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СКАЧАТЬ as a type of shared misery.” She waved her hand. “I don’t go in much for that.”

      He stared at her. He hadn’t known a woman could say so much without taking a breath.

      She smiled. “Then tell me what is.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “You said talking isn’t one of your stronger suits. What is?”

      He noticed that her eyes were a light, light brown, matching the color of her designer coffee. He found himself returning her smile. “Well, I’d have to talk to tell you that, wouldn’t I?” Her laugh was as smoky as he thought it would be. “Um, my job.” Oh, but that was lame.

      “Your job?”

      “Yes.” He didn’t offer more. It was suddenly important to him that she not know he was with the INS. He was drawn to her openness. Her teasing smile. And he suspected that if she knew what he did for a living, she’d close all that off to him. He didn’t want that to happen. Not yet, anyway.

      He was relieved when she turned her attention toward the sugar decanter. She straightened it, then the napkin holder behind it, her gaze scanning the café’s interior. “I once wanted to open a café.”

      His brow rose again, but for a completely different reason.

      “Oh, not here. In Paris. Until Papa pointed out that the last thing Paris needed was another coffee shop.” That smile again. She tucked her mass of unruly hair behind her right ear. Jake was inordinately fascinated with the move and found himself wondering if her hair was as soft as it looked. And pondered how it would feel trailing a path across the sensitive skin of his abdomen. “So I switched my plans to a restaurant.”

      Her laugh caught him unaware. What was funny about that?

      “You know. If Paris doesn’t needed another café, it needs another restaurant even less?”

      “Oh.” He cleared his throat again, then blurted, “You seemed distracted.”

      She squinted at him slightly, as if not understanding.

      “When we bumped into each other earlier.”

      The light in her eyes diminished. “Yes. I was distracted.”

      She took another pull from her cup, and he looked at his own. He wasn’t sure what it held. Was afraid to find out. “Any particular reason?”

      He noticed then that she bit her nails. They were too short, barely crescents on her fingers. Unpainted. “Yes. There is a reason. Tomorrow, I’m told, I must leave your country full of swindling private detectives and bloodsucking purse snatchers. Go back home.”

      He held his gaze steady on her. Just as he suspected.

      She gestured with her hands. “They, those people don’t care that I need to stay here. That I need to find my daughter. They tell me they can’t help me. They can’t grant me an…”

      “Extension.” He finished her sentence.

      She squinted at him again, making him wonder if she normally wore glasses. He scanned her features, imagining her with all that unruly hair pulled into a smooth twist—

      “Yes, an extension.”

      “So you can find your daughter.”

      Her hands stilled on her cup. “Yes. Her father, or the man who calls himself her father when he didn’t want any involvement in her life before now, came to Paris two months ago and…took her. Brought her here.”

      “Your husband?”

      She shook her head. “No. He and I, we had a brief—how do you say it?—relationship. No, no, an affair. You use the same word, yes? Five years ago. He was an American living in Paris. I was a waitress. Lili was the result.”

      Jake stared at her. Not so much shocked by what she’d said, but shocked that she was saying what she was as easily as she was. And that he found it impossible to tug his gaze away from her animated face. She was a single mother who’d had her child out of wedlock. And she was foreign. Not that he had anything against foreigners. At one time or another, all Anglo-Americans had been foreigners to this land. But in his job as agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the word foreigner took on a whole new meaning.

      Not knowing what to say in the situation, he asked, “So your daughter’s four?”

      She briefly closed her eyes, her long, dark lashes casting shadows against her pale skin. She murmured several sentences in French. The thick, nasal sound wound around him in a way he wasn’t sure he liked. It made him feel…lustful. He found himself wishing he knew the language so he could understand what she’d said, though he was sure it had nothing to do with his increasingly uncomfortable state. “Yes. She will be four this Saturday…five days from today.” She stared at the tabletop, but he doubted she saw it. “I should have never given Gerald a copy of her birth certificate when she was born. I’d wanted to include him, yes? Instead, he used it to get her an American passport and take her away from me.”

      She looked so helpless at that moment. Much as she had in the parking lot when he’d returned her purse. He was filled with an inexplicable, urgent need to pull her into his arms. To smooth her curly hair. Tell her everything would be all right.

      On the heels of that sensation followed a physical pull that left him feeling as if he’d downed a pitcher of beer in a single sitting.

      The reaction was so completely alien to him, he wasn’t sure how to respond. No one had ever stirred such a complete physical response in him. He had stopped paying attention to the countless hard-luck stories he heard on a daily basis about six years ago. Stopped counting the number of illegals he’d taken to the airport and put on the next plane out. Why Michelle Lambert’s sketchy situation should affect him so baffled him.

      “Have you visited the States before?” he asked quietly.

      Normally he might not have noticed the slight coloring of her skin, but he’d been staring at her so much, any variation was noticeable. He wished he knew exactly what it meant. “Yes…I visited the west coast years ago. Vacation.”

      He grimaced. “So you’re going home tomorrow?”

      A waitress approached their table. “Can I get you two something else? A warm-up, maybe? The elephant ears are fresh.”

      Michelle waved her away. “No, thank you. I don’t wish for anything more.” She looked at him. “You’ve been far too generous already.”

      “Please,” he said.

      “No. No, thank you.” She gathered her purse and got up. “I really must be going now.”

      Jake rose so quickly, he nearly knocked the table over. All he knew was a sudden, overwhelming urge to stop her from leaving. He curved his fingers around her arm. The heat that swept through him and pooled in his groin was instantaneous.

      She gazed into his face, clearly puzzled. Then her expression changed. Her pupils widened, nearly taking over the tawny brown of her irises. The open sensuality he saw in the coloring of her cheeks, the softening of her mouth, made СКАЧАТЬ