The crush that he’d thought long gone was alive and kicking.
Right where it hurt.
A primal hunger surged in him, thickening the blood in his veins, assaulting his senses and robbing him of his free will. There was no fighting it. It knocked him down and pinned him to the ground until he gave in, helpless before its vigor.
As if hypnotized, he brought his hand to Jeanne’s face and traced his thumb across her lower lip. He moved slowly, pressing lightly enough not to hurt her, but with sufficient force to miss nothing of the texture, warmth, and fullness of her lip.
Her chest heaved as she closed her eyes.
“God,” he rasped, hardly recognizing his own voice. “You have no idea how often I’ve dreamed of doing this. I’m crazy about your lips, Jeanne. Even without the piercing.”
When his thumb reached the corner of her mouth, he trailed it across her upper lip, savoring every sensation and growing so aroused it hurt. It was much too soon when he completed the circle, but no force on Earth could make him break the contact or make him stop touching her. His thumb slid down to her chin, his palm cupping her cheek. Oh, the sweetness of her, the long-forbidden treat he was finally about to sample. It was heavenly. It made him want more.
His gaze traveled down her graceful neck framed by auburn hair, to her shoulders. He bent down and began to cover them in hot kisses as his hands wandered across her back, bared by the figure-hugging dress she wore. And what a clever dress it was—specially designed to drive him out of his mind. Its skirt reached the middle of her thighs, revealing most of her shapely legs. Its seemingly demure neckline skimmed her collarbone and then plunged in the back, descending all the way down to the two sweet dimples in the small of her back. Which was exactly where his hand was going. . . until she opened her eyes and pulled back.
“This is wrong,” she said.
He stared at her, disoriented.
She sighed. “I’ve been here before, Mat, and I got burned. I can’t . . . I won’t . . . fool around with a man who’s taken.”
He swallowed hard and released her. As his heartbeat slowed and his breathing evened out, his speech capacity returned.
And so did reason.
“You’re right. I’m so sorry, Jeanne.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered.
He gave her another long look. “Let me walk you home.”
She shook her head. “I live five blocks down the street. Really . . . Just go.”
She spun around and rushed away, leaving him no choice but to grab his jacket and bolt out the door.
***
“And then she told me I was too old and too ugly for her.” José smoothed the long-gone hair on his shiny skull.
“Her loss.” Jeanne shrugged. “Are you coming back for lunch today?”
He shook his head. “I have another date this afternoon, in the park. I’m tired of paying for drinks and dinners only to hear I’m too ugly.”
“Honey, you’re not ugly, and don’t give up yet. You started this Internet dating thing only a month ago.” She wrung out the dishrag and wiped the copper surface of the bar.
José was a regular at La Bohème. A newly retired vieux garçon, he was a little chubby and seriously grumpy. But Jeanne didn’t mind his ranting, especially on days when she didn’t want to be alone.
And on this beautiful Sunday morning she needed company more than ever. The brunch crowd would provide a welcome distraction, but it was still too early. So thank God for José whose stories took her mind off what had happened last night.
“What’s the name of today’s date?” she asked.
“Clementine. I know—terribly old-fashioned, which makes me think she probably lied about her age.”
Jeanne smiled. “You’ll find out soon enough. Besides, would it be so terrible to date someone your age or older?”
“Hmm,” José said. He took a sip of his brew. “Your coffee’s better than the previous gal’s.”
“You’ve already told me that. And don’t think I didn’t notice how you changed the topic.” She turned away to empty the filter basket. “But thanks—I’m flattered.”
Somebody else spoke from José’s right. “Can I have one, too, since it’s so good?”
Mat.
She hadn’t seen him come in. Why was he here?
“Espresso?” she asked without turning to look at him.
“A double, please,” he said.
As she began preparing his coffee, she sneaked a peek at him. He looked even hotter than last night. No expensive suits today—just a pair of faded jeans and a navy blue V-necked sweater over a white T-shirt. He propped his elbows on the counter, a tiny smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
Jeanne looked away, flabbergasted. One quick glance at him had been enough to make her pulse quicken and her hands grow moist. How was this possible? After all, she had happily snubbed this same person a few years ago. Granted, he was more masculine now than in those days. A lot more masculine, what with those biceps and pectorals he hadn’t showed the slightest inclination for in the past. Besides, his general demeanor was more confident. Even his voice was deeper. Sexier.
But people couldn’t change so completely, could they? Somewhere deep inside this gorgeous male was hiding a mild, nerdy guy with unruly hair and eyes like a toad’s. If she could only spot one or two telltale signs of that guy, she’d be able to shake this spell and forget about his existence.
“I’ll be off. See you tomorrow, Jeanne.” José paid for his coffee and plodded away.
“A regular?” Mat asked.
“Nine o’clock every morning,” Jeanne said, placing his steaming espresso on the counter.
“Are mornings a busy time?”
“Not really. A half dozen builders and drivers who come for an espresso and a cigarette outside. Another half dozen white collars pop in for various blends and croissants to go, and then José and a gang of moms.”
“What do the moms order?” Mat asked, looking vastly entertained for some mysterious reason.
