Kitabı oku: «The French Connection», sayfa 3

4

TO SAY HER MOUTH HUNG OPEN wide enough to accommodate a small family of yaks was being understated. If the itty-bitty round table that held her teeny-tiny coffee cup were not blocking a direct path to the ground, Shelley would have been scraping her back molars off the dusty white pebbles at that very moment.

She rose, stumbling slightly as she pushed back her folding chair. “Count de Montfort.” Her voice sounded reedy, thin.

“Please, don’t get up.” He lightly touched her forearm with his hand—a hand far larger and stronger than Shelley would have imagined for the leisurely life of a European noble. “May I join you?”

She stopped teetering only to become aware that she was barefoot. She motioned for him to sit, and he let go, leaving a warm imprint through the thin material of her suit jacket. Forcing herself not to touch it, Shelley lowered herself in her chair. She blindly fished around for her shoes and nervously watched as he pulled out a chair for himself.

What wasn’t to watch? His jet-black, slightly disheveled hair curled over the white collar of his shirt. His shirt collar was unbuttoned—no, the button was missing. Nothing else was, though. Dark stubble highlighted his angular jaw and sculpted his too-prominent cheekbones. And then there were his eyes.

“You have blue eyes.” She couldn’t help it. Now that he was no longer directly in the sun, the color of his cornflower-blue irises was clear. Shockingly clear. Sherwin-Williams couldn’t have manufactured a more startling color.

He raised his eyebrows, providing dramatic arches over the twin azure pools. “Yes, it’s rare, but it is a trait that runs in my family, particularly among the men—and not always the upstanding ones, I’m afraid.” His English was flawless, his subtle accent as melt-in-your-mouth smooth as a whole bag of M&M’s. And as for his self-deferential tone—gosh, it was beguiling in a way that could get a gal in a whole lot of trouble. He might just as well have had a sign hanging around his neck that read Danger. Proceed At Your Own Risk.

No doubt the vast majority of the female population—those with a heartbeat and a passing knowledge of birth control—would have proceeded without a care, let alone major medical insurance.

Shelley, on the other hand, silently repeated her paltry checking account balance over and over as a way to keep herself grounded.

Seemingly oblivious to Shelley’s discomfort, the count turned his head in the direction of the waiter and instantly got his attention. “Café.” He looked back at Shelley and pointed to her empty cup. “Another?” He smiled.

And at that moment Shelley forgot her bank balance, her ATM access number and the name of her bank. She shook her head no, not trusting herself to speak lest she blurt out something equally embarrassing along the lines of, “I want to have your first-born child and strip you naked—preferably in reverse order.”

So rather than risk mortifying herself even further, Shelley concentrated on putting her shoes back on. She located one, but the other seemed to have gone AWOL. She poked around discreetly.

The waiter scurried off and Edmond studied Shelley. “So, Dream Villas has decided to make the rather grand gesture of sending over a personal representative to pay condolences?” He peered around the edge of the table. “I believe that’s my foot and not your shoe that you’ve located.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Shelley immediately drew back her foot. “If you’ll just give me a second. My feet were swollen after the flight, so I took my shoes off to be more comfortable. But now one of the little suckers has decided to make a break for it—kind of appropriate here, don’t you think? Seeing as we’re sitting in front of a former jail. Jailbreak? Get it?” She stopped. “I’m rambling, I know.” And decided the best course of action was to lift up the tablecloth and bend down to find the errant flat.

And maybe stay there. Until the next millennium at the very least.

After a long moment, the count leaned down. “I was starting to wonder if I should send for a rescue party.”

Shelley looked up and saw his bemused grin peeking from under the edge of the cloth. She straightened up—and proceeded to hit the back of her head on the underside of the table. Overhead, the cups rattled.

She pulled back and came to an upright position, rubbing the back of her head but stopping as soon as she saw him reemerge from below.

“Your shoe?”

“My shoe?” She saw her slide in his hand and remembered what she had been doing in the first place. “Oh, right, my shoe. Thank you.” As she leaned to retrieve it, a lock of her perennially unruly hair loosened from the barrette, which was meant to hold the thick mass of curls in an efficient twist, and it tumbled forward.

