Blame It On Paris

CHAPTER THREE

SWALLOWED UP. That's how she felt. Wrapped in Will's arms, absorbed in his kiss, the scent of him. taste of him, look of him.

In some part of her brain, Kelly recognized they were still on the boat, that the music had stopped playing, that the engines had quit, that the other passengers were noisily gathering their belongings and descending the gangplank.

And still, she seemed to be dancing with Will. To unheard music.

To scents she'd never experienced before. To textures she'd never imagined-like his tongue.

His wicked, wicked tongue.

Her fingers fisted around his neck, not clenching so much as holding on. Her balance felt increasingly threatened, as if she was precariously a blink away from falling, awash in silver dizziness.

The image of silver dizziness almost made her laugh. How ridiculous was that? She'd never been fanciful. She'd always been practical, the kind of woman who ran her life on facts, numbers, reality. For darn sure, she didn't go around looking to do wrong things. She suffered enough guilt day by day trying to do the right things.

Only just then her conscience couldn't seem to scare up any sense of doing wrong.

And the silvery dizziness made perfect sense to her.

And so did kissing Will. Being taken in by Will. The scent of him swarmed her. surrounded her, mixed with the silky black water of the Seine and the lights of Paris and just him. Her stranger. Her clean, warm, sexy stranger. Herexotically sexy stranger…

"Monsieur? Mademoiselle?" A staff member patted Will on the shoulder. His expression was tolerant, gentle, as if he was used to regretfully interrupting lovers-this was Paris, after all. The vision of two people lost in each other was nothing new to him.

But it was new to Kelly…and judging from the dazed, dark look in Will's eyes, it wasn't an everyday occurrence for him, either. Finally, Will stopped moving, as if realizing that the only two people still swaying to music were them.

The night had turned downright chilly, midnight chilly, except when she was circled in his arms. And when he dropped his arms, he still didn't look at the uniformed guy, but only at her. His voice was thicker than smoke, lower than blues. "We're going back to my place."

"Yes," she said, as if it were the only word she knew, the only word she could say.

Even at that moment, she knew he wasn't referring to her having no other place to stay. He wasn't offering her his couch.

And she wasn't leaping to offer excuses-too much wine, too much dinner, too much of an exhausting, terrible day, too much Paris.

She knew what he was inviting.

She knew what she was saying yes to.

Where it had taken almost an hour to get to the port where the cruise began, it seemed only minutes before they were back at Will's place, hauling her suitcases from his trunk. He'd left no lights on. She plunked one case right inside the hallway; he dropped the other two. He'd barely closed the door before leaning her against the hard surface and leveling another kiss on her. This one happened to be a whole-body kiss, involving his chest, his knee, his tongue, his hands, his erection. His soul.

And hers. It wasn't totally her fault she couldn't stop kissing him. Lonesomeness poured off Will in waves. This just wasn't about horniness or chemistry or that kind of nuisance stuff. He tugged at something in her. something huge. A loneliness. A yearning. A need to be with someone-someone who filled up the emptiness. Someone who mattered. Someone who touched her. Not on the outside, on the inside.

He did stop for breath once, but only to grumble. "If you say no now, you'll kill me."

At that moment, her thin sweater was flying somewhere over her head. His right shoe was gone. Her knee had regretfully connected with a wall. Neither had turned on a light yet. but the glow of streetlights below was starting to infiltrate the darkness. She could see the fierce shine in his eyes. Feel. see. the tension in his body, in his face.

"What if I want to say no?"

"Then say it. Just know, you'll kill me."

"And what if I say… take me right here, right now, Will. Only love me like no one has ever loved me, or don't mess with me at all."

He muttered a curse word. Or a prayer. "Not a smart thing to say if you want a guy to stop, Kel."

"No?"

"No. So don't say it to any other guys. Ever. Okay?"

Well, hell. He didn't give her a chance to answer. Next thing, he was walking her backward down the dark hall, stopping once to yank his shirt over his head, then to heel off his other shoe. Eventually they bounced off enough walls to pass the bathroom, past all the rooms she'd seen before, into one that she definitely hadn't. Still, even in the dark she knew it was his bedroom. It smelled like his soap. Like the fresh air blowing in the cracked window, like…like him.

Like an exotic, sexy, unbearably masculine man. A fantasy man.

