French Kiss

by Susan Johnson

  “Stay in touch, now.” Kazuo glanced at his watch. “Duty calls,” he added with a grin.

  The men shook hands, then Kaz shook Nicky’s hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you. I can see why Johnny wanted to get home.” Then with a wave, Kazuo strode away.

  “You sure know a lot of different people,” Nicky said, as Kazuo stepped into the Mercedes sedan and the driver shut the door behind him.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Silence.

  Okay. She wasn’t going to get an explanation for either Kazuo or their trip.

  “I don’t know how much to tell you.” Each word fell into the silence with grudging unwillingness.

  She was thinking maybe she didn’t want to know when his jaw was set like that and each word he’d uttered had clearly been said against his will. Then again that line about curiosity killing the cat wasn’t just a baseless phrase. “How about the truth? You went to scout some new band, didn’t you?”

  “Not exactly. I can’t actually tell you the complete truth.” Disclosing Kaz’s father’s business was off-limits for one thing; there was no room for negotiation there.

  “You’re kidding—right? What about ‘the truth will set you free?’ ”

  “ ‘Truth is stranger than fiction,’ would be more appropriate to this situation. Look, the whole incident and trip is over. I’d rather just forget it.”

  “Now, you’re freaking me out. What kind of bizarre trip did you go on?”

  “Are we going to have a huge fight about it if I tell you?”

  “It depends on what you tell me,” she said, the green of her eyes taking on a sudden coolness.

  A tic fluttered along his jaw line, he exhaled an inaudible expletive, and understanding some explanation was required to temper that coolness in her eyes, he finally said, “There was no band to scout. We went to get Yuri off your back. I didn’t want him to frighten you again. That was it.”

  “Why couldn’t you just say that?” Although even as she said the words, she knew how she would have freaked out had he told her.

  He shrugged. “I just didn’t want to get into it after your”—he hesitated—“bad experience with Yuri.”

  “Because I would have tried to stop you.”

  “I figured.”

  “You were right. They have guns. Oh, God, don’t tell me you had guns, too.”

  “We mostly just talked.”

  She was smart enough not to ask him to parse mostly. She’d always been susceptible to nightmares. But it would go a long way toward mitigating any future nightmares if she knew whether he’d been successful in convincing Yuri to stay away. “So is he off my back?” Like could she sleep in her own house again?

  “Yep. He’s out of your life.”

  “Wow. That’s good news. And Kaz must have gone along to help.”

  “Yep.”

  “And Yuri just said okey dokey, and you came home.”

  “That’s about it.”

  That wasn’t a credible answer, not with a man like Yuri. Just to make sure, she said, “And no one was harmed in the encounter?”

  “Nope.”

  “Crap,” she said, half pissed that Yuri might still be in the picture and half pissed that Johnny thought she was that stupid. “You actually expect me to believe that Yuri rolled over as easy as that?”

  “We were able to exert pressure on him. No violence was necessary.”

  “But you would have used violence,” she said between her teeth, wondering if she’d gotten herself mixed up in a situation that could only end badly. Like with blood involved.

  “No—I wouldn’t have,” he lied. “Relax.” He started to reach for her, and she slapped his hands away.

  Christ, was Johnny mixed up in a way of life beyond the music he produced? Should she start running like hell? “I don’t feel like relaxing,” she ground out, part snappish, and mostly sullen. “This is all messing with my mind big-time. I live a simple life, or did until—”

  “I know. I’m sorry to get you mixed up in any of this,” he quietly said. “And look, I don’t want to fight about my going to Zurich. The trip was a one-shot deal—sorry, scratch that phrase. It was a set of circumstances that will never be repeated. Never. Okay?” He bent low so their eyes were level. “Yuri is out of our life. I promise. There’s just a lot of people I have to protect, so I can’t explain every little detail.”

  She really liked his unreserved promise about it being over, but all the rest about not being able to tell her everything and people to protect made her uneasy. “You’re like—not connected, are you?” she nervously asked.

  He laughed so hard and so long she was beginning to get rankled all over again when fighting a smile and wiping the tears from his eyes, he said, “Word of honor, babe. I’m not connected.”

  “For sure?” Could she ask him to swear on a stack of Bibles or something equally inane.

  “For sure,” he said without a hint of a smile this time, without a glint of amusement in his gaze, with such earnestness, she knew he was telling the truth. About that at least, if not about the Yuri stuff. And if he was really protecting other people, she didn’t expect him to jeopardize that trust? Did she?