And that was enough.

That singular, insouciant flounce of dark red hair had Edmond suddenly reevaluating his first opinion of Shelley McCleery as a bland if somewhat clumsy American. Not that he had a negative image of Americans in general, mind you. Far from it.

Some of Edmond’s fondest memories dated back to his time as a seventeen-year-old exchange student in Grantham, New Jersey, where he had enjoyed those quintessentially New World contributions to civilization—lacrosse, The Simpsons and Philly cheesesteaks. Ah, what bliss! Not only that, CDs were cheap by European standards, and female classmates were seemingly all above average in terms of brain-power and the length of their well-proportioned legs.

It must have been all that lacrosse.

Even more miraculous, a French accent allowed an otherwise shy bookworm, one who constantly fretted that he had yet to experience a growth spurt, to get more than the proverbial foot in the door.

Ah, what bliss!

Until the end of June, that is. That was when he’d gotten word that his grandfather had died on the eighteenth green of St. Andrew’s Royal and Ancient. Since he had yet to putt in—with the distinct possibility of making a birdie—Edmond knew Grand-père must have felt cheated.

Edmond had felt cheated, as well. Gone was the possibility of lifeguarding at the Jersey shore that summer. Back he came to study for the baccalauréat, prep for the entrance exam to one of the elite grandes écoles and ultimately a career in government. Such was the decree by Grand-père’s widow, the last of his many couturier-clad and nipped-and-tucked wives. “It was your grandfather’s last wish,” Françoise had declared melodramatically over her third glass of sherry and just before she’d patted his bum when he’d been leaving the study. “He wanted you to preserve the family’s long tradition of service to the country.”

Frankly, Edmond figured his grandfather’s last wish would have been that he’d go two under par for a full round of golf. Edmond also didn’t cotton to being goosed by his stepgrandmother, whose face was so tight she could barely blink.

But in his own way Edmond did feel an obligation to the family legacy, a legacy—mind you, that included as many scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells as diplomats and statesmen. Given this latitude, he figured he was perfectly justified in fulfilling his calling in his own particular way—no excuses necessary, thank you.

Yet as Edmond held on to Shelley McCleery’s slim Italian shoe—very fine quality, he noticed—he was struck by how much he really didn’t want to think about his calling. Not when the shoe belonged to a slender, finely shaped foot which in turn was attached to a well-turned ankle—that being as much of her leg as he could glimpse beneath the table and below the hem of her trousers. And having never given much thought to having a shoe, foot or, for that matter, ankle fetish, the arousing images going through his mind were…well, really quite arousing.

He shifted in his chair.

“I’ll take my shoe then,” she prompted, holding out her hand. “It’s one of my favorites, not to mention that I got it for a great price at Nordstrom’s in Woodbridge, New Jersey, which, if you’re ever in the States, I highly recommend checking out—not that you need to worry about that kind of thing.”

Edmond raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’d be surprised.”

“In any case, ever since I discovered that my ability to hop on one foot for a prolonged distance was not up to Olympic standards, roughly about the same time I realized I would never be a prima ballerina, rock star or winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest—I was still holding out for secretary of state, mind you—I became quite fond of wearing shoes on both feet.”

Edmond hesitated before speaking and looked once more beyond the severe pantsuit and the prim hairstyle to the winking green eyes—rather startling emerald-green, he realized—and saw there was something quite unique about Shelley McCleery beyond the fact that she had mentioned New Jersey, the sybaritic utopia of his adolescence.

“My shoe?” A note of impatience tinged her question.

He coughed. “Of course. Allow me.” And on the hard pebbles of the café’s courtyard and in the ominous shadow of one of southern France’s most imposing prisons, he knelt down on one knee and extended Shelley’s shoe toward her.

She looked furtively around, relieved to find that the proprietor, who was leaning against the sun-drenched stucco wall of his establishment, was totally intent on deciphering the daily racing form.

“I feel quite silly, you know,” she said and reluctantly raised her naked foot.

“You think you feel silly? Imagine how I feel?”

“Then why do it?”

He gave her a lopsided smile, and she noticed the button on the cuff of his sleeve was about ready to fall off.

