Perfect Strangers

James whispers sweet words against my lips that I don’t hear because I’m floating somewhere out in space. It’s only when he slips his hand from between my trembling thighs that I open my eyes and find myself back in the book store, in a hazy cloud of afterglow.

Through a gap in the shelf in front of me, I see the blonde cashier. She’s looking right at me. Our gazes hold for a moment, then she turns away to help a customer.

I know she saw us.

I don’t care.

James turns me toward him and kisses me softly, then whips out the silk pocket square from his suit jacket and swipes it between my legs, gently drying me. Then he stuffs the square of silk back into its place, adjusts the hem of my dress, and kisses me again, cupping my face in his hands.

Weaving slightly on my feet, I grasp his jacket’s lapels and pronounce, “This is the best book store I’ve ever been to in my entire life.”

He chuckles. “It’s my favorite, too. Been coming here for years, since I first moved to Paris.”

I bite my tongue not to ask From where? Instead, I manage the presence of mind to tease him. “If you tell me you bring all your girlfriends to the Russian section, I’ll be forced to take off one of my shoes and stab you with a heel.”

His expression turns serious. Rubbing his thumbs back and forth over my jawline and gazing into my eyes, he murmurs, “I’ve never brought anyone here, love. No one but you.”

Love. My heart does this complicated thing where it seizes up and melts, all at the same time. Then I notice the hard pressure against my hip and suffer a twinge of guilt.

“What’s wrong?” he asks sharply.

I blink, startled again by how easily he sees through me. “Did you take a course in mind reading? You’re crazy good at it.”

He hesitates a moment before answering. “I’m experienced with deciphering people’s facial expressions.”

I can tell we’re in Touchy Subject area, but I’m not sure why. It makes total sense that an artist who creates portraits as detailed and full of emotion as his would obviously have a lot of experience reading the nuances of people’s expressions, but he’s acting like there’s more to it than that.

You’re the one who insisted on no personal questions, genius. Move on.

“I was just thinking that you’ve, ahem”—I glance down briefly toward his erection, trapped between us in his trousers—“taken care of me twice now, but I haven’t taken care of you at all.”

His blue eyes grow warm. “Delaying gratification is something I do well.”

Another mysterious statement that I know will go unexplained.

The man is a sphinx.

“Let me show you around the rest of the shop,” he says, offering his arm and smiling his sphinxlike smile.

I curl my fingers around the rock of his biceps and let him lead me out of the alcove and down another winding passageway toward the back of the store.

“So a famous book store, a famous library, and the former residence of one of the most famous writers in the world. You’re giving me the grand tour.”

“The grand writer’s tour,” corrects James, smiling at me. “Paris isn’t known as the literary capital of the world for nothing.”

I study him. Sitting across from me at a table in a restaurant on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, he’s elegance personified. He’s powerfully magnetic, too, his raw masculinity straining the edges of his graceful manners and exquisite suit. The woman at the table next to us can’t stop ogling him, despite her male companion’s obvious irritation.

She’s not the only one. I’m aware of several women and their heated stares turned James’s way.

I suppose it’s disrespectful to me how indiscreet they’re being, but I can’t blame them. His mere presence is commanding of attention. He could be passed out on the floor and it would still be impossible to look away.

“Thank you for doing all this.” I toy with my fork, flattered by how much effort it must’ve taken him to plan and arrange this date. “If it weren’t for you, I’d have stayed holed up in Estelle’s apartment for the summer.”

He doesn’t reply. He simply watches me play with the cutlery, his gaze penetrating, until I get too self-conscious and fold my hands in my lap.

Finally, he says, “I’m bothering you again.”

“You’re bothering half the women in this restaurant.”

“I don’t care about them,” comes the instant response. “I care about you.”

The intensity in his eyes flusters me. I have to look away so I don’t make a fool of myself and start reciting odes to his beauty. Very quietly, I say, “Same.”

I hear his low inhalation. From the corner of my eye, I see his hand—resting on the arm of his chair—curl to a fist, then flex open.

Why that should make my pulse double, I don’t know.

His voice low and controlled, he says, “You have no idea how beautiful you are, and how much I love knowing that color in your cheeks is because of me.”

I reach up and touch my face. Sure enough, my cheeks are burning. “You’re tough on my equilibrium,” I admit sheepishly. “I’m not normally this affected by anything.” My laugh is small and nervous. “Or anyone.”

“Look at me.”

When I do, I find him staring at me with blistering focus, his blue eyes clear and fierce.

He says, “Me neither.”

There’s a little heartbeat between my legs, pulsing in time with every hot surge of blood through my veins. I’ve never been this strongly attracted to a man before. The frightening thing is that it’s not only a physical attraction. I’m drawn to everything about him, from the way his eyes change with his mood and the light to the obvious depth of his intelligence and sensitivity.

