Perfect Strangers

That’s a double entendre if I’ve ever heard one. Spoken in the same husky tone from moments before, his words carry a hidden meaning, a dark undercurrent of sensuality that tightens my stomach and makes me swallow hard around the sudden lump in my throat.

Or is my imagination playing tricks on me? Is he merely making conversation and I’m reading too much into innocent words?

Dammit, I hate having a brain that manufactures magical portals out of everyday cracks in a wall! Life would be so much easier if I were an accountant.

“That would be great,” I say carefully, looking everywhere but at him.

I hear his low chuckle and know that I’m amusing him.

Then from somewhere inside his suit jacket comes a muted electronic ding. I glance over. Frowning, he reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a cell phone, small and black, the size of a credit card. It’s thinnest one I’ve ever seen. Must be a European model not available in the States.

He takes one look at the screen and his entire body stiffens.

“Everything okay?”

His gaze flashes up to meet mine. He stares at me for a fraction of a moment, a strange new hardness in his eyes, then he says curtly, “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“Go? Where?” I look around the restaurant, as if searching for a plausible explanation for this sudden turn of events, but James is already standing.

When he doesn’t answer, I know we’re in Touchy Subject area again.

Feeling dismayed, I allow him to help me out of my chair. Then he ushers me through the restaurant with his hand flattened protectively on the small of my back, moving his gaze swiftly left and right as if visually sweeping the area for land mines as we head to the door.

When we’re in the elevator heading down and he’s standing stiff and silent beside me, I lose my patience with the cloak and dagger routine. “Are you going to tell me why you’re so angry all of a sudden, or am I going to have to make up some story in my head that will probably be a thousand times worse than reality?”

“I’m not angry,” he snaps, sounding angry.

I sigh and close my eyes. “Okie dokie, then.”

A few seconds later, the elevator jolts to a stop.

I yelp in surprise, throwing a hand against the wall for balance. My eyes fly open. James turns away from the panel of buttons and looms over me, fire burning in his gaze as he backs me up against the elevator wall.

“It’s work. I don’t want to leave, but I have to.”

I stare up at him with narrowed eyes and a crinkled nose. “Work? An emergency portrait session, is that it? Somebody decided on a whim on a Friday night that they desperately needed you to get their mug on paper before they went to bed?”

“No, smartass. That’s not it.”

He’s big and bristling and obviously mad, but I’m not afraid of him and I’m not backing down. I know I’m the one who set up this whole no questions format, but that was before he started acting so suspicious.

“No? Okay. So your agent texted you to tell you he just lost a big sale? You have to run over to the gallery and beat him up or something?”

Through a clenched jaw, he says, “No.”

Nose to nose, we glare at each other. The heat of his body burns me right through my dress. I’m as pissed off as he is, but holy shit do I want him to kiss me.

He can tell. He drops his gaze to my mouth. The heat between us ratchets up a few hundred degrees.

“I’m taking you home,” he growls. “I’ll come by later. It might be late. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Ha! You’re taking a lot for granted there, Romeo! Don’t come by later, I need my beauty sleep. You can try giving me a call tomorrow, but I’m not guaranteeing I’ll answer, because I’m feeling a little weirded out by this whole scenario. The only reason I can think why you’d suddenly get called away in the middle of dinner on a Friday night and then start acting all sorts of freaked out and paranoid is because you’re—”

I stop, the words turning to ash in my mouth.

I was about to say “in the witness protection program”—which I realize doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I was on a roll there—but something far worse has presented itself as an option. A word even more terrifying than “fugitive” has leapt into my mind.

That word is “married.”

I stare at him in horror.

When Edmond told me at the cocktail party that James was the most eligible bachelor in Paris, I took that to mean he was single. But considering Edmond’s blasé attitude toward monogamy, it’s possible he thinks all men are lifelong bachelors, no matter what legal commitments they’ve made.

James could have a wife holed up somewhere.

This is France, after all. In America the national pastime is baseball; here it’s having a mistress or two.

James sighs heavily and closes his eyes. “You’ve got that look again like you think I’m a serial killer.”

“Okay, lover boy, I’m going to ask you a question. And you have to tell me the truth.”

He opens his eyes and stares at me, his expression wary.

“I promise this will be the last personal question I’ll ever ask. I swear on the baby Jesus and all the saints and every single angel and cherub in heaven.”

His brows draw together. “Are you very religious?”

I wave a hand dismissively in the air. “No, I’m just big on hyperbole. It’s a bad habit. My editor is always yelling at me to tone it down. Anyway, here’s my question. And you better look me right in the eye when you answer. Okay?”

Another heavy sigh. I could smack him.

I pronounce each word slowly and carefully. “Are you married?”

His eyes drill straight down into the blackest bottom of my soul. “No,” he says, just as slowly and carefully. “I’m. Not. Married.”

Folding my arms over my chest, I inspect his face. He appears to be telling the truth, but this is the same guy who pulled a credible Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde impression when the waiter first arrived at our table.

An alarm sounds. James grabs me and kisses me. Hard.

When I turn my head and break the kiss, he commands gruffly, “Stay at the apartment until I come back.”

Damn, he’s bossy.I say sourly, “If you think you’re the boss of me, pal, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Think.”

I give him a side-eye. “Excuse me?”

“The correct phrase is, ‘You’ve got another think coming,’ not thing.”

“No. That makes no sense.”

“I’m telling you, that’s what it is.”

“Who’s the writer here? Me or you? It’s thing.”

The elevator alarm sounds again, but this time it doesn’t stop, it just keeps on blaring. Looking all sorts of frustrated and sexy and hot, James mutters an oath and turns to the panel of buttons, jabbing a finger against one of them. The elevator jerks into motion again, and we’re headed down.

When the doors open moments later, he takes me by the arm and leads me out to the street, where he whistles for a cab. One immediately screeches to a stop at the curb, because even taxis are obliged to obey him.

“Why we don’t just take the Metro, I’ll never know,” I grumble under my breath.

James swings open the door of the cab, quickly inserts me into the back seat, and leans in to glare at me. “Because you’re safer in a cab, that’s why.”

That makes me blink. “Safer from what?”

He slams the door shut in my face.

Then he leans in the open front window to give the driver the address, tosses a handful of money at him, and turns and stalks away.

As the cab pulls away from the curb, I twist around in my seat and stare out the back window, watching the receding figure of James striding off into the warm Paris evening until he’s swallowed by the crowd and disappears.