A Wedding in Paris Read online

She stopped to look into the mirror, vainly attempting to do something with her hair. “You don’t have to be gallant.”

  He laughed shortly as he got up and pulled his trousers on quickly. “Gallant. Now there’s a word I don’t remember being called. I like it.” He heard her laugh and looked over his shoulder. She was crossing to the door. He couldn’t read her expression. “Seriously, I want to see you again.”

  “We’re in the same wedding party,” she reminded him glibly. No matter what she was feeling about the night they’d just shared, she didn’t want to make too much of this. That was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place, letting her feelings run away with her.

  “After that,” he insisted as he crossed to the door. “I don’t want you going back to Robert when he comes crawling to beg you to forgive him and take him back.”

  Now there was a scenario that was never going to happen. “Robert doesn’t crawl.”

  He feathered his fingers through her hair. That same funny feeling was stirring inside him. “He would if he knew what was good for him.”

  Josh knew what to say to make her feel special. Shannon paused to kiss him again, then grabbing her shoes, she sailed out the door. “You’re a dear,” she tossed over her shoulder before shutting the door behind her.

  Watching her leave, Josh felt as if he was back in senior year high school all over again. Back in high school and feeling helpless. Except that this time, he intended to do something about it.

  “OH MY GOD, were you just in Josh’s room?” Alexis demanded, her hands on her hips, her eyes registering complete shock.

  Damn.

  Walking into the hall without first looking, Shannon had all but backed into her sister. Sneaking around was just not her forte, Shannon thought.

  She decided to brazen it out. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  Alexis looked as if her world had just been shattered. “But you’re engaged—to Robert.”

  Shannon held up her left hand and wiggled her empty ring finger. “Not anymore.”

  Alexis looked at the finger, stunned. “Because you slept with Josh?” She grabbed both of Shannon’s arms, as if she was going to shake some sense into her. “Shan, do you know how many women he goes through in a year?”

  Shannon wasn’t ready to come off her cloud, not yet. “I’m not interested in those statistics.”

  “Well, you’re going to hear them,” Alexis insisted. “Gabe told me Josh likes to set his sights on a girl and see how long it takes him to wear her down. The more challenging the conquest, the better, although most women don’t even try to resist him.” Releasing her sister, Alexis waved her hands helplessly in the air. Alexis was exaggerating but she felt it was for Shannon’s own good. She didn’t want to see her sister making a mistake. Paris could turn a girl’s head and her heart. And Josh was so much more charming than Robert. “It all has something to do with his being short in high school and making up for lost time. I really didn’t pay that much attention to what Gabe said, but I do know Josh isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to settle down. He said he’s not even going to think about that until he’s at least forty. He even tried to talk Gabe out of getting married,” she finished with indignant umbrage. “And Robert called me,” she added triumphantly.

  Now that was out of character. Robert rarely had any contact with her family. He claimed she was much too involved with them, that she should “grow up” and break her ties. His attitude bothered her a great deal. “Called you? Why?”

  “Because he’s trying to reach you and couldn’t get through on your cell phone.”

  There was a reason for that, Shannon thought. She’d turned it off after she’d found out that Robert had taken some bimbo to his bed.

  “He sounded really upset,” her sister was saying.

  Men who got caught, Shannon thought, unmoved, generally were. “I’ll talk to him when I’m good and ready,” Shannon answered, knowing that wouldn’t be for a very long time. “And you, little sister, have too much on your plate to worry about what anyone else is doing—and this means me.” She raised her chin. “I can handle my own life just fine, thank you,” she concluded, only wishing she was half as certain as she tried to sound.

  THE WEDDING CEREMONY was five hours away when Shannon slipped out of the inn and went for a walk. She left without telling anyone, careful to avoid her own family and Gabe.

  And especially Josh.

