Blame It on Paris (23 page)

“You want help with Dad, or you want to pry?”

“I'd rather pry.”

But his mom gave him a quick hug and let it go—for then. An hour later, Aaron turned from cantankerous tyrant into sleeping baby, and Will drove Kelly home.

He caught her first smothered yawn—and the second big one she couldn't try to hide. “You're beat?”

“Yeah. Really long day at work.”

“And then I added this stress package with my dad. On the other hand, this means I owe you. And it's always to your advantage for me to owe you.”

“Darn right,” Kelly agreed.

“I have an idea. On how I could pay you back.”

“Is it expensive and decadent?”

“Hey. Would I waste your time on anything less?”

“Okay,” she said. “I'm game.”

“Tomorrow night…”

She made a sound. “Will, I've got my mom's birthday party coming up. Tomorrow I have to take her shopping for it.”

“And that has to be tomorrow?”

“Pretty much, it really does. Because we're running out of evenings to do it—and she wants clothes—so we always go together to pick them out.”

“Ah,” he said, thinking he should have known that from his sisters. “So…Thursday night.”

“Okay, what time?”

“What time can you get free?”

“Um…six, earliest.”

“Then six it is.”

 

B
Y
W
EDNESDAY NIGHT
at eight-thirty, Kelly was comatose, sprawled outside a dressing room at Ann Taylor.

She'd already raided most of Grape Road with her mom, checking out the usual suspects—Talbots, Coldwater Creek, Chico's, the mall's specialty stores. Typically her mom claimed to be a size eight, would never be more than a six, and looked cuter than the devil no matter what she tried on.

The problem was getting Char to choose. She knew Kelly's budget, and was allergic to getting anything that wasn't on sale. They'd started after work—in a downpour—gulped down fast food for energy and then begun the siege.

Outside the dressing room, Kelly was using bags and purses for a pillow. Her eyes were closed in a mininap when her cell phone vibrated. She couldn't help but smile and feel her tummy warm when she heard Will's voice.

“How's the present shopping going?”

“We're having a blast. But thank God the stores close soon.” She added, “Everything okay?” Ever since last night, she'd thought nonstop about his dad, that fabulous unique mansion and how even mighty rich people could be crabby when they didn't feel well. Her ego was still soaring about that whole business. She'd loved helping Will with his parents. She'd have loved both his dad and mom even if she hadn't loved Will.

“Everything's fine…”

Her eyes popped open and she sat up abruptly. “Is there a problem with tomorrow night?”

“Not at all. We're on. Actually, I'm calling for business.”

She relaxed again. “Sure you are.”

“No. Really. You do searches on people, right?”

“You know I do. Primarily credit card identity theft.”

“So what do you charge for doing these people searches?”

Char emerged from the dressing room in a little black dress. Kelly shook her head. First, because her mom already had a zillion little black dresses, and she almost never wore them. And second, because it was dowdy. “Do you mean, how much would it cost you? Or a normal person?” she asked Will.

“Hey. I'm normal.” His tone sounded wounded.

She chuckled. “Well, the going rate is set by the hour. But it also includes expenses. Most of the time, there really aren't any. Most of what I do is on the computer. It's just occasionally I have to travel. Anyway, I can't really give you a flat rate because it honestly depends on the job.”

“Okay…” She heard background noise, then a door closing. “Whatever your rate is, I'll pay it. I need you to look into a guy who works at Maguire's. Name of John Henry. I can give you his address, birth date and social security number. I know you have other irons in the fire and might not be able to do this right away—”

She frowned. Her mom emerged from the dressing room again, this time in a cream-and-coral-print skirt with a coral top. If the outfit didn't have Char's name on it, it should have. Kelly gave her an exuberant thumbs-up, but she was still frowning into the phone. “Will, you know I'm not a private investigator, don't you? Because if this is about somebody's divorce or private life—”

“This is about someone working for my dad, where things just aren't adding up. I'd like to be sure his name is real. That he's who he says he is. That's all.”

She slumped farther against the wall. “Are you inventing this mini-job just to keep your mitts on me?”

“Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. That is so unfair.” He paused. “If I'd thought of that, actually, I'd probably do it. But as it happens, this is on the up-and-up.”

She chuckled again, then stopped. Her mom was back in the dressing room. A gaggle of women had just left, leaving the general hallway calm for that moment. She said quietly, “I talked to her, Will. About my dad.”

He understood how long it had taken her to finally get this done. “And?”

“And…I went into the conversation so, so mad. Mad that she'd lied to me. Mad that she'd invented a father who never existed and mad that I never had a chance to know my real one.”

“And now?”

