Blame It On Paris

'His name is Jason. And apparently he has left town. Decided to take a week's vacation without telling anyone.'

'Then how'd you know?'

She sighed as she handed him the three gallons of paint to juggle on the way back to the car. 'Because his mother called me. Then his sister. Then his brother. Then my mother. First, because they had no idea where he was, and then, after someone contacted his boss and found out about the vacation, they all had to call me again. They seemed to feel I'd want to know that I was responsible for Jason's being so depressed that he had to leave town.'

'Hell. That doesn't sound like a depressed guy to me. It sounds like a coward, getting out of Dodge so you'd be stuck handling everything.'

'Well, I can't fault him for that. Since I'm the one who broke it off. I don't see why he should have to deal with the aftermath. I just have to admit, this hasn't been a real ran week.' She studied him when they climbed back in the car. Looked close and hard. Didn't kiss him. didn't touch him, just…looked.

'What? I have a bug on my nose?'

'No bug. It went that badly with your dad?' she asked gently.

'Hey, I told you. It went okay.'

Yeah, right. Back at her place, they went back to whispering. Will hadn't come dressed to paint, obviously, but he kept saying his T-shirt and old jeans didn't matter. Within minutes, they'd pushed furniture and boxes to the middle of the floor and had laid down tarps.

She did the trim; he did the rolling-a division of labor that she considered sexist and unfair. His response to that was a major 'duh,' as if it would have been obvious to any man in the universe that guys didn't do trim. Still, clearly in an extreme effort to be accommodating, he offered to wrestle her for rights to the roller.

'You're going to be such hard work for any woman who thinks you're marriage material,' she said disgustedly.

'Hey. You like me. Warts and all.'

'I am able to tolerate you,' she corrected him. Of course, that was a complete lie. Even worried about whatever he was hiding from her. her mood was singing high just from being with him. Even if they both were taking ridiculous care not to accidentally touch. And teasing helped. 'Part of the reason I'm able to tolerate you is because you're capable of being a hero when a girl gets mugged. It makes up for your being a royal pain in the keester the rest of the time.'

'Welllll…I'm not sure you should be giving me credit for being a hero. I mean, I don't do much unless there's a whole lot of incentive. Such as, say, outstanding sex.'

He was dreaming if he thought she'd let him get away with that one. 'We weren't talking about sex. We were talking about how things went with your dad.'

'No, we weren't. But if you're determined to bring up fathers, what's the story with yours? Has there been any contact between you two since Paris? And have you confronted your mom?'

'Ouch. Neither of those are easy issues. I brought up the subject of my dad once to my mom. At the time, she was focused on the broken engagement, couldn't let that go. But now, she hasn't mentioned my dad again, and I can't seem to.' Just trying to talk about this made her feel flustered inside. 'Darn it, Will. I need to understand. I'm hurt that she lied to me-not just that she wasn't married but about never telling me I had a father who was alive. I want to know why she lied. I want to understand…'

'Hey. You're clear enough about what you want to say. Why is it so hard to get it out on the table?'

'I don't know.' A drop of vanilla paint plopped onto her cheek. 'I just can't start the conversation. I get too upset.'

Somehow he'd moved across the room and found a wet rag to swipe the paint off her cheek. She tensed up in strong sexual awareness with Will that close, but he didn't pounce. He just rubbed at the paint spot. And forced her to endure a combustible amount of chemistry that she was determined to ignore.

And then, of course, he took his rag and his rascal smile and moved back to rolling paint.

After the job was finally done they moved outside, to wash out their brushes and the roller pan with the hose. It took forever to get the stuff clean, and the hose water was freezing cold. Once most of the paint was cleaned off, they moved back inside to do a major hand and face wash in the bathroom- together. Kelly couldn't help noting that both of them were still carefully not touching.

After the cleanup, they took five minutes to just stand in the doorway of the room and admire their handiwork.

'Well, it's not like anyone could turn this place into a spread for House Beautiful, but we do good work, don't we?' She really was in awe. It hadn't taken that long to paint the sucker-four hours or so? And it looked so much better. She'd been telling herself that she hadn't minded going from a nice apartment, filled with decent furniture and matching towels and her own colors, to living like a college student, but that was a lie. She'd been depressed up the wazoo.

Will said. 'We still need to get rid of the tarps, get the bed moved back and all that. But I'm voting for a break first.'

His theory was a predinner ice-cream cone. Kelly thought she was in no shape to be seen in public, but he looked adorable, with the streak of cinnamon-colored paint on his neck and another spot in his hair. Kissably adorable. Not that kissing him was on her mind.

Cotton-candy ice cream was. Her favorite flavor. And once he handed her a double-decker cone, he asked if she'd been in contact with her father since she'd left Paris.

'When he asked for that DNA test, he royally ticked me. But I went to a doctor, did a swab at a lab and had the results sent directly to my father's Paris address. Then I stewed.' Her tongue swiped at the ice-cream cone. Man, it was good. 'We had exchanged e-mail addresses the first time I met him. I thought that was interesting. I mean, obviously he didn't want mail or phone calls to come to the house from me. By giving me an e-mail address. I didn't know if he was trying to prevent direct contact or trying to keep a door open. Anyway…'

'You've been writing him?'

She nodded. 'I don't know if I want a relationship with him-or vice versa. But I'll be damned if he gets to pretend that I don't exist, now that we both know about each other. And it still bugs me, that my half brothers believed I was after his money. So I started sending him a post every couple of days. Telling him things about my life, who I am. Not asking for a response.'

'Has he responded?'

She shook her head. 'The e-mails haven't come back, so I assume he got them. I mean, I realize he could have blocked me, or just deleted the e-mails without reading them, but there's nothing I can do about that. The only thing I have power over is keeping the door open. Even if he doesn't want to believe I exist, I still feel this…need. To know more about him, about that side of my family. Like, what were my grandparents like? Are there any family-related health issues? That's part of who I am. Who my kids will be, too.' She almost got an ice-cream headache, she had devoured the cone so fast. But then she sighed. 'The whole thing has had me in a muddle. Cripes. I've been a muddle since this all started-'

'All right, all right. We'll go shopping.'

'Huh?' She blinked in surprise.

It was his turn to sigh, one of those heavy, testosterone-laden sighs. 'You think I don't know when I'm being set up? It's okay. I get it. You've had a rotten time for weeks. And now you've ended up working like a dog on a Sunday, a day you should have spent relaxing. Obviously you need some kind of female pick-me-up. So where are we stuck going? The mall?'

His face said it all, that he considered shopping to be the ultimate sacrifice. 'How about a movie instead?' she asked.

'A movie?'

The look of relief on his face almost made her burst out laughing. 'When I'm stressed, I love to see a movie, any movie. Of course, we've still got paint on our clothes.'

'Dried paint. And not that much.'

It was hysterical, she thought, how willingly he'd do anything to get out of shopping. And even more interesting, how he'd just shown up and fit into her life all day as if he belonged there.

Her heart started aching. And the ache had intensified by the time she was sitting next to him in the dark