Blame It On Paris

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE STIRRED the next morning before Will. Half-awake, she slowly became conscious of the pale sun filtering through the screen, the first horn on the street, a tufty breeze, the sounds of a sleepy Paris coming to life. She stayed cuddled up to Will, not wanting to move, not wanting to think, just wanting to absorb the feel of her lover…until she felt his gaze on her face.

"You're awake," she murmured.

He was studying her, not with sleepy eyes but with an ultraquiet expression. "You're still feeling guilty," he said.

She didn't try lying. Didn't have to lie. not to Will. "That's my life," she admitted. "By everything I've ever believed this is wrong." Yet she added softly, "But I've never even remotely felt this way about anyone. Just you."

"So does that make it wrong or right?"

"It makes it something I can't walk away from." She felt his thumb brushing her cheek. Her eyes wanted to close, to absorb the simple intimacy. "How about you?"

Suddenly he sat up. "Oh. no. We grilled Will for dinner last night," he said wryly. "It's gonna be all about you today."

Before he went to work, she got a complete, complex list of instructions. Directions. Money. Key. Food. Stuff she could do, stuff she couldn't. Places she could go, places she needed to steer clear of. "This is a city, remember. You can't go smiling and saying hi to strangers on the street."

On and on. "All these orders," she grumped.

He chuckled, but he stopped smiling at the door. He knew her schedule for the day. To pick up the wired money from her mom. then to head for her father's old neighborhood. It was the latter that clearly bothered him. "Kelly, the neighborhood where you're going…it's more than safe. You won't have to worry about that. But maybe you should wait to do this until I get home from work."

"Heavens, no."

It was the second time Will had expressed uneasiness about Kelly visiting her dad's old neighborhood alone. She did all her chores, felt enormous relief when she had her own money in her hands, fumbled around with public transportation, picked up a sandwich from a French bistro and made it to her father's old house just before noon.

When she stepped out of the taxi at the corner. Will's uneasiness shot back into her mind. It seemed especially crazy, once she saw the neighborhood.

She'd expected…well, anything. An old house, some kind of neighborhood where families raised kids, schools close by, maybe a corner grocery store.

She'd never expected…elegance.

Her step slowed and then stopped when she reached the exact address. Architecture wasn't her thing, but she was pretty sure the style of the Rochard house was Beaux Arts. Long stone steps led up to a multiple-arched doorway. A couple of lions framed the entrance. It wasn't the Smithsonian. It wasn't even a castle. But it was a darn fancy house, three stories of marble and stone.

She stood there, bewildered, racking her brain to make sure this was the correct address. Without the old letters, she couldn't be positive-but she was. She'd read and reread those letters a zillion and a half times.

All she'd really wanted to do was see the house, see the neighborhood. Maybe in the back of her mind, she thought she'd find someone to talk to, someone who could tell her about the Rochard family…or that she might be able to walk around, see the school her dad might have walked to, see the church he might have attended on Sunday.

Now she took a step toward the house…stopped again.

Suddenly it wasn't so easy to simply go up and knock on the door, but then she noticed the carved emblem on the door. An intricate vine shaped into the letter R. Her lips firmed. Maybe they'd throw her out, call the gendarmes, slam the door in her face. But she'd come all this way. and no matter what happened, she couldn't just turn away.

She marched up the steps, took a breath for courage and knocked softly. Then knocked again.

She was about to knock a third time, when a man opened the door. The look of him startled her so much that her jaw must have dropped ten feet.

He looked around her age, give or take a few extra years. Rich brown hair, thick, with a little unruly wave. Tea-brown eyes. Slim to the skinny side, fine boned, medium height.

"Bonjour" she began in her schoolgirl French, telling herself she had to be an idiot to think they looked so much alike. "I'm sorry to bother you. Je m'appelle Kelly Rochard. Je sais…this sounds… odd…but the thing is, my father-mon père-grew up at this address. His name was Henri Rochard. I wonder if there is any chance someone in the house might have known the family or anything about him…"

Her voice trailed off.

She'd expected her stumbling language to be a problem… Instead, her appearance seemed to provoke the man in an entirely different way. She didn't stop talking because she ran out of things to say, but because he started to look so…angry.

Red flushed up his neck to his cheeks-the same icky-splotchy red that happened to her when she was overheated or upset.

