Blame It On Paris

theater, stealing his popcorn, shoulder-touching, knee-brushing, smile-sharing.

Desire, suppressed all day, appeared, ugly, annoying and refusing to disappear. She didn't want this yearning, this need to be with him. She told herself that she wouldn't mind so much if the whole thing were just about sex.

Sex was just sex, after all. Even when it was fantastic, fantabulous, fantilicious sex. Sex was only dangerous. It wasn't petrifying, like when doing ordinary things like painting a room and going to a movie felt impossibly right.

A bunch of blood and guts showed up on the movie screen. Kelly chewed on a nail. She wasn't going to start believing that the fantasy was real. This wasn't Paris. They were home now. Reality was reality. He was from a very, very rich background and had family problems beyond her ken. She was having identity issues of her own, not even counting how fractious her family relationships currently were.

So she ate his popcorn and she forced her mind off sex and she told herself, several zillion times, that the fantasy was over. When that didn't work-as they were walking out of the theater-she tried the one subject that should have been guaranteed to jam him up.

'So it went so bad with your dad that you can't even talk about it?'

She must have worn him down, because this time he didn't even try to duck. 'It probably could have been worse, but I don't know how.'

When he didn't come through with any details, she said, 'Okay. I have an idea.'

'What?'

'Ask me to dinner. With your parents. Pick a nice place, but more ordinary than ultrafancy. You know. Comfortable, with nothing about the atmosphere to add stress. They'll come because they'll be worried about what kind of girl you're seeing, so the heat will be on me instead of you. And it'll give me a chance to get a take on your dad. Maybe I could be of more help if I knew the players face-to-face.'

'That's really a dumb idea,' he said.

'Uh-huh.' She thought again. 'I can't tomorrow or Thursday. I'm clocking a ton of extra hours, trying to make some extra money. But Wednesday night would work well. Say six-thirty?'

They'd just stepped off the curb, crossing with the light, aiming for the parking lot across the street. People were milling all over the place, some exiting the theater, others going to dinner.

When Will grabbed her arm, her first assumption was that there was a problem-like she hadn't been paying attention and there was a car headed toward them.

She glanced around, yet there didn't seem to be any sudden cars in their way. And when she looked back at Will, his expression had turned sober…as if that first touch between them was all it had taken to create a conflagration within him. As it had for her, too.

His arms swooped around her.

Her arms wrapped around him.

His mouth claimed hers in a hot kiss that went on and on and on. She claimed his mouth right back, asking for more, needing more, demanding more.

Tension and tenderness swirled between them. She couldn't smell anything but him. Couldn't see

anything but him. Couldn't feel anything but him. 'Will.' she said softly, full of longing. He answered with another wild, slow kiss.

A car honked.

Then another.

Then a semitruck-loud enough to wake the dead.

She pulled back from him, startled at the sudden appearance of other people, cars, trucks. They were in the middle of the road, for Pete's sake.

And this wasn't Paris.

CHAPTER TEN

WILL FIGURED this dinner with Kelly and his parents was going to be as much fun as, say, cuddling up to a hornet's nest. Suffering a flat tire in Alaska in the dead of winter. Having your wisdom teeth pulled.

He pulled into Kelly's driveway, then positioned the rearview mirror so he could fix his tie.

He hadn't worn a tie in years. He hadn't done stress in years. He'd been doing just fine in Paris, leading a devil-may-care life, strolling through each day, getting his Ph.D. in irresponsibility. Nothing had been wrong with his life. Nothing!

He scowled in the rearview mirror, found a cowlick in the back of his head, scowled at that, and was just slamming out of the car when Kelly showed up at the front door.

He stopped in midstride.

She looked damned adorable. Not remotely like her, but damned adorable. She was the textbook model for a Woman Meeting the Parents. Shed tamed the curls, pulled them all back somehow. The white top was sleeveless, natural for the balmy night, but the high neck was suitable for a nun. A navy skirt danced around her knees, not too short, nothing wild. The sandaled heels showed off bare legs, but weren't too high. Her toes and nails both had a soft pink polish that matched her lip gloss.

She was using the blue-and-white scarf he'd given her in Paris as a shawl.

Her face, apart from looking breathtakingly beautiful, had a scared expression on it.

As she headed for him and the car, she took in his own scared expression and laughed. 'We're one heck of a pair.'

'You have nothing to worry about. They'll love you.'

'Yeah, right.' She moved close and shook her head as she reached for his tie. She fumbled with it for several minutes, while he stood there, liking her hands on him, liking her near, recognizing her perfume as the scent he'd had made for her. He noticed that he was harder than a rock…and before dinner with his parents.

Finally she laughed and looped the tie from around his neck. 'This is dumb. Why do you need a tie? It isn't you.' She threw the tie into the backseat, tilted up long enough to brush his lips with a completely unsatisfactory kiss, then darted around the car to climb in the passenger side. 'What'd you do to your hair?'

She reached over, pushed down the cowlick, and when that didn't work, licked her hands and used the spit.

'I can't believe you did that,' he said.

'I can't believe I did, either. Would you quit looking so nervous? This is going to go just fine.'

Oh. yeah. Just fine, like her living in that dive because of him. Just fine, like her tearing up her whole life because he'd promised himself that sleeping with her wouldn't hurt anybody. And yeah, she had needed to shake the turkey, aka Jason, but that wasn't the point.

'You don't have to do this,' he said for the dozenth time.

'A free meal? At Joseph's?' She named the ritzy restaurant that his mother had chosen. He smelled her scent again. It hovered around her neck, like a peek of cleavage or a flirting smile. She wasn't giving him flirting smiles or cleavage. It was just the perfume. 'If you think I'd turn down a great dinner like this, you've got another think coming. But you have to relax, Will. You look like you're ready to climb the walls.'

'I'm perfectly calm,' he snapped. Guys weren't nervous. Guys were calm in a crisis. Guys took charge. Guys were tough.

When they walked into the restaurant, the tuxedoed maitre d' hustled forward to take care of them. Will tensed all over again. He and Kel were early, but he should have guessed his father would arrive even earlier. Aaron, being a classic control freak, liked to study the stage, maneuver where everyone would sit, get all the details set up the way he wanted them.

His father stood when he saw them approaching. Kelly's face lit up as if she recognized her new best friends. 'I couldn't wait to meet you two,' she said warmly.

She reached out and hugged Aaron, as if she'd been hugging him all his life, then bent down to hug his mom, who was dressed-how did women do that?-in navy and white just like Kel.

She turned back to Will and said. 'I'm in love. You told me I'd like them, so I should have guessed I would on