Blame It on Paris (15 page)

A single glimpse was enough to give a guy estrogen overload, but that was okay. He had three sisters. He knew how to handle females.

But five seconds later, the meeting had started skating downhill. She'd looked at him, and before he'd even introduced himself, her eyes narrowed and her back stiffened.

“You're the one, aren't you?”

“Pardon me?” he'd said.

“You have to be the reason. I knew it! I
knew
something had happened in Paris! So it was you.”

Nothing like shooting a guy before he'd even had a trial. That initial warm, welcoming, very pretty smile turned colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra, as his grandfather used to say. Char had pulled him inside the house, all right, but only because she didn't want him to leave. She'd tracked down Kelly on speed dial, figuratively and literally.

Once Kelly had been located, she got here fast, but not fast enough to save him from a grilling.

He hadn't actually given anything away. It helped to be blood kin to his own relentlessly manipulative family—he knew all those tricks. The thing was, he was wary of telling Char anything until he knew for certain what Kelly had told her mother about him, about them, about Paris.

He didn't have to say much to realize that Kelly was in one heap of a mess.

He forgot all that when she showed up. He forgot everything. Even her mother, who wasn't an easy person to forget. But it was all suddenly there…. The thick brown hair swishing around her cheeks. Her eyes, not just brown, but that brown with life and sensuality. The silky, soft mouth.

The way she looked at him. As if he really mattered. Him. Not just a guy or any guy. She looked at him as if he tipped her world in a different direction.

Maybe that reaction was silly and unrealistic and nothing a grown man should be believing, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she looked at him that way.

Rational or irrational, her gaze sent his masculine ego soaring into the stratosphere. Made him feel bigger than he was. Better than he was.

“Mom,” Kelly said vaguely, looking at him, not her mother. “We're leaving.”

“The coffee'll be done in two shakes,” Char said.

“And thanks so much for making it. I'll call you later.” She grabbed his hand in a way that made him want to grin.

Kelly was no Viking. But she was getting him out of there like a legendary Valkyrie of old. He wasn't afraid of her mom and coped just fine with the grilling, other than worrying that he could slip and somehow make Kelly's situation worse than it already was. But Kelly apparently thought he'd been enduring a real battering and was whisking him away.

She didn't speak until she got him outside on her mother's front porch with the door firmly closed.

“I don't exactly know how we're going to work the logistics of this, but I have a car. And obviously you had to get here by car, too,” she began.

“Yeah.”

“So I don't care which one we take, but we've got to move fast. I'm dying to know why you're here. What's happened with you. But Mom will drag us back inside if we're still here two seconds from now.”

“Easy enough. We'll take both cars, so neither's left here. What's the address where you're living?”

A frown set in as he followed her. Maybe he hadn't been back to South Bend in a few years, but he still knew the area. Initially he was positive he must have misunderstood the address she gave him.

He hadn't.

The house she walked up to had a saggy roof, an unkempt community yard and trash whipping around the window.

She seemed to guess what he was thinking from his expression. “I only moved here temporarily. Very, very temporarily, I hope.”

“Like that's an explanation? What's going on?”

“Oh, no. You don't get to ask questions until I do. You're the one who showed up out of the blue.” She motioned. “Come on in, meet my roommate, Skip.”

“Skip?” He bristled up when he heard a guy's name.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open. Faster than a laser, Will's gaze snapped to the guy on the couch. A boy, yeah. Sitting in his shorts in front of a computer, hair unbrushed, feet bare. The general living room looked like a fallout zone—glasses and papers and silverware and shoes heaped all over the place.

“Skip, this is Will. Will, Skip.”

“Hey,” Skip said, and swung around to wave a hand.

Will got it. The bright eyes, the falling glasses, the three whiskers on his chin. The kid really was just a boy. But that still didn't explain why Kelly was living in such a dump, or why her mother had treated him like a hostile witness to an unknown crime.

Kelly detoured into the kitchen, emerged with two mugs of coffee and cocked her head for him to follow her down the hall.

The room where she led him revealed more information. It was shaped like an el. Boxes were tidily piled to the ceiling along one wall, all marked to identify the contents. The two tall windows were so clean the sun glared through. Her bed, a lumpy daybed, was too small but it was mounded with pillows and a deep red comforter that matched the rug on the floor.

The sitting area was just as beaten up as the rest of the house, but she had a couch, a chair; her computer equipment nested on a minidesk. A fake Tiffany lamp offered some soft light. And three unopened cans of paint stood at the door, receipt still taped on a lid.

In a glance, Will took it in, easily concluded she'd done a good job of making the ghastly place livable, at least for the short term. More than that, he saw the scarf. It was draped over the top of the bureau mirror. The blue-and-white silk scarf he'd gotten her that last day in Paris.

And on the scratched bureau top was a minitray, with the perfume.

When she saw him glancing there, she plunked down on the edge of the couch.

“Okay. I can tell you're not too impressed with my fancy digs. What can I say? This is what happens when you take off in the middle of the night with the clothes on your back and have to start over.” She made a humorous motion. “Don't be feeling sorry for me. I'm not suffering. Nothing's long-term catastrophic. I'd just bought a lot for the other apartment, and I didn't take any of it with me, so I'm just having a wee little temporary financial problem. I'm solvent. It's a no-sweat. It's just…I need to have some time to build up again.”

