‘So this has been helpful?’
Joe stepped forward. ‘Amazingly so. Thank you, Jean.’
‘We’ll be sure to recommend our friend visits here,’ Imogen chimed in.
Minutes later they exited the shop, and Joe inhaled the Parisian air as they started walking in the late-afternoon sun, heading towards the Sacré Coeur.
Imogen stared down at the ground as she walked, presumably shell-shocked by the mass of information she had accrued.
‘I can’t believe we did that,’ she said.
Neither could he. What had he been thinking? Checking out a sex shop was hardly a work-related activity, however he spun it. Time to regroup.
‘Let’s stop for coffee and check out a map to find that fabric place you mentioned.’
‘OK. Good idea.’
He led the way into a small café and sat down at a scarred wooden table. A few minutes later, espresso in one hand and a map in the other, he expelled a sigh of relief. Control restored.
Until he glanced at her, took in the way she twirled a tendril of hair round her finger as she gazed at him almost speculatively.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I’m not sure I can ask,’ she said.
He snorted. ‘We just spent half an hour in a sex shop with a man extolling the virtues of a Power Stallion vibrator. Right now you can ask me anything.’
She stared at him for a moment and her lips tipped up in a smile. ‘I wish you could have seen your face when he said it still wasn’t quite the same as the real thing.’
He grinned. ‘I imagine my expression was pretty much a mirror image of yours when he explained what a g-wand does.’
Imogen giggled—a full-on, proper fit of giggles—and as he watched her features scrunch up in mirth he couldn’t help himself. A sudden chuckle fell from his lips and developed into laughter. The kind that came straight from the belly. The sort of laughter he hadn’t experienced for a while—not since his sisters had taken off travelling.
‘I can’t believe it really happened,’ Imogen said breathlessly. ‘Poor Jean. We should have bought something, really.’
Lord—she looked so beautiful when she laughed. Her face was so alive, her dark hair highlighted by t
he sunshine filtering through the window. An intense spike of desire pierced his chest, and the urge to lean across the polished wood of the table and cover her delectable mouth with his own was almost overwhelming.
Gripping the edge of the table, he forced himself to remain still, all inclination to mirth gone.
Her blue-grey eyes met his and her laughter ceased abruptly.
The silence thickened and her lips parted as her breathing quickened. Joe’s brain was scrambled. Conversation—he had to find something to say before sheer momentum tilted him towards her.
‘So, what were you going to ask?’
Imogen blinked, as if his words were reaching her through a haze of desire. ‘It doesn’t matter. Really.’
‘No, go ahead.’ Surely she grasped that they had to talk—use their lips to form words, not anything else.
‘All those things in the shop … Do you think they’re important in a relationship?’
OK. This wasn’t the topic he’d been hoping for. Damn it, couldn’t she have been wondering about the weather, or French politics, or his opinion on the socioeconomic state of Britain or something?
‘Would you like your girlfriend to come home dressed as Wonder Woman, wielding a whip?’ she continued.
‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’ As answers went it was a cop-out, but as questions went hers hadn’t exactly been social chitchat.