And then he let loose a torrent of words, far more than she could possibly keep up with. She caught menteusse, which she was pretty sure meant liar. When he yelled. "Ça va barder," Kelly was pretty sure there was going to be trouble, and instinctively started backing up.

She recognized another term-les couilles-that in another universe might have made her laugh. She believed he was suggesting that she had balls, which wasn't just an anatomical impossibility, but a curious thing to insult her with besides. He spewed out a few other choice words, all in the same angry tone. Vache. Chameau.

She'd backed up four more steps when another man, about the same age, showed up in the doorway, clearly curious about what all the commotion was about. They talked to each other, a mile a minute, for a few seconds, and then the second man looked at her. Really looked.

And suddenly no one was talking.

WILL HEADED HOME, wiped from a killer workday and annoyed by the frazzle of traffic…yet still feeling his pulse jump when he finally parked in the driveway, knowing he was going to see Kelly.

The damn woman. In just a few short days, she'd managed to irritate him, challenge him, exhaust him. She poked her nose where she wasn't wanted or invited. She could outtalk a magpie. She was the last kind of woman he even wanted to be near.

But he couldn't wait to see her.

He'd connected with her twice that morning, so he knew she'd gotten the wired money, knew she was headed on her "dad quest" after that. He'd intended to catch up with her in the afternoon, but business nonsense kept intruding on his time.

He always intended to spend a lazy workday with his feet propped on the desk. But his boss was such a…well, such a baby. Yves had come from the country with big hopes of selling his gourmet cheeses-some so outstanding he'd caught the attention of several famous chefs. Yves had outstanding products but no clue what to do about them.

He'd needed a brand. A marketing strategy. A manufacturing and production and advertising and distribution plan.

That was what Will discovered when he first took the job. It wasn't real work. It paid the rent; it was easy. Mostly he just had to set stuff in motion and then sit down with Yves, explain what to do, where to go from there. There was nothing about the job tying Will down. The stuff was stressful for Yves, a guy who could be reduced to tears by the simplest business decisions-who could figure? But occasionally, like today. Will was forced to exert a little serious energy.

Calls had come in from Canada. Germany. Denmark. Then something had gone wrong with a shipment arrival. Then certain packaging decisions had to be made. Yves got upset at that kind of thing.

Didn't bother Will. It was just business, but he was still fairly wrung dry by the time he vaulted the steps and pushed open the door.

"Kelly?"

He stopped almost immediately. Something was wrong. The place looked the way it had before Kelly showed up here. It was all…tidy. No lights, no smells, no messes, no sounds. No ultragirl perfume invading his space.

Alarm stole the smile from his face. "Kelly?"

He dropped the newspaper, his jacket. Poked his head in the living room, thinking maybe she was outside on the balcony and that's why it was all so quiet-but no. He checked the bathroom, thinking maybe she was taking a long soak in the tub, but she wasn't there, either.

"Kel?"

"I'm in here, Will."

He saw her even before he heard her voice. That single glance, though, made a double dose of alarm quicken his pulse.

Kelly wasn't quiet.

She was curled up in the desk chair in his mini office. The alcove was about the only place in the whole flat that was windowless and dark, nothing nice about it. It was just a hole to locate his computer and work with no distractions. At a glance, he could see she wasn't crying. She was sitting absolutely still in the dim light, with her legs tucked under her.

Motionless… Kelly. Quiet… Kelly. No animation, no wild zest for life, no heart hanging out there for any fool heart-thief to take advantage of. Like him.

Hell. The look of her hurt Will like a stab in his gut.

"What happened?"

He hunkered down next to her. wanting to be at her eye level. Her expression reflected that something had seriously shaken her.

She said, "I met my father."

"The one who's dead?"

"Yeah." She gulped. "It was quite a shock."

"Well, hell. I imagine it was for him, too."

She looked startled at his humor, but then the shocked stiffness seemed to loosen in her shoulders and she let out a little laugh. Very little, but still a laugh. "Oh God, Will, I'm so glad I had you to come home to, you to tell."

He lurched back to his feet, fetched glasses, a wine bottle, the opener. He could have opened it in the kitchen, but that would have taken a minute or two. He wasn't willing to leave her for that long, so he carried it back to the office and immediately started working on the corkscrew.

"I was afraid of your going alone there," he admitted.

