Blame It on Paris (19 page)

Her front door flew open again before he'd even reached the car. She charged toward him in bare feet though the sidewalk was midnight-cold.

“I forgot to thank you for the great dinner,” she said.

He wanted to roll his eyes—you'd think they were still kids in high school who had to dot those
i
's. He wasn't about to let loose that she'd hurt him. Or made him madder than a kicked porcupine. She lifted up on her bare toes and smooshed her lips against his.

It was less than a kiss. It was more a two-second lip-smash. The contact was barely enough to feel her breasts crush against his chest, her blue-and-white scarf flutter around his neck in the midnight breeze. Barely enough to feel the brush of her fingertips on his neck, see the tea-brown shine in her eyes, feel the satin of her mouth.

And then she severed the connection and went back down on her heels. “Don't be mad,” she whispered.

“I am not mad.”

“They're good family, Will. You don't throw good family away. I mean, it's not as if they're drug addicts or abusers or alcoholics or terrible people—”

“Kelly. Maybe we could talk about this five years from now on a Tuesday when we're on different continents. But right now—”

“I know. You're mad as hell at me.” She patted his cheek, had the bloody nerve to smile at him, and then turned on her heel. “I'm freezing! I have to go in!”

“So go in!” And don't come back out this time, he thought darkly. Yet he stood there, long after she'd gone in the second time, long after he heard the door lock.

He didn't want to go home. He just wanted to stand outside her damned door in that damned decrepit neighborhood and pine for her.

He was turning into a lovesick goose. A complete fool. A mindless idiot who was so stupid he wanted to be around a woman who made him crazy and didn't even stand by him. She'd taken the enemy's side instead of his. She'd backed them up instead of him.

He was not only going to stop loving her.

He was going to leave a good long space before he saw her again.

 

S
INCE
W
ILL COULDN'T
sleep, he quit trying around three in the morning, made some black-as-mud instant coffee and installed himself at his sister's prissy provincial desk with a phone. Maybe the U.S. was asleep, but it was working hours in France. He called Yves, who expressed surprise at hearing from him.

“I thought you were on holiday,” Yves said. “Busy with family.”

“I am, I am. But I had a few minutes with nothing to do.” And Yves was helpless at certain things, Will knew. Like marketing. Costing out a new project and tax implications. International freight procedures and laws.

Nothing complicated, but Will knew details like that gave Yves anxiety attacks, and that was the point. He could talk Yves through those issues, sipping coffee with his feet up, playing Spider Solitaire on his laptop at the same time.

“How will I do all this if you don't come back?” Yves fretted.

“I told you I was coming back.”

“I know what you said. But I always knew you wouldn't stay with me forever.”

That was so French thinking. Yves was always the pessimist, not exactly a handwringer but always braced for bad news. After that hour-long phone call, Will finally managed to close his eyes and crash…but it seemed like only minutes later that he heard noisy pounding on the door.

The pounding stopped, but only because Martha barreled inside as if she owned the place. Which, come to think of it, she did. And being the disgusting, exasperating sister she was, she seemed to feel she had every right to pull the covers off him and tickle his feet.

“I wouldn't have to go to these lengths, you cretin, if you'd just answer your phone.”

“I didn't hear the phone.”

“That's the point. You were sleeping like the dead. I made a big breakfast, but it's not going to be hot if you don't come over this minute. Besides which, I can't leave Ralphie. So get your butt up!”

She slammed the door closed before he could answer. In fact, before he could take the pillow off his head and face the daylight. The apartment over the garage looked the same as it had yesterday, displaying Martha's latest decorating scheme—which happened to be purple and yellow and French provincial furniture. Every time he looked at the mustard yellow, he thought he had to get out of there. Soon.

But then he'd woken up grumbly, partly because he'd only had a few minutes' sleep. Mostly because he'd argued with Kelly in every damn dream.

He took his pitchy mood across the flagstone walk to his sister's kitchen. Martha, typically, looked ready to run the universe. Her hair, fresh out of the shower, had the artful messy look that probably cost her three hundred a month at a hairdresser. Her makeup was perfect, her white shirt had a collar turned up just so and her kitchen was blindingly clean—from the Sub-Zero freezer to the range big enough to feed forty-seven for lunch.