“Tell me,” he commands, because of course he can read me like an open book.

I whisper, “You scare me.”

He leans forward, his voice urgent. “You’re afraid of me?”

I know he’s asking if I think I’m in physical danger from him, which stops me for a moment. The assumption is so off base it seems uncharacteristic. He can usually gauge me so well. “No, not like that. Like…”

I take a breath for courage, glancing down at the tablecloth in search of a safe place to hide from his piercing eyes. “Like if I’m not careful, I could fall into you and drown.”

After what feels like an eternity, James reaches across the table and grasps my wrist. Wary of his reaction and if I’ve admitted too much, I glance up at him from under my lashes.

The savage hunger on his face takes my breath away.

“Don’t tempt me, Olivia. Don’t make this a hypothetical. Because if I thought you were actually going to give me an inch of rope with this thing going on between us, I’d take it to the last goddamn mile. And believe me, that’s not something you want.”

My lips part, but no sound comes out. I’m too stunned by the combination of his expression and his words, spoken in a dangerous, terse monotone in stark contrast with all the heat and desire on his face.

“Bonsoir, monsieur et madame! Bienvenue chez Jules Verne.”

I jump, startled by the sudden arrival of the waiter at our tableside.

His eyes shuttering and his expression wiped clean, James releases my wrist and leans back into his chair, crossing his legs. He casually adjusts a cufflink, then offers the waiter a disinterested smile.

He went from a boiling vat of molten lava to cool as a cucumber in one second flat.

It’s incredibly unnerving. Not only because it seemed so effortless, but also because it seemed…practiced. Professional.

As if he learned it in school.

The waiter rambles on in French through what I have to assume is an introduction to the menu or the restaurant itself, which is named after the famous French novelist, poet, and playwright Jules Verne. Then he directs a question to James, who orders two bourbons and sends the waiter on his way.

With a shaking hand, I reach for my water glass. I gulp the cool liquid, trying to buy some time to calm down. When I set the glass back onto the table, James says, “I should’ve asked if you have any spots in particular that you’d like to visit in Paris. I know the city well.”

His tone is polite. Distant, even. I don’t know if this is part of his breakneck mood change or if he’s taking pity on me and letting me off the hook. I think if he tried to force me to respond directly to that mind-blowing speech he just gave, I’d bolt right out of the room in a panic.

I clear my throat and moisten my lips. Despite all that water I drank, my mouth is desert dry. “I didn’t…I haven’t really thought about it, to tell you the truth. I expected I’d be focused mainly on trying to write, not…” I trail off, picturing our passionate tryst in the book store. Heat creeps back into my cheeks. “Sightseeing.”

“Sightseeing,” he repeats, his voice husky.

Don’t look at him. You’ll burst into flames. “But I suppose now that I’ve got someone with experience to show me around, I should take advantage of it.”

“Yes, I’m very experienced. And I’d very much enjoy showing you around.”

That’s a double entendre if I’ve ever heard one. Spoken in the same husky tone from moments before, his words carry a hidden meaning, a dark undercurrent of sensuality that tightens my stomach and makes me swallow hard around the sudden lump in my throat.

Or is my imagination playing tricks on me? Is he merely making conversation and I’m reading too much into innocent words?

Dammit, I hate having a brain that manufactures magical portals out of everyday cracks in a wall! Life would be so much easier if I were an accountant.

“That would be great,” I say carefully, looking everywhere but at him.

I hear his low chuckle and know that I’m amusing him.

Then from somewhere inside his suit jacket comes a muted electronic ding. I glance over. Frowning, he reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a cell phone, small and black, the size of a credit card. It’s thinnest one I’ve ever seen. Must be a European model not available in the States.

He takes one look at the screen and his entire body stiffens.This is property © NôvelDrama.Org.

“Everything okay?”

His gaze flashes up to meet mine. He stares at me for a fraction of a moment, a strange new hardness in his eyes, then he says curtly, “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“Go? Where?” I look around the restaurant, as if searching for a plausible explanation for this sudden turn of events, but James is already standing.

When he doesn’t answer, I know we’re in Touchy Subject area again.

Feeling dismayed, I allow him to help me out of my chair. Then he ushers me through the restaurant with his hand flattened protectively on the small of my back, moving his gaze swiftly left and right as if visually sweeping the area for land mines as we head to the door.

When we’re in the elevator heading down and he’s standing stiff and silent beside me, I lose my patience with the cloak and dagger routine. “Are you going to tell me why you’re so angry all of a sudden, or am I going to have to make up some story in my head that will probably be a thousand times worse than reality?”

“I’m not angry,” he snaps, sounding angry.

