The French Connection

4

TO SAY HER MOUTH HUNG OPEN wide enough to accommodate a small family of yaks was being understated. If the itty-bitty round table that held her teeny-tiny coffee cup were not blocking a direct path to the ground, Shelley would have been scraping her back molars off the dusty white pebbles at that very moment.

She rose, stumbling slightly as she pushed back her folding chair. “Count de Montfort.” Her voice sounded reedy, thin.

“Please, don’t get up.” He lightly touched her forearm with his hand—a hand far larger and stronger than Shelley would have imagined for the leisurely life of a European noble. “May I join you?”

She stopped teetering only to become aware that she was barefoot. She motioned for him to sit, and he let go, leaving a warm imprint through the thin material of her suit jacket. Forcing herself not to touch it, Shelley lowered herself in her chair. She blindly fished around for her shoes and nervously watched as he pulled out a chair for himself.

What wasn’t to watch? His jet-black, slightly disheveled hair curled over the white collar of his shirt. His shirt collar was unbuttoned—no, the button was missing. Nothing else was, though. Dark stubble highlighted his angular jaw and sculpted his too-prominent cheekbones. And then there were his eyes.

“You have blue eyes.” She couldn’t help it. Now that he was no longer directly in the sun, the color of his cornflower-blue irises was clear. Shockingly clear. Sherwin-Williams couldn’t have manufactured a more startling color.

He raised his eyebrows, providing dramatic arches over the twin azure pools. “Yes, it’s rare, but it is a trait that runs in my family, particularly among the men—and not always the upstanding ones, I’m afraid.” His English was flawless, his subtle accent as melt-in-your-mouth smooth as a whole bag of M&M’s. And as for his self-deferential tone—gosh, it was beguiling in a way that could get a gal in a whole lot of trouble. He might just as well have had a sign hanging around his neck that read Danger. Proceed At Your Own Risk.

No doubt the vast majority of the female population—those with a heartbeat and a passing knowledge of birth control—would have proceeded without a care, let alone major medical insurance.

Shelley, on the other hand, silently repeated her paltry checking account balance over and over as a way to keep herself grounded.

Seemingly oblivious to Shelley’s discomfort, the count turned his head in the direction of the waiter and instantly got his attention. “Café.” He looked back at Shelley and pointed to her empty cup. “Another?” He smiled.

And at that moment Shelley forgot her bank balance, her ATM access number and the name of her bank. She shook her head no, not trusting herself to speak lest she blurt out something equally embarrassing along the lines of, “I want to have your first-born child and strip you naked—preferably in reverse order.”

So rather than risk mortifying herself even further, Shelley concentrated on putting her shoes back on. She located one, but the other seemed to have gone AWOL. She poked around discreetly.

The waiter scurried off and Edmond studied Shelley. “So, Dream Villas has decided to make the rather grand gesture of sending over a personal representative to pay condolences?” He peered around the edge of the table. “I believe that’s my foot and not your shoe that you’ve located.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Shelley immediately drew back her foot. “If you’ll just give me a second. My feet were swollen after the flight, so I took my shoes off to be more comfortable. But now one of the little suckers has decided to make a break for it—kind of appropriate here, don’t you think? Seeing as we’re sitting in front of a former jail. Jailbreak? Get it?” She stopped. “I’m rambling, I know.” And decided the best course of action was to lift up the tablecloth and bend down to find the errant flat.

And maybe stay there. Until the next millennium at the very least.

After a long moment, the count leaned down. “I was starting to wonder if I should send for a rescue party.”

Shelley looked up and saw his bemused grin peeking from under the edge of the cloth. She straightened up—and proceeded to hit the back of her head on the underside of the table. Overhead, the cups rattled.

She pulled back and came to an upright position, rubbing the back of her head but stopping as soon as she saw him reemerge from below.

“Your shoe?”