A lover.

She didn't get naked easily. There'd only been Jason for her, and it had taken him four years to talk her out of all her clothes. Her procrastinating hadn't been about morality so much as prudishness. She liked her clothes on. She didn't like messiness.

All in all, she'd long figured out that she just didn't have that big a sex drive. Everybody couldn't, after all. She thought sex was important-like meat and potatoes. A staple of life. Needed. A serious thing.

But certainly nothing on a par with cyclones and tsunamis.

Yet that seemed to be how it was with Will. All explosive risk and wicked need and unbelievably soft romance.

He kissed a slow path all the way down to her toes, then trailed back up again, lingering between her thighs-and embarrassing the devil out of her. He gave her no time to work up a royal prudish fit, which she'd always been very good at.

The feather bed was all rumpled and warm, like him. Beneath, the mattress was hard as a board- maybe it even was a board-but thankfully there were all those soft covers to melt into. Or possibly that was Will she was melting into.

"Maybe you better hold on to the headboard. Kel. I think this could get a little wild."

"Urn. Did I mention ahead of time that I only do good-girl sex?"

"I don't think you mentioned that today yet, no."

A breeze fluttered in the dark room, chilling her overheated skin when he flipped her on top of him. They weren't joined yet. but she could feel how it was going to be. Scary. Delicious. "You get a thrill on roller-coaster rides?" she murmured.

"Nope. But I'm going to get a thrill when I ride you. You ready?" He raised an arm, fumbled in the bedside drawer.

"Condom?" she asked. And got the first serious tone from him she'd heard in hours.

"You don't have a problem with that, do you?"

"Hey, don't insult me."

A flash of a smile in the dark. And that was it…the last time she had a coherent thought.

A zillion sensations bombarded her senses. The sterling shadows on the wall, the profile of him riding her, the strength and bold, primal sexuality of him. How she felt…beguiled…spun into a whispery web of touch and taste and need. The texture of their skin, shiny as wet varnish, silky with sweat. Her lungs gasping for breath. The howl of a siren outside. A flash of lights inside, deep inside her. when this crazy, lofty, silver-sharp climax took her over, took her under.

When it was over, he fell back, pulling her half on top of him as if refusing to be separated even for an instant. She lay there, slaked, eyes closed, still trying to catch her breath. She felt him pulling up the covers, the stroke of his hand on her back, the cuff of his knuckle when he tucked the sheet around her neck, sealing all the airholes. He murmured something silly and throaty and low, like, "Who knew?"

As if he never expected she'd be such a red-hot mama.

Before dropping off to sleep, she remembered thinking. Damn, I was. I really was.

At least with him.

SWEET, WARM RAIN DRIZZLED down the windows. Horns and sirens heralded the new day below. A child's laughter echoed from the street. Beneath the feather comforter, she couldn't remember feeling snuggled so safely, so securely. Her cheek seemed embedded in Will's shoulder. Her arm was loosely, possessively, draped around his bare waist. His chest hair nuzzled her very warm, very bare breasts.

But none of those things were what woke her up.

Guilt woke her up.

Huge, sharp, ear-drumming, shame-sucking heaps of guilt.

Silent as sin, she inched out from under the covers-praying not to wake Will-and then tiptoed, shivering, into the hall. Her two suitcases and carry-on were still lying in a jumble by the front door, but right then, she only had one thing on her mind and it wasn't remotely her stuff.

Grabbing a towel from the bathroom to cover herself, she hustled into the living room, grabbed the telephone and found a spot to sit upon the carpet behind the couch.

She dialed Jason.

The phone rang.

And rang.

And then rang some more.

She hated using Will's phone, partly because she'd have yet another bill to clock up on Will's balance sheet, and partly because it just seemed the height of wrong. But without her purse or her cell phone or any of her phone cards, there was no other choice. And this call wouldn't wait another minute. Another second.

But there was no answer, even after seven rings. She hung up, bit her lip, then dialed the number all over again.

It was seven hours earlier in South Bend. That meant it was somewhere around two in the morning there. Heaven knows, she didn't want to wake Jason up, but she needed to reach him. Now. And at this hour, he simply had to be in their new apartment, asleep.

Where else would he be on an early Saturday morning? Even if he'd gone out with the guys, he'd have been home hours before this.

