Читать книгу Nights In Black Lace - Noelle Mack - Страница 7

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, Odette.”

Odette Gaillard looked again at the man seated in the front row next to the catwalk. “He is very handsome.”

Her assistant only shrugged. “If you like Americans.”

“I do.” She shot Marc a laughing look. “And I am in the mood to fall in love.”

“Oh, Odette. You should not say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you cannot decide if you are going to fall in love. Love finds you. Then you fall in it.”

“Like a mud puddle?” Odette asked.

“Well, sometimes. And sometimes you experience incomparable bliss, accompanied by earth-shattering sex.”

Odette gave a snort. “If you are very lucky. I don’t think I could describe any love affairs of mine like that. Which doesn’t keep me from wanting a new one.”

“How long has it been, Odette?”

She answered with vehemence. “Months! The business of fashion has taken over my life!”

Marc waved a hand in a bored way. “Please, spare me the part about you being an artist and how you need to create.”

She stuck out her tongue. “I do though.”

“And your latest collection is your best yet. Having so many clients is good for you and good for the company.”

“Well, the last part is true. We are making millions, Marc. But I still feel very tempted to quit and go do something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed deeply. “Putting this show together has unhinged your mind.” Marc took another peek at the man his boss had her eye on and shrugged. “But I suppose he would do for a fling.”

“Exactly,” she said with a feline smile. “Besides, love can last a week or a lifetime. No one knows that at the beginning of an affair.”

“Alors,” Marc said. “We all wish we did.”

Odette stepped away from the curtain that separated the backstage area from the catwalk. “Are you happy that we have a full house?”

“Of course. The dragon lady from Vogue is in her accustomed place and we ought to begin.”

“I do like peeking at them first,” Odette replied. “Especially the celebrities.”

“Who is here?” He twitched apart the curtain again. “Aha. Alisa Calderon is making an entrance.”

Odette put her cheek next to Marc’s to watch a famous Spanish actress saunter to her seat in the front row. “Isn’t she going to star in Pedro Almovodar’s next movie?”

“I heard that too. You must design something exclusively for her, Odette.”

“She is beautiful.”

With her cascade of dark hair, doe eyes, huge breasts, and a purse big enough to partly conceal the bodyguard who followed her, the actress caused a stir she seemed to enjoy.

“Beautiful, yes, but she does not know how to accessorize,” Marc said disapprovingly. “Her purse is much too large and those shoes do nothing for her legs.”

Odette only shrugged. “Since I design neither of those things, that is not my problem. Hmm. I could create a bustier studded with precious stones for her. And if she wears it on the red carpet, then women will be clamoring for their own.”

“Fabulously faux, of course.”

“Yes, Marc. Great big sparkly fake emeralds and amethysts, I think. With her sultry coloring, perfect. What fun.”

Marc thought of something that had evidently been on his mind. “Don’t you think that you should move into accessories, Odette?

“Eventually. Ooh, Alisa, you are a naughty girl. How the heads turn when she sits down.”

“That is because her skirt hikes up,” Marc sniffs. “I can see far more than I want to.”

Odette noticed that the American man, whoever he was, did not even look at the actress or seem to notice the hubbub around her. He was talking to a woman next to him, who was delighted to have his attention.

Odette knew her well—Marie Arelquin was a freelance journalist who blogged for Paris Match. “Your friend may have first claim to him,” Marc was saying.

Odette pouted. “I have known Marie since our school days. She was never one to share.”

“Then you are out of luck,” Marc laughed.

The man was laughing at whatever Marie was saying.

“What a nice laugh he has,” Odette said, talking to herself more than to Marc. “I like that type of man. He seems open-minded and open-hearted.”

Marc snickered. “And athletic. And too young for you.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked indignantly.

“You will turn thirty in November.”

She looked at the man. “He is twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He has smile wrinkles around his eyes.”

Marc clutched his clipboard and looked over the top of it. “I suppose so. I would bet he has spent his adolescence on a surf-board. Very bad for the skin.”

“And very good for the physical development. Swimmers and surfers have magnificent bodies.”

Marc sighed thoughtfully. “Are we reading too much into the fact that he is wearing the top half of a wetsuit?”

“Unzipped,” Odette pointed out.

“It is hot out there.”

“He is hot.”

Marc laughed in a low voice. “Ah, Odette, I know you will find a way to meet him before the show is over. But you have only a little while left for this game of peekaboo.”