  She’d never been a quitter, never run away from anything. Not life, not a challenge, not a fight. But right now, she had to admit she felt like running. Like leaving everything and everyone behind, hailing a cab to the airport and hopping the first flight back to New York. Not to see Robert, God knows. She’d ended that officially over the phone, telling him exactly what she thought and not allowing him a word in edgewise. It had felt wonderful and afterward she’d felt liberated.

  Almost as liberated as when she’d made love with Josh.

  No, her desire to flee had nothing to do with Robert, or even with throwing herself into her work, her usual cure of choice whenever she needed to keep things at bay until she could handle them. This time she just wanted to get away from the wedding and be by herself to try to sort things out. She was too close to things in the inn.

  Too close, she knew, to Josh.

  She was clearly rebounding, she insisted silently. And that wasn’t fair to Josh. She’d tried to make him understand at the rehearsal dinner last night, but her resolve kept melting whenever she was near him. She needed space.

  In her heart of hearts, if she were being honest with herself, she’d known for a while that things between Robert and her weren’t going to work out. She’d been too stubborn, too optimistic, to admit the truth.

  When she’d fallen for Robert, he’d been a different person. Slowly, he began to change and she began to change with him in order to try to please him. Over the months, she’d tried to make herself over into someone Robert would approve of. But there was always something he found fault with, some minor transgression she’d unwittingly committed which made him frown and made her heart sink. They didn’t belong together.

  Now that she’d taken the first huge step away, she had to admit that she really didn’t like the person Robert wanted her to be. Driven, but without passion, focused, but without joy.

  Stopping to smell a wild rose, Shannon closed her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Robert had laughed together. She couldn’t live like that.

  She wouldn’t live like that.

  She supposed, in a way, she had Josh to thank for her epiphany. Josh had shown her that there was life beyond Robert and for that, womanizer or not, she’d always be grateful to him.

  The trouble was, she thought as she slowly began to walk back to the inn and her responsibilities, she was falling in love with Josh. At least Robert had said he wanted to marry her. But Josh?

  She had a feeling that Alexis was right. Josh wasn’t the marrying kind. Joshua from high school might have been, but this new, improved model with the wicked, wicked mouth wasn’t.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Alexis came running down the path to her and grabbed her arms.

  “Omigod, Omigod, Omigod,” Alexis cried breathlessly, gasping for air.

  Now what? This did not look like woman who was about to be married in a few hours. Beset with problems, it looked as if Alexis had finally had her meltdown. Bracing herself, Shannon slowly extracted her arms from her sister’s death grip. “What’s wrong, Alexis?”

  “The cat,” Alexis sobbed. Her sister began pulling her back to the inn. “The cat destroyed it.”

  Okay, Alexis had officially gone over the deep end. This wasn’t making any sense. Shannon tried to stop walking, but Alexis wouldn’t let her. “What cat, Alex? Destroyed what?”

  “The cat that’s been lurking around here,” Alexis said, and Shannon vaguely recalled seeing a cat darting out of everyone’s way a couple of times. She assumed it belonged to the owner of the inn. �
�It got its claws caught in my veil. My veil, Shannon,” she wailed. “I walked into my room and found that creature shredding my veil.” Tears were flowing down her perfectly made-up face now. “What am I going to do?”

  Entering the inn, Shannon mentally crossed her fingers. It was never as bad as Alexis thought it was. “All right, let’s go see the damage.”

  Following her up the stairs like a distraught puppy, Alexis cried, “There’s nothing left.”

  There was a lot left, most of it completely untouched by furry paws or extended claws. Shannon had a strong suspicion that Alexis had sent the cat scrambling for its life before it had a chance to do any real major damage.

  Gingerly picking up the delicate material from the floor where it had fallen, Shannon carefully inspected it. She discovered a total of two small rips, both of which were not located in readily visible areas.

  Still holding the veil, she looked at her sister with confidence and smiled. “This can be fixed.”

  Alexis stared at the veil. “How?” she cried.