On the ninth ring, she clicked off again, frustrated and anxious, but she just couldn't quit. Surely he was just sleeping hard. Sooner or later he'd hear the ring.

She started punching in the numbers again until she suddenly noted a tousled blond head peering at her from over the couch. "I don't know if the customs have changed in America, but over here, we're allowed to sit in a regular chair to make a call," Will said, his voice thick from sleep. She could hear his amusement.

"I was trying not to make noise. I didn't want to wake you up. I was just calling…" She almost said my mother, but the lie stuck in her throat. She'd committed enough sins in the past twenty-four hours. She couldn't add another one to the mound. She sighed. "My fiancé."

Will's eyes narrowed as if he were sighting in a rifle. "I thought I recognized that strange expression on your face. Guilt. Which is completely wasted, Kelly. Whoever that guy is, you were never going to marry him."

"I was. I was."

"See? You said it in the past tense. You already know he wasn't remotely right for you."

If she wasn't a lady-and if she wasn't struggling with both hands and a phone to keep covered by the towel-she'd have smacked him. "But I thought he was right. Last week."

"Can't help that," Will said heartlessly.

"Even two days ago I thought he was!"

"Can't help that, either. Good thing you found out, though, huh? Before you got tied up with a guy who was totally wrong for you?" His face disappeared from sight. "I'm headed in the kitchen to make some coffee, so you're welcome to the shower first. By the time you're done, I should have some scrambled eggs ready. That is, assuming you're not still hiding behind the couch."

"I am not hiding."

A few minutes later, when she was locked in his bathroom, standing under the shower, which was more a sultry trickle than the exuberant water pressure she was used to in the U.S… she was still feeling defensive.

By the time she'd rinsed out the shampoo, though, her mood had metamorphosed from defensive to morose. Truth was, she would have liked to hide behind Will's couch indefinitely. At least for a few weeks. She didn't know what was happening to her. It was totally impossible that she'd cheated on Jason. It was even more impossible that she'd just made love with a stranger.

More confounding yet, something in her heart, deep down, kept beating the quiet, sure pulse that something about Will was right. Really right. In a way that nothing had ever been this right in her life before.

By the time she'd stepped out of the shower and was pulling on fresh clothes…fresh, wrinkled clothes, straight from the suitcase…she was thinking herself into circles.

Maybe Will wasn't right. Maybe, instead, a massive flaw in her character had just shown up. Maybe somewhere deep inside her, she'd always been a cheater. A piker. A moral-less slut. And the potential had just never shown up before now.

God. It was enough to send a girl into a deep depression.

WHEN KELLY WALKED into the kitchen, Will took one look at her expression and mentally sighed. She looked adorable. For a woman with no boobs or butt, she gave off an amazing amount of feminine-ismo- the girl version of machismo. She was just so pure female, from the arch of her shoulders, to the way she walked, to the way she tilted her head. But she'd opted to wear a summer skirt and top, and the pale top was noticeably buttoned to the neck, the denim skirt noticeably oversize. She wasn't in any hurry to look at him, either.

Last night they'd rocked the walls. Will couldn't remember more stupendous sex. Yeah, she'd started out shy, but that had been fun to coax out of her. Once her engine was started, she was high performance all the way, knew what worked for her and let him work damn hard to give it to her. Talk about delicious.

Not that he wasn't a major fan of sex before-and any sex was better than none-but the good stuff just never happened until you were into a relationship, where the woman knew you well enough to bring down the inhibitions and go for it.

With Kelly, he couldn't explain or understand it, but it was as if they already had that kind of gut-level trust, had known each other forever. He'd gone to sleep wanting her again. Woken up wanting her. Found her hiding behind the couch and suffered yet another hard-on just looking at her.

Given her cover-up clothes and shyness now, though, she clearly didn't feel the same. Either he'd flunked in her bed-scoring class, or…or…or hell, he didn't know what.

"You need coffee," he said, hoping to ward off conversation. Particularly the kind of conversation that was going to be some kind of rehash of what last night had meant.

"I need to call my mother again."