  The honest truth was that she would like him to tell her everything. Like bare his soul to her, like they did in really hokey movies.

  The reality was she’d known him a grand total of seven and a half days and really couldn’t expect much more from him than a certain civility given to a woman he’d slept with.

  Jeez, that was one harsh reality when she was trying her damndest not to even think about being in love with him after so brief a time.

  “Hey, are we good now?”

  He was giving her that unbelievably sweet smile that could, like, charm the pants off of the world’s biggest ice queen. “Yeah, we’re good.” She smiled. “And I should thank you for dealing with Yuri. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Anyway, it was very brave of you.” A vast understatement, but she didn’t know where the line between fantasy and real life actually met in that scenario. And maybe he was right. Maybe she’d be better off not knowing. She’d lived through a real-life nightmare with Yuri once already. She didn’t need a repeat.

  All Johnny wanted was for this conversation to be over. So much so that he did another brave thing. He decided to give her what he had in his pocket.

  “Kaz bought some jewelry for his wife while we were in Zurich,” he abruptly said, his voice brisk and hurried, as though having made up his mind, he wanted to get through what he was going to say as quickly as possible. “This jeweler does some special work apparently, so as long as I was there, I got you this.” Pulling a small velvet box from his pants pocket, he snapped the lid open with his thumb. “What’d you think?”

  “Holy Christ!”

  He couldn’t get a read on her wide-eyed expletive, or maybe he wasn’t up to speed when it came to giving out engagement rings. “Is that good—or not good?”

  “It’s huge!”

  “Kaz says his wife likes huge, no pun intended,” he said with a faint smile, feeling better because Nicky was grinning ear-to-ear now. “Try it on.” Slipping the diamond ring out of the box, he lifted her left hand, and slid a ring the size of Rhode Island on her fourth finger. “I was thinking about maybe a long engagement though… so we can get to know each other, if you know what I mean. Like no sense diving off a high dock into shallow water and breaking our necks because we haven’t given this a little thought. Although I’m sober and straight this time, so I’m guessing it’s a whole lot different than last time—but”—he half-smiled again—“just in case.”

  Now she knew what was meant by flummoxed. It was part numbness, part hearing a voice from nowhere saying You better check this one out, part fantasy Hollywood script. She swallowed and said in what she’d hoped would be a normal tone of voice but turned out to be a whisper, “Is this a marriage proposal?”

  A long, long, long silence this ti
me. Apparently she wasn’t the only one spacing out.

  “If it’s okay with you,” he finally said, “yeah, I guess that’s what you’d call it.”

  Even as the little voice inside her head was screaming Will you shut the fuck up!!, she attempted to rally her rational faculties. “We don’t know each other very well,” she pointed out. “Or hardly at all,” she added, nudged by the small, incorruptible bit of her sanity that wasn’t dancing in the streets shouting Hallelujah!

  “What I know about you,” Johnny softly replied, every syllable rich with sexual innuendo, “I really like. But”—he shifted his stance marginally as though responding to the significance of her statement—“I hear what you’re saying. I suppose you should meet my parents and brother… somewhere down the road.” The masculine code of family obligation in action. “And we’ll go see your family, too. But Jordi’s the only one that really counts as far as any decisions I make,” he added, his daughter viewed through a very different prism. “And she likes you, I can tell. So we’re good.”

  “I have the requisite seal of approval, you’re saying.”

  “Hey, don’t be mad. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” He paused. “Yeah, actually, I did. Jordi really matters to me. What can I say?”

  Nicky smiled. “I’m not mad. I was being flip. And for the record, it’s more than okay. I wouldn’t like you if your daughter wasn’t important to you.” In fact, it was the first thing she’d noticed about him—well… maybe the second, next to his drop-dead good looks that couldn’t be ignored unless you were blind.

  He blew out a breath. “So, are you saying yes?”

  She wondered if there was a woman in the world who would have said no. “How about a maybe?” So perhaps she was a little bit crazy not jumping at the chance to be married to the Sexiest Man Alive. But that’s what came from being semi-grounded. She wasn’t gonna jump out of a plane without a parachute.

  His brows came together in a scowl. “What the hell does that mean?”