I sigh and close my eyes. “Okie dokie, then.”

A few seconds later, the elevator jolts to a stop.

I yelp in surprise, throwing a hand against the wall for balance. My eyes fly open. James turns away from the panel of buttons and looms over me, fire burning in his gaze as he backs me up against the elevator wall.

“It’s work. I don’t want to leave, but I have to.”

I stare up at him with narrowed eyes and a crinkled nose. “Work? An emergency portrait session, is that it? Somebody decided on a whim on a Friday night that they desperately needed you to get their mug on paper before they went to bed?”

“No, smartass. That’s not it.”

He’s big and bristling and obviously mad, but I’m not afraid of him and I’m not backing down. I know I’m the one who set up this whole no questions format, but that was before he started acting so suspicious.

“No? Okay. So your agent texted you to tell you he just lost a big sale? You have to run over to the gallery and beat him up or something?”

Through a clenched jaw, he says, “No.”

Nose to nose, we glare at each other. The heat of his body burns me right through my dress. I’m as pissed off as he is, but holy shit do I want him to kiss me.

He can tell. He drops his gaze to my mouth. The heat between us ratchets up a few hundred degrees.

“I’m taking you home,” he growls. “I’ll come by later. It might be late. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Ha! You’re taking a lot for granted there, Romeo! Don’t come by later, I need my beauty sleep. You can try giving me a call tomorrow, but I’m not guaranteeing I’ll answer, because I’m feeling a little weirded out by this whole scenario. The only reason I can think why you’d suddenly get called away in the middle of dinner on a Friday night and then start acting all sorts of freaked out and paranoid is because you’re—”

I stop, the words turning to ash in my mouth.

I was about to say “in the witness protection program”—which I realize doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I was on a roll there—but something far worse has presented itself as an option. A word even more terrifying than “fugitive” has leapt into my mind.

That word is “married.”

I stare at him in horror.

When Edmond told me at the cocktail party that James was the most eligible bachelor in Paris, I took that to mean he was single. But considering Edmond’s blasé attitude toward monogamy, it’s possible he thinks all men are lifelong bachelors, no matter what legal commitments they’ve made.

James could have a wife holed up somewhere.

This is France, after all. In America the national pastime is baseball; here it’s having a mistress or two.

James sighs heavily and closes his eyes. “You’ve got that look again like you think I’m a serial killer.”

“Okay, lover boy, I’m going to ask you a question. And you have to tell me the truth.”

He opens his eyes and stares at me, his expression wary.

“I promise this will be the last personal question I’ll ever ask. I swear on the baby Jesus and all the saints and every single angel and cherub in heaven.”

His brows draw together. “Are you very religious?”

I wave a hand dismissively in the air. “No, I’m just big on hyperbole. It’s a bad habit. My editor is always yelling at me to tone it down. Anyway, here’s my question. And you better look me right in the eye when you answer. Okay?”

Another heavy sigh. I could smack him.

I pronounce each word slowly and carefully. “Are you married?”

His eyes drill straight down into the blackest bottom of my soul. “No,” he says, just as slowly and carefully. “I’m. Not. Married.”

Folding my arms over my chest, I inspect his face. He appears to be telling the truth, but this is the same guy who pulled a credible Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde impression when the waiter first arrived at our table.

An alarm sounds. James grabs me and kisses me. Hard.

When I turn my head and break the kiss, he commands gruffly, “Stay at the apartment until I come back.”

Damn, he’s bossy. I say sourly, “If you think you’re the boss of me, pal, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Think.”

I give him a side-eye. “Excuse me?”

“The correct phrase is, ‘You’ve got another think coming,’ not thing.”

“No. That makes no sense.”

“I’m telling you, that’s what it is.”

“Who’s the writer here? Me or you? It’s thing.”

The elevator alarm sounds again, but this time it doesn’t stop, it just keeps on blaring. Looking all sorts of frustrated and sexy and hot, James mutters an oath and turns to the panel of buttons, jabbing a finger against one of them. The elevator jerks into motion again, and we’re headed down.

When the doors open moments later, he takes me by the arm and leads me out to the street, where he whistles for a cab. One immediately screeches to a stop at the curb, because even taxis are obliged to obey him.

“Why we don’t just take the Metro, I’ll never know,” I grumble under my breath.

James swings open the door of the cab, quickly inserts me into the back seat, and leans in to glare at me. “Because you’re safer in a cab, that’s why.”

That makes me blink. “Safer from what?”

He slams the door shut in my face.

Then he leans in the open front window to give the driver the address, tosses a handful of money at him, and turns and stalks away.

As the cab pulls away from the curb, I twist around in my seat and stare out the back window, watching the receding figure of James striding off into the warm Paris evening until he’s swallowed by the crowd and disappears.