"Why? You couldn't possibly have known-"

"That your dad was alive, no. Of course not. I don't know anything about your family. But when you told me the address, I was kind of taken aback. That neighborhood is known for money. Big money. No piddling millionaires. I mean the serious, major-fortune people." He wrenched the cork free, poured a glass for her, handed it over. "Nothing bad about anything in that picture. But somehow I didn't think you were expecting…"

"A fortune in the family history? You've got that right. You know what else? I've got two brothers. Two half brothers, anyway. Who hated me on sight. I didn't pick up all the language, but I'm pretty sure they immediately concluded that I was a gold-digging, lying bitch. Well. Either a bitch or a camel. I've always gotten those two words in French confused for some reason…"

Will forgot all about pouring his own wine. The idea of someone, anyone, hurting Kelly put a growl in his throat. Growing up with three sisters, he'd gotten over any desire to save damsels in distress. Chivalry was nothing more than a land mine. It was designed to heap trouble and responsibility on a guy's head until he sank from the weight of it, so the sudden instinct to bash Kelly's half brothers was disturbing. He hadn't slid into his old, bad habits for years now.

"Maybe you 'd better start at the beginning." he said.

"That's just the problem. I thought I knew the beginning. The story my mom told me was that my parents met when my mom was in college, doing a year at the Sorbonne. I thought they fell in love, got married, moved back home to South Bend. I thought my dad made a trip back to Paris to see his parents when my mom was pregnant. I thought there was some kind of train accident. That he died along with his parents. That there were no Rochard relatives left."

Will wanted to wince on her behalf. "Hmm…I take it a few of those things aren't exactly true?"

"Will?"

"What, honey?" He couldn't believe he was using the word honey. As if they'd known each other a bunch of years. As if he were into comforting her, instead of having a red-hot illicit affair. Yet. what the hell. He got up, took her-and the wine-and settled them on his lap in the office chair.

"My mom and dad weren't married. They were never married. In fact, my father-the one who's still alive-already had a wife. Not now, because she died about four years ago. But he was married to her way back when, which is exactly how I have two brothers who are older than me."

"Uh-oh." Will murmured, and stroked a hand through her tumble of hair. "A little shock. Finding out you're illegitimate?"

"Cripes, I don't care about that. This isn't the Middle Ages. Mistakes happen. So I was a mistake. That's all right. But it's killing me that I didn't know I had a father all these years…that my mom lied to me all this time."

"A pretty big lie," Will admitted.

"She slept with a married man."

"Maybe she didn't know he was married."

"Maybe she didn't. But she knew he was alive. She knew I had a living father."

He couldn't say anything to that.

"My brothers… Well. It seems my father has a ton of money. And he's developed a heart condition. His two sons were visiting him today, that's how they saw me, although I'm pretty sure I'll have to come up with DNA for them to believe we're related. But I think they knew the truth, because for damn sure. I knew, the minute we looked at one another. We have the same eyes, same hair, same mouth, same coloring. Will?"

"What, honey?"

"They thought I was showing up because I was after my father's money."

"It's a shame your brothers are stupid. You must have gotten all the IQ genes from your mom."

"Don't make me laugh. This is awful. They didn't want to let me in the door, just started yelling at me in French right off the bat. In fact, it was the yelling that brought my father from somewhere upstairs in the first place, to see what was going on. He took one look at me-"

"Listen. No crying allowed here. We talked about this before, remember?"

"He didn't get it. Until I mentioned my mother's name. Then there was this look on his face. He knew. He knew I was his daughter."

Will winced again. It didn't take a super brain to figure out the cretin had hardly greeted her with open arms.

"It was such a mess." Kelly dragged a hand through her hair, turned to him with tear-blurry eyes. "Obviously his sons never knew there was a sibling from the wrong side of the blanket. They started yelling at him, then. I couldn't stay. Couldn't leave. Didn't know what I was supposed to do."

"So what did you do?"

"I gave him a piece of paper with my e-mail address and asked for his. I couldn't give him my cell-phone number because that was stolen, and I didn't want to give him my mom's address in South Bend for obvious reasons. But I wanted some way to contact him, and where he could contact me. Even though I don't think he will or wants to."

One gulp of a sob, so big it scared the hell out of him. He splashed more wine in her glass, spilling a bit on her jeans and his.