She didn't think her mother could hear behind the closed door, but she still moved away from the dressing rooms, keeping an eye peeled in case Char came out. “Now I realize the obvious. That my mom wouldn't have lied unless she felt she had to. At the time, she just didn't think she had a lot of choices. I think she lost her head and her heart in Paris. She believed he loved her. She thought they had something real. And all that crashed when she discovered he was married, but it was even more than that. She lost faith in herself, in her judgment.” Kelly would have said more, but she saw the dressing room doorknob turn. “I have to go, Will. See you tomorrow night.”

Her mother saw her shut the cell phone, but she worked her over about the outfit first. “I like it, I admit, but it costs too much. Particularly when you've got a tight budget right now.”

They did the same song, different lyrics but the same refrain, every birthday. “Nonsense. The day I can't buy my mother a birthday present, I'm throwing in the towel.” Kelly grabbed the top and skirt before her mother could escalate the discussion.

“I heard you on the phone—were you talking to Jason?”

“No, Mom.”

“But have you? Talked with him?”

Kelly dug out her wallet before they reached the checkout line. “Yup. He showed up at work. A very uncomfortable conversation, which I wouldn't be telling you about at all, except that I'm almost sure he'll show up at the block party on Saturday. He won't raise trouble on your birthday that I can imagine. But if you can't find me at some point, it's probably because I'm hiding in your closet behind your shoe boxes.”

“Hmm.”

“And what does that
hmm
mean?” The checkout girl took her time, way too much time, folding the outfit with exquisite care, so there was no escaping the store too quickly.

“Are you still seeing that other man? The one from Paris?”

“His name is Will, Mom.”

“Yes. Will Maguire. Of the Maguires.” Her mother's voice didn't drip disapproval. Just opinion. Char might have come to believe that Will wasn't totally responsible for her breaking up with Jason, but people with the Maguire kind of money weren't remotely on their Christmas card list.

“You didn't like him?”

“The question isn't whether I like him. Or you do. The question is whether you're in love with him. And whether you're ready to risk any more heartache or trauma in your life right now.”

“I don't know,” Kelly admitted. “Nothing seems to come with a guarantee. I'm going with my heart, and maybe that's the most foolish thing I could be doing. But the only man who really threw a trauma into my life wasn't Will, Mom. It was my father.”

Her mom suddenly looked small. “That was my fault.”

Guilt pinched her heart. “The hell it was. You're a fabulous mother. And you've made an outstanding success of your life, totally on your own. That my dad didn't appreciate you is his loss. You didn't do a single thing wrong. All you did was fall in love.”

Her mom laughed, and they hugged, both of them carrying packages but still managing to walk hip to hip to the car.

It was later, brushing her teeth before bed, that Kelly rethought that exchange. Her mom really hadn't done anything wrong except innocently fall in love. Maybe Kelly wouldn't have lied, but she understood why her mother felt she'd had to.

What troubled her now, though, was the resounding echo of their lives. She couldn't deny it. She'd fallen fiercely in love. In Paris. At a time when her whole sense of self had been shaken up.

So how
was
she supposed to know if what she felt for Will was real?

If it could last?

Or if loving him would cause repercussions through her whole life, the way loving the wrong man had affected her mother's?

W
ILL DIDN'T
usually shop at sex-toy stores before a date. In fact, he'd never shopped at a sex-toy store, ever, but after trying two drugstores and a department store for the item he needed—an item he'd have thought would be easy to find—he gave up and went to a source he knew would carry it.

Come to think of it, he'd never gone to this much trouble for any date, ever.

Not that he minded. Not for Kelly. But he was edgily aware that the stakes were damn high—and increasing by the day.

When he pulled into Kelly's driveway, he remembered how she'd described the confrontation with her mother. All this time, she'd been too upset to bring up the subject. All this time, she'd felt so wounded that her mother had lied to her about keeping her father's existence and identity a secret.

Thunder grumbled in the west. Clouds scudded overhead like tumbling balls, one falling over the other, each darker than the last. The first fat drop of rain splashed on his head, but he was prepared for that, too, and put up an umbrella before he climbed the steps to Kelly's door.

He rapped. Waited. He was still thinking about what she'd said about her mother, that her mom had lost her head in Paris, believing Rochard had loved her, then had become disillusioned.

Somewhere in her mother's story was the reason for Kelly's fears. Though he didn't totally understand it, he sensed the bottom line—that the only thing really keeping Kelly from taking off with him to Paris was this. She needed to feel sure of herself and what she felt for him, with him.

Sure that he wasn't a guy like Rochard. Sure that he wasn't feeding her a fantasy.

He was about to rap on the door again when it abruptly swung open.

His mouth framed a hello, but no sound emerged.

It was the yellow that locked up his vocal cords.

