Kissed in Paris (27 page)

With that, he sped off into the early morning fog, leaving me alone in a cloud of his dust.

***

MT-541-RW. MT-541-RW. MT-541-RW.

Taking the steps two at a time up to Julien’s room, I repeated the sequence over and over in my head. I scoured the desk for a piece of paper and a pen, then scribbled down Claude’s license plate number. I’d be damned if I was going to let him get away with what he’d done.

I sat on the edge of Julien’s bed for a minute to catch my breath, and to calm the sick feeling that crept up from my gut when I thought about what had just happened.

If what Claude had said was true, I now knew that my passport was gone for good. And with this whole bank account police fiasco I was wrapped up in, I doubted there was any feasible way I could make it home in time for my wedding.

And even though the threat of missing my wedding to Paul should’ve been the
only
thing on my mind, the last thing Claude had said to me made me feel even worse than the fact that I now had no way to get home.

“
I learned it all from him—the expert.
”

After the events of the past two days, I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Julien was well-versed in the art of lying. But to have taught Claude
everything he knew
would have meant that Julien had stolen from other women, the way Claude had stolen from me.

Suddenly Julien’s words from that terrifying morning in the Plaza Athénée Hotel flooded through my spinning head.

“You think it is a mistake that Claude chose you, the cautious American with a hefty bank account and a wedding next week? Your life will be in ruins faster than you can blink. I have seen it happen to many women before you.”

It was all making sense now.

Julien had seen it happen to many women before me because
he
was the mastermind behind the scams, not Claude. Julien
wasn’t an undercover agent
pretending
to be a criminal.

He was a criminal himself. 

That’s why he’d been so insistent on me staying away from the police. It’s how he’d known the scary Australian duo in Annecy. And how he’d known every last detail of the scam Claude had pulled on me—how he’d stolen my pin number, tapped into my bank account, wired the money to an off-shore account, drugged me, then left me looking like a hooker in that slinky red dress.

Julien had played the exact same scam on other women before me.

How could I have been so blind?

I imagined Julien, shaven and in a suit, prowling some rich hotel. Praying on innocent women like me. I felt the bile rising up my throat as I thought about how, despite the fact that he’d lied about Claude being his brother, I’d actually begun to trust him, to believe that he really wanted to help me. I’d even thought about sending clients his way!

God, what a fool I’d been.

Suddenly the image of Julien kissing me in the lobby of the hotel appeared in my mind. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Paul’s face, just as I had the night before, but I couldn’t draw it up. All I could think about were Julien’s soft, warm lips. Julien pressing up against me in the dressing room of the lingerie store. Julien in his wire-rimmed glasses, reading his winemaking book, his dimple popping into his unshaven cheek as he gave me that goofy grin.

I shook my head in an attempt to erase the rage, the disappointment, the confusion bubbling over inside of me. If Julien had taught Claude everything he knew, then Julien could be capable of anything. And I couldn’t place my trust in him any longer.

I had to get out of here.

I still hadn’t seen or heard anyone else in the house, and with no clue where they’d gone, I checked all the bedrooms—all eight of them—and still found no one. Peering out the window, I searched the rows of vines for signs of life, but came up empty yet again.

Just as I was trying to figure out a plan for how to get the hell off this vineyard and to a U.S. embassy, a red flash caught my eye.

It was the Smart car, all two inches of it, parked right where we’d left it.  

I threw on my jeans and T-shirt, then flipped open Julien’s computer and Googled the Dubois family vineyard to find out where in the hell I was. After clicking through a few links, I nearly fell off my chair when I found the name of the town I was trapped in.

It was called
Saint-Julien
.

Seriously
?

I looked up directions from Saint-Julien to the U.S. embassy in Paris and found that it was about a four hour drive. I jotted down the directions on a clean sheet of paper, then searched around Julien’s room for money, a credit card, anything. I didn’t want to run out of gas on the way up.

I ransacked every drawer, every crevice, but found nothing. I sighed in exasperation, considering just leaving so as not to waste any more time, and then stealing gas at a gas station if worse came to worse, but then I realized I hadn’t checked the tiny drawer in Julien’s nightstand.

Inside, Julien had placed the same black wallet he’d been carrying around since I met him. I flipped it open, pulled out the blue credit card I’d watched him use to pay for our hotel, our breakfast, my shoes and my clothes, and as I turned the card over in my hand, I gasped. The name printed on the front wasn’t Julien’s. It was Claude’s.

This whole time, Julien had been using a stolen credit card. His own brother’s! Clearly there was no family loyalty left between the two of them. Why was I even surprised?