Martha's counters had never seen dirt. Will wasn't sure how she did it, but nothing ever stuck to her pans. Nothing ever spilled in her oven. Even his youngest nephew, Ralph, sitting in his booster chair with his cheeks stuffed with breakfast, had tidily tied shoes and an unstained junior-sized Ralph Lauren polo.

Martha's scene boggled Will's mind. More to the point, it scared him. She was a very scary sister, even when she charged over and gave him a loving peck before pointing the royal finger at where he was supposed to sit.

“All right, I admit I'm sorry I woke you up, but I just couldn't wait another minute. How'd the dinner go? Who's the girl? How serious is it? Were you decent to Dad? Did Mom like her? What'd she wear? What does she do? What did you all talk about?”

“Man, the price of breakfast is sure high these days.”

“Shut up and talk,” Martha said as she served him coffee, and then a plateful of…well, hell, he didn't know what it was.

Avocados? Papaya? Some kind of gourmet muffin that looked like a mix of tofu and grass? A few weeds? He looked at the weeds with some interest, but they definitely weren't
that
kind of weed. Not with his sister. “Ralphie gets Cheerios. How come I can't have some of those?”

“Because you're my brother and I'm the boss of you.”

“Does that mean you're not the boss of your own son?”

Martha plopped next to her toddler and folded her arms. “You start talking or I'll make you sorry you were ever born. You just remember—I beat you up when we were kids, and I could still take you on.”

“The only reason you ever beat me was because of the rules that I couldn't hit a girl.”

“I won. That's the point. Not what the rules were. Now talk.”

He'd have done anything for the coffee. To find out the real reason she'd yanked him over here, though, he realized he had to make a dent in the petrifying meal and come through with some gossip. The latter wasn't hard. He'd been handling his oldest sister from the day he came out of the womb. “Went to Mom's favorite restaurant. Had the filets. Just as good as always. Dad and Mom were great to her. Her name is Kelly. Dad was fine. No, we didn't fight. No, no one fought. They loved her. And no, sorry, nothing embarrassing happened.”

Martha recovered from this utterly boring account and moved on, thankfully, to her real agenda. Ralphie let out a squawk when he'd stuffed in enough Cheerios. She wiped his face, let him loose, then sighed when he hit the floor running. “He'll be filthy in five minutes flat. And he's got a playdate at nine.”

“A playdate? Does that mean he's authorized to play doctor with someone of the opposite sex already?”

But she couldn't be diverted from the next sneaky line item on her agenda. “You know I've got the Sabre in Lake Michigan. A really nice slip in St. Joe, on Harbor Isle. It's not that far a drive, if you'd like to take her out for a sail while you're here.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“Because you're my favorite brother.”

“I'm your only brother.”

“I love you.”

Will swiped a hand over his face. “Okay, I can't take much more of this sweet talk. Just spill it out. What do you want?”

“Nothing.” She poured him a fresh mug of coffee—French vanilla, one of his favorites, which was the kind of thing Martha specialized in knowing. “But…Will…I was thinking…”

“Uh-huh.” The way only an idiot walked into a dark alley at night, Will knew anything his sister said from here on out was dangerous. Afraid to take his eyes off her, when he felt the tug on his leg, he automatically pulled Ralphie onto his lap.

“If you happened to take the boat out, I was thinking you might not mind looking at a little cottage for me. It's right on the lake. There's a dock there, so you could pull up and see it. The cottage isn't fancy or anything, but while Ralph and Daphne are still young, I was thinking how great it'd be to have a place on the lake. Where the kids could swim and learn to sail in the summer, and the family could all come for picnics.”

Both his other sisters could do it. Add two and two and end up with fifteen. More interesting, they never thought anyone would notice. Hypocrite that he was, Will kept sipping her coffee because, damn, it was good coffee. But he was wondering what Kelly would think of his sister, what she'd say, how she'd handle the whole conversation.

Will could have known where this was going in his sleep.

Martha's husband made a decent living as a mid-level manager. Nothing wrong with Bob—he was a good guy all the way—but he didn't make enough to pay for the castle on the ravine, the garage with the apartment overhead, the beauty of a Sabre sailboat, the vacation overseas every year. Martha had never worked. She was a good mom, devoted to a bunch of seriously good causes, as well.

If she wanted a cottage, it wasn't going to come out of her husband's salary. It was going to come out of their dad.

