LITMIR.BIZ

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took another pull from her cup, and he looked at his own. He wasn’t sure what it held. Was afraid to find out. “Any particular reason?”

      He noticed then that she bit her nails. They were too short, barely crescents on her fingers. Unpainted. “Yes. There is a reason. Tomorrow, I’m told, I must leave your country full of swindling private detectives and bloodsucking purse snatchers. Go back home.”

      He held his gaze steady on her. Just as he suspected.

      She gestured with her hands. “They, those people don’t care that I need to stay here. That I need to find my daughter. They tell me they can’t help me. They can’t grant me an…”

      “Extension.” He finished her sentence.

      She squinted at him again, making him wonder if she normally wore glasses. He scanned her features, imagining her with all that unruly hair pulled into a smooth twist—

      “Yes, an extension.”

      “So you can find your daughter.”

      Her hands stilled on her cup. “Yes. Her father, or the man who calls himself her father when he didn’t want any involvement in her life before now, came to Paris two months ago and…took her. Brought her here.”

      “Your husband?”

      She shook her head. “No. He and I, we had a brief—how do you say it?—relationship. No, no, an affair. You use the same word, yes? Five years ago. He was an American living in Paris. I was a waitress. Lili was the result.”

      Jake stared at her. Not so much shocked by what she’d said, but shocked that she was saying what she was as easily as she was. And that he found it impossible to tug his gaze away from her animated face. She was a single mother who’d had her child out of wedlock. And she was foreign. Not that he had anything against foreigners. At one time or another, all Anglo-Americans had been foreigners to this land. But in his job as agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the word foreigner took on a whole new meaning.

      Not knowing what to say in the situation, he asked, “So your daughter’s four?”

      She briefly closed her eyes, her long, dark lashes casting shadows against her pale skin. She murmured several sentences in French. The thick, nasal sound wound around him in a way he wasn’t sure he liked. It made him feel…lustful. He found himself wishing he knew the language so he could understand what she’d said, though he was sure it had nothing to do with his increasingly uncomfortable state. “Yes. She will be four this Saturday…five days from today.” She stared at the tabletop, but he doubted she saw it. “I should have never given Gerald a copy of her birth certificate when she was born. I’d wanted to include him, yes? Instead, he used it to get her an American passport and take her away from me.”

      She looked so helpless at that moment. Much as she had in the parking lot when he’d returned her purse. He was filled with an inexplicable, urgent need to pull her into his arms. To smooth her curly hair. Tell her everything would be all right.

      On the heels of that sensation followed a physical pull that left him feeling as if he’d downed a pitcher of beer in a single sitting.

      The reaction was so completely alien to him, he wasn’t sure how to respond. No one had ever stirred such a complete physical response in him. He had stopped paying attention to the countless hard-luck stories he heard on a daily basis about six years ago. Stopped counting the number of illegals he’d taken to the airport and put on the next plane out. Why Michelle Lambert’s sketchy situation should affect him so baffled him.

      “Have you visited the States before?” he asked quietly.

      Normally he might not have noticed the slight coloring of her skin, but he’d been staring at her so much, any variation was noticeable. He wished he knew exactly what it meant. “Yes…I visited the west coast years ago. Vacation.”

      He grimaced. “So you’re going home tomorrow?”

      A waitress approached their table. “Can I get you two something else? A warm-up, maybe? The elephant ears are fresh.”

      Michelle waved her away. “No, thank you. I don’t wish for anything more.” She looked at him. “You’ve been far too generous already.”

      “Please,” he said.

      “No. No, thank you.” She gathered her purse and got up. “I really must be going now.”

      Jake rose so quickly, he nearly knocked the table over. All he knew was a sudden, overwhelming urge to stop her from leaving. He curved his fingers around her arm. The heat that swept through him and pooled in his groin was instantaneous.

      She gazed into his face, clearly puzzled. Then her expression changed. Her pupils widened, nearly taking over the tawny brown of her irises. The open sensuality he saw in the coloring of her cheeks, the softening of her mouth, made looking anywhere else impossible.

      She slowly leaned forward, tilted her head and pressed her mouth firmly against his. Jake couldn’t have acted more surprised had someone zapped him with a live wire, but he’d be damned if he could pull away. She tasted of chocolate and coffee. Smelled of fresh air and open interest. He wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn he felt the quick flick of her tongue over his bottom lip before she pulled away.

      He stood dumbfounded. Had that really happened? Had she just kissed him? His almost painful erection told him she had. And that he wanted her to do it again.

      “Why…what did you do that for?” He barely recognized the low, gravelly voice as belonging to him.

      She glanced quickly away, then gave a slight shrug. “Just curious.”

      “About what?”

      Her gaze slid to his face, and she smiled. “Curious as to whether your lips felt as good as they looked.”

      She began to move away again, and he let her. Near the door, she turned toward him. “By the way, they do.”

      She stepped through the door.

      Jake stood for a long moment watching her, an ache the size of Virginia in the pit of his stomach.

      2

      HE DECIDED to blame it on all the time he had on his hands. Jake stood waiting for the elevator to reach the second floor, only belatedly thinking he should have taken the stairs. And thinking of the prospect of having time on his hands. He’d passed his most pressing cases to fellow agent Edgar Mollens. His desk was clean even of dust. The only thing that stretched before him was five days trekking through the Blue Ridge Mountains with David.

      He cringed. He’d be the first to admit that spending the night in a tent wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time. In his mind, roughing it was being stuck in a hotel room without CNN. But even his reluctance to snap on his new backpack and tie his new boots wasn’t to blame for his unusual interest in a certain provocative Michelle Lambert.

      Then there was her kiss.

      He forced the thought from his mind even though his body immediately responded.

      At any rate, it was better that his chances of seeing her again were zip to nil. She’d never answered his question, but he was certain she’d be heading to France tomorrow. The elevator doors opened, and he stepped out. What he couldn’t help wondering was when she was due to fly out.

      Bypassing the administrative offices where he usually left any papers, he walked through the jam-packed waiting area in Room 200, vaguely aware of a number being called and an elderly woman likely of European descent using her cane to rise from her chair. He strode down the long hall leading to his office. His interest in Michelle should have been equivalent to his interest in the European woman. Less, even, because Michelle violated at least ten of his appearance rules.

      Yet his mind kept venturing to her. The way she ran the small pad of her thumb across the rim of her cup while she spoke. Sat slightly leaning to the right, her legs crossed. Looked as if she could see inside

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