Since the one person I had no qualms stealing from in this whole scenario was Claude, I stuffed the card in my jeans pocket and decided I would drive to Lyon instead, then take a train from there up to Paris.

After tucking the wallet back inside the drawer and looking up a new set of directions to Lyon, I grabbed the paper where I’d scribbled Claude’s license plate number and ran downstairs to the foyer. There, on a side table, were the keys to the Smart car, lying in the exact spot where Julien had thrown them the night before.

The shiny silver car keys taunted me as my blood ran marathons through my veins. Could I do this? Could I really steal their car?

I was just taking it to Lyon, which was only forty minutes away. I could figure out a way to let them know where I’d left it if I really wanted to, so I wasn’t exactly
stealing
. And if I wanted to get out of here before they got home, I didn’t have another second to waste.

I grabbed the keys, jogged out to the tiny car, and for the first time since this whole mess had begun, I climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and took off by myself.

***

Speeding down the hilly country road, my hands shaking at the wheel, the wind whipping my hair in circles around my head, I realized why Julien and his brother had a thing for stealing. There was a certain exhilaration that came along with doing something forbidden. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before the past two days with Julien, and at the current moment, it was a feeling I hoped I’d never have to experience again once I left France for good.

I focused my eyes on the winding road ahead and forced myself to stop thinking about the fact that I was stealing this car from Julien’s family. It would be okay. I would figure everything out when I got to Paris.

And just as the trembling in my hands began to calm and the feel of the smooth steering wheel on my palms became comfortable, a navy-blue car that had just sped past me going the other direction pulled a u-turn and raced up behind me.

I floored the gas and checked the rear view mirror to see if I could make out a face.

As soon as I saw the messy brown hair and the cigarette dangling out the window, I knew exactly who it was.
Damn.

I flicked my gaze back to the road but gasped when a razor-sharp curve snuck up on me and Julien’s horn wailed behind me. By the time my foot hit the brake, I was already barreling down a grassy hill. I closed my eyes as a willow tree trunk plunged into the front of the car and the airbag inflated in my face.

After a few moments of listening to the sound of my own breath grazing over the airbag, I realized I was still alive. I lifted my aching head to find steam billowing up from the hood of the tiny car. The tree trunk was now only two feet away from my head.

So much for my big, brave escape plan
.

Footsteps pounded down the hill and before I could even turn my sore neck, Julien peeled the door open and lifted me out of the car. He set me down on the soft grass and sat across from me, his breath heavy and fast.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I rubbed the back of my neck, my hands shaking, my chest pounding. “I think so.”

“Good,” he said. Then he stood, walked calmly over to the crumpled car and pounded the roof with his fist. “
Putain
!” he shouted, then fisted the car again.

He turned to me, his eyes full of rage. “
T’es dingue?
What were you thinking?”

I stood on wobbly legs as I narrowed my eyes at him. “Oh, sure. You can teach your slimy brother how to manipulate women and ruin their lives, but I can’t even steal a stupid Smart car and get away with it!”

“What are you talking about? Teach my brother?”

I let out a snort. “Guess who made a surprise visit to the vineyard this morning while you and your family were out doing God knows what?”

Julien’s brown eyes widened. “Claude was here?”

I nodded. “Yup, and you know what else? He doesn’t have my passport.”

Julien’s hands flew into the air. “Your passport? Your passport!
Putain
! Is that all you can think about? Where is he?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “He’s gone.”

“What? You let him leave?”

“What was I supposed to do? Hold him down? Or even better, slip a drug in his drink and seduce him like you’ve probably done to hundreds of women?”

Julien rushed toward me, his eyes flashing with anger. “Why was he here?”

“He left your mom a note on the kitchen table. Horrible handwriting—I couldn’t make out a word.”

“What did he say to you? Did he give you any idea as to where he was going?”

A dry laugh escaped from my lips. “Are you kidding me? Claude actually
tell
someone where he was going next?”

Julien made an angry grumbling sound with his throat, then pounded his fist on the car yet again. “
Le salaud
!”

I jumped backward, not used to seeing him so furious.

Julien turned to me, his expression crazy with rage. “How long ago did he leave?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a half an hour.”

He marched past me up the hill. “Come on!” he shouted over his shoulder. “We can’t waste any more time. We have to go after him.”

I planted my feet into the ground. “I wouldn’t bother. He said the painting is gone.”

Julien flipped around. “That means nothing coming from him. He is a liar and a thief.”

“Funny, he said the same thing about you,” I replied coolly.

“He would.” He turned and continued climbing up the hill.

I wasn’t going anywhere with him. “So it’s true then,” I yelled. “What Claude said. You taught him what he knows? How to steal?”