“So,” he said, “you want me to see this cottage and then talk Dad into buying it for you.”

“Of course not. I can talk to Dad on my own. I'd never ask you to do that. You two are oil and water, besides. But it'd help if you thought it was a good idea. Because even when you and Dad are fighting, he listens to you.”

That was so ridiculous that Will almost burst out laughing. Only he suddenly couldn't seem to hear his sister. Suddenly couldn't seem to feel Ralphie yanking on his ear with sticky fingers. Suddenly couldn't focus on anything in Martha's pristine kitchen.

Nothing had gone well since he'd come back, and making lemonade out of all these lemons was going to be nonstop challenging if not downright impossible. His father wasn't going to bend. His sisters were already playing him, his mom applying emotional thumbscrews, the whole shebang thorny and unfixable, just like always.

Yet it suddenly filled his head that he didn't want to return to Paris. Because even if he had no faith that anything at home could get better, Paris hadn't been the same once Kelly left. Paris was no good alone anymore.

He wanted Kelly in Paris.

Kelly in
his
Paris.

“Earth to Will, earth to Will,” Martha scolded.

“I heard you.” He took his empty mug to the sink. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I'll take the sailboat out.”

“And you'll look at the property?”

“Martha, Martha, Martha…” Swinging Ralphie high in his arms, he rose from the chair and gave his sister a smooch. “You know I'm putty in your hands. I'd do anything you asked me to do.”

Martha gave him a suspicious look. They had, after all, been related all their lives. He'd been the one to squish shaving cream in her training bra and freeze it. His sister knew that he wasn't altogether trustable.

But that was about sisters.

Not about Kelly. Kelly could trust him with anything, including her life. His mind was already spinning possibilities. All of them about Paris and Kelly, and choices that had never occurred to him before.

K
ELLY DECIDED
that her office was starting to resemble a cave. The door was still visible, but the windows were now blocked with case boxes and texts; her desk was heaped high, and files had started wandering around, to the floor, to the chairs, to the windowsills.

The chaos was unavoidable. It happened every time she neared the end of a case. Like now.

Peripherally she was aware that Samantha had shown up in the doorway, but some things mattered more than bosses. Will, for example. One reason she was working herself into a frenzy was because it put relationship worries on the emotional back burner, at least for a few hours.

The current case was about a woman named Penelope. From the instant Kelly uncovered the name, she had a mental picture of highlighted hair and upper-crust bones. Somehow Penelope had copped a dozen or more credit cards. From the stolen cards, she'd ferreted out social security numbers, birthdays and all the other personal ID info that enabled Ms. Penelope to rob a half dozen innocent people.

Kelly's love of snooping had practically reached orgasmic proportions on this one. The credit card companies had all been contacted by the various people whose identity Ms. Penelope had stolen. So had the police. But everyone else had been stymied in the quest to identify the culprit…except for Kelly. Who hadn't yet found her, but man, she was sure on the cusp.

Ms. Penelope only purchased certain items with the cards. She didn't pay rent or make car payments. She bought Coach handbags, Versace clothes, Mackie tops, Wacoal underwear. She made a lot of long-distance calls to Los Angeles. She'd paid for a visit to a plastic surgeon in Minnesota.

Ergo, Kelly figured she was a hotshot wannabe, probably an unemployed actress with some youth and looks, willing to do anything to get what she wanted. Kelly had pinned down the first name for sure. The woman moved around, so finding her wasn't going to be a matter of pinning down a base address, but where she was trying to function, en route to Hollywood….

“Kelly.”
Samantha let out such an exasperated shout that Kelly finally looked up.

“I'm sorry, what?”

“I've been trying to get your attention for at least four minutes!”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Well, she wasn't. Not only was she close to solving this particular identity-theft problem, but coming back to earth meant coming back to reality. Family messes. Life messes. Will, who hadn't called since the dinner with his parents, and who she knew darn well was mighty ticked at her.

She also knew why. Will wanted her to take his side. Instead, she'd felt compelled to tell him that he was being bullheaded. Of course, she shouldn't have been that honest with him. What man ever wanted to hear the truth?