“Café crème or tea.”
“And after they leave?”
Jeanne shrugged. “I make myself a nice strong coffee and read my paper.”
“Still loyal to Le Monde?”
She nodded, absurdly pleased that he remembered.
“What about the cig that always went with the coffee?” he asked.
“A thing of the past.”
“So you gave up smoking then?”
“It’s been two years now.” She smiled. “I quit after Lena started emailing me horrible photos of blackened lungs. Daily.”
“I quit, too, thanks to Cécile.”
He looked down at his cup, and Jeanne suddenly needed to occupy her hands with something. She grabbed the dishrag and started wiping the spotless countertop.
“I’m so sorry about last night,” Mat said.
Jeanne stopped wiping and stared at the dishrag, noting absently that it was dark green and had too many holes from rough treatment.
“I behaved like a jerk . . . like one of those sleazebags I enjoy feeling superior to.” He gave a heavy sigh. “This isn’t who I am, Jeanne. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Château-Grillet. Too much of it,” she said, trying to make light of the situation.
He shook his head. “Anyway, I just came to apologize and . . . to say good-bye.”
Why did it hurt to hear him say those words? Had she expected him to announce he was changing his life after an evening with her? Had she actually entertained the idea he had come to tell her he was dumping his girlfriend because of their ground-shattering moment? She was such a pathetic fool.
“Take good care,” she said, turning away to fumble with the coffee machine.
She heard coins clank against the countertop and then Mat’s retreating steps.
It’s over, she told herself. Just a bit of drama that came and went.
She’d forget him in no time.
***
> Chapter Two
October
They were ready to start the job interviews. Pierre and his two lieutenants—Jeanne and Didier—sat next to each other on one side of the large teak table that dominated the bistro’s tiny backyard. On the other side of the table, they’d placed a lonely chair for the applicants. La Bohème had been a man short for a couple of weeks now, which put an extra strain on everyone, but especially on Manon and Jimmy, the front of the house servers. This was why Pierre had lined up four interviews for this afternoon and was determined to hire one of the candidates on the spot.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” Jeanne said puckering her face at the uncertain sky.
Didier shrugged. “It was your idea to do this outside.”
“It’s not like we can’t move back in if it starts raining,” Pierre said, browsing through the stack of paper in front of him. “The first candidate arrives in ten minutes, so I suggest you both take another look at their CVs and the questions I asked you to prepare.”
Jeanne scanned her copies. None of the four candidates had waited tables before, but then, everyone had to start somewhere. Two of them were students, so they’d probably be only interested in evening shifts, which was fine.
“We’ll have to train whoever we hire from this batch.” Didier shook his head disapprovingly.
Pierre put his papers down. “And so we will. Regardless of how much pride we take in our trade, let’s face it—rocket science it is not.”
“I disagree.” Didier gave him a disgruntled look. “I did three years of specialized school before applying for my first serving job. I was a professional compared to these greenhorns.”
“Well, there aren’t enough professionals to go around,” Pierre said. “So we have to make do with amateurs.”
Manon appeared in the doorway, bowed ceremoniously and said far too politely, “Excuse me for interrupting, messieurs-dames, but the first candidate has arrived. Shall I show him in . . . um, out here?”
Pierre smiled. “Please.”
Manon stepped sideways, making way for an elegantly dressed young woman. She walked slowly toward the empty chair and greeted the trio with a bright smile.
One point for style, Jeanne thought. She remembered the hardcore Gothic look she’d been sporting when Pierre hired her six years ago. He must have been feeling brave that day. Or desperate.
“Please, sit down.” Pierre pointed to the lonely chair.
“You study communication and marketing,” Didier said, scanning the woman’s CV. “Why are you applying for this job?”
“I need more pocket money than my parents are giving me,” the woman said.
“Do you realize this is hard work?” Jeanne asked.
The woman shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”
Jeanne was beginning to find her slightly off-putting, but told herself not to jump to conclusions. Before she could ask her next question, a phone went off in the woman’s purse.
“Excuse me,” she said with the same polite smile and opened her handbag to retrieve a latest iPhone. “Salut,” she purred into the phone. “I’m fine. What about you? . . . No kidding? When? . . . What did she say exactly?”
Didier cleared his throat.
Jeanne tapped her pen on the table.
“Shall we give you some privacy and return in twenty minutes?” Pierre asked.
“Thank you, it’s very kind of you.” The woman beamed, the irony of Pierre’s words completely lost on her.
The interview panel exchanged amused looks, marched inside the bistro, had a coffee and returned twenty minutes later.
The woman had finished her conversation.
“You’re really nice, you know? I’m sure we’ll get along famously,” she said.
“Thank you for your time,” Pierre said.
“Is the interview over already?”
“We’ll be in touch,” Didier said, poker-faced.
“Or not,” Jeanne added, reluctant to give her false hopes.
The second candidate was an accounting student who told them he was a “numbers person” and hated dealing with people. The third one was a middle-aged woman who, within the space of fifteen minutes, managed to tell them about her epic divorce, her landlord’s refusal to repaint her apartment, the mistress of her former boss, and her recent thyroid surgery. She blew her nose every thirty seconds using paper tissues she pulled from her bottomless tote bag. She then neatly folded each used tissue and put it next to the previous one on the table in front of her.