“Why do it?” he repeated her question as he thought. “Because this may be my one and only chance to play Prince Charming.” He reached for her foot with his free hand and, as he held the back of her ankle, slid on her shoe.

His head was bent, and she couldn’t see his face, only his wavy black hair falling this way and that. It really was too long and desperately needed to be cut, or barring that, combed. She could think of any number of women ready to take on the task. “Actually, in your case it’s Count Charming,” she joked.

But then stopped.

Because his fingers were caressing the sensitive skin at the back of her heel. Should she say something, extricate her foot in some way? Did she really want to?

A noisy seagull chose that moment to swoop over and land on the ground in front of the café. It walked in its stiff-legged gait and poked among the stray sugar wrappers and baguette crumbs that had blown to the ground. From its purposeful stride, it was clear the bird was familiar with this exercise. It stopped a few feet from the table and stared at Shelley with its black, button-shaped eyes.

And just like that the moment was broken. Edmond let go of Shelley’s foot and settled himself back in his chair.

She tucked her legs under the table.

He coughed into his hand.

She became entranced by the sea.

“Another coffee?” he asked.

She brought her gaze back to him. “No. No, thank you. I think I need to moderate my mix of uppers and downers if I’m going to stay awake this evening.” She rubbed her finger on the Teflon-coated tablecloth, with its flower-print pattern. “Not to change the subject too abruptly, but I wanted to tell you how sad I was to hear of the death of your grandmother, Madame la Comtesse.”

“That’s very kind.” A note of formality descended over the conversation. “In point of fact, she wasn’t my actual grandmother since she was my grandfather’s third wife. My real grandmother, along with my parents, died while strolling along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice many years ago when I was quite young. A Milanese banker, distraught at his mistress leaving him for the center-forward of the Forza Napoli soccer team, lost control of his Lamborghini, which jumped the sidewalk and struck them.”

“How—” melodramatic seemed too insensitive “—tragic.” There were worse things after all than having a father run off to the circus.

“Yes, well, they had just finished having aperitifs at the Hôtel Negresco, so I think they were feeling no pain.” The way he worked his jaw belied the flippancy of his remark.

“At least you had your grandfather.” Who later also died on him, Shelley realized. The layers of tragedy were beginning to rival Les Misérables.

Edmond signaled to the waiter and pointed one finger toward his empty cup. The man reluctantly put down his racing form and went inside to make another espresso. “Yes, I was very lucky. And then there were my aunts, of course.”

“Yes, Marie-Jeanne and Isabelle are clearly totally enamored of you.” Shelley saw him frown. “What? Have I said something inappropriate? I mean, I hope you don’t think I was forward calling your aunts by their first names. Isabelle insisted, you see.”

Edmond paused as the waiter delivered his new espresso, taking away the old cup but leaving the bill. “No, it’s not that. It’s that most people cannot tell my aunts apart. True, there are two years between them in age—Marie-Jeanne being the older at seventy-three, not that she would ever admit that—but they look practically like jumelles, twins.”

Shelley nodded. “Yes, but Isabelle’s eyes are slightly wider apart and Marie-Jeanne has a small mole near her right ear.”

Edmond leaned back in his chair and scrutinized her carefully. “Remarkable.”

“Actually not that remarkable. It’s just a matter of training. I once studied to be an art historian, so it’s just that I notice details better than most people.”

He continued to stare at her as he lifted his cup and drank.

Shelley gulped and turned to the water. She wasn’t used to people intensely gazing in her direction. Even Paul had never gazed on her with such interest—the televised coverage of the NCAA basketball championship maybe, but never her.

Naturally, she did the only thing a gal unused to rapt attention plus lacking a discreet application of Clinique light-as-a-feather but full-covering foundation could do—she turned a deep pink hue akin to a floribunda rose.

“You’re blushing,” Edmond observed.

“It must be the sun.” Shelley diverted her gaze toward the dock. “Is that the ferry I hear?”

He turned in the direction of the small quay at the bottom of the stone stairway, then glanced at his watch. “Even arriving reasonably on time.” He finished his coffee in one gulp.