“What time is it?”

Marc looked at his watch, a massive chunk of titanium and black leather and flashing digital functions. “We are a half hour late.”

“Excellent. It would not do to be too prompt. I want to whip the audience into a frenzy of longing.”

Marc snorted. “Speaking of that, I should go to the dressing room and crack the whip on our models.”

“Yes, please see that they have everything they need and that the hairdresser is not being too cruel to them.”

“They are such crybabies,” Marc sighed. “It’s not as if they can do their own styles.”

“I want Nadia’s hair up in spikes.”

He made a note of it.

“And Dabra, in ringlets, but pulled back very tight.”

“Could work,” he said indifferently, making another note.

“The rest I will leave up to you,” Odette said.

“Merci, madame.” He gave a mocking little bow and turned to go.

Marc threaded his way through the backstage personnel, stepping carefully over thick lighting cables and avoiding the technicians who swarmed around the area.

Odette looked again through the curtain at the handsome American. Besides the unzipped wetsuit jacket that did very nice things for his broad shoulders, he wore a tank top that fit just right over what she suspected was a beautifully muscled chest. And, naturellement, faded jeans. He was perfection.

By her educated guess, the jeans had not been stonewashed or artificially distressed in any way. No, they were molded to his muscular thighs and calves as if he had worn them for months on end in the California sun. Perhaps he was not only a surfer. That taut, sinewy build could just as well be that of a mountaineer.

He might be on his way to Alsace to climb—she could think of no reason for a beach god to be in Paris. Ah, there was another possibility. He could be a cyclist. That would explain the magnificent thighs.

She smiled to herself. An all-around, all-American athlete. Triple A. Exactly what a fling required. Here today and gone tomorrow, always chasing risky new experiences, in love with danger, free as the wind.

In quick succession, she envisioned him shooting the curl of an immense wave, then dangling from a rope in a climber’s harness, and finally bent over the handles of a racing bike, legs pumping, his sun-warmed skin bared above the waist. No cologne was more intoxicating than that very masculine smell, as far as she was concerned.

Ah, the pleasures of having an overactive imagination. She felt rather warm herself.

His hair was thick and wavy, also kissed by the sun, its dark brown glinting with an occasional flash of gold under the catwalk’s pulsing lights. Odette studied his face. High cheekbones, strong jaw, a deeply carved dimple that flashed when he smiled. And such eyes. Soulful. Expressive. Dark and shadowy. She would have to find a way to meet him somehow, and get a better look close up.

He sat with his legs well apart, and she could not help but notice the other very male characteristics he’d been blessed with under the worn denim. She looked her fill. She doubted that he was wearing underwear. What an animal. His hands were strong and veined, his fingers spread casually open over each solid thigh.

A sensual vision of him with his ragged fly unzipped and his hands around his erect cock came to her mind. She chided herself for having such wayward thoughts only minutes away from the opening of an important show, then forgave herself immediately.

Sexual fantasy was her business, after all. And she had been considering a line of men’s underwear to complement the super-sexy lingerie she designed for famous beauties, rock stars, and movie goddesses. Her line had been wildly profitable from the very first year of its existence—of course, charging hundreds of dollars for a few scraps of material had helped. It was all about the image she was able to project, knowing precisely how to do so only too well, as a ex-model herself.

She’d been on countless covers and strutted the catwalk for every designer in Europe until she’d quit at the age of twenty-five and parlayed her saved income into millions. With the help of a wealthy backer, of course—her former lover, who’d noted her business acumen and obtained the necessary financing. She’d done so well in the previous quarter she would be able to donate her profits to charity after every last supplier and everyone on her staff was paid.

At the founding of her company, she’d vowed to do exactly that someday to honor her mother, an embroiderer and beader, one of the petite mains, the little hands, who did the fine sewing and finishing for the great couture houses, behind the scenes in workshops on quiet Parisian streets.

Odette Gaillard now employed several hundred people at her atelier and her showroom. Models flew in from all over the world to work in her dazzling shows, and the most successful men in the world vied for front row seats to watch them.

She smiled inwardly. Most models were too self-obsessed to pay attention to their status-seeking admirers—at least until they left the business, deciding they had a right to eat more than a few hundred grams of food a day.

After she’d quit modeling, Odette had indulged herself for weeks, eating napoleons two at a time and slices of cake to her heart’s content, then quit that too, sick of sweets and happy to be done with both extremes. She didn’t envy the models and didn’t find the business of fashion all that glamorous anymore. But she worked hard.