“Why?” Not that he'd been waiting to pounce with that question, but he suddenly had too much energy to sit down. Jet lag had turned his brain to mush, but finally the obvious answer filtered through. “You left the fiancé, didn't you? That's why you're here. That's why your mom—”

She shook her head swiftly, wouldn't give him a chance to finish. “I'm not coming through with more story until you spill yours. The last I knew, you weren't coming home again. Especially not home to South Bend.”

“Yeah, well, it's your fault I did.”

“My fault?”

He loved the look on her face. Of course, growing up with sisters, he knew how to get a rise out of a female, but Kelly bit so easily.

At least for him. “I got a call from my father. My mom's sixtieth birthday is coming up. Family wants to do a big shindig, wants me to be part of it. It was his latest excuse to get me to come home.”

“And?”

“And…you annoyed the hell out of me. Making out like I was hiding in Paris. Making out like I didn't have the character to solve my differences with him…instead of believing me, that there
is
no way in hell to solve our differences with each other.”

“And?”

“And so I'm going to solve the damned problem, come hell or high water. I'll try one more confrontation. One more hash-out with the old man. It won't work. I figure the odds are somewhere around five million to one. But being part of my mom's sixtieth-birthday celebration is a good thing.”

Hell. She gave him a look of such sympathy that he wanted to kick something. He'd wanted her to think it was no big deal, just something he was doing, not a life-altering problem. It had bugged him that she'd criticized him, as if he had total power over a solution, as if it didn't take two to make a mess. Damn, she'd made him feel like a weakling and a coward, both of which had hit big-time.

But now her look of compassion bugged him, too. Go figure.

“I know you won't believe this,” she said gently, “but I really do know how you feel.”

“About my dad?” She couldn't possibly. And somehow he couldn't sit still, had to move, stretch his legs, prowl around. He touched the Tiffany lamp, the edge of a sweater, checked out the window views.

“No, not about your dad. But…your life is just as much of a train wreck as mine is. Nothing's right. Nothing's easy right now.” She sighed. “Everybody's mad at me. I swear I can't seem to do anything right, and I'm afraid it's going to be a big blue moon before I can see any light at the end of this particular tunnel.”

He said slowly, carefully, “It was rough on you. Breaking up with him. You want to tell me about it?”

“Maybe. Not now. But I do want to tell you that he's a nice guy, Will, so don't be thinking otherwise. The screwup and breakup is on me, not him.” She added quickly, hoping to change the subject, “How long will you stay?”

“Here, this minute? Or here, in South Bend?”

“Both.”

He was willing to answer her, but his head was still back on the ex-fiancé. He couldn't help feeling high as a kite that she'd split up with the guy. But he also felt terrible because their making love in Paris had been the catalyst for all the difficult life changes she'd been making. Maybe he wasn't responsible for her being stuck living in this college-type dump, but it felt like his fault.

“Will?”

Yeah. She wanted him to answer the question. “Well, this is what's playing out so far. My parents know I'm home, but I haven't seen them yet. First, I had to get off the plane, see you, sleep off some jet leg and get my own place to stay so there can't be any argument about my staying with my folks. I've got three sisters. I know I told you that before. The oldest is Martha. We've always fought like cats and dogs, but she's got a studio apartment above her garage, so that's where I shoved my suitcase.”

“That doesn't totally answer my question, handsome.”

“Yeah, well. I don't know how long I'm staying. I can do some work for Yves while I'm here.”

“Will.”

“What?”

“Answer the question.”

“God, you're a pain. I forgot how much. And how nosy.” His teasing made her chuckle, but he couldn't seem to keep his mind on humor. All he could think about was her. How she looked under her jeans, under a bulky sweater. Under his hands.

He also couldn't stop being acutely aware that he hadn't kissed her yet. Or touched her. She had a hint of wariness in her eyes, which he could understand. His coming back created even more complications in her life, and right now, Kel had no way of knowing whether they were going to end up together.

Hell, neither did he.

He cleared his throat. “The truth is, Kel, I can't give you an absolute about how long I'll be staying. One way or another, I'm determined to come to some kind of terms with my father. I'm staying for however long it takes to do that right.”

He wanted to add,
More than anything else, I'm staying for you.
He hadn't slept since she'd left Paris. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her, stop remembering their time together.

But being with her now, those words weren't so easy to say even if they were part of the real truth. Because now he realized she'd come home and torn her whole life apart. The jerk wasn't right for her. Will didn't have to meet the fiancé to know he wasn't worth Kelly's little finger. This Jason guy hadn't been there for her when she'd been in trouble in Paris, hadn't been the one she'd called, hadn't been the one she'd asked for money until the paperwork all went through. She was well rid of him.

That's what Will told himself. What he'd believed before seducing her. What he still believed.

But there was a blot on his conscience. Just maybe, if he hadn't entered her life, Kelly wouldn't be in this mess right now.

“Good grief,” Kelly said suddenly, and started to laugh.

“What?” he demanded.

“I don't know…. It's just that your life sounds as complicated and awful as mine is right now. And I don't mean that's laughable! But it keeps striking me as ironic that we're in such a similar boat. And…well…this is just so
not
like Paris.”

“You said it.” He swiped a hand over his face. “Paris was…a dream.”

“A fantasy,” she murmured. “A few moments in time when the rest of the world seemed to disappear, and there was just the two of us.”