"But right then…he needed to talk to his sons, you know? I mean, he had more to sort out than just me. And I didn't know what else to say, anyway-I'm glad you're not dead, even if you happened to be a coldhearted adulterer who left a pregnant woman alone to fend for herself?"

"Probably that would have been a tough thing to communicate with your French, cookie."

Again she looked startled at his irreverent humor, yet again she laughed. Another weak one, but a laugh nonetheless.

'Then I came back here. Didn't know what else to do. I wanted to call my mother and ask for an explanation, yell at her for lying to me all these years. But more than that…I keep thinking that I'm not me, Will. Three weeks ago. I had a job, an apartment, I was engaged. I never doubted who I was. I thought I understood my mom, how she felt after losing my dad, the one man she really loved, turning into a single parent. Now…"

"Now what?"

"Now," she said slowly, "it's not just that I was lied to. It's that everything I knew about myself suddenly seems to be in doubt. I thought I had the genes of a quiet-professor type who was good in math-not the genes of a tycoon. I thought I came from this tragic, romantic history, not from a plain old sordid affair. I was raised to believe honesty was everything. That was another lie. I thought I was mostly like my dad, or the image I had of my dad. But that's all a sham, too. I feel totally confused. Nothing about my life is what I thought it was."

Will put down her glass. His. She was already curled up in a ball in his lap, with her head under his chin. His right thigh muscle was falling asleep. He didn't care.

"Maybe." he said, "that's really why you came to Paris."

"What do you mean? I couldn't possibly have known about my dad."

"No. But you had questions about your life, right? You were looking for something. You knew something wasn't right at home." Like the fiancé. Will thought. But she'd gotten touchy when he brought up the creep before, so he didn't want to mention him again.

"Maybe I did. In fact, I think you're right."

"Ye gods. A woman who admitted a man was right?"

She cocked her head back, nearly cracking his chin. "Don't rub it in. You're next."

"What do you mean, I'm next?"

"I mean…maybe I landed in your life at this specific time for a reason, too."

"Yeah. Fabulous luck."

She kissed him. Clearly reluctantly. But she couldn't let the compliment pass, and even after a long, long lip suck, that elephantine memory came back. "Maybe fate brought us together because we were both meant to solve our father issues."

"I'll go along with the fate thing. But I think fate had incredible sex on its mind. That we'd find each other for this moment of time. And it'd be earth-shatteringly fantastic."

"Okay," she murmured. "That, too." And did the lip-suck thing again. "Will?"

"What now?"

"I'm so hungry I can't think. And it's been an awful day."

"So you want to-"

"Make love," she finished, as if that made perfect sense to her.

It did to him, too.

WHEN KELLY woke up the next morning, the impossibly bright sun matched her mood perfectly. In spite of everything, she'd slept like a child, one of those healing, safe sleeps that renewed her spirits.

And that was a good thing, because nerves promptly gnawed on her conscience the instant she sat up. What should she do about her father? How was she going to handle Jason? What should she say to her mother? What should she do next? Why had her mom never told her the truth? Was there one thing in her life that made sense anymore?

So much for a restful night's sleep. The whole mess was overwhelming. She sank back against the pillows and pulled the sheet over her head.

A few minutes later, though, she felt the sheet being tugged off her. Will was standing naked with a skillet in his hand. The aroma reached her even before she saw the contents. Technically, breakfast was just scrambled eggs, but he'd added herbs and cheese. "Coffee, too."

"Am I still dreaming, or did you turn into a hero while I was sleeping?"

"You're not still dreaming. It's me. Your hero." But he looked at her hard before teasing any further. "Yeah, I figured you'd be chewing your fingernails before even getting out of bed, Ms. Guilt Queen. So come on. I'm serving breakfast on the balcony. And after that, I have a plan."

"I'd follow that cute butt anywhere," she told him.

"Don't embarrass me before breakfast."

"You're walking around naked. Is it even possible to embarrass you?" It was easy to tease him, yet Kelly still felt a headache threatening behind her temples. Her whole spirit felt trounced from yesterday's revelations. Or maybe from the whole week of traumas. Five days. She'd been in Paris five days.

In those five short days, she'd lost her identity- physically and emotionally. She'd been mugged. She'd lost the life she'd had. She'd taken an irrepressible, unforgettable lover, when she'd never been the kind of woman to "take lovers." Or even to find lovers.

