He straightened his clothing and then left, closing the door behind him.
For a couple of seconds, Trish stayed where she was and stared at the closed door. Assuming he comes back, if that's the appetizer, then what's the main course? The friend he'd mentioned? Carl? Carlos? Something like that. She couldn't remember the name exactly.
She bent down and picked up her purse, but as her fingers closed around her discarded panties, she froze. The friend's name wasn't important, but what about his name?
She knew for sure she hadn't introduced herself, and she couldn't remember him doing so either. In fact, incredible and unbelievable as it might seem to the rest of the world, she'd taken her sexual inexperience one step further by allowing herself to be fucked by a total stranger. She didn't know his name, his phone number, his address, or anything else about him. He hadn't mentioned his company's name or the name of the company in Toronto. All she knew about him was that he owned an expensive black car and had a chauffeur called Georges. Then again, she didn't know that for sure. For all she knew, the car and driver both belonged to the company he worked for rather than him personally. They could also have been rented from one of those agencies that specialized in meeting executives at airports.
Feeling like a prize fool, Trish carried her things into the bedroom and stripped off the rest of her clothes. On the negative side, she'd been had by a very charming and handsome opportunist and she wanted to kick herself for being so gullible. She wasn't some wide-eyed teenager, for heaven's sake. She was a woman who'd just turned thirty-she ought to have known better than to fall for all that high-powered testosterone and TLC. On the other hand, the man had saved her the cost and the hassle of finding transportation from the airport into the city, he'd had the good manners to use a condom, and he'd taught her more about the pleasures of sex in the past few hours than she would have learned by herself in a lifetime.
"Hey, it wasn't all bad," she murmured, allowing herself a self-satisfied smile as she emptied her suitcase on the bed and looked for the bag containing her toilet articles. "In fact, some parts of it were beyond great…even if I don't know Sir Galahad's real name."
She was tired from the overnight trip, but still too excited to think about sleeping. She hung a dress, a jacket and a couple of skirts in the closet to prevent them being crumpled to the point of needing a trip to the drycleaners, then she picked up her toilet bag and headed for the bathroom.
The shower water was hot the way she liked it and had one of those massaging attachments designed to iron out the kinks. She turned the massage dial up to the max, lathered her body with shower gel and after ten minutes under the hot spray and less than one under the cold, she felt almost as good as new.
Wrapping herself in a bath towel, she returned to the bedroom, opened the window and peeked out. It was a beautiful late spring day. The sun was shining, the trees at the entrance to the apartment building were coming into bloom, and she estimated the temperature to be somewhere in the high sixties, even though it was still early in the day.
She thought briefly about making coffee before going out to explore her new surroundings, but remembered having coffee at a sidewalk café and watching the world go by was one of the "must-do" things on a trip to Paris.
Hurrying back to the bathroom, she quickly finished her toilette, dried her hair and put on a little makeup. Once she was finished, she turned off the light and returned to the bedroom. After slipping into clean underwear and surveying the clothes she'd brought with her, she decided on a pair of black jeans with a splash of bling on the front pockets and down one leg, and a brand new white hoodie she'd bought especially for the trip.
Socks and her favorite white sneakers completed the outfit and then she checked herself in the mirror. The black and white color combo went perfectly with her dark, shoulder-length hair, and while she realized she would never be mistaken for a French woman, no way did she intend to advertise the fact she was a tourist by wearing a baseball cap and short shorts or denim cut-offs, or whatever the me-generation currently considered in-gear. In any event, turning thirty was a milestone in her life-she was supposed to dress and act like an adult.
A bubble of laughter escaped her lips. Yeah, right! Getting laid by a nameless stranger on the basis of a couple of hours' acquaintance on an overnight flight wouldn't qualify as adult behavior, no matter how hard she tried to rationalize what had happened.
She thought back to the events of the past night as she ran her hands down over her belly and continued to stare at herself in the full-length mirror. Her lips appeared to be a little bee-stung, her half-closed eyes had that dreamy, satisfied look usually attributed to the heroines in romance novels, and she felt a little sore in all the right places.
By anyone's standards, it had been a really insane thing for her to do-he could have been a rapist, a pervert or a serial sex offender. She should have pushed him off, asked the flight attendant for a seat change, and reported him to the airport police when they landed. But she hadn't, partly because she'd been having too good a time and partly because she'd done more to encourage than deter his advances. She could have told him to back off, but she hadn't and she didn't intend to spend one single second on regrets.
Okay, so what if chances were better than good she'd never see him again? She'd live. She'd manage to have a good time on the memories alone because, even if nothing else happened between now and the time came for her to return home, except maybe the odd suggestive leer or intense look, it would still be a trip to remember and treasure.
Recalling Jenny's warning about pickpockets, instead of using her regular purse, Trish slid her passport, a credit card, a few euros, a lipstick and a couple of tissues into a smaller one that she could wear bandolier-style next to her skin under a loose sweater or jacket. She took off her hoodie and slipped the long strap over her head, arranging the purse so it rested snugly against her skin and just above her waistline.
After putting the hoodie back on and conducting a short search for the apartment key, she found it on the table in the entrance hall where she assumed Sir G must have dropped it before they'd jumped one another like a pair of randy rabbits. Picking up the key, she made for the door.
Rabbits! She smiled at the parallel. Actually, she'd been lucky. The man's only crime, if it even qualified as one, had been that of being an opportunist.
And so what if he had? She'd taken advantage of the opportunity as well, and anyway her chances of seeing him again were less than slim. But this was Paris, it was springtime, and Frenchmen had the reputation of being great lovers, and that meant it was all good as far as Trish was concerned. It was a simple case of him being a match to her tank of gas, or however it worked in the case of instant attraction. And there had been a ton of combustible chemistry between the two of them from the word go, which she doubted either of them could have extinguished…supposing either of them had wanted to try. Anyway, she was quite sure stopping the progress of nature had been the last thing on either of their minds.
On her way out, Trish remembered to lock the door behind her, and as she started down the first flight of narrow stairs, she heard the sounds of someone coming up. Expecting to meet one of her new, albeit temporary neighbors, she hesitated at the first landing, then stared in surprise when she realized who was it was.