Surely she was entitled to take a few moments for mental dalliance now and then. Who could he be? She could not remember ever seeing a man so naturally good-looking at one of her shows. Or anywhere else.

Odette watched as he rose to give his seat to Marie Arelquin’s grandmother, an ancient but still chic relic of the glory days of French fashion. In the early 1960s, Madame Arelquin had been the most exclusive couturier in Paris, limiting her clients to a handful per year. Odette had read up on the period in her mother’s books on fashion, and of course, had pored over Marie’s family scrapbooks.

Madame Arelquin had been slim and straight as a reed then, with a matchless style that was all her own. She’d favored pencil-slim skirts topped with flyaway jackets cut very full in the sleeve, immense hats designed to cast an air of mystery, over-the-elbow gloves, and clutch purses.

The Arelquin house had presided over the last era of elegance. After that, it was Courrèges and then Carnaby Street mod and then hippies, until Yves St. Laurent took the look and invented the rich gypsy.

Madame Arelquin had chosen not to fade away, developing a line of facial rejuvenation creams that seemed to work, even though she’d announced in the notoriously catty fashion press that every woman had to choose between her face and her behind at some point. Madame had let the latter get big and round, so that the former would not look starved and sick.

The strategy had worked, Odette noticed. Madame Arelquin had to be over eighty, but she had very few lines on her face. She gave her granddaughter a double air-kiss, not wanting to disturb Marie’s maquillage or her own carefully applied red lipstick. Odette smiled.

The young man managed a half-bow that was charming and not gauche in the least as he gave up his seat to the grande dame. So he had manners. That was a nice plus.

Odette found herself wondering who had taught him to be so respectful of women, and decided that his mother must have instructed him. Whoever she was, she had raised her son right.

Madame Arelquin gave him an imperious nod in return and seated herself next to Marie, crossing her legs elegantly at the ankle as she did.

Odette’s other assistant bustled up and looked over her boss’s shoulder at the restless crowd through the small opening in the curtain.

“See and be seen. It is always the same,” Lucie murmured. “Ah, there is the winner of the raffle.” She pointed the pink eraser end of her pencil at the man now standing behind the Arelquin women, then flipped through her seating chart and made a note on the front row using her own hieroglyphic.

Odette could not read it but it didn’t matter. Lucie was a wizard of organization and good at seating the rich and the famous, who slept with each other somewhat indiscriminately. No one who had recently broken up could be put next to an ex, or there was sure to be a cat fight. Amusing, but not good for business.

“I was wondering who he was,” Odette said.

“His name is Bryan Bachman. The story is that he spent his last euro on a raffle ticket for your charity and won that seat,” Lucie replied.

“Is it true?”

“The reporter says it is.” Lucie gave a very French shrug that communicated her doubt. “I am sure he has an ATM card somewhere in those jeans. It is all one needs these days.”

“What interest does he have in fashion? Does he want to be a model?”

Lucie shook her head. “I overheard the reporter from Bonjour Paris interviewing him in the lobby before the show. Apparently not. He has a degree in science from a California university and is known in his field. Her poor little slave of an assistant went wi-fi and confirmed everything he said on her laptop—I looked over her shoulder while she was doing it. The article will be online in a few hours if you want to look at it.”

Odette nodded. She didn’t want to wait to read it. “Is he in Paris by himself?”

“I think that is what he said—”

“Where is he staying?” Odette asked, not caring how shamelessly interested she sounded.

“He didn’t say, she didn’t ask, but I don’t think he will sleep on the streets,” Lucie said dryly. “Not with that face and that body. He could have his pick of the women here, don’t you think?”

“You ask too many rhetorical questions, Lucie. Let’s stick to the facts,” Odette said.

“I have told you what I know. I thought he looked like a cyclist or a climber, traveling through Europe before he returns to college.” Lucie paused to look at him again. “So I was surprised when he said he had a degree. He seems too old to be a student. But he is certainly an athlete.”

“I thought the same thing. And Marc did too.”

Lucie permitted herself a polite chuckle. “Marc can read the meaning of people’s clothes like a detective.”

Odette smiled. “Of course. He is a devotee of Hercule Poirot.”

“Who is that?” Lucie turned her head in response to a softly voiced call for her assistance. “Zut. I am needed. Excuse me.”

“Of course,” Odette murmured. Every seat was now full, and more people had squeezed in along the walls in back.