Will set down the tray on the metal table on the bitsy balcony before he even seemed to think about putting on clothes. She grabbed a robe before stepping outside. "I told you I was the repressed type, didn't I?"

"Yeah." Will said. "I think you mentioned it. Just before we fell in bed the first time."

"You want to hear about my fiancé?"

"No."

"I think I should tell you," she said honestly, as she lifted the carafe to pour coffee for both of them.

"Nope. No interest. You're with me. When you're in Paris, you're with me. When you leave Paris…" His gaze shot to her eyes, so hot and blue. "Then there's nothing I can do. You'll be there. I'll be here."

"That was the agreement," she concurred.

"But you do need to shake that guy. He's not right for you."

"Now, come on, Will. You really have no basis to know he's not for me."

"I'm three hundred percent sure. You're going to break it off when you get back to South Bend." Will made it sound more like an absolute statement than a question. The sky was blue. Her broken engagement was a given.

Kelly didn't respond. Thinking about Jason and going home just tangled her up again. She was tangled up enough.

Besides, just below their balcony, Paris was waking up. An old man was hawking the morning newspapers. Another vendor was pushing fresh flowers- he stopped below, saw her and raised a bouquet to her, peeling off a whole speech so fast she couldn't follow.

"What's he saying?" she asked Will.

"He says if you'll come down, he'll give you a bouquet for free, because you are a beautiful woman, a darling, where I am but a canard for hiding you from the world up in this apartment. He wants to kiss your hand. He wants to adore you. He wants you to be with a man who knows how to love a woman-a man such as himself."

"Oh." Tugging her robe closed, she bent over the balcony and threw the flower man a kiss. "Merci, monsieur! Je vous aime! Toujours!"

The man grinned.

Will shook his head. "You'll have him on our doorstep every morning."

"I had to be polite, didn't I?"

"Uh-huh. You picked up the French flirting thing really well. But onward…here's the plan for the day. I don't have to go to work, because work, after all, is irrelevant to life. But I do have a couple things I should do there. So you could either come with me- shouldn't take me more than an hour-or you can stay here for that hour. After that, well, you can't be in Paris and not do certain things."

"Like…?"

"You're a girl, so you have to do a parfumerie or two. Then there's the old Halles marketplace near the Centre Pompidou. That's like hell on earth. You know. Shopping. Little shops, zillions of them. If you like cooking stuff, Le Creuset is there. Or Sabatier knives. Or copper cook ware…"

"Please don't look at me when I'm drooling. It's embarrassing." She made a vague gesture. "You'd actually shop with me?"

"With you, yes. With anyone else, no. Then after that…well, you have to see the Marmottan Museum.

God knows, there are a hundred museums around here. But that's the one with the Monets. Then there's the Musée Rodin, which I swear is seriously cool. Then there's Sacré-Coeur. I don't know if it's a mortal sin to be a Catholic and miss Sacré-Coeur, but it's gotta be close. And we have to hit a garden or two. Boulogne or Tuileries or Monceau. It's spring. The gardens here are an absolute."

She looked at him and kept on looking. He was beyond good-looking. His eyes alone were mesmerizing. Not dark blue, not light blue, but kind of a clear, lake-blue. He had such a strong, sharpjaw-a measure that he was more stubborn than a bulldog, she realized now. And she figured he wore that rumple of blond hair a little on the long side to illustrate that he didn't care, was a lazy wastrel type.

He wasn't a lazy wastrel type.

When she didn't immediately respond to his plan, he hesitated. "I know, Kel. You didn't really come here to sightsee. And I don't even do sightseeing. But the thing is, you've had a major stress load. So you've got to balance it. You're stuck waiting until some things happen, like getting your passport back-"

"After which. I have to go home."

"I know you do. So we have to schedule your time, find a way to make the most of it."

Truthfully, Kelly didn't need to do another thing to know she'd never forget a second of Paris…or a second she'd spent with him.

"But," he said, as if that single word were a sentence in itself.

"But?"

"But maybe you have something else you want to do? Or something you want to add to that agenda?"

She nodded. "I'd like to do everything you said. Will. But I'm afraid I can't think, can't do much of anything, without doing something more about my father. What to do. I don't have a clue. But right now, I'm just feeling…"

When she couldn't come up with a word. Will said. "The French have a word. Dérailler. Feeling derailed. Thrown off track."