  She smiled, liking that he towered over her looking worried, liking that he really was the Sexiest Man Alive and wanted her. “It’s a high percentage, mostly yes, maybe—okay? But marriage is a big thing. It’s not a trip to the grocery store. You said yourself you wanted a long engagement. I’m just going along with the idea.”

  “Gotcha.” He looked relieved. “And you’re right to be cautious. There’s too many serial marriages and fly-by-night love affairs in this business. I’m not looking for more of that, either.”

  “Speaking of love affairs…”

  He took her hands in his. “We’re good there for sure.”

  “It’s the love part I’m kinda wondering about.”

  He didn’t quite meet her gaze.

  “Hey, don’t panic,” she murmured. “I don’t know what I’m doing in that department, either. Especially after the state of my relationship with Theo, who I thought I loved and obviously didn’t, because here I am pretty sure I love you.”

  His face lit up. “Same here. On that pretty sure stuff.”

  “That’s all I really meant about maybe. I’m head over heels for you, and I just want to make sure I’m not completely nuts to feel this way after knowing you for not very long. I’m figuring I need a little time to stabilize my out-of-control-blind-to-everything-but-you passions.”

  “No shit. That first night in Paris something just clicked. And not in the usual way. It wasn’t just about sex, although,” he said with a grin, “I’m not discounting what we had going there. But this was different—is different.”

  “Whatever that means.”

  “Yeah—whatever.” He smiled. “How about we figure it out together?”

  Together. What a nice word, she thought. Simple, yet improbably complex. Warmhearted. Soft as a kitten. Cozy. Pink sunsets and walks on the beach. Whoa… she was moving into the Hallmark card shit. “I’d like that,” she simply said.

  “I almost forgot. I brought you something else, too.” Reaching up, he pulled a shopping bag from the roof of her car. “From Jean-Paul.” Johnny had placed a special order from Zurich and had it sent to the airport in Paris where they set down to pick it up. “He sends his compliments.”

  Nicky could smell the rich scent of chocolate from the guerilla-style factory in the fifteenth arrondissement before she pulled the large red box from the shopping bag. “How did you think of this?” she asked, ripping the ribbon from the box, her salivary glands already gearing up.

  “You seemed to like his stuff,” Johnny said with the casualness of a man who didn’t understand the full spiritual mystique of chocolate.

  Since she had neither the time nor the inclination to set him straight when she had a full box of Roussel chocolates in her hand, she simply said with feeling, “You’re an absolute darling,” and handed him the cover and shopping bag.

  “OHMYGOD!!” She didn’t mean it to be a shriek, but there was no other word for it. Wide-eyed, she beheld an arrangement of Jean-Paul Roussel chocolate kisses on a spun-sugar cushion, the kisses spelling out: I LOVE YOU. Two rows, two times I LOVE YOU—enough kisses to keep her in chocolate heaven for a blissfully long time.

  Quickly popping a kiss into her mouth, she gazed up at Johnny and, smiling through her chewing, savoring, and swallowing, managed to say, “Maybe—we could discuss… this—long engagement… thing.” Any man who was this unbelievably, incredibly thoughtful was the kind of man one should immediately lock down in a long-term, signed, sealed, and delivered contract. Okay, maybe it was the chocolate talking. Everyone knew how really good chocolate affected the pleasure centers and serotonin levels in women, but seriously, she was beginning to waver on this issue of long engagements.

  “I’m definitely open to a discussion.” He grinned. “Say, tonight in bed.”

  “That’s another thing,” she said, returning his grin with a chocolatey smile. “And I don’t want to jack up your ego any more than it already is, but honestly, you’re really hot—you know, sex-wise. So in terms of pure selfishness…”

  “I’m way ahead of you there.” He had this irrepressible, possessive impulse when it came to one Nicky Lesdaux. Don’t ask him to explain it. He couldn’t. But the feeling was definitely a full-speed-ahead, pedal-to-the-metal sensation. “You know, long could be a couple weeks.” Male possessiveness operating at the max.

  Nicky’s eyes flared wide. “Really? I was thinking six months.”

  “How about a month?”

  “Three months.”

  He grinned. “Deal, Now I need a kiss to seal the bargain.”

  Plucking a chocolate from the box, she offered it to him with a smile.

  “Cute.” But he took the chocolate, put it in his mouth and then bent low and kissed her the way he wanted to kiss her.

  Chocolate to chocolate.

  Body to body.

  Flame-hot, impassioned love to love…