LITMIR.BIZ

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styles. If she read Beguile, she would probably recognize Number Three from the Sexiest Singles article. Or from the recent news coverage.

      Dev solved her dilemma by gesturing to the cell phone Evelyn clutched in one hand. “I’m Dev and this is my fiancée, Sarah. Would you like me to take a picture of you and your husband?”

      “Please. And I’ll do one of y’all.”

      The accordion player began strolling the aisle while cell phones were still being exchanged and photos posed for. When he broke into a beautiful baritone, all conversation on the boat ceased and Sarah breathed easy again.

      Moments later, they pulled away from the dock and glided under the first of a dozen or more bridges yet to come. Meal service began then. Sarah wasn’t surprised at the quality of the food. This was Paris, after all. She and Dev sampled each of the starters: foie gras on a toasted baguette; Provençal smoked salmon and shallots; duck magret salad with cubes of crusty goat cheese; tiny vegetable egg rolls fried to a pale golden brown. Sarah chose honey-and-sesame-seed pork tenderloin for her main dish. Dev went with the veal blanquette. With each course, their server poured a different wine. Crisp, chilled whites. Medium reds. Brandy with the rum baba they each selected for dessert.

      Meanwhile, Paris’s most famous monuments were framed in the windows. The Louvre. La Conciergerie. Notre Dame. The Eiffel Tower.

      The boat made a U-turn while Sarah and Dev lingered over coffee, sharing more of their pasts. She listened wide-eyed to the stories Dev told of his Air Force days. She suspected he edited them to minimize the danger and maximize the role played by others on his crew. Still, the war-torn countries he’d flown into and the horrific disasters he’d helped provide lifesaving relief for made her world seem frivolous by comparison.

      “Grandmama took us abroad every year,” she related when he insisted it was her turn. “She was determined to expose Gina and me to cultures other than our own.”

      “Did she ever take you to Karlenburgh?”

      “No, never. That would have been too painful for her. I’d like to go someday, though. We still have cousins there, three or four times removed.”

      She traced a fingertip around the rim of her coffee cup. Although it tore at her pride, she forced herself to admit the truth.

      “Gina and I never knew what sacrifices Grandmama had to make to pay for those trips. Or for my year at the Sorbonne.”

      “I’m guessing your sister still doesn’t know.”

      She jerked her head up, prepared to defend Gina yet again. But there was nothing judgmental in Dev’s expression. Only quiet understanding.

      “She has a vague idea,” Sarah told him. “I never went into all the gory details, but she’s not stupid.”

      Dev had to bite down on the inside of his lower lip. Eugenia Amalia Therése St. Sebastian hadn’t impressed him with either her intelligence or her common sense. Then again, he hadn’t been particularly interested in her intellectual prowess the few times they’d connected.

      In his defense, few horny, heterosexual males could see beyond Gina’s stunning beauty. At least not until they’d spent more than an hour or two in the bubbleheaded blonde’s company. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he chose not to share that particular observation.

      He couldn’t help comparing the sisters, though. No man in his right mind would deny that he’d come out the winner in the St. Sebastian lottery. Charm, elegance, smarts, sensuality and...

      He’d better stop right there! When the hell had he reached the point where the mere thought of Sarah’s smooth, sleek body stretched out under his got him rock hard? Where the memory of how she’d opened her legs for him damned near steamed up the windows beside their table?

      Suddenly Dev couldn’t wait for the boat to pass under the last bridge. By the time they’d docked and he’d hustled Sarah up the gangplank, his turtleneck was strangling him. The look of confused concern she flashed at him as they climbed the steps to street level didn’t help matters.

      “Are you all right?”

      He debated for all of two seconds before deciding on the truth. “Not anywhere close to all right.”

      “Oh, no! Was it the foie gras?” Dismayed, she rushed to the curb to flag down a cab. “You have to be careful with goose liver.”

      “Sarah...”

      “I should have asked if it had been wrapped in grape leaves and slow cooked. That’s the safest method.”

      “Sarah...”

      A cab screeched to the curb. Forehead creased with worry, she yanked on the door handle. Dev had to wait until they were in the taxi and heading for the hotel to explain his sudden incapacitation.

      “It wasn’t the foie gras.”

      Concern darkened her eyes to deep, verdant green. “The veal, then? Was it bad?”

      “No, sweetheart. It’s you.”

      “I beg your pardon?”

      Startled, she lurched back against her seat. Dev cursed his clumsiness and hauled her into his arms.

      “As delicious as lunch was, all I could think about was how you taste.” His mouth roamed hers. His voice dropped to a rough whisper. “How you fit against me. How you arch your back and make that little noise in your throat when you’re about to climax.”

      She leaned back in his arms. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He could see it in the desire that shaded her eyes to deep, dark emerald. In the way her breath had picked up speed. Fierce satisfaction knifed into him. She was rethinking the cooling-off period, Dev thought exultantly. She had to recognize how unnecessary this phase two was.

      His hopes took a nosedive—and his respect for Sarah’s willpower kicked up a grudging notch—when she drew in a shuddering breath and gave him a rueful smile.

      “Well, I’m glad it wasn’t the goose liver.”

       Fourteen

      As the cab rattled along the quay, Sarah wondered how she could be such a blithering idiot. One word from her, just one little word, and she could spend the rest of the afternoon and evening curled up with Dev in bed. Or on the sofa. Or on cushions tossed onto the floor in front of the fire, or in the shower, soaping his back and belly, or...

      She leaned forward, her gaze suddenly snagged by the green bookstalls lining the riverside of the boulevard. And just beyond the stalls, almost directly across from the renowned bookstore known as Shakespeare and Company, was a familiar bridge.

      “Stop! We’ll get out here!”

      The command surprised both Dev and the cabdriver, but he obediently pulled over to the curb and Dev paid him off.

      “Your favorite bookstore?” he asked with a glance at the rambling, green-fronted facade of the shop that specialized in English-language books. Opened in 1951, the present store had assumed the mantle of the original Shakespeare and Company, a combination bookshop, lending library and haven for writers established in 1917 by American expatriate Sylvia Beach and frequented by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. During her year at the Sorbonne, Sarah had loved exploring the shelves crammed floor to ceiling in the shop’s small, crowded rooms. She’d never slept in one of the thirteen beds available to indigent students or visitors who just wanted to sleep in the rarified literary atmosphere, but she’d hunched for hours at the tables provided for scholars, researchers and book lovers of all ages.

      It wasn’t Shakespeare and Company that had snagged her eye, though. It was the bridge just across the street from it.

      “That’s the Archbishop’s Bridge,” she told Dev with a smile that tinged close to embarrassment.

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