"Exactly."

"Okay." He thought. "So we'll start out the day at my work. Leave there, hit a library, research some background information about your father. After that, you can decide if you want to try to make another face-to-face connection. If you do, I'll go with you."

Very casual, her Will, she mused. He never made anything sound serious. Certainly there was no protective tone in his voice, but that quality was there. From the instant he'd met her, he'd relentlessly found ways to help her with each and every mess she'd landed herself in.

"I need to do this alone, Will," she said gently.

"Why?"

"Because it's my problem."

He made a Gallic gesture. "How can my being there make it any worse? It's already awkward and upsetting. And if I drive you, we'll be able to cut and run and go get drunk on bad wine if it turns out wrong. Why not have some company if you're going to be miserable?"

"That's like saying you should get a tetanus shot if I'm stuck getting one. There are some things you shouldn't ask someone else to share."

"Damn right. I'm not volunteering for the tetanus shot, so don't even try asking."

"I wasn't!"

But somehow it all ended up just like he said. It was a long day of discovering Will was a manipulative son of a gun. He used charm and subterfuge and tricks-like ignoring her, or agreeing to something she'd said and then just bulldozing in the same direction he'd planned from the beginning, or kissing her every once in a while. Out of the blue. In a way that bamboozled her thought train so completely that she forgot whatever she'd been staunchly arguing about.

Even before noon, Kelly had his newfound character flaws inked in her brain. Her mother loved quoting the old saying, make a fool of me once, shame on you…make a fool of me twice, shame on me. So Kelly planned to have her guard up tight before Will was ever successful with those underhanded methods again.

But she changed her mind in the afternoon. Some of his underhanded, manipulative methods seemed to unexpectedly work out.

By then, of course, they'd been to his work. She'd met Yves, his boss, a little guy with a fuzzy head of hair who treated Will like a god. And then there was the receptionist. Marie, who clearly ruled the office with gum-popping efficiency and a snappy tongue. There were only a handful of others-it wasn't that big a facility-but whenever or however Yves had hired Will. Will was clearly the one making the business decisions. All of them.

"You realize you're running the place?" she asked when they left there.

"Not really. Yves has outstanding products. And he's a good guy. He just never had Business One-O-One."

"Will. You're doing a lot more than Business One-O-One for him."

That was one of the times he kissed her. Right in the middle of the street-and God knows, the traffic was homicidal on a Paris street during a workday. At the time, she forgot that she'd been trying to get him to talk more about his job, to explain the complete lie he'd told her. He had so clearly said that he couldn't stand going into his father's business, that he wanted nothing to do with business ever in his life-when she saw for herself that business was as natural for Will as milk for a baby.

After that, though, he rushed her off into an elegant old library, where they hung out in the research section, diving into old Paris newspapers. Normally research was her bread-and-butter, her love, and being nosy had always been a boon in her job. but she'd never tried researching anything in French. Or had a reason to experience research directly in another country.

After the research binge, Will insisted on feeding her. He picked a bistro in the Latin Quarter, where they had something called Bresse chicken, washed down with a liter of wine.

"I don't drink during the day," she objected.

"You haven't had anything to feel guilty about so far. You know you won't survive a whole day unless there's something you're wringing your hands about. So guzzle it, baby."

She didn't want to guzzle it. She needed a clear head to process all they'd learned about her father and the Rochard family. Her head was already reeling and dizzy, long before she'd had the first sip of wine.

"Will," she said, "he's rich."

"I'd call that a pretty good understatement," Will said. "The French would use the word rupin. As in, filthy rich."

"You knew."

"Not knew. The Rochard name is too common here to be sure your family was one of the badass rich ones. But the address made it pretty impossible for your father to be basic middle class. No one can afford that community who isn't pretty much rolling in it." He refilled her wine, and when he saw a pastry tray circulating, motioned for the waitress. "You ready to call him?"

"In a minute."

"Kel, there's no point in postponing this if you want to see him again directly. You only have a few days."

"I know, I know. And if there's any chance he might be willing to see me today. I need to call immediately. But, Will, I'm still dizzy. And it's not the wine."

In her job. Kelly had tracked enough missing persons and stolen identities to know how to get to the bottom of things.