Samantha stepped in, giving her another exasperated look, as if her boss was well aware she'd mentally wandered off again. “Two things. This—” she put an envelope on Kelly's desk “—is a bonus. I can't give you a raise right now, not until your review in August. But you've poured on the coals so thoroughly that I had to express my gratitude.”

“Thanks.” Kelly didn't mean to rip open the envelope like a kid with a candy bar, but her fondness for living in student rental housing—even after the paint job—was paper-thin. She was saving money now, but she wasn't about to start looking for new digs until she'd scared up a seriously heavy down payment. Anything extra was more than welcomed.

Her jaw dropped, though, when she saw the amount printed on the check. Yeah, she'd done an outstanding job in the past few weeks. But after all, it was her job. And maybe she'd saved credit card companies considerable money. But that was her job, as well. “Wow,” she said honestly. “Thanks so much. What a surprise—and I really appreciate it.”

“I just want you happy, Kelly. I don't want you looking for another job.”

“You know I love the work.”

“Yes, I do. But I also know you're working too many hours. I don't want you burning out.”

“I won't. I won't.”

Her boss lingered one more minute. “The second thing I wanted to tell you—just as I was going through the lobby, a man was walking in to see you. I told Brenna I'd let you know so she wouldn't have to page you.”

“Thanks!” Kelly popped out of her chair thinking it was Will. No, she wasn't expecting him. And no, she couldn't imagine a reason on the planet why he'd stop by her place of work in the middle of the afternoon, but it wasn't as if clients normally showed up out of the blue, either, so it
could
be him.

Even if her thinking was illogical, her heart was still soaring before she'd reached the door, then she ran back to the desk, opened the middle drawer, brushed her hair and smacked on coral lip cream. Her tan slacks and salmon shirt were hardly femme fatale attire, but en route to the lobby, she undid an extra button at the throat and put some sauce in her step.

Her enthusiasm was squashed when she saw the man in the lobby—the guy facing the windows, jingling change in his pocket. The one with the dusty-brown hair and skinny shoulders and handsome features. Familiar, handsome features.

Jason spun around as if sensing her presence. His expression was hungry and raw even if his posture was protectively stiff. “I've been out of town. Just got back.”

“I heard you were gone.”

He nodded. “I went on the honeymoon we were supposed to take together.” He barely paused. “All I could think of was speeding from the airport, getting here, seeing you. I've got something I have to say.”

Kelly thought she knew every flavor of guilt, but this taste was acid all the way down. She herded him into her office, aware of faces and eyes drawn to doorways. They all knew Jason, all knew of her wedding plans, her broken engagement. And seeing him again made her heart clutch. His dear face was as familiar as peanut butter.

She did still love him, the way she loved cocoa in winter and peppermint ice cream and snuggly slippers. It was a real enough love, even an important love. But there was none of the excitement she felt with Will, none of the fierce loneliness when she wasn't with Will, none of the singing joy of life or the lusty pizzazz.

She couldn't treat Jason as an enemy, because he wasn't. But she wanted this conversation with him like a hole in the head, and he started in the instant she closed her office door.

“Kelly…on this vacation, I drank. Swam. Took a lot of time to think. I think you're making a mistake. I think we both are. I want you to give us another try.”

She started shaking her head, but he wasn't about to let her answer. Not yet. He jammed his hands in his pockets and slowly stalked around her bitsy office like a wounded cat. “I don't care what you said. I know there was a guy. There just
had
to be a guy, because nothing else makes sense. So let's get that out in the open. I don't care. I mean, of course I care. But I still love you. I still think we can make a damn good marriage. Lots of people have flings before the wedding. Weddings make people panic. When people panic, they do crazy things. So maybe that's wrong and not smart, but it's still one of the mistakes people make.”

She tried to interrupt him again, but he'd obviously prepared this whole speech, and he was already gulping for air between sentences. Her work phone rang. Then the song on her cell phone started playing. Her coworker two offices down—Myrna, the one getting the testy divorce—pushed open her door and started to ask a question, saw her with Jason, backed right out again.

And Jason kept talking. “We've known each other our whole lives. I
know
you love me. I love you. Maybe we forgot some of the romance because we knew each other so well. But both of us could take a fresh shot. We're invested in each other, Kelly. We have shared family, shared friends, a shared history. It's just plain crazy to throw that all away.”