“Actually I think this is the boat that was due an hour and twenty minutes ago.” She slipped the small piece of paper with the bill from under her cup and fumbled for her bag and her change purse.

He reached out. “Allow me.”

She clutched her beaded purse decorated with the face of Betty Boop. It was at moments like these—alien, foreign moments with a sexy, foreign nobleman—that Shelley could use some Boop-Oop-A-Doop. “Monsieur le Comte—”

“Please call me Edmond. Whenever someone uses the title, I have this feeling that I am being asked to meet their very eligible daughter.”

On his comment alone she had no qualms handing over the check. Besides, it came to under the equivalent of two dollars, so it wasn’t as if she owed him any favors like a quickie in one of the corner cells. Hmm, a quickie in one of the corner cells…

Shelley cleared her throat and replied, “I’m sure you suffer through the indignities of matchmaking as nobly as possible.” She mentally thanked Betty Boop for her outburst of Dutch courage and slipped the change purse back in her Miu Miu bag—a hand-me-down from Abigail, who had moved on to a monogamous purchasing relationship with Bottega Veneta ever since her promotion to partner.

“Are you trying to make fun of me?” Edmond asked, his voice aghast.

Shelley shrugged. “Only because you invite it.”

Edmond pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders—something he did very well being French and jaded, not to mention having very broad yet flexible shoulders. “You’re right. Anyway, I shouldn’t complain about the cream of female aristocracy throwing themselves at me. Luckily my aunts tend to fend off the worst of them. They have this inflated view of my worth—” if only they knew, Edmond thought “—and deem most prospects beneath me.”

“Funny, I got the impression it was the exact opposite.” Shelley had visions of Isabelle plying eligible women from Aachen to Zermatt with all sorts of baked goods. “I’d say their matchmaking skills are pretty well honed.”

Edmond blinked slowly. Yet another surprise from Ms. McCleery. “You’re saying…that my aunts suggested that you…I?” He made a circle with his hand.

Shelley held up a hand in turn. “Not to worry, your virtue is safe with me.” Her virtue after a few more of his self-deprecating grimaces was another matter completely.

He leaned forward. “Perhaps this is something we should discuss further—on the boat ride back to Marseilles.” He emptied a pocket of some change—retrieving a canceled Paris métro ticket that had tumbled out at the same time—and left the euros on the table. Shelley noticed he was a generous tipper.

She also noticed that even within the range of a friendly harborside chat, she was rapidly moving out of her league. She might have envisioned a romantic interlude with some archetypal charming count, during which time she pictured them both skipping joyously and seemingly weightlessly through the misty dawn—she clothed in a diaphanous dress of Grecian folds, her hair flowing about her shoulders and never in her nose or mouth, he in a white pirate shirt open to reveal a manly chest with a discreet amount of chest hair…

But maybe not quite yet. Not when jet lag coupled with fear was the principal force consuming her body.

Instead she assumed a businesslike demeanor, one that fit the practical side of her nature all too well. “Actually I’d prefer to discuss the matter of the Dream Villas contract—at dinner back at the chateau this evening. Your aunts have arranged it, and I know that Isabelle is quite emphatic that I taste her fruit tart.” The less said about the implied aphrodisiac qualities, the better.

Edmond raised one eyebrow thoughtfully and appeared to consider her statement for a moment. “All right. Dinner at the chateau it is. In which case, I’ll drive you back to Aix after the ferry lands in Marseilles.”

Shelley rose, making sure that she had her shoes before she did so. “That won’t be necessary. I’ve got a car.” She walked across the stones in the direction of the ferry landing.

He pushed back his chair, its feet scraping on the stones. “You drove? In Marseilles?” he asked, quickly following in her heels. And very nice heels they were.

Shelley stopped, only to find Edmond looming over her one step higher on the descending stairway. A more defensive posture she didn’t need.

She continued the descent to the sea—not a metaphor for the current state of affairs, she assured herself without much conviction. “Forget the driving. I found the parking to be the real challenge. Fortunately, I found this underground garage by the Vieux Port—” She turned when she reached the mooring and saw him hesitate at the bottom step. “What?” she asked. “Did I do something wrong about parking there? Isn’t it safe?”