Money was always at the bottom of things.

She could read more French than she could speak, and Will had helped interpret any material where she'd stumbled. Apparently her grandfather, Pierre Rochard, had some Jewish blood. He'd been injured in WWII, had been found and taken in by a Catholic family who'd hidden him for the duration of the war. When it was over, he discovered that he'd lost his entire family…and when he came home to the only place he'd ever lived, he found the house in shambles, his art and family treasures all stolen.

Until the war, the Rochards hadn't had big wealth, but they'd been furniture makers, successful, thriving. Her grandfather had turned his loss and anger into a cause-seeking out old art treasures.

She'd found two magazine articles highlighting different aspects of her grandfather's life. Initially, justice had been Pierre Rochard's motivation for finding things that had once belonged to his family, and then he had wanted to help others do the same. But over the next couple decades, finding stolen treasures became his life's work.

"You know what I found amazing?" Kelly mused to Will. "That's what I do, too. I mean…I don't do anything as big or fascinating as what my grandfather did. But there's still a similarity. Tracking down credit card theft and fraud-it's all about the hunt, the search and the love for that kind of thing. You have to like poking into corners, people's private lives. You think that could be an inherited trait?"

Will appeared to consider this question, then gravely shook his head. "At a guess, I'd say nosiness at your level is probably a lot more of a practiced, perfected art form."

And then, just as she was about to smack him. he leaned over and came through with another kiss. It was another one of those forget-where-she-was, who-she-was kind of kisses, and she knew he'd done it deliberately.

"I'm on to you now," Kelly said, vaguely aware that the waitress was hovering with a tray.

"On to me about what?"

"About your wicked, manipulative ways."

"Yeah?" A quiet flush seeped up his neck. He was clearly delighted by the praise.

"Anyway," she said vaguely, and then picked up a spoon, unsure how a lemon ice had appeared in front of her. Her lips still felt kiss-stung. But eventually her mind wandered back on track to her father.

Her dad, Henri, had grown up with that background-only unlike his father, he tackled the treasure-hunting bug from a different angle. His work was insurance-insuring art treasures-while he developed a major collection of his own along the way. Kelly still hadn't grasped how that amounted to tons and tons of francs, but apparently it did.

"Thirty million. Isn't that what that last article claimed he was worth?"

"Something like that," Will concurred.

Bucks, francs, euros, who could keep them all straight? And Will didn't seem particularly impressed by the figure, but then his family already had money. Kelly was used to having none.

She motioned with her spoon. "I can't fathom how that number is supposed to mean something. I don't even know how many zeroes are on the end of that. I'm used to thinking in terms of clearance sales. I'm a hard-core T.J. Maxx-er. When I was little, my mom was a rummage-sale addict."

Will frowned. "What's a T.J. Ma-?"

"Nevermind. Trust me, you wouldn't understand. The point is I don't understand how my mom fit into this. I mean…some of what she told me had to be true. How else could she have met a Frenchman if she hadn't been over here studying at the Sorbonne? But from everything she said, even if she invented a bunch. I never had the impression she thought he had any money."

"Maybe he wasn't the kind of guy to show off his wealth. Your grandfather certainly sounded like a quiet, reclusive type. Every article we found on him made a big deal out of how quietly he lived, not wanting to be noticed."

Another thought occurred to her. "Now it makes more sense why my brothers-my half brothers-took such an instant dislike to me. I couldn't understand why they leaped to the conclusion so fast that I was a gold digger, but that was before I realized how much money there was. Now I get their attitude. And I have to tell my father that, Will. Now! Today! That I don't care about the money, that was never why I tracked him down, that I never even knew about that-oh my God!"

"Oh my God. what?"

"I just called him my father. As if I really believe it."

Will lifted a hand across the table and took hers. Met her eyes. "Now," he said gently, "I think you're ready to try calling him."

"No."

"Yeah, you are. You're ready to see him again, too."

"No, I'm not!"

"Uh-huh. I'll be right with you." He stood up, as if expecting her to rise, too. Granted, they'd finished eating ages ago and they'd already argued about the bill and then Will had paid it, and they couldn't very well sit there all afternoon.

But her eyes narrowed. Nobody bullied Kelly Nicole Rochard. Nobody. She wasn't going to do this until she was downright good and ready.

Only then, of course. Will kissed her again.