"I know you do. You've got a whole list of have-to's waiting for you. But it's the weekend. Hopefully you're going to reach your mom, get the paperwork going, get some money. Maybe we can even pick up the police report. But unless someone who's worth a few billion is dying, the embassy and consulate will be closed tighter than a drum until Monday. So you might as well have some coffee. Some breakfast. And after that…"

"After that what?" she asked, as warily as a rabbit in a fox's lair.

"After that, we might as well do more Paris."

He didn't exactly have a plan, other than knowing she had to get the stolen-passport business moving or she was going to go nuts. The other major fret on her mind was her mom. Will pretty easily pictured her mother as an independent type, who could easily have shot off to see a friend or do a shopping spree for a couple of days, because Kelly kept saying there was no reason to worry just because her mother hadn't answered her messages; sooner or later her mom would call back. The lack of response meant, though, that Kelly was still dead broke, still financially dependent on him.

And that was killing her. Will tried to keep up a hustling pace to get her mind off it, but initially they only ran into more frustration instead of less. Their first stop was the specific commissariat-the police station. There, of course, the bureaucratic bullshit began. In order to obtain the required récépissé de déclaration de perte ou de vol-proof she'd been through a theft-she had to get two separate sets of receipts. One was for the passport papers, and one for any other type of stolen valuables. Everywhere there were lines.

Because Will knew the system, he figured he'd stay cool, but by noon he was coming apart at the seams, like Kelly was. The solution was obvious. Get the hell out of Dodge. By midday Saturday, there was no real chance of getting business done anyway, so there was no reason not to aim for some fun.

He picked Île de la Cité first. The island, located in the middle of the Seine, was sardine packed with history and monuments, a guaranteed attraction for tourists. Hell, even the locals loved it. So did he.

It seemed the ideal place to get her out in the fresh air, removed from everything to do with the trauma of the mugger-and whatever else was haunting those wet-velvet brown eyes.

That was the theory.

The reality turned into something else. Getting her out in the fresh air pepped her up just fine. Only then she opened her mouth and never shut it again.

"I'm sick of thinking about me, talking about me. God knows, it's your turn. What's your job, Will? Why'd you end up in Paris? You're not planning on living here forever, are you?"

That nasty line of conversation started when they were in sight of the Notre Dame Cathedral. He'd figured it was the one place guaranteed to brighten up her mood…and it did. Only after thirty seconds of awed, respectful silence, she turned her attention right back to him, waiting for a barrage of answers to her endless questions.

He could only duck so far. "Fromage," he said finally.

"Fromage?" From the depths of her schoolgirl French, she suddenly remembered the word. "Cheese? Your job here is about cheese? Are you kidding?"

He sighed. "It's hard to explain."

"Why? What's hard to explain about cheese?"

The drizzling rain had stopped. A watery sun poked through the tufty clouds. Tourists, as always, were out in droves. It was spring, after all. Paris.

And Île de la Cité had more old stone and romantic history than anyplace in the universe. She should have been entranced. They should not have been talking about cheese.

"I came here originally to…well, to loll around. Play. Live my life. The idea was to take any job I could find that would support me, but otherwise, I wasn't looking for career work. There's no way I'll ever be driven the way my father is. I'm not about to be chained to an office or living just for money."

She stopped dead, as if a lightbulb suddenly dawned in those far-too-smart brown eyes. "Oh my God, oh my God. Will…I know you said your last name was Maguire, but you're not…" She gulped. "You're not one of those Maguires, are you?"

"Don't go there," he warned her.

"Holy mackerel. You're Aaron Maguire's son? Good grief. Good heavens. Your family's practically a dynasty in South Bend. Everybody knows they're wallowing in money. Practically drowning in it." She hustled in front of him on the sidewalk, walking backward to look into his face. "I'll be darned. I've seen his picture a zillion times in the paper. You look just like him, except that he's tall and distinguished, of course. Where you're more on the plain old adorable side."

He rolled his eyes, than yanked her next to his side. Walking backward, she was creating an obvious hazard for the other pedestrians, not to mention herself. French drivers knew no mercy. Especially for Americans.

"Could you focus on the important stuff here? We just passed the Palais de Justice. Couple blocks down, we'll be at Saint-Michel, and after that we'll be standing in line to get into Notre Dame like every other idiot tourist in the city. Notre Dame. The real thing. You're supposed to be thrilled."

"I will be. In just a sec. I'm still having a heart attack over your family. I think you should tell a girl before you sleep with her when you're part of a dynasty like that."