Her bouncers were examining invitations and steering a few people who proffered faked ones to the exits. Other assistants scrambled to find folding chairs but inevitably some onlookers would remain standing.

The crowding added to the excitement. So it went. This was her fifth show in as many years. Each one had been more popular than the last.

Odette sighed inwardly as the house lights went down. The walls reflected a deep blue that suggested an undersea realm. She felt at the moment as if she were looking into an aquarium filled with colorful fish, very chic fish with rolling eyes and mouths that opened and closed as they moved about, sometimes in unison and sometimes wriggling frantically when they found themselves alone.

Bryan Bachman seemed out of place among them, but not at a loss. He was self-assured and confident, studying everything he saw with interest. A scientist, hmm? She would not have taken him for one, but she supposed California intellectuals dressed differently.

The Arelquins were doing their best to make conversation with him. Marie Arelquin seemed to be explaining something. Bryan nodded as if he understood and looked up suddenly at the curtain.

At Odette.

She had fancied herself invisible. Apparently not. Odette took a step back. He had to have seen her, so penetrating was his look. Standing there staring, now that the house lights had gone down, she must be visible behind the curtain.

Not that it mattered. Would he even know who she was?

Most likely not. Of course, Lucie saw to it that the creative head of the firm got plenty of publicity, and Odette was photographed often. Still, Bryan Bachman didn’t look like someone who read Vogue or Details or W.

The models were lining up not far away behind the curtain, nervous and clumsy in their high heels. They had very little in the way of material to conceal any stumbles or awkward turns on the catwalk, adorned only in the scantiest bras and panties ever seen, and fanciful feather trains and headdresses, which Marc and his team had provided, that harked back to the show-girls of the Folies Bergère.

Ready or not, they had to step out. Two or three girls glanced her way, and Odette gave them an encouraging smile.

She let the gap in the curtain fall closed, and went to confer with her makeup people, attending to last-second details, feeling rather distracted.

As soon as the parade down the catwalk was underway, she could escape and watch most of the show from a distance, as she usually did. It was difficult to get a real feeling of the honest reaction to the new looks otherwise.

Then she would run backstage and emerge at the very end to take a bow.

Who was she?

Bryan had noticed someone behind the curtain from the moment he’d sat down, peeking through. When the house lights went down, he’d seen her in outline.

Fantastic shape, definitely female.

Just before the models stepped out, she’d moved away from there. But he remembered her eyes, intent and watchful as a cat’s, outlined with dark pencil. That was about all he could see, but he had a feeling those eyes belonged to someone beautiful.

Then again, everyone at a fashion show this exclusive was beautiful or acted like they were. But the two women on either side of him didn’t seem to notice that they were being watched.

The scene was a freakin’ zoo otherwise.

And he no longer had a place in the front row, not that he cared. He hadn’t expected to win the seat when he’d bought the raffle ticket, just wanted to use up the last of his euros before he flew back home.

He’d come to Paris purely for the hell of it, on his way back from hiking in the Alsace-Lorraine region, on the recommendation of a former roommate. Spectacular scenery, but too damn cold and slippery this time of year.

He somehow imagined that Paris would be warmer. Not in April. He’d stashed his stuff in an inexpensive hotel near the airport, taken the Métro into the heart of the city and wandered around. Brrr.

Bryan understood enough French to know that the French knew he was American, and left him alone. Tant pis, as they said. Tough luck.

The city was interesting, but he didn’t have enough money to enjoy much of it, outside of watching the Eiffel Tower light up at night, which was free and very cool.

Even romantic, if he’d had anyone to share it with.

And he’d thought the pretty girl selling raffle tickets was interested in him. Hah.

He’d handed over a couple of bills and jotted down his cell phone number when she’d said something about a charity and a fashion show in the same breath. Whatever.

The text message that he was a winner had surprised him, but he’d had nothing else to do that night. So here he was, making out okay in French, mostly because a lot of them spoke decent English.

Marie Arelquin looked at his tank top and smiled.

“Is that where you are from?” she asked.

He looked down, not remembering what he had on right away. “Uh—yeah. Newport Beach. I grew up there but I’ve lived all over California.”

Two really young women in the next row leaned over to take a look too. See and be seen, he thought. He was hardly God’s gift to fashion, but they eyed him appreciatively.

The first nodded wisely. “Le O.C.,” she said to her friend as if he wasn’t able to figure out what that meant.

