Nights In Black Lace. Noelle Mack

      “This place is great. They didn’t miss a trick.” He gestured with a frite toward the quilted steel walls and the mirrored tile above it that reflected the cakes and pies in a glass-doored cabinet behind the counter.

      Odette took another frite from his plate and nibbled at the end of it. “I am glad you like it.”

      He studied her. “I like the way you eat that.”

      “What do you mean?” She set it down on her plate.

      “Like it was forbidden fruit. But you eat it anyway.”

      “It is.” She took a sip of coke. “I am in the fashion business.”

      “Right. I haven’t even asked you what it is you do exactly. Or your name.”

      “Odette.” She waved the napkin she picked up from the table again as if that were enough of an answer to the rest of it.

      “Just Odette?”

      “Odette Gaillard.” She watched his face. Her name didn’t seem to register with him one way or another.

      “Pretty name,” he said. “But then everything sounds pretty in French.”

      She hesitated, not sure whether to explain more and not wanting to at all. A fling was a fling. Explaining who she was would feel something like handing him a balance sheet or pulling up an e-file of press clippings on her company. For a little while longer, she wanted to be no more than herself.

      “So what was it that you do again?” he asked.

      “Ah, I am a stylist.” That wasn’t so very far from the truth.

      “That means that you…style things?” He gave her a hopeful look.

      “Yes.”

      “Help me out here. I’m just a guy. What does that mean?”

      Odette picked up another frite and ate it in two bites. Fried food gave her courage. “If I were to style an outfit for an American athlete, I would go to the flea markets and vintage clothing stores to buy exactly what you have on. A tank top from a famous beach and a wetsuit jacket—”

      “Actually, neoprene is too hot to walk around in where I’m from, but Paris is cold in the spring, so it works. At home I wouldn’t be wearing it except when I’m actually in the water.”

      She glanced at the faded letters on his tank top. “Newport Beach? I have seen it on that TV show. The harbor is huge.”

      Bryan nodded. “Yeah. And filled with luxury yachts that the owners never sail. They make pretty good roosts for the pelicans.” He nodded at the pin on her lapel. “I like that. Made me think of them.”

      “Ah. What else is there in Newport Beach besides pelicans?”

      “Beach shacks that sell for two million dollars. Hamburgers that cost twenty dollars. The real people got priced out a while ago. But there are a few crazy kayakers left.”

      “Not surfers?”

      “Farther south you get surfers. Newport Beach doesn’t have big waves, as a rule.”

      “Oh. I imagined you as a surfer.”

      Bryan laughed a little ruefully. “Okay, you’re not wrong. But I had to hit Highway 1 to get anywhere worth surfing.”

      “I have heard of it. In Le O.C.”

      He made a wry face. “Not my favorite show.”

      Odette nodded. “It is for teenagers, non?”

      “That’s about right.”

      She let her gaze move over his well-muscled body. Bryan was very much a man. “So what is it that you do?” she asked him at last.

      “Short version?”

      “If you please.”

      “I’m twenty-five. No brothers or sisters. Raised by my mom. She’s a dressmaker—I can’t wait to send her the photos from before the show. She won’t believe I got to see Paris fashion on the runway.”

      Odette raised an eyebrow. So the interviewer from Bonjour hadn’t been able to resist having photos taken of Bryan because of his raffle win. Not much of a story, that, but Bryan himself was delectable. No doubt the witch, as Lucie called her, had been all over him like a—like a wetsuit. And not just the jacket.

      “Got a BA in marine biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, halfway through my master’s,” Bryan was saying. “I took time off to travel. Went up the Amazon for a while and did independent study in Belize. Right now the Scripps Institute has me waiting to hear.” He smiled at her puzzled look. “It’s in San Diego. The best marine lab in the US, outside of Woods Hole in Massachusetts. I applied there too. In fact, I applied to every university within swimming distance of a barnacle.”

      “I see. So what brought you to Paris?”

      “Last stop before my flight home.” He looked at her a little worriedly. “Not that I didn’t want to see Paris. But I’m not that much of a city guy.”

      “How much of the city have you seen?”

      He pushed the plate of frites away. “I’m ashamed to say it. Not much. The Eiffel Tower. The cheap tour of the Champs-Élysées. The back end of Notre Dame, from a tour boat on the Seine. And the depressing lobby of my budget hotel.”

      “And how much time do you have left?” Odette asked.

      “Two more nights. Which is to say that I have to check out by Friday. After that I don’t really have to be anywhere.”

      “Then you can stay with me if you like.”

      “What?”

      Odette, per the unwritten rules of flings, didn’t explain her invitation.

      “For starters,” she said airily. “Do you like jazz?”

      “Sure. Anything but techno. No offense, Odette, because you work for whoever runs that fashion show, but the music was the pits.”

      “Then we will go to the Bistrot d’Eustache or the China Club. They have wicked gin fizzes.”

      “Sign me up. And lead the way.” She began to protest but he held up a hand. “You have to. I’m a stranger in a strange land, Odette.”

      “How melodramatic,” she said with disdain.

      “I can see I’m going to have to prove I’m the man.”

      Odette felt a secret flush of excitement steal through her. His tone of voice was teasing, but there was an underlying edge in it that made it clear he understood what she wanted from him. No-strings-attached sensuality. Fast and furious. Clandestine—she had no particular wish to tell him who she was. No, she wanted an affair with no limits except time. Necessarily brief.

      But intense.

      Later…

      It was well after midnight when they left the China Club. Odette had gambled on seeing no one she knew there, and she’d been right. Marc and Lucie and the rest of her staff had gone off to a boîte in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Denis to celebrate—she’d received a text message from Marc that was a perfect combination of tact and innuendo as to the reason for her disappearance. The models had gone back to their hotels to collapse.

      Giddy from one too many gin fizzes, they had hailed a taxi and come back to her apartment in the most exclusive arrondissement in Paris.

      She hoped he wouldn’t realize that.

      The elegant buildings stood in regular rows, their mansard roofs neatly aligned, their stone blocks punctuated by wrought-iron balconies. It was too early in spring and too cold for flowers to spill from them—and even with the old-fashioned street-lights, rather too dark to see much.

      He