He'd been talking so steadily that she wasn't expecting him to suddenly move toward her, clearly intending to pull her into an embrace. She froze like a scared rabbit. “Jason,” she said, “I'll care about you forever. I'll always love you. But not the way—”

She smelled the familiar scent of him, the familiar feel of his hands on her shoulders, the familiar way he approached a kiss and her stomach rolled. His lips came down, yet thankfully within seconds, he stopped, jolted upright.

He met her eyes. He looked sick. She felt sick, too, but there was no way to pretend a feeling that didn't exist.

“You can't even try?” he asked thickly.

“It doesn't take
trying
to care about you, Jason. But it's not there—the kind of love you want. My heart can't make it happen.”

“That doesn't make sense. What the hell is the right kind of love, the wrong kind of love? Love is love. It changes over the years, anyway. So we hit a lull. So what? It doesn't mean we won't care for each other ten years from now. Or twenty.”

Her office phone started ringing again. Another coworker, George, poked his head in and backed out faster than a fire.

Kelly sucked in air, thinking this was about as much fun as a case of leprosy. Slowly, carefully, she said, “We're not getting married, Jason. I hate hurting you. I'm terribly sorry. But I am one hundred percent positive that it isn't going to happen.”

He put up his hands in an exasperated gesture of giving in, and finally started shuffling toward the door. “It's your mother's birthday party next week. I assume the neighborhood will put on a big block party, same as always. So if you think we won't be talking again, trust me, we will. But I can see there's no point in trying to get through to you anymore today.”

Talk about a way to put a girl in a funk. Kelly couldn't reclaim her workaholic mood after that, couldn't get anything done. She grouched around her office until she finally gave up. Outside, it had turned hot and humid; South Bend traffic was as snarled and grouchy as she was, and once she deposited the bonus in the bank, she holed up at home.

Her room had no air-conditioning, so she stripped down to shorts and a tee, slapped together a peanut-butter sandwich and then sat at her laptop to pound out an e-mail to her father.

It was a waste of time, she knew. Her father didn't care, and pretending otherwise was getting a little ridiculous. But sometimes, Kelly figured, a woman was entitled to beat her head against a wall if she wanted to, and right then, she was definitely in that type of mood, which possibly affected the tone of her e-mail.

 

Hi, Dad. You haven't responded to any of my other e-mails and I suspect you won't to this one. But I'm still writing to you.

I'm really sorry you were a low-down cheater who never considered there might be consequences from your having a good time. But you affected my mother's whole life. And mine.

I always, always tried to be a good daughter, a good person. I never took chances, never did anything wrong if I could help it. I know, I know, you don't care, or you'd have written me back by now. But I'm trying to tell you that's who I've always been—a girl who was afraid of taking risks—and I think it's partly because I had no dad. No sense of someone who could pick me up if I fell really hard.

My mom has always been there for me. As I hope I've been for her. But there's always been a hole…a wondering how different my life might have been if I'd had a dad, known a dad.

And I do get it, of course. Why you haven't responded. My existence is just a nuisance for you. But I'm angry, do you understand? Angry at you. Angry at you for not knowing about me, for not caring enough to even find out if your actions created a baby. I'm angrier yet that you never even considered whether having a daughter might have added something good to your life.

I guess I've never been real to you.

I'm starting to understand that I was never all that real to me, either. But now there's a man I've fallen in love with. Real love. The kind of man I think I could spend a life with…except that I'm not sure of anything right now. I thought I was a “good girl.” Now I'm doing some pretty wild things. I thought I was the daughter of a single mom. Now I know that's not true, either. I thought I knew myself—what I wanted, what I needed, what I was capable of. And all that seems in question now, too…

I know you don't care, so I don't know why I kept venting to you, why I…

 

Kelly startled when her cell rang. She didn't want to answer. Her mood had evolved from low to subterranean. Bleak, dark. Cry-close gloomy. PMS with thorns. She had absolutely no motivation to push that on anyone else.

But the phone kept ringing, too distracting to concentrate further on the silly e-mail that her father was just going to ignore anyway. Finally she jerked out of the computer chair and tracked down the phone in her purse.

“What?” she answered crossly.

“Kel?”

Damn. Just like that, a single syllable in Will's lazy tenor, and the nasty mood she'd been clinging to disappeared like dust in the wind.

“Yeah, it's me, Will, but—”