Jeanne crossed her fingers by the time the last candidate lowered himself on the chair. The combination of his name, face, and zip code on his CV suggested he was a son of North African immigrant workers.
“Why have you applied for this job, Amar?” Jeanne asked.
“I’m a pro football player, but I sustained a nasty knee injury six months ago, and had to give up on football.”
“Are you saying that waiting tables is the only alternative to professional sports?” Didier asked.
“No. But until I figure out what I want to do, it’s a better alternative than many others I can think of.”
Well said, Jeanne thought.
“Waiting tables requires a lot of walking,” Pierre said. “Would your injury allow it?”
“Without a problem. There’s a big difference between walking between tables and sprinting around a football field.”
“You’re only twenty-one, and this would be your first proper job. How can we be sure you’ll manage?” Didier asked.
“I guess you’d have to trust your judgment,” Amar said with a small smile.
But Didier wasn’t finished yet. He opened his notebook and read, “Please describe your best professional quality using just one word.”
“I’m very good at following the instructions I’m given,” Amar said gravely.
Jeanne frowned, until she noticed the corners of his mouth twitch. A second later, a sly grin spread on his face.
She burst out in laughter.
“You’re hired,” Pierre said, smiling. “Can you start tomorrow?”
A little after midnight, Jeanne closed the bistro and headed home. She was dog-tired. Working double shifts for the past three weeks had affected her physically. On one level, at least, it was a good thing. The more her muscles ached and her head pounded, the less she thought about Mat. She’d discovered this effect shortly after the unfortunate incident at Lena’s engagement party and was determined to exploit it fully until she purged him from her system.
Stepping into the lobby of her building, Jeanne walked past the concierge’s loge and stopped in front of the door to her apartment. Lucky thing she lived on the ground floor. She couldn’t imagine climbing even one flight of stairs right now. As she fumbled with her keys, she focused on one thing: a hot bath—a steaming, bubbly, foamy bath, with an old Sting album in the background and a scented candle flickering on the shelf above the tub. She’d soak until the last bit of tension, the last ache, left her body and then she’d turn in. This was the best way to fall asleep as soon as she hit the bed.
The apartment felt stuffy, so Jeanne opened the window to the inner courtyard and began to run her bath. As she browsed through her music collection, a thumping sound and a shrill female scream pierced the air. Then a male voice shouted something unintelligible.
“Get out of here!” the woman yelled.
More racket followed, something heavy hit the floor, and then a kid—a boy by the sound of it—shrieked, “Stop it, please, stop it!”
Jeanne turned off the tap and rushed to the window. The voices came from the concierge’s loge. The concierge, whose name Jeanne couldn’t remember, had been hired by the condo a couple of weeks ago after the previous one retired. Jeanne tried to remember what the woman looked like. Small, frail, curly-haired, late twenties maybe? Her face was a blur. Did she have a child? And who was she was fighting with? Should she intervene?
Someone slammed a door and a female voice said soothingly
, “It’s over, baby, he’s gone now. He’s just had too much to drink. He didn’t mean any harm.”
Jeanne waited a little longer to make sure the man wasn’t coming back before she closed her window and went back to the bathroom.
***
Amar jogged over to the kitchen pass-through. “Table three want their steaks cremated.”
“Got it,” Claude replied.
Amar nodded and hurried back to the dining room.
Jeanne smiled privately. They’d made a good choice. In less than three weeks, Amar had learned an incredible amount, improving his waiting skills and picking up the bistro jargon as he progressed. The boy was a natural.
After another hour of hustle and bustle, the last lunch customer left the bistro, and time slowed its pace from furious gallop to a leisurely amble. Jeanne glanced at her watch. She had about three hours until things got hectic again. Enough time to make a coffee and finish the novel she’d started last week. That is, unless Didier wanted to chat.
A couple of weeks ago he’d become uncommonly chummy, which was weird. They’d worked together for many years now, but they’d never been friends. Now was hardly a good time to develop a friendship. Had he forgotten they were rivals competing for the same prize—La Bohème?
Jeanne sighed. Pierre hadn’t yet given any indication as to whom he favored. He and Didier went back a long way and saw eye to eye . . . But Pierre was also known to have a quasi-paternal affection for her.
Jeanne pulled her book from her purse and hurried to the coffee machine. If she was quick, she’d be out of the bar area and engrossed in her book by the time Didier showed up. And if she was lucky, he wouldn’t intrude on her down time. Unless his sudden friendliness was part of some diabolic plan to get her to withdraw her bid.
Like that was ever going to happen.
Jeanne picked up her fragrant cup and her book and strode to her favorite corner by the window. As soon as her butt touched the padded bench, she opened the book and started reading.
Someone cleared his throat above her. She looked up expecting to see Didier, but it wasn’t him.
“I need to talk to you, Jeanne, if you can spare a minute,” Pierre said.
Under My Skin: A Contemporary Romance Set in Paris (Bistro La Bohème Book 2) Page 2