"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.