“Non. Baywatch,” her friend replied.

“They think you are an actor,” Marie whispered.

He looked back at the girls to see if they’d heard her say that, but they were busy gawking at some other guy, who actually was famous.

Bryan couldn’t blame them for the mistake, since he was dressed like a lifeguard on the lam. Couldn’t be helped. He’d dug out the wetsuit jacket because the weather was cold, and it offered lightweight warmth. The tank top had been underneath it in his duffel bag. He hadn’t put on his sweater, underestimating how damp it was.

Everything else he owned was dirty, including his underwear, but he wasn’t staying in the kind of hotel that had laundry service. So, he’d shown up in take-me-as-I-am mode.

Milling around before the show started was interesting and the people-watching was a hoot. So this was what fashionistas were like. He’d memorized every detail he could to share with his mother in his next e-mail, and then made friends with Marie Arelquin, a sophisticate who didn’t seem to mind his funky clothes or his shaggy hair, and who didn’t try to hit on him, either.

Talking to Marie was fun and her English was a lot better than his French. And what could he do but give up his seat to her grandmother when she’d edged through the crowd?

Madame Arelquin was or had been a big deal in this weird world, judging by the deferential nods she got, but these days she apparently wasn’t quite as big a deal as Mademoiselle Arelquin, right up front. He was getting an idea of the hierarchy involved, and feeling a little like he’d gone back in time to the court of the Sun King. Bow and scrape. Check out each other’s clothes and shoes.

As far as that went, the old lady had eyed him haughtily from head to toe, and Bryan got the message. His own mother would have been proud of how fast he’d been to offer the coveted front-row chair to her.

The music thundered and the show began.

Bryan stood behind the Arelquins, who were talking in rapid-fire French that he half-understood as one leggy babe after another strode by at the level of his nose. The first two or three made his cock twitch—high heels and underwear were an effective combination—but after a while, the models and what they were wearing began to blur in his mind.

Something about the way they walked was off-putting. Their bodies were unnatural, for one thing. Their legs were extremely thin, and so were their arms. And their butts were just too flat. Boobs, non-existent. Were there guys who got off on women this skinny and underfed?

Bryan liked the kind of female you could get a grip on. These girls looked breakable.

Never mind, he told himself. Just get the details. He knew his mother wouldn’t believe he’d gotten a front-row seat at a designer show. But that reporter from Bonjour Paris had had him pose for pictures before they entered the showroom hall, and made the photographer guy promised to e-mail Bryan the jpegs that same night.

The photographer, who was the essence of arty cool in a shaved head, Harley tattoo, T-shirt, and a black leather vest, never looked at Bryan except through the image finder. But he’d said yes. Bryan figured he’d stop at an internet café and forward whatever popped up in his e-mail as soon as he could.

Come to think of it, he’d post them on Facebook. His UC Santa Cruz postgrad pals would be sure to get on his case about the political incorrectness of a fashion show.

He’d get a more honest reaction from his minimum-wage-earning, wave-riding, jock friends. They’d either laugh their skanky heads off or die of envy. And then there was the head of the marine biology department, a lonesome weirdo they all called the Giant Squid. The Squid would want to get his tentacles on a model, no doubt about it.

“Bryan,” Marie was saying. “Do you want to go out after the show to eat with me and my grandmother?”

He loved the way she said that. Grrranmuzzaire. It sounded better than just plain grandmother and her lips looked so pretty as she parted them, waiting for his reply. But even so. Hitting on a woman with her formidable grandmother right by her side? Nope. Wasn’t going to happen.

“Ah—no. Sorry. I have a, uh, previous engagement.” That sounded lame, he thought.

It would have to do. He didn’t have enough money to take her and Madame Arelquin out, and he wasn’t going to let them take him out.

Marie only smiled and nodded, and returned her attention to the show, making notes on a pad of paper. Laptops weren’t allowed, she’d said. She’d explained that new designs were often copied within hours of their appearance on catwalks. So, no cellphones, no cameras.

He edged his way into an opening between her chair and the next, and squatted down on his haunches. A passing model looked down with surprise and gave him a startled smile. The occupant of the chair to Marie’s right, a tycoon type in an impeccably tailored suit, glared at him.

Bryan grinned back. The model, seventeen at most, hadn’t even noticed the tycoon, who was undoubtedly a model hound. The dude had to be in his fifties, though. But obviously rich. Happy hunting, Bryan thought with disgust.

