From Paris With Love Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

cut off each day. Now they are everywhere.”

      “So it seems.”

      Mistaking her for a native, he winked and shared his personal opinion of his enterprise. “The tourists, they eat this silly stuff up. As if they can lock in the feelings they have right now, today, and throw away the key. We French know better, yes?”

      His cigarette bobbed. His gestures grew extravagant as he expounded his philosophy.

      “To love is to take risks. To be free, not caged. To walk away if what you feel brings hurt to you or to your lover. Who would stay, or want to stay, where there is pain?”

      The question was obviously rhetorical, so Sarah merely spread her hands and answered with a shrug.

      * * *

      She was still thinking about the encounter when she met Madame Girault for lunch later that day. She related the lock seller’s philosophy to Elise, who belted out a raucous laugh that turned heads throughout the restaurant.

      “My darling Sarah, I must beg to disagree!”

      With her blond hair drawn into a tight bun that emphasized her high cheekbones and angular chin, Elise looked more like the Black Swan of her portrait. Her sly smile only heightened the resemblance.

      “Locks and, yes, a little pain can add a delicious touch to an affair,” she said, her eyes dancing. “And speaking of which...”

      Her mouth took a sardonic tilt as a dark-haired man some twenty-five or thirty years her junior rose from his table and approached theirs.

      “Ah, Elise, only one woman in all Paris has a laugh like yours. How are you, my love?”

      “Very well. And you, Henri? Are you still dancing attendance on that rich widow I saw you with at the theater?”

      “Sadly, she returned to Argentina before I extracted full payment for services rendered.” His dark eyes drifted to Sarah. “But enough of such mundane matters. You must introduce me to your so-lovely companion.”

      “No, I must not. She’s in Paris with her fiancé and has no need of your special skills.” Elise flapped a hand and shooed him off. “Be a good boy and go away.”

      “If you insist...”

      He gave a mocking half bow and returned to his table, only to sign the check and leave a few moments later. A fleeting look of regret crossed Elise’s face as he wove his way toward the exit. Sighing, she fingered her glass.

      “He was so inventive in bed, that one. So very inventive. But always in need of money. When I tired of emptying my purse for him, he threatened to sell pictures of me in certain, shall we say, exotic positions.”

      Sarah winced, but couldn’t say anything. Any mention of the paparazzi and sensational photographs struck too close to home.

      “Jean-Jacques sent men to convince him that would not be wise,” Elise confided. “The poor boy was in a cast for weeks afterward.”

      The offhand comment doused the enjoyment Sarah had taken in Elise’s company up to that point. Madame Girault’s concept of love suddenly seemed more tawdry than amusing. Deliberately, Sarah changed the subject.

      “I wonder how the negotiations are going? Dev said he thought they were close to a deal.”

      Clearly disinterested, Elise shrugged and snapped her fingers to summon their waiter.

      * * *

      Halfway across Paris, Dev had to force himself to focus on the columns of figures in the newly restructured agreement. It didn’t help that his seat at the conference table offered a panoramic view of the pedestrians-only esplanade and iconic Grande Arche that dominated Paris’s financial district. Workers by the hundreds were seated on the steps below the Grande Arche, their faces lifted to the sun while they enjoyed their lunch break.

      One couple appeared to be enjoying more than the sun. Dev watched them share a touch, a laugh, a kiss. Abruptly, he pushed away from the table.

      “Sorry,” he said to the dozen or so startled faces that turned in his direction. “I need to make a call.”

      Jean-Jacques Girault scooted his chair away from the table, as well. “Let’s all take a break. We’ll reconvene in thirty minutes, yes? There’ll be a catered lunch waiting when we return.”

      Dev barely waited for Girault to finish his little speech. The urge to talk to Sarah, to hear her voice, drove him through the maze of outer offices and into the elevator. A short while later he’d joined the throng on the steps below the Grande Arche.

      It took him a moment to acknowledge the unfamiliar sensation that knifed through him as he dialed Sarah’s number. It wasn’t just the lust that had damned near choked him last night. It was that amorphous, indefinable feeling immortalized in so many sappy songs. Grimacing, he admitted the inescapable truth. He was in love, or close enough to it to make no difference.

      Sarah answered on the second ring. “Hello, Dev. This must be mental telepathy. I was just talking about you.”

      “You were, huh?”

      “How are the negotiations going?”

      “They’re going.”

      The sound of her voice did something stupid to his insides. To his head, too. With barely a second thought, he abandoned Girault and company to the team of sharks he’d flown in last night.

      “We’ve been crunching numbers all morning. I’m thinking of letting my people handle the afternoon session. What do you have planned?”

      “Nothing special.”

      “How about I meet you back at the hotel and we’ll do nothing special together?”

      He didn’t intend to say what came next. Didn’t have any control over the words. They just happened.

      “Or maybe,” he said, his voice going husky, “we can work on our next time.”

      A long silence followed his suggestion. When it stretched for several seconds, Dev kicked himself for his lack of finesse. Then she came back with a low, breathless response that damned near stopped his heart.

      “I’ll catch a cab and meet you at the hotel.”

      * * *

      Sarah snapped her phone shut and sent Madame Girault a glance that was only a shade apologetic. “That was Dev. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

      Elise looked startled for a moment. But only a moment. Then her face folded into envious lines.

      “Go,” she ordered with a wave of one hand. “Paris is the city of love, after all. And I think yours, ma petite, is one that deserves a lock on the Archbishop’s Bridge.”

      Sarah wanted to believe that was what sent her rushing out of the restaurant. Despite the lock seller’s philosophical musings, despite hearing the details of Elise’s sordid little affair, she wanted desperately to believe that what she felt for Dev could stand the test of time.

      That hope took a temporary hit when she caught up with the dark-haired, dark-eyed Henri on the pavement outside of the restaurant. He’d just hailed a cab, but generously offered it to her instead.

      Or not so generously. His offer to escort her to her hotel and fill her afternoon hours with unparalleled delight left an unpleasant taste in Sarah’s mouth. Unconsciously, she channeled Grandmama.

      “I think not, monsieur.”

      The haughty reply sent him back a pace. The blank surprise on his face allowed Sarah more than enough time to slide into the cab and tell the driver her destination. Then she slammed the door and forgot Henri, forgot Elise, forgot everything but the instant hunger Dev’s call had sparked in her.

      She wrestled with that hunger all the way back to the hotel. Her cool, rational, practical-by-necessity self kept asserting that her arrangement