It had all happened so quickly. The mugger disappeared into the crowd. Some pedestrians kept on walking, acting as if she were invisible, but a few rushed over to her. jabbering sympathetically in French. Someone yelled for a gendarme-she understood the word for police, but by then she didn't care. It was too darn late for that.
She was fine. Her heart didn't know it yet; she was still gulping down air like a panicked beached whale…but really, she knew she was okay. Her engagement ring, her passport, her money-losing all of it was a nightmare, but she was alive and the jerk was gone.
Everything was survivable except for the loss of those letters. No one even knew she had them, even her mom. Especially her mom. And no one would likely recognize the ratty old envelopes as remotely valuable, because they weren't.
To anyone but her. Unfortunately, they were irreplaceably valuable to her, and the loss hit her like a blow.
"Mademoiselle…" A mustached man in a uniform pushed through the onlookers, bent down to her. A cop. But what good could he possibly do? Find a thief in this kind of city traffic? The guy was probably at the Eiffel Tower by now. And when he got around to opening her purse, he'd undoubtedly take the loot and credit cards and passport and throw out everything else.
Like the letters.
A raw, rusty sound came out of her throat. Kelly told herself to get a grip and turn back into her usual strong, sturdy self, but man. somehow she couldn't find the on switch. Caving was totally unlike her. She'd always been a go-to woman, the kind of woman who could cheerlead through a tornado, who saw problems as opportunities rather than crises. She never had meltdowns. She wasn't the meltdown type.
But damn. The loss of those old letters really, really, really hurt.
''Mademoiselle" the cop repeated, and reeled off some questions in French.
She pushed a hand through her hair, struggling to understand, flunking, struggling again. She could see he was getting impatient. Hell's bells, so was she-with herself. But she was shook up, and the gendarme was speaking so fast.
But then…somewhere in the sea of strange faces and confusion, she heard an American accent.
An American Midwestern accent like hers.
A man.
"Hey," he said, "are you in some kind of trouble here?"
Her head shot up. One glance gave her a jolt. The guy was tall and lean and blond, with a Matthew McConaughey angular face and come-on baby-blue eyes. He wasn't just killer good-looking. He was to die for.
But that wasn't what snagged her attention. His clothes did. Filling out a Notre Dame sweatshirt were brawny wide shoulders.
The logo wasn't for Notre Dame, as in the French cathedral. But as in Notre Dame football. As in the golden dome. As in South Bend, Indiana.
As in home.
She fell in love so fast it made her head spin-of course, her head was already spinning. And it wasn't like she thought it was real love…but it was real enough for that moment.
She pushed toward him, never losing eye contact, and said breathlessly, "You can't imagine how much I'd appreciate some help. I know a little French, but not enough to communicate, at least as fast as I need to. If you'd play translator for just a few minutes… it couldn't possibly take long…"
WILL MAGUIRE, at age thirty-one, had done all the bailing out and damsel saving and white-knight crap he ever intended to do in this lifetime.
But hell. He had noticed the commotion from all the way down the block, and when he heard the sudden, sharp, panicked yell-obviously a woman's voice-he instinctively hustled toward the sound. The instinct wasn't heroic. It was lunatic.
He'd lived in Paris long enough to know getting involved in a tourist brouhaha was complete lunacy. Yet still he came closer.
It took only seconds for him to interpret the scene. She'd been ripped off. Moments before, a gendarme had shown up, and typical of Paris, so had every busybody bystander. Most of them figured an American tourist, being an American tourist, had done something stupid. A few wanted to whine about the danger of Paris streets these days. The gendarme was trying to question her about exactly what happened.
In those same few seconds, he snared a quick look at her.
Very quick.
But that was all it took for him to feel a potent kick in the gut.
He didn't get it. A pale purple sweater cupped her small boobs. Dark pants fit snug enough to clarify that she had skinny legs and no ass. Since he'd always tended to like more breasts and less bone, there was nothing below her neck that should have rattled his hormones. Yet his pulse was kabooming like a freight train.
Heightwise, she came up to his chin. And that was where she stopped being ordinary. The eyes were mesmerizing, almond shaped, tea-brown, looking right at him. The details included a small, thin nose; pink mouth; and a sweep of almost-shoulder-length brown hair. Only brown wasn't an accurate description of the color. The sixty-five-degree morning was drenched in sunshine, and that's how her hair looked-lustrous, full of light, shiny in the sun.
Okay, so she was adorable. But that alone didn't explain the kaboom thing. There were fabulous-looking women all over Paris.
There was something else about her, something he couldn't define. A zest. A glow. A female thing. Will didn't need to identify it to know it was a serious problem.
Ever since he'd devoted himself to a life of decadence and vice-that'd be the last four years-he'd fine-tuned his sonar to beware of women who meant trouble.
She meant trouble.
On the other hand, all she'd asked him to do was translate for her for a couple of minutes. How could that possibly be any kind of risk?
"Sure," he said. And immediately discovered that helping her wasn't going to be quite that simple.
The gendarme shot him a look as if a savior of the universe had just shown up. The bystanders kneed in closer, all hot to participate. Everybody claimed to have seen the thief close-up. One said he was tall and burly. One said he was lean as a stick. One said he had a beard, like a homeless person, and another said he'd just been a guy walking down the street who suddenly sprang into this deviant behavior, far too fast for anyone to stop him or come to the girl's aid.
Still, for all the confusion, it didn't take forever to get the basic questions asked and answered. Her name was Kelly Rochard. She was twenty-seven. From South Bend, Indiana. Here for ten days. Vacation.
Something flickered in her eyes when she said "vacation," but Will just dutifully translated-it wasn't any of his business whether she was telling the truth or not.
"So the thief took off with your purse," he said. "Can you give the cop a list of the critical stuff in the bag?"
Hell, she said, her whole world was in the damned bag. Passport, money, credit cards. Oh yeah, and then she got around to mentioning that the thief had also taken off with her engagement ring.
"What?" she said, when Will and the gendarme exchanged a quick look.
Will didn't answer. It was obvious that the cop had immediately thought the same thing he did. What sense did it make for a beautiful woman to be traveling to Paris alone in the spring? Her so-called fiancé was either a jerk or an idiot. Probably both.
"…and there were some private papers in the bag. too. That's the worst. That those records are probably gone forever. I have no way to replace them, no way to…"
"Hey," Will said gruffly. Tears suddenly magnified her eyes, making them look extra huge and exotic. "Take it easy there. It'll all get straightened out."
Well, it wouldn't, of course. Losing a passport in a foreign country was a guaranteed nightmare. Times fifty.
The cop heard about the "private papers," but he was tuned to the same practical channel that Will was. It didn't really matter what Kelly had lost, because the mugger was long gone. She'd still need a police report, which was a pain for the gendarme to fill out when there was about zero chance in a zillion they'd ever find the guy. But he'd get her one so she could pursue a replacement passport.