“I appreciate the invitation, Marie. You’ve been great about explaining all this.” He gestured toward the stage as he turned his attention again to Marie. “Thanks.”

“Is crazy, no?”

“Yes. But fun in a way.”

“For me, it is work.”

Her grandmother, on Marie’s left, leaned over and got his attention with a crooked finger. “So you are enjoying the show?”

“Sure.” Bryan glanced up at an improbably high pair of cork-soled wedge sandals clomping by. The model dragged an equally improbable swath of peacock feathers after her, raising a faint swirl of dust.

“The girls are beautiful,” Madame Arelquin said with approval.

“Oui,” Bryan said. It seemed like the only thing he could say. And he wasn’t totally lying. They were amazing in their gangly, gorgeous way, just not his type.

He couldn’t imagine actually dating one. He would feel guilty sinking his teeth into a juicy BLT while they, what, sucked on toothpicks and sipped ice water?

Besides, you probably couldn’t even get a BLT in Paris. Or a chili dog. Two things he really craved.

He was hungry, and truth be told, he didn’t know if he could make it to the end of this fashion extravagoonzah, especially because he didn’t know how long it was going to last.

Model after model appeared, in teeny thongs and fancy bras. The effect was oddly unerotic. Plus the noise of the throbbing techno music, and the crush of heavily made-up, perfumed, overdressed women—okay, there were a few men in the mix but so what—it was giving him an headache.

He rose, made some excuse in half-assed French that the very nice Arelquins accepted, and got as far as the back wall.

And there she was. The woman whose eyes he had seen behind the curtain. Killer curves, long legs. The shadow template stuck in his head.

“Hello,” he said. He wasn’t going to ask why she’d been peeking out. She must have something to do with the show, probably was a production coordinator or something like that. He tried to think of the French for headache, so he could ask her if she had one too, and couldn’t remember it to save his life.

Hell, he could do better than that for small talk. He didn’t want to sound like a hypochondriac. Bryan hoped she spoke English. A lot of the Parisians around his age seemed to, and she was obviously only a few years older than he was, if that. Worth a shot.

“Great show,” he said. That seemed like a safe opening line.

“Thank you.” She looked toward the stage, observing the models stalking down it, executing their turns with thousand-yard stares over the audience, and heading back behind the curtain.

Bryan looked at her. Whoever she was, she had style. French women knew how to dress. The outfit was one of a kind, almost like she’d put together bits and pieces from a thrift shop.

She had on a fitted black jacket with a big lapel pin of a pelican that made him smile. Underneath that was a camisole—was that what those tight tops were called? Maybe it was a corset. Anyway, it was low-cut and made of black lace that stretched over beautiful full breasts.

Get a grip, he told himself, wishing in another second that that particular verb hadn’t come to mind. Of course, he did want to get his hands on that sweet flesh. No, you jerk. Keep your eyes moving.

Bryan drew in a breath. No matter where he looked, she made him hot. He glanced down at a short skirt in hot pink showing off strong, slender legs that got that way because she undoubtedly walked a lot and bicycled and danced. And jumped for joy.

Something about her said that uninhibited joy was part of the deal.

Yeah.

What would it feel like to have legs like that clasped around his lower back while he—you don’t even know her name.

She was talking to him. “I heard you won a ticket to a front row seat.”

“Huh?” He lifted his gaze from her shoes, which were strapped at the ankle, high-heeled but cut low, with toe cleavage. She had been tapping one foot idly, which had gotten his attention. He was pretty sure her stockings were seamed. He’d love to bend her over and find out if garters were involved. “Oh—right. Quite a view. I’ve never been to anything like this.”

“I can tell.” There was a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

Now he was close enough to see their color—green with dashes of gold. But it was the expression in them that mesmerized him. Soulful. Intelligent. Woman-of-the-world.

Whereas he, Bryan Bachman, was still knocking around said world, waiting to hear from graduate schools while he tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. She looked like she had. She looked successful, despite her thrift store outfit, which was cute as hell.

“Hey, would you like to get out of here and get something to eat?” he said all of a sudden. “How about a BLT? My treat.”

Big spender. But he could probably afford that. She actually seemed pleased. He would have sworn that she blushed for a second, and was amazed when she did.

“Ah, what is a BLT?” she asked politely.

“That’s a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich,” he explained. “I’ve been craving one. It’s really simple and really good, when you get the ingredients right. The tomato has to be ripe and the mayonnaise is key—”

“It sounds very American,” she said thoughtfully. “But then we French invented mayonnaise.”

