipt still taped on a lid.

In a glance, Will took it in, easily concluded she'd done a good job of making the ghastly place livable, at least for the short term. More than that, he saw the scarf. It was draped over the top of the bureau mirror. The blue- and-white silk scarf he'd gotten her that last day in Paris.

And on the scratched bureau top was a minitray, with the perfume.

When she saw him glancing there, she plunked down on the edge of the couch.

'Okay, I can tell you're not too impressed with my fancy digs. What can I say? This is what happens when you