glanced at the faded letters on his tank top. “Newport Beach? I have seen it on that TV show. The harbor is huge.”
Bryan nodded. “Yeah. And filled with luxury yachts that the owners never sail. They make pretty good roosts for the pelicans.” He nodded at the pin on her lapel. “I like that. Made me think of them.”
“Ah. What else is there in Newport Beach besides pelicans?”
“Beach shacks that sell for two million dollars. Hamburgers that cost twenty dollars. The real people got priced out a while ago. But there are a few crazy kayakers left.”
“Not surfers?”
“Farther south you get surfers. Newport Beach doesn’t have big waves, as a rule.”
“Oh. I imagined you as a surfer.”
Bryan laughed a little ruefully. “Okay, you’re not wrong. But I had to hit Highway 1 to get anywhere worth surfing.”
“I have heard of it. In Le O.C.”
He made a wry face. “Not my favorite show.”
Odette nodded. “It is for teenagers, non?”
“That’s about right.”
She let her gaze move over his well-muscled body. Bryan was very much a man. “So what is it that you do?” she asked him at last.
“Short version?”
“If you please.”
“I’m twenty-five. No brothers or sisters. Raised by my mom. She’s a dressmaker—I can’t wait to send her the photos from before the show. She won’t believe I got to see Paris fashion on the runway.”
Odette raised an eyebrow. So the interviewer from Bonjour hadn’t been able to resist having photos taken of Bryan because of his raffle win. Not much of a story, that, but Bryan himself was delectable. No doubt the witch, as Lucie called her, had been all over him like a—like a wetsuit. And not just the jacket.
“Got a BA in marine biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, halfway through my master’s,” Bryan was saying. “I took time off to travel. Went up the Amazon for a while and did independent study in Belize. Right now the Scripps Institute has me waiting to hear.” He smiled at her puzzled look. “It’s in San Diego. The best marine lab in the US, outside of Woods Hole in Massachusetts. I applied there too. In fact, I applied to every university within swimming distance of a barnacle.”
“I see. So what brought you to Paris?”
“Last stop before my flight home.” He looked at her a little worriedly. “Not that I didn’t want to see Paris. But I’m not that much of a city guy.”
“How much of the city have you seen?”
He pushed the plate of frites away. “I’m ashamed to say it. Not much. The Eiffel Tower. The cheap tour of the Champs-Élysées. The back end of Notre Dame, from a tour boat on the Seine. And the depressing lobby of my budget hotel.”
“And how much time do you have left?” Odette asked.
“Two more nights. Which is to say that I have to check out by Friday. After that I don’t really have to be anywhere.”
“Then you can stay with me if you like.”
“What?”
Odette, per the unwritten rules of flings, didn’t explain her invitation.
“For starters,” she said airily. “Do you like jazz?”
“Sure. Anything but techno. No offense, Odette, because you work for whoever runs that fashion show, but the music was the pits.”
“Then we will go to the Bistrot d’Eustache or the China Club. They have wicked gin fizzes.”
“Sign me up. And lead the way.” She began to protest but he held up a hand. “You have to. I’m a stranger in a strange land, Odette.”
“How melodramatic,” she said with disdain.
“I can see I’m going to have to prove I’m the man.”
Odette felt a secret flush of excitement steal through her. His tone of voice was teasing, but there was an underlying edge in it that made it clear he understood what she wanted from him. No-strings-attached sensuality. Fast and furious. Clandestine—she had no particular wish to tell him who she was. No, she wanted an affair with no limits except time. Necessarily brief.
But intense.
Later…
It was well after midnight when they left the China Club. Odette had gambled on seeing no one she knew there, and she’d been right. Marc and Lucie and the rest of her staff had gone off to a boîte in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Denis to celebrate—she’d received a text message from Marc that was a perfect combination of tact and innuendo as to the reason for her disappearance. The models had gone back to their hotels to collapse.
Giddy from one too many gin fizzes, they had hailed a taxi and come back to her apartment in the most exclusive arrondissement in Paris.
She hoped he wouldn’t realize that.
The elegant buildings stood in regular rows, their mansard roofs neatly aligned, their stone blocks punctuated by wrought-iron balconies. It was too early in spring and too cold for flowers to spill from them—and even with the old-fashioned street-lights, rather too dark to see much.
He made no comment. Perhaps he thought the neighborhood was old-fashioned. She was counting on his lack of knowledge of Paris—after not wanting him to know she was famous, she really didn’t want him to know that she was rich.
It would change the mood of this brief affair, from the happiness of a man and a woman without a thought for anything but their delight in each other and their mutual desire for each other to something very different.
She unlocked the outer door of wrought iron and the inner one, then led him up the curving marble staircase to the third floor.
“Oh my. Watching you go up the stairs is serious motivation.” A few steps behind her, he reached up to stroke the inside of her thigh. Odette paused, thrilled by the sensual tickle of a male hand on her silk stockings.
But Bryan didn’t reach all the way up. Or grab. He sighed and let his hand trail down, then patted her calf. “Keep going or we’ll never get there.”
Odette giggled and continued to mount the stairs, knowing that her short skirt was swishing provocatively only inches from his face.
She wouldn’t mind if he lifted it and pressed kisses on her bottom, which was mostly bare. He didn’t know that because he hadn’t touched it.
A young man who wanted to wait, was able to wait, could savor every moment of the foreplay—sex with Bryan Bachman ought to be good. Very good.
She opened the door to her apartment and motioned him in, switching on a light.