“Yeah.” Bryan stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, wondering if he’d made a mistake. He should have asked her out to a good bistro, not that he knew one from another. Of course, he could have asked her to recommend one. And risk sounding like a mooch? No way.

He didn’t even know where to get a decent BLT in Paris, let alone whether she’d like his favorite sandwich.

“So you want American food,” she was saying. “We can go to Le Diner, then.”

“You know a place?”

She nodded. “The chef is as French as I am, but the cuisine is definitely not.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Bryan asked sheepishly.

Odette had to laugh. “I have heard only good things about it, but I have never been there. I do know that tourists haven’t discovered it yet—it just opened.”

“Okay, that’s a good thing. I won’t run into anyone I know from back home.”

Odette gave him a look of mock offense. “Why? Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”

“Hell, no,” he said, flashing a startled smile. “You must be the hottest woman in Paris. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Not at all.” She gave him a smile that melted him.

“Anyway, I’d much rather look at you than a bunch of fanny-packers.”

“Ah. I see. Merci, m’sieu.”

He looked around at the filled-to-capacity hall as if he had no idea where he was and gave one last absent-minded glance at the catwalk. The music was louder and the models were dancing now, working the crowd.

The model hound in the row he’d left reached up and tried to grab an ankle. Bryan noticed the beefiest bouncer heading that way.

“Cochon,” Odette said indignantly. “There is one at every show.”

“He is a pig. Do you want me to—”

She shook her head. “The situation is under control.”

The tycoon was being lifted off his feet and hauled away faster than he could call a lawyer.

“All right. Well…shall we go?” He’d gotten lucky, she’d said yes, and he wanted to leave before anything else distracted her.

“Yes.”

Bryan looked around, somewhat disoriented by the place and the ever-louder music. They must be getting around to the grand finale.

“Lead the way,” he said to her.

She shook her head. “That’s not how I like to do things.” She stepped forward and slid her arm around his. “You are the man, no?”

“Uh…yeah. I like the way you say that.”

It took several minutes to get near the exit. He seemed even taller that close. His body so near hers, his thighs brushing hers, made her think of what she wanted: sex. Uncomplicated by emotion. But as passionate as two people who didn’t really know each other could make it.

Not just yet. She needed to find out more about him, look him up online, confirm Lucie’s offhand remarks. Odette whispered a few words to one of the bouncers on her way out so Marc would not worry.

Looking into the mirror of the bathroom in Le Diner, Odette asked herself a few interesting questions as she reapplied her eye pencil.

The first was What do you think you are doing? And the second, which was trickier, was When are you going to tell him who you are? He didn’t seem to realize that she was Odette Gaillard of Oh! Oh! Odette Lingerie, hadn’t asked her name. Just talked to her, half in schoolboy French that made her giggle, half in English, in between bites of his BLT. Even better, he’d listened when she talked.

But she’d been a little evasive, taking advantage of his not-so-fluent French to avoid questions. She’d ordered a BLT too. He was right. The sandwich was very good and very much the sort of thing one could crave.

So was he. Bryan Bachman was exactly what she wanted right now, and she needed a fling.

On a mad impulse, she’d deliberately skipped the grand finale of her own show. Missed her bow. Done without the loud acclaim of the crowd in attendance and the kissyface insincerity of the well-wishers afterward.

Odette had realized in the moment when Bryan had asked her out that she needed a holiday from the hoopla.

After five shows, she knew only too well that buyers would buy. Sex always sold.

Her designs were flirty and fun, of no real consequence. Her collection escaped the criticism reserved for true haute couture: the deconstructionists of fashion who turned garments inside out, and the architects of fabric whose pleats and poufs made women’s bodies invisible.

Marc had probably seized the opportunity to take her bow for her, and accept the bouquets of roses like the beauty pageant winner he longed to be in his retro fantasies of glamour.

Bless Marc’s gender-bending heart. Her assistant would be the first to understand a mad impulse to have a bizarre but tasty sandwich with a stranger. And whatever happened next.

Odette straightened her pelican pin, touched up her lipstick, and went out the swinging door, back to Bryan.

He’d finished the sandwich and was tackling a plate of frites. He looked up when she slid into the opposite side of the booth.

“This place is great. They didn’t miss a trick.” He gestured with a frite toward the quilted steel walls and the mirrored tile above it that reflected the cakes and pies in a glass-doored cabinet behind the counter.

