Meet Me in Paris. Simona Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ and one of them is mine. You can keep the hankie.” He spun around and walked off.

      She did as she was told, scrubbing at her face to remove the tears and the streaks of makeup they’d left, catching the newsstand owner out of the corner of her eye and wondering how much of their conversation he’d heard. The fine linen, rubbed hard into her skin, abraded away her despair, her humiliation and her pain. Then there was only one emotion left. Pure, home-grown, unadulterated, polyunsaturated rage. It was all she needed.

      Hammond was walking so fast she could barely keep up, but sheer pig-headedness made sure she did. Two blocks down, he turned into the Blarney Stone, a pseudo-Irish steakhouse she’d been to once or twice. She followed at a distance. He never so much as looked back.

      She made it inside a minute and a half after he did. It was good to be out of the drizzle. She could see Hammond seating himself. A waitress was upon him in a single shake of a lamb’s tail. He ordered with a smile that was happily returned by the young lady, who was leaning in toward him a little more closely than necessary. As she walked away, the waitress flipped her hair and gave her shamrock-dotted hips a little swivel. Ick.

      Look at him. Sitting there so smug and self-satisfied. Flirting with the waitress. Loading up on breadsticks, as if everything was all hunky-dory, now that he’d given the least likely candidate for Employee of the Month the slip. The more she thought about it, the more she paced. Getting madder and madder.

      On her dozenth about-face on the lobby carpet, she found herself toe-to-toe with the hostess, who was all kitted up as a leprechaun. Central casting would have been impressed. The young woman was four feet ten and festooned with stick pins, smiley-face stickers, shamrock key chains, small, fuzzy animals and clunky brass whatnots. She looked like a walking trinket cart at the county fair. “Miss? Will you be dining?”

      The apparition jolted Kendra out of her internal rant. She was suddenly aware she must look quite bizarre, half-soaked, whirling back and forth in the lobby, muttering as though she had imaginary friends. She felt her face heat up. “Um, not right now.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

      “Are you waiting for someone?”

      “You could say that.” Involuntarily, she glanced across at Hammond. He was poring over the menu. Still completely relaxed, damn his eyes.

      “Then would you like to have a drink at the bar while you wait?”

      A drink? In here? She probably didn’t have enough change in her purse to buy herself a soda. She shook her head. The leprechaun gave her a strange look and left.

      Missy with the swively hips brought Hammond a Bloody Mary. Again, the goo-goo smile as she set it down, and again his overwhelming charm as he took it. All this with the ease of a man who’d rid himself of a minor irritant, like he’d brushed a beetle off his coat sleeve. Like she, Kendra, was nothing. No.

      Next thing she knew, she was standing at his table. The expression on his face was so precious, if she could have bottled it, she’d have made a million bucks. She took advantage of his momentary speechlessness to lay into him. “Listen up, Hammond. I’ve had enough of you and your attitude. What makes you think you can sit in judgment of me? Where d’you get off acting so superior?”

      “Where do you get off hovering over my table while I’m having a drink? For God’s sake, Forrest, if you’re going to ruin my lunch, at least do it sitting down. You’re making me dizzy.”

      “I don’t want to sit down. I want you to listen. I’ve listened to every nasty thing you’ve had to say to me—”

      “Was any of it undeserved?”

      “Be quiet. It’s my turn to speak. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t need your forgiveness, because you’re a rude, arrogant, self-assured bastard, so coming from you, it wouldn’t be worth a damn. But I do expect you to respect me. Don’t you ever, ever turn and walk away from me again. Don’t you ever call me a thief again. I did something stupid, and I admit it. And I don’t have the money right now, but I’ll get it to you if I have to work my fingers to the bone….” She waited for the sneer. She waited for the derisive laughter. None came.

      “Okay.”

      Okay? That was it? It took the wind out of her sails. What next? They stared each other down like two cats balanced on an alley wall. His stare was thoughtful, contemplative, making her feel like a beetle under a magnifying glass. She hoped he wasn’t directing the sun’s rays at her.

      She couldn’t stop him from looking at her, but while he was doing it, darned if she wasn’t going to take the opportunity to size him up, too. He must have known how good looking he was. Why else would he have chosen a suit that was the exact charcoal gray as his eyes? Why else would he have worn a shirt the color of a glacier’s heart, and a tie of garnet that set those coals alight? His silver-rimmed glasses framed his face so well, he could have stepped down from a poster in an optometrist’s window. No wonder he knew the brands she was wearing. He was a bit of a metrosexual himself. And they said women were vain.

      His almond-hued skin was clear and bright. His soft, slightly wavy hair was closely cut and razor-marked. Even so, it rippled from forehead to nape. His finely shaped nose was indisputable evidence of mixed blood. His lips…she didn’t want to go there. As she watched him, and as he watched her, something in his face changed. She could have sworn that the deadly steel of his eyes warmed to a deeper shade. Maybe it was that shirt again. He gestured at the chair opposite him, the one she was clutching. “Sit down. Please.”

      She sat, discovering that she was heaving with effort.

      “Feel better?”

      “What?”

      “That was a whole lot better than the crying jag back there, wasn’t it?” Unbelievably, he was smiling. Kindly.

      She did a quick mental inventory and discovered that she did feel better, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Not to him. So she didn’t say anything.

      He didn’t seem perturbed. “What’re you drinking?” he asked, lifting his Bloody Mary as a visual example. She realized she was dying of thirst. Again, there was the problem of her empty pocketbook. That, and the laughable idea of drinking with the enemy. “Nothing.”

      “Oh, come on. Storming all the way over here and reeling off a list of my character flaws to the entire restaurant must have made you thirsty. What’s your poison?” He signaled the waitress without waiting for an answer.

      “Water, please.”

      “I’m buying.” He didn’t say it in a nasty way.

      Perceptive. But she insisted. “I like water just fine.”

      He sighed. “Have it your way. Still or sparkling?”

      “Tap.”

      Looking amused by her stubbornness, he turned to Miss Shamrock and said, “The lady will have a glass of water. Tap.”

      Witnessing Kendra’s tirade hadn’t diminished the redhead’s effusiveness toward Hammond, but it did earn her a scathing look, of which she got a double helping when the woman returned with a tall, frosty glass of water. She accepted it gratefully and took a long, deep drink.

      He handed over the glossy, emerald-green menu. “The mutton here is amazing.”

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