He'd never seen her in yellow before. And this wasn't yellow-
yellow,
more like a pale butter color, and he wasn't dead sure if it was a dress or underwear. The indefinably dangerous garment had tiny shoulder straps. After that it was simply silky fabric that fell from a bodice to above her knees.

He would have bet—even in Vegas—that she wasn't wearing a bra.

Or underpants.

He opened his mouth to greet her again, and again lost his voice. This time, though, his gaze narrowed on her face.

Smoky eyes met his. Of course, Kel had always had smoky eyes, but tonight the lashes looked long and sultry, the brows arched with a delicate curve. Her lips had this…this
red
on them. Not siren-red. Just…sex-red. Her hair was scooped up in a messy little heap on top of her head. And the expression on her face was pure…tease.

“I got a little dressed up,” she murmured.

“I can see that.”

“You said this was a payback dinner. That you owed me. So I figured I'd make you pay back big.”

“I'm already paying,” he assured her drily, making her laugh.

“Not
that
kind of paying, you nut. I meant…a seriously good dinner. Like lobster or something.”

“Trust me,” he said in the same dry voice, “you can have whatever you want for dinner. Lobster. Me. Steak. Ribs. Me—”

She rolled her eyes. “You are so easy…and speaking of sex objects, you look edible yourself.”

He'd tried. His sisters were responsible for anything decent in his closet, since the girls had told him from birth that he had no taste and they did. So the dark blue shirt and black summer slacks were supposed to be the right thing.

As long as Kel liked them, that was all that mattered. “You're going to get a fancy dinner, I swear. But the place we're going is a surprise.”

“What kind of surprise?” she asked suspiciously.

“The kind of surprise you can't guess.”

As expected, she looked completely bewildered when he turned into a neighborhood near the Notre Dame campus, and even more confused when he pulled into the driveway of an unfamiliar house.

“We're eating with friends of yours?” she asked.

“Nope.” The street was shaded by fat, old maples. Most of the homes were brick with landscaped yards, the tip of ND's golden dome visible in the distance. “An economics professor used to live here,” he said as he opened the car door and motioned her toward the front.

“And now who lives here?” she asked.

He grinned. It wasn't a big house, just one of those English Tudor bungalows—redbrick with a high-peaked roof and dormer and a pretty oak door. When he unlocked the front door, she stepped inside.

The foyer was a semicircle of cherry paneling. The paneling was unique, but the wood floors definitely needed a refinish. A thin set of stairs led to a single giant bedroom and bath upstairs, not that Kelly could see those from here.

The immediate view showed a small living room with a bay window and white stone fireplace. Beyond was a dining room, looking over a shaded backyard, and beyond that was the kitchen. The kitchen had old appliances, but the room had been renovated fairly recently with cobalt-blue counters and white trim.

Kelly glanced around, then back at him, and when he didn't produce immediate answers, she started ambling around. The more Ms. Curious poked and prodded, the more confused she appeared. Apart from a full downstairs bathroom, done in a ghastly shade of pink, the downstairs held two more rooms—one long, narrow family room, and the other a medium-sized den, where she paused in the doorway.

The den had ceiling-to-floor bookcases and a corner fireplace. Dusty, long drapes fell to the floor.

“There's no furniture in this place,” Kelly said bewilderedly.

“I know.”

“Except that I smell food in the oven.”

“Yup, you're right again.”

When she looked back into the den, it had to be pretty obvious where they were eating. On the carpet. He'd been here ahead, of course, set up an old blue blanket, opened the merlot to let it breathe, absconded with major-size pillows from his sister's place and a tray of vanilla candles. Late-afternoon sun was still filtering the west windows for now, though, making candlelight a little premature.

“Okay,” she said. “Cut out the suspense. You know I can't stand it. You said an economics professor used to live here. But who does now?”

“You do. If you want.”

“Huh?'

There. The look of stunned surprise was worth all the running around he'd done to put this together—and of course, this was just the first part of the evening, and not the end of the surprises. But it was a pretty good zinger for an opener, if he said so himself.

Dinner wasn't too challenging. Wine. Strawberries dipped in cream cheese and brown sugar. Fresh bread, just baked. A crab salad and some sushi and other delicacies he knew she liked, followed by a complete tray of desserts. It wasn't exactly his kind of meal, but when he'd called his favorite restaurant to cater, he was thinking of what worked for her. Chocolate. French pastries. The ease of bread and fruit and all, where they wouldn't need knives and spoons, so much, just an occasional fork.

By the time he had her shoes off—which didn't take long—she was sitting cross-legged on the blanket, the silky yellow dress bunched between her legs for modesty. She was still trying to absorb what he'd told her, but it was uphill getting her to accept this particular gift.