Odette took another frite from his plate and nibbled at the end of it. “I am glad you like it.”

He studied her. “I like the way you eat that.”

“What do you mean?” She set it down on her plate.

“Like it was forbidden fruit. But you eat it anyway.”

“It is.” She took a sip of coke. “I am in the fashion business.”

“Right. I haven’t even asked you what it is you do exactly. Or your name.”

“Odette.” She waved the napkin she picked up from the table again as if that were enough of an answer to the rest of it.

“Just Odette?”

“Odette Gaillard.” She watched his face. Her name didn’t seem to register with him one way or another.

“Pretty name,” he said. “But then everything sounds pretty in French.”

She hesitated, not sure whether to explain more and not wanting to at all. A fling was a fling. Explaining who she was would feel something like handing him a balance sheet or pulling up an e-file of press clippings on her company. For a little while longer, she wanted to be no more than herself.

“So what was it that you do again?” he asked.

“Ah, I am a stylist.” That wasn’t so very far from the truth.

“That means that you…style things?” He gave her a hopeful look.

“Yes.”

“Help me out here. I’m just a guy. What does that mean?”

Odette picked up another frite and ate it in two bites. Fried food gave her courage. “If I were to style an outfit for an American athlete, I would go to the flea markets and vintage clothing stores to buy exactly what you have on. A tank top from a famous beach and a wetsuit jacket—”

“Actually, neoprene is too hot to walk around in where I’m from, but Paris is cold in the spring, so it works. At home I wouldn’t be wearing it except when I’m actually in the water.”

She 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.

“Wow. Nice place.” He looked around at the furnishings. “You have interesting stuff.” He ran a hand over an armchair made of slabs of clear lucite that had red roses embedded in it, stems and all. “Is this for sitting in or is this a work of art?”

“You can sit in it if you like.”

“That didn’t answer my question.” He turned around and settled himself in it. “Not very comfortable. I prefer upholstery.”

Odette pointed to a sofa thickly padded in dark green velvet. “Then sit there.”

“Only if you do.” He looked at the naked nymphs carved on the legs of the low table in front of the sofa before he stretched out. “Now that’s something you generally don’t see on an American coffee table.”

“Why not?”

“No bare breasts allowed on the furniture, I guess. They seem to be everywhere in Paris. Even on the billboards.”

Odette held her breath. The taxi had passed a huge ad for her company screened onto vinyl and attached to the side of a building. Had he noticed the Oh! Oh! Odette logo?

Apparently not.

“I just have to get used to it,” Bryan was saying. “I bet you don’t give bare boobs a second thought, not with a job like yours.”

“Not really, no.”

He gave the table an admiring look. “So where’d you get this thing?”

“Les Puces. The flea market. It’s a Victorian piece. Not valuable. I just liked it.”

“Okay.” He leaned back against the cushions and looked around at the rest of the room. “Works with everything else. I like your style, Odette. I like everything about you. Come here.”

For some reason, the exuberant compliment and the command that followed it made her nervous.

“In a moment.” She sauntered into the kitchen, feeling very hungry and needing something to eat that would soak up the drinks they’d downed.

There was bread, plain bread, but it was exactly what she wanted. Odette extracted the long, uncut baguette from its crackling paper bag and went back into the living room with it, along with a corked, half-full bottle of wine and two glasses held dexterously in her fingers. He’d moved to the couch.

“You look like an ad for Air France,” he chuckled.

“Do I? The bread is very good. Still fresh.” She extended the long loaf to him. “Feel it.”

He gave it a squeeze and looked at her, laughing. “Is this some kind of crazy French sex ritual?” he asked, after she plopped down next to him. He accepted the morsel of bread she tore off and put into his mouth, and didn’t talk for a little while.

“Yes,” she said. Odette had several bites and so did he before he took the baguette away and set it on the coffee table.

“Mmm. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou. And a naked table. It doesn’t get better.”

She planted a kiss lightly dusted with flour on his cheek. “You must be part French.”

He nuzzled her neck. “Don’t think so.”

“What are you then?” she asked. What he was doing felt very good.

“A red-blooded, all-American man,” he growled. “That okay with you?”

“Bien sûr,” she murmured.

His lips pressed against the side of her neck for several sensual kisses before he opened his mouth and nipped her. The contact was immediately erotic, almost dominating.

Odette arched her back and let him do it, wanting only to melt into his arms and let him take over.