  Shannon slipped an arm around her sister’s slender shoulders and laughed softly. This disaster, at least, was easily remedied. Unlike her own life. “It’s called sewing, Alexis.”

  “But I don’t know how to sew,” Alexis protested.

  “We’ve got a lot of women in this place. Someone must know how to sew. In a pinch, I can do it,” she added. Her stitches weren’t the neatest, but they would hold. Alexis was still a ghostly shade of white. “Breathe, Alexis, breathe.”

  Obediently, Alexis drew air in, then slowly let it out again. She looked at her sister with unabashed relief and gratitude. “Oh, Shannon, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Shannon merely smiled, examining the material again to make sure she hadn’t missed another tear. “You’d manage.”

  Alexis shook her head. “No, really.” Wanting to do something for her, Alexis hit on the only thing she could think of. “If you want Josh, you’ve got him. I’ll have Gabe tie him up with a bow for you.”

  She mustered a smile for Alexis’s sake because she knew her sister meant well. “Thank you, Alexis, but I’ll do my own shopping for men.” Changing the subject, Shannon decided to go in search of Alexis’s future mother-in-law. Audrey Fellini liked nothing better than being needed and pitching in. “And don’t worry about the veil. Fixing it will be a piece of cake,” she assured her just before she left the room.

  The color slowly began to return to her sister’s face.

  “SO THERE YOU ARE,” Josh said, coming out to the fountain. After searching the inn, it occurred to him that Shannon might be here, where he had found her the night of the bachelor party. Was she having second thoughts about her terminated engagement? Was she searching in the water for the ring? “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Dressed and ready, with baby’s breath flowers woven through her hair, Shannon had opted for another moment alone to pull herself together before the ceremony began. Since the guests were inside, she came out here where there were only the caterers to deal with.

  At the sound of Josh’s voice, Shannon looked up and saw him walking toward her. He looked incredibly handsome in his dark tuxedo. It took effort to keep from melting all over again.

  She reminded herself of what Alexis had told her. She was only one of Josh’s many conquests. She’d thought she was okay with that. Now she knew that she wasn’t. But that was her problem, not his.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice distant. “Is there another wedding emergency?”

  “No, no emergency. I just wanted to see you.”

  As he took a step toward her, she took one step back, keeping the distance the same. “Look, there’s no need to pretend.”

  Josh looked at her uncertainly. “Pretend?”

  “That you’re interested in me,” she clarified, annoyed that her voice sounded almost squeaky to her ear. Shannon took a breath, reminding herself that she’d vowed to stay cool. “Alex told me all about your MO.”

  He looked at her blankly, all the while a hint of panic beginning to take hold. He knew in that instant that he didn’t want to lose her. Ever. She was the woman of his dreams. “My MO?”

  Her hold on patience slipped. “Will you stop repeating everything I say?”

  “When I stop being mystified by the things you say, I will,” he told her simply. “Now, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a man who’s made it his life’s goal to sleep with every woman he comes across.”

  Josh pushed his sleeve back from his wrist, looking down at his watch. “Talk fast, Shannon, I’m supposed to make love to Great-Aunt Celeste in five minutes. It’s all the time we have before the wedding starts,” he deadpanned. Then, pushing his sleeve back into place, he looked at her. “Do you see how dumb that sounds?”

  She hadn’t really meant that he wanted to sleep with every woman. Just the ones he considered attractive. She raised her chin defensively. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “Okay, you got me,” he said, raising his hands like a man surrendering. There was a reason, however shallow now that he looked back at it, he’d behaved the way he had. And why he was now ready to turn his back on his former bachelor way of life. “I was the guy everyone either ignored or ridiculed in high school and maybe, when the ‘magic fairy’ transformed me from a toad to a regular, acceptable guy, I went a little haywire for a while and tried to make up for lost time.”

  Shannon began to turn away from him, but he couldn’t let her. Moving around to face her again, Josh put his hands on her shoulders to anchor her in place. She had to hear him out.

