Kissed in Paris (13 page)

“Julien Dubois,” she breathed into his ear. “
You
were the one I always wanted.”

She brushed her full lips up against his cheek before running her long forefinger down the middle of his chest.

“I didn’t come here for that, and you know it, Marie.” Julien pushed her hand off his chest, took mine instead, and led me to the door.

But just as we were about to leave this dodgy apartment, I remembered my ring.

I would not leave without it.

When I turned back toward the coffee table in search of the sparkly diamond that had been lying there moments before, it was nowhere to be found.

Aware that both Tattoo Guy and Seductress’ eyes were glued to my back as Julien pulled me through the doorway, I leaned close to him and whispered in his ear, “But my ri—”

He didn’t let me finish my sentence as he whipped me out into the dim hallway and slammed the door behind us.

“But my ring!” I hissed again as I slipped my dreaded heels back onto my sore feet.

“Don’t talk until we get outside.” Julien gripped my hand as he led me out into the cool night air.

Once outside, I yanked my hand from his grasp and crossed my arms over my chest. “My engagement ring was lying on that coffee table. We have to go back in there and get it!”

Julien grunted as he stalked further down the alley without me.

“I’m serious! I have to go back in there. This is not an option.”

Julien flipped around, his eyes flashing, his hand stuffed into his jeans pocket. Then he reached out for me.

“No, I am not holding your hand again. Who knows where that hand was before I arrived. And another thing,” I spouted. But I didn’t get a chance to finish when I noticed what Julien had placed in the palm of my hand.

My engagement ring.

I stared down at the large diamond shimmering underneath the faint glow of the street lamp, my head spinning in circles.

“But how did you . . .?”

“I told you I would help you, did I not?” Julien flipped around and headed back underneath the stone archway.

I hobbled to catch up with him. “And my passport? Did you find it?”

He shook his head before pulling a cigarette out of his jeans pocket and lighting up. “No passport.”

“But there were all those passports on the coffee table. What about those?”

“Yours was not there. I checked.” His tone grew impatient as he blew a puff of smoke into the night air.

“But how can I trust that you actually looked? I saw you in there with that . . .
woman
. You didn’t seem too focused on getting my passport back.”

Julien’s gaze fixed on the ground ahead of him and his jaw clenched before he spoke.  “It was not what it looked like. And you had no right to follow me. I asked you to stay at the restaurant. I knew what I was doing, and you, thinking you know how to do everything, had to run in and ruin the whole operation.”

“I’m sorry for ruining the operation, but there are clearly things you’re not telling me. What does any of this have to do with a
painting
?” I asked.

Julien flicked the cigarette onto the curb and took a sharp right up the river. “That is confidential information. You shouldn’t have been there to hear it in the first place, so forget you ever did.”

“Fine. So what now?” I said, realizing that after all of this madness, we still hadn’t found Claude or my passport.

“We will get a hotel for the night, and we can take the first train out of the city tomorrow.”

A sinking feeling gripped the pit of my stomach. What was I going to do? How was I going to get home? What if I went back to Paris and the police were still after me? And if those transfers really were tied to illegal activity, Paul would certainly be hearing about it soon. And how would I ever begin to explain the past twenty-four hours to him? How could I let him and my family down like this?

I peered down at the engagement ring I held in my hand. That diamond had once symbolized the security of the life I was to have with Paul.

But in one day, the safety net I’d worked so hard to build for myself had been swept out from under me. And all because I’d allowed some sweet-talking French man to feed me a few glasses of wine.

I followed Julien through the winding streets of Annecy in silence as I held the ring in my palm, physically unable to slip it back onto my ring finger. I wondered then, as I thought of Paul, if he too felt that we weren’t just one, but many oceans apart right now.

Eight

I’d never been so happy to see a regular, paved sidewalk. After following the cobblestone street along the river for a few minutes, we finally arrived at a main intersection with normal sidewalks and streetlights. It was a miracle I hadn’t sprained my ankle with the amount of times I’d slipped in my heels on those damn uneven stones.

The river that flowed through town fed into a huge lake, its silky waters shimmering under the moonlight. Instead of continuing toward the lake, Julien took a left down the paved sidewalk and nodded for me to follow him.

That’s all I was going to get now? A nod? Like I was his dog or something?

“Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly feeling so exhausted I could’ve curled up on a bench and gone to sleep in two seconds flat.

“There is a hotel up ahead. It is called Splendid Hôtel. We will get a room there for the night.”

“Splendid,” I replied dryly.

A tiny smirk emerged from Julien’s lips.

“Should I even ask why you would be smiling at a time like this?” I asked.

“I am just thinking that my . . . what I mean to say is that
Claude
must have seen a very different side of you last night when he followed you up to your hotel room. I don’t imagine this is the side I will be seeing tonight?”