“Maguire's owns the house. Actually, the family owns a fair amount of real estate around the university. Anyway, the economics professor who lived here got a divorce, moved away in the middle of the semester. That left us stranded in more ways than one. You'd be doing me a favor if you lived here.”

“In a pig's eye,” she said. “A favor is when you need to borrow a cup of sugar. Or a ride to the airport. It's not giving someone a place to live.”

“No, no, this is for me. Not you. See…the guy had the place forever, so some things need updating before it's rentable again. Like…the wood floors need sanding and varnishing. The downstairs bathroom needs somebody to pick out a different color and do something with it. Several appliances need an upgrade. Almost all the rooms need fresh paint.”

“Will. I'm not exactly sure where you're going with this, but I'm way, way smarter than I look. You're not going to sell me roses in the desert.”

“Would you
listen?
” He put some petulance in his voice as he stacked the dishes on the tray and poured her more wine. Her second glass.

“I
am
listening, but I'm not a charity case, buster.”

“I keep telling you, this is a favor to
me.
It's one of my dad's messes. There's more to Maguire's than just the manufacturing facilities. The company has real estate. Houses and office buildings, and other holdings beyond that. And the thing is, to get this place ready to rent—or sell—someone has to oversee the renovations. Make the choices about paint and colors and crap like that. Report if the workmen aren't up to snuff. I can't be ten places at once.”

“Your sisters could do it. Or your mother.”

This was a lot trickier than he thought it was going to be. “Yes. They could. But their taste is in their credit cards, if you know what I mean. They'll spend more than the house is worth. I need someone to look at the house, update where it needs updating, choose what makes sense for the place. Someone like you. And in the meantime—” he raised his voice, because he could see she was about to make another protest “—you could live in the place. It'd be disruptive, but it'd be all yours. That way, you'd get out of that wreck you're in. It's still close to your job. It's a good neighborhood. And…”

He popped the last strawberry in her mouth just to keep her quiet for a moment longer.

“And, when you come to Paris with me, when we have all our messes straightened out—which, I admit, is taking a tad longer than I expected—it'll be easy for you to get out. Besides which—”

“I didn't realize you had this whole con-artist side to your character,” she said darkly.

“This isn't con-artist stuff. If you like the house, you could either rent it or buy it when all the reno's done. Say, September. So see? You're not tied to any decision whatsoever. You have all your freedom, all your choices. And I get somebody supervising the update on the place. Everybody wins.”

She hesitated. Then hesitated some more, searching his face, obviously thinking hard. “There's something wrong about this deal. I just can't figure out what it is.”

“God, you're suspicious. Of course, maybe you don't like the house.”

“Of course I like the house! It's adorable! Two fireplaces and this great den and a blue-and-white kitchen? What's not to love!”

“You haven't seen the upstairs. Look…” He did his best to sound apologetic. “I realize it'll be a lot of trouble. A lot of dust. Workmen in and out. A bunch of crappy shopping, picking out colors and appliances and that tedious stuff—”

Possibly he'd laid it on a little thick, because she pounced. “Quit trying to be so damned nice or I'm going to smack you,” she warned him. Only then she really did pounce, in a flurry of yellow silk and wine-wet lips. He'd been sitting there, with one knee up, but when she hurled herself at him, he fell back onto the picnic blanket.

All right, all right, so maybe he could have kept his balance. It wasn't as if she was remotely heavy. But she leveled him with a kiss. Her landing on top of him was ideal, after all. And in seconds, they were all tangled up, her bare legs tucked around him, the yellow dress dipping beautifully at the bodice, revealing the bare rounded breasts he'd been so close to seeing before.

It had been a long time since they'd made love.

Too long.

He needed to keep his head a little longer, and he gulped for oxygen before he was completely sucked into that taste, that texture, that look in her eyes. “You forgot underwear,” he told her.

“It was a choice,” she assured him.

“What happened to sin and guilt and all?”

“There's a time for that. And a time for no underwear,” she explained. “Were you objecting?”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “Definitely no. But—”

Sprawled on his chest, her elbows digging into his shoulders, rubbing against him with deliberate, manipulative, disgraceful invitation, she was obviously determined to destroy him. “If there's any ‘but,' that's it. I'll get up and put on some good-girl underpants and a nice, thick, wired-up padded bra.”

“No. Please. No.” He got it, that she was enjoying torturing him. But he couldn't take much more teasing. “I need to do something.”

“I know,” she said smugly.

“Something
first.
”

She was still smiling, but it was that bad-Kelly smile. It was a smile he didn't trust, couldn't trust. An unpredictable, worrisome, adorable smile and,
damn,
but he loved Kel when she was feeling full of herself and high on being a woman.