“My shoe?” She saw her slide in his hand and remembered what she had been doing in the first place. “Oh, right, my shoe. Thank you.” As she leaned to retrieve it, a lock of her perennially unruly hair loosened from the barrette, which was meant to hold the thick mass of curls in an efficient twist, and it tumbled forward.

And that was enough.

That singular, insouciant flounce of dark red hair had Edmond suddenly reevaluating his first opinion of Shelley McCleery as a bland if somewhat clumsy American. Not that he had a negative image of Americans in general, mind you. Far from it.

Some of Edmond’s fondest memories dated back to his time as a seventeen-year-old exchange student in Grantham, New Jersey, where he had enjoyed those quintessentially New World contributions to civilization—lacrosse, The Simpsons and Philly cheesesteaks. Ah, what bliss! Not only that, CDs were cheap by European standards, and female classmates were seemingly all above average in terms of brain-power and the length of their well-proportioned legs.

It must have been all that lacrosse.

Even more miraculous, a French accent allowed an otherwise shy bookworm, one who constantly fretted that he had yet to experience a growth spurt, to get more than the proverbial foot in the door.

Ah, what bliss!

Until the end of June, that is. That was when he’d gotten word that his grandfather had died on the eighteenth green of St. Andrew’s Royal and Ancient. Since he had yet to putt in—with the distinct possibility of making a birdie—Edmond knew Grand-père must have felt cheated.

Edmond had felt cheated, as well. Gone was the possibility of lifeguarding at the Jersey shore that summer. Back he came to study for the baccalauréat, prep for the entrance exam to one of the elite grandes écoles and ultimately a career in government. Such was the decree by Grand-père’s widow, the last of his many couturier-clad and nipped-and-tucked wives. “It was your grandfather’s last wish,” Françoise had declared melodramatically over her third glass of sherry and just before she’d patted his bum when he’d been leaving the study. “He wanted you to preserve the family’s long tradition of service to the country.”

Frankly, Edmond figured his grandfather’s last wish would have been that he’d go two under par for a full round of golf. Edmond also didn’t cotton to being goosed by his stepgrandmother, whose face was so tight she could barely blink.

But in his own way Edmond did feel an obligation to the family legacy, a legacy—mind you, that included as many scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells as diplomats and statesmen. Given this latitude, he figured he was perfectly justified in fulfilling his calling in his own particular way—no excuses necessary, thank you.

Yet as Edmond held on to Shelley McCleery’s slim Italian shoe—very fine quality, he noticed—he was struck by how much he really didn’t want to think about his calling. Not when the shoe belonged to a slender, finely shaped foot which in turn was attached to a well-turned ankle—that being as much of her leg as he could glimpse beneath the table and below the hem of her trousers. And having never given much thought to having a shoe, foot or, for that matter, ankle fetish, the arousing images going through his mind were…well, really quite arousing.

He shifted in his chair.

“I’ll take my shoe then,” she prompted, holding out her hand. “It’s one of my favorites, not to mention that I got it for a great price at Nordstrom’s in Woodbridge, New Jersey, which, if you’re ever in the States, I highly recommend checking out—not that you need to worry about that kind of thing.”

Edmond raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’d be surprised.”

“In any case, ever since I discovered that my ability to hop on one foot for a prolonged distance was not up to Olympic standards, roughly about the same time I realized I would never be a prima ballerina, rock star or winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest—I was still holding out for secretary of state, mind you—I became quite fond of wearing shoes on both feet.”

Edmond hesitated before speaking and looked once more beyond the severe pantsuit and the prim hairstyle to the winking green eyes—rather startling emerald-green, he realized—and saw there was something quite unique about Shelley McCleery beyond the fact that she had mentioned New Jersey, the sybaritic utopia of his adolescence.

“My shoe?” A note of impatience tinged her question.

He coughed. “Of course. Allow me.” And on the hard pebbles of the café’s courtyard and in the ominous shadow of one of southern France’s most imposing prisons, he