rose, stumbling slightly as she pushed back her folding chair. “Count de Montfort.” Her voice sounded reedy, thin.
“Please, don’t get up.” He lightly touched her forearm with his hand—a hand far larger and stronger than Shelley would have imagined for the leisurely life of a European noble. “May I join you?”
She stopped teetering only to become aware that she was barefoot. She motioned for him to sit, and he let go, leaving a warm imprint through the thin material of her suit jacket. Forcing herself not to touch it, Shelley lowered herself in her chair. She blindly fished around for her shoes and nervously watched as he pulled out a chair for himself.
What wasn’t to watch? His jet-black, slightly disheveled hair curled over the white collar of his shirt. His shirt collar was unbuttoned—no, the button was missing. Nothing else was, though. Dark stubble highlighted his angular jaw and sculpted his too-prominent cheekbones. And then there were his eyes.
“You have blue eyes.” She couldn’t help it. Now that he was no longer directly in the sun, the color of his cornflower-blue irises was clear. Shockingly clear. Sherwin-Williams couldn’t have manufactured a more startling color.
He raised his eyebrows, providing dramatic arches over the twin azure pools. “Yes, it’s rare, but it is a trait that runs in my family, particularly among the men—and not always the upstanding ones, I’m afraid.” His English was flawless, his subtle accent as melt-in-your-mouth smooth as a whole bag of M&M’s. And as for his self-deferential tone—gosh, it was beguiling in a way that could get a gal in a whole lot of trouble. He might just as well have had a sign hanging around his neck that read Danger. Proceed At Your Own Risk.
No doubt the vast majority of the female population—those with a heartbeat and a passing knowledge of birth control—would have proceeded without a care, let alone major medical insurance.
Shelley, on the other hand, silently repeated her paltry checking account balance over and over as a way to keep herself grounded.
Seemingly oblivious to Shelley’s discomfort, the count turned his head in the direction of the waiter and instantly got his attention. “Café.” He looked back at Shelley and pointed to her empty cup. “Another?” He smiled.
And at that moment Shelley forgot her bank balance, her ATM access number and the name of her bank. She shook her head no, not trusting herself to speak lest she blurt out something equally embarrassing along the lines of, “I want to have your first-born child and strip you naked—preferably in reverse order.”
So rather than risk mortifying herself even further, Shelley concentrated on putting her shoes back on. She located one, but the other seemed to have gone AWOL. She poked around discreetly.
The waiter scurried off and Edmond studied Shelley. “So, Dream Villas has decided to make the rather grand gesture of sending over a personal representative to pay condolences?” He peered around the edge of the table. “I believe that’s my foot and not your shoe that you’ve located.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Shelley immediately drew back her foot. “If you’ll just give me a second. My feet were swollen after the flight, so I took my shoes off to be more comfortable. But now one of the little suckers has decided to make a break for it—kind of appropriate here, don’t you think? Seeing as we’re sitting in front of a former jail. Jailbreak? Get it?” She stopped. “I’m rambling, I know.” And decided the best course of action was to lift up the tablecloth and bend down to find the errant flat.
And maybe stay there. Until the next millennium at the very least.
After a long moment, the count leaned down. “I was starting to wonder if I should send for a rescue party.”
Shelley looked up and saw his bemused grin peeking from under the edge of the cloth. She straightened up—and proceeded to hit the back of her head on the underside of the table. Overhead, the cups rattled.
She pulled back and came to an upright position, rubbing the back of her head but stopping as soon as she saw him reemerge from below.
“Your shoe?”
“My shoe?” She saw her slide in his hand and remembered what she had been doing in the first place. “Oh, right, my shoe. Thank you.” As she leaned to retrieve it, a lock of her perennially unruly hair loosened from the barrette, which was meant to hold the thick mass of curls in an efficient twist, and it tumbled forward.
And that was enough.
That singular, insouciant flounce of dark red hair had Edmond suddenly reevaluating his first opinion of Shelley McCleery as a bland if somewhat clumsy American. Not that he had a negative image of Americans in general, mind you. Far from it.
Some of Edmond’s fondest memories dated back to his time as a seventeen-year-old exchange student in Grantham, New Jersey, where he had enjoyed those quintessentially New World contributions to civilization—lacrosse, The Simpsons and Philly cheesesteaks. Ah, what bliss! Not only that, CDs were cheap by European standards, and female classmates were seemingly all above average in terms of brain-power and the length of their well-proportioned legs.
It must have been all that lacrosse.
Even more miraculous, a French accent allowed an otherwise shy bookworm, one who constantly fretted that he had yet to experience a growth spurt, to get more than the proverbial foot in the door.
Ah, what bliss!
Until the end of June, that is. That was when he’d gotten word that his grandfather had died on the eighteenth green of St. Andrew’s Royal and Ancient. Since he had yet to putt in—with the distinct possibility of making a birdie—Edmond knew Grand-père must have felt cheated.
Edmond had felt cheated, as well. Gone was the possibility of lifeguarding at the Jersey shore that summer. Back he came to study for the baccalauréat, prep for the entrance exam to one of the elite grandes écoles and ultimately a career in government. Such was the decree by Grand-père’s widow, the last of his many couturier-clad and nipped-and-tucked wives. “It was your grandfather’s last wish,” Françoise had declared melodramatically over her third glass of sherry and just before she’d patted his bum when he’d been leaving the study. “He wanted you to preserve the family’s long tradition of service to the country.”
Frankly, Edmond figured his grandfather’s last wish would have been that he’d go two under par for a full round of golf. Edmond also didn’t cotton to being goosed by his stepgrandmother, whose face was so tight she could barely blink.
But in his own way Edmond did feel an obligation to the family legacy, a legacy—mind you, that included as many scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells as diplomats and statesmen. Given this latitude, he figured he was perfectly justified in fulfilling his calling in his own particular way—no excuses necessary, thank you.
Yet as Edmond held on to Shelley McCleery’s slim Italian shoe—very fine quality, he noticed—he was struck by how much he really didn’t want to think about his calling. Not when the shoe belonged to a slender, finely shaped foot which in turn was attached to a well-turned ankle—that being as much of her leg as he could glimpse beneath the table and below the hem of her trousers. And having never given much thought to having a shoe, foot or, for that matter, ankle fetish, the arousing images going through his mind were…well, really quite arousing.
He shifted in his chair.
“I’ll