  “Looking back, that was dumb. But maybe it happened because the one person I really wanted was never accessible to me.”

  “And that person was?” she asked.

  He couldn’t believe she was actually asking. Was she that unaware of the effect she’d always had on him? “Oh, c’mon, Shannon. Were you really that oblivious to me in high school? Was I just this invisible voice to you, the one who helped you through your math tests?”

  She stared at him, stunned. “You had a crush on me?”

  He snorted. Long-suppressed anger rose to the fore. “It was a hell of a lot more than a crush and maybe, if you hadn’t been surrounded by all those athletes, you might have realized that.”

  She continued to stare at him, utterly dumbfounded. “But you never said anything.”

  “Because I didn’t want you to laugh in my face.” It was every teenage boy’s nightmare, to be rejected as unworthy of the person he dreamed of every night.

  She looked at him for a long moment. Is that what he actually thought? That she’d laugh at him if he’d asked her out? Shannon suddenly felt hurt and insulted. “I guess you didn’t know me at all, did you?”

  He looked into her eyes, and saw something that gave him pause. And a glimmer of hope. “You would have gone out with me if I’d asked you? But I was shorter than you.”

  “I would have worn flats. You were a nice person then.”

  Damn, when he thought of all the time that had been wasted, all the time he couldn’t recapture…

  But there was still the future.

  “I still am,” he assured her. Strains of organ music began to fill the air. The ceremony would be starting soon. “And I’d like to take you out. Officially. The second this wedding is all behind us.”

  There was something she wanted more, to build a relationship with him. A relationship with a future. Hope began to form within her. “You’re not just saying that?”

  He took hold of her hands, as if making a pledge. “Yes, I’m saying that. And I’ll go on saying that until you finally go out with me.”

  “Okay.” She grinned. “It’s a date. The second we step off the plane in New York. Now stop talking,” she ordered, winding her arms around his neck.

  He slipped his hands around her waist, drawing her closer. “Your every wish is my command.”

  “I do like the so
und of that,” she murmured.

  “Hopefully, you’ll like this even better,” he said, just before he kissed her.

  PICTURE PERFECT

  Cindi Myers

  For the ladies at Romancing the Yarn

  CHAPTER ONE

  Milles Fleurs—six days before the wedding

  LACEY JESSUP SLID the baking pan from the oven and bent low over the twin baguettes and inhaled deeply. The yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread filled her with a deep contentment. The smell reminded her of the Iowa farmhouse kitchen where she’d spent so many hours growing up. Here in Paris, she could recreate this sense of home anytime she opened a bag of flour. It pleased her to think that bread was much the same, even halfway around the world.

  And now, thanks to weeks of work in the classrooms and labs of Le Cordon Bleu and the kitchen here at Milles Fleurs, the inn where she worked, she had finally mastered the art of making the perfect French loaf.

  She transferred the baguettes to the cooling rack and admired their perfectly browned crusts beneath their dustings of flour, four diagonal slashes evenly spaced across the top of each loaf.

  “Very nice, chérie,” the chef d’hôtel at Milles Fleurs, Giselle Fortier, peered over Lacey’s shoulder and nodded approvingly. “A little more practice and no one will ever guess the baguettes are made by an American.”

  The qualifier to the praise erased Lacey’s smile. “You think I need more practice?” she asked.

  “Only a little.” Giselle nodded at the loaves. “The shape, it is still a little fat in the middle, non? The ideal baguette is uniformly long and thin, with no bulges.”

  Lacey nodded. Now that Giselle had pointed them out, she could see that her baguettes did indeed have bulges. “Next time, I’ll make them perfectly,” she said, moving to the kitchen island to begin preparing vegetables for tomorrow’s quiche lorraine. Even as she said the words, she could almost hear her mother cautioning her that nothing was ever perfect—no matter how much Lacey wanted it to be so.