This time he narrowed his eyes. Give the girl a little sleep, and she was all sass and sparkle. He hooked an arm around her neck, and it wasn't an affectionate gesture. "You know, you're not the only one who gets to be nosy. It's about time you answered a few questions yourself. Like how you hinted that you weren't in Paris just for a vacation."

"I wasn't hinting. There's no secret." She didn't seem to mind the stranglehold he had on her neck. At least she wasn't trying to break free from it. "Actually, I guess there is a little secret, because I didn't tell anyone back home what I was doing. But that was because it was no one's business. I came here on kind of a private quest. I wanted to find some information about my father."

Now there was a word guaranteed to stop him dead. "Oh. Fathers."

"Yeah, it wasn't hard to guess we both had father issues…but in my case, it's because I never knew my dad. He was French. From Paris. And he died when my mom was pregnant with me. So I never knew him or had a chance to know anything about him. That's just the way it was." Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes. "That was partly why the mugger upset me so much. I had some old letters in that purse, letters he'd written my mom way back when…"

Hell. He loosened the grip on her neck. She was still talking. He'd figured out that when she started, it was like trying to plug a dike. Better not count on the flow stopping anytime soon.

"Years ago, my mom threw out the letters when she married someone else. A man named George. That marriage only lasted a few years-but anyway. I was just a kid, saw her throwing out the letters and I saved them from the trash. There were only a few, but they were all I had of my dad's. And on the envelopes, they had a return address, from where he grew up in Paris."

The little glisten in her eyes was one thing, but now a big. fat tear trickled down her cheek. Alarm started drumming through him. They were in the middle of a crowded street. There was no place to run.

"So…that was my plan when I came here. I just wanted to see the house, the neighborhood where he grew up. I can't imagine anyone would remember him after all this time…but I still wanted to do it. Just walk that street. See it, feel it, smell it. I don't have any other way to know him. And the whole idea popped into my mind when I got engaged. I mean…suddenly my whole life was going to change. And I just wanted to know more about who I came from."

He tried to steer her to something practical and solvable, so the tears would dry up. "So now you've lost the address? We could find a way to track that down. Kel-"

She blinked. "Oh…no, no need for that. I've had the address memorized for years. What upset me was losing the letters. His handwriting. The words. It was the only thing I ever had of his. I never cared about losing my passport or money or anything like that. But darn it…"

"Don't cry again." This time Will made it a stern order.

"I'm not."

"You are. Quit it." He fumbled for another diversion. "Okay, so what's your father's old address?"

She reeled it off. The street was in the 7th arron-dissement, which was the name of the absolute last suburban area he expected her to say. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely." She cocked her head. "What's wrong? Is there something odd about the address? Or the neighborhood?"

"Not exactly," he muttered, and sucked in an uneasy breath. This was getting mighty complicated.

She was mighty complicated.

Will didn't do complicated. Didn't, wouldn't, couldn't. Yeah, he felt this wild, insane pull toward her-didn't know why, didn't care why, was just more or less enjoying it. He sure had enjoyed making love with her the night before.

But now, he wanted to extricate himself before he got any more embroiled. Particularly when he sensed she might have a world of hurt coming-nothing to do with him, nothing he could do about it. But there was no point in two of them lying down on a train track if one of them could get out of the way.

"Something's wrong." she insisted. "Just say it. Whatever's on your mind."

"Nothing."

"Yes, there is. You looked tense all of a sudden."

"Well, yeah. The weather's gone south on us fast."

Now there was an understatement. The morning drool hadn't been bad. but the sun just couldn't seem to stay out for long. Temporarily it was just misting hard, but from the look of the dirty clouds, they were minutes away from the day turning into a soaking deluge. A crack of thunder echoed his forecast.

Kelly looked up, startled, and then simultaneously seemed to realize their heads were damp, rain sluicing off their jackets. How long had they been oblivious to the weather? She suddenly started to laugh.

And darn it, because her laughter was so infectious, he started to laugh, too.

Then, of course, they found their wits and ran for shelter. Or that's where he thought they were running…

EXHAUSTED, LAUGHING, soaked to the skin. Kelly burst into the flat as soon as Will unlocked the door. Although it was only early evening, the apartment was midnight dark. Outside, the sky was still grumbling with thunderclouds. Traffic hissed on the wet streets below. Streetlights swayed in the wild wind.