“French men, American men, you’re all the same.” I sighed, removing my gaze from the mischievous look brewing in Julien’s eyes. “One minute you’re furious, the next minute you’re thinking about sex.”

“You are the one who is engaged, and who is about to spend
another
night in a foreign hotel with a
different
French man,
chérie
.”

“Thanks for pointing that out. Where is the hotel again?”

“You ask, and I deliver.” Julien gestured to his left.

The Splendid Hôtel awning hovered overhead.

I followed him into quiet lobby, thinking about what he’d just said. He was right.
I
was the one who
was engaged, and who, for the second time in a row, was about to spend the night in a foreign hotel with a guy I’d just met. I was so deeply ensconced in this mess though, I didn’t know how else to emerge on the other side without trusting Julien one more time.

Julien pulled out a credit card and paid for our room, leaving me to ponder the fact that I’d known him for less than twenty-four hours, and yet there wasn’t even a tiny part of me that felt frightened at the thought of spending the night in a hotel room alone with him.

Scanning back through the events of the day, with the exception of the vicious punch he’d thrown at the police officer in the hotel bathroom, nothing about Julien had scared me. In fact, it was just the opposite. He had this fiercely protective nature about him, like no matter what disaster came our way, he would handle it . . . and he would protect me in the process.

I’d never met anyone like him.

Then again, I’d never met anyone like Claude, and my sleaze-bag, con-man alarm signal clearly had not gone off the night before when he’d smooth-talked me. Maybe my gut instincts weren’t to be trusted after all.

At least this time I had nothing left for anyone to steal. And at this point, I would’ve actually paid Julien to steal my heels and this slutty red dress so I wouldn’t have to wear them for another second.

After Julien collected our room key, we waited for the elevator together.

“You know, once all of this is figured out, I’ll pay you back for everything,” I told him.

“That is not necessary,” Julien said, pushing the button once more.

The bell dinged, and when Julien opened the door, he revealed the tiniest elevator I’d ever seen.

“After you,” he said.

The two of us crammed against each other in the tight space, our chests and knees knocking together.

I tucked a strand of my ever-thickening hair behind my ear, suddenly feeling awkward and nervous. I diverted my eyes toward the wall.

“Seriously, though,” I said. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I get home.”

Julien lifted his forefinger up to my lips.

“Shhh.” He grinned at me, a mischievous gleam in his eye. “When you are around me, you can relax. I won’t tell anyone.”

Julien dropped his hand, his fingertips brushing over mine. A wave of heat pooled below my abdomen as tingles shot up my spine, making me feel light-headed. I swallowed hard as I broke his gaze.

Before I could say anything else to cut the weird tension that had filled up the stale elevator air, we arrived on the fourth floor. I took a deep breath as I followed him down the slim, dark hallway.

Julien unlocked our door, revealing a miniscule room containing a less-than-generous double bed, a tiny wooden desk and chair, and absolutely no floor space.

We stood in the doorway together and stared at the bed for a moment before Julien spoke.

“I am sorry. There were no rooms with two beds left. And all hotel rooms in France are small. Well, except for the Plaza Athénée.”

I was so tired, I didn’t know what to say. I mean, the man had shuttled me around France all day trying to find my passport, he’d retrieved my engagement ring, and he’d paid for my food, my train ticket, and now this hotel room. What was I going to do? Tell him to sleep in the wooden chair?

I plopped onto the bed and kicked my heels off my feet, which were red, swollen, and covered in blisters.

“Ouch,” Julien said as he crossed to the other side of the bed and peeked inside the bathroom. “Your feet do not look happy. I will give you some privacy in case you want to take a shower. I’ll be back in thirty minutes. Okay?”

“Thanks,” I said.

Julien smiled kindly in my direction before letting himself out of the room.

Before I knew it, my back had plummeted into the mattress, my head like a dead weight which was too heavy to hold up for another second. I stretched my arms out to the sides and lifted my tired legs onto the bed while I stared up at the ceiling.

If I focused long enough on the way the paint swirled in endless circles above me, I could’ve forgotten what was actually going on. Or at the very least, fallen asleep. But the throbbing in my feet was too painful for me to ignore, and more than that, whenever I closed my eyes, my insides heated up again, just as they had in the elevator with Julien only moments before.

As I forced myself up to a sitting position and shook off the heat that stung my cheeks, I spied the hotel phone on the desk across from me. Sophie would be flying into DC the next day, and she had no idea I wouldn’t be there when she arrived. The thought of my sister staying alone with Paul for even a day made me queasy. They didn’t just dislike each other, they
loathed
each other. Paul couldn’t stand Sophie’s constant chatter, question-asking, and general lack of practicality, and as Sophie had so eloquently put it in her email to me before I’d left, she wasn’t a huge fan of the giant stick up Paul’s ass.