"Good grief! I feel kin to a fish!" she yelped, as she pushed out of her soggy shoes. Pulling off her light spring jacket made rain spatter everywhere, including on Will, who jerked upright when he heard her sneeze.

"We've got to get you to a shower before you catch your death."

They both seemed to reach the same decision-that it was better to peel off their soaking clothes right there, in the dark, not waiting. There was no point in dragging the ocean of wet stuff all through the apartment. And Will's teeth were chattering as hard as hers were.

Still, she was exhilarated. "I can't believe how much we saw!"

"Yeah. well. I should have listened to my better sense and dragged you home hours ago."

"But you said you were stuck doing some work tomorrow. And even if it's Sunday. I still have to push through the passport nightmare. And this way, we had the whole day for you to show me Paris." Her mind was still reeling with the wonders. Île Saint-Louis and the Hotel de Ville. Sacré-Coeur. The Eiffel Tower. The Jardin du Luxembourg.

"You don't see gardens in the pouring rain, not if you have a brain."

"But it was perfect. All rain-clean. And nobody else there but us-oomph." Her fanny seemed to connect with his elbow. It would have helped if they both weren't fumbling to get off wet things in the cramped foyer.

Her head shot up at the same time he tried to get out of the way. And then her head seemed to somehow bump into his chin.

They both let out a responsive howl, and Kelly was inclined to convulse in laughter again. She'd shucked off both shoes, where he still had one on. Both their jackets were draped and steaming on chairs. She'd managed to pull off her damp sweater, but she couldn't wait to get the clammy wet socks off, and it was impossible to do anything fast. Both of them had chilled-clumsy fingers, and every time they bent down, they seemed to collide again.

It was such an easy problem to solve.

All they had to do was turn on a light.

Move into the larger space of the apartment.

Instead, in their shivering, laughing scuffle, there was an instant-at least for Kelly-when she suddenly remembered the night before. Remembered him as a lover, naked, evocative, demanding, challenging. Lusty.

It wasn't as if she'd forgotten that for a second all day.

It was just that all day she'd been good at blocking it out.

Denial was a learned skill. She'd practiced her whole life. And she was safe, she'd thought, because neither of them could possibly be in the mood. They were both cold and tired and had sore feet. He couldn't possibly want her. She looked like a drowned rat.

And she was about to sneeze again.

Then in the blink of a second, his eyes met hers.

There was a second of silence. A second when the laughter died. A second when the shivers and exhaustion and rain pelting the windows in torrents seemed to fade out, as if they were all background colors in an old picture.

He was all foreground. Even in the shadowy foyer, she caught the clear shine in his eyes, heard his breath catch, could swear she actually saw the sudden arc of lightning between them.

She didn't mean to suck in a breath, but he seemed to take that as an invitation.

Maybe it was.

She was in his arms like that. As if she'd die if she couldn't touch him that very minute. As if she'd die if she couldn't have him. As if nothing in her life had created need like this, fire like this, a hunger to live like this. Until him.

She surely accumulated a dozen bruises navigating the hall toward his bedroom, and him probably more. Darkness and dampness were only two of the obstacles. She refused to stop kissing him-to stop being kissed-refused to be severed from him for even a second.

"We're going to kill ourselves," he muttered against her mouth.

"You can always say no."

And then, when they finally reached the bedroom, when she finally had him naked, he mentioned, "You know, we don't have to go this fast."

"You want slow?"

"No." His voice turned thick, just like that. Thicker than honey. Thicker than molasses. Thicker than a bluesy sax on a hot night in Paris. "I want you now. Totally. Every which way. Total dominion over you."

"You got it," she murmured, in a voice that wasn't hers. Kelly-the Kelly Rochard she saw in the mirror every day-had a voice meant for a church choir. A voice that giggled with children, that played family diplomat in touchy moments.

The woman's voice talking to Will was a slut's voice. A bad, bad woman's voice. Conscienceless. Greedy. Wicked.

It was all a trick, she thought. A trick her heart was playing on her. A trick that made it okay to be a brazen hussy-not in life, not in general, but with him. Will Maguire. Here. Now. In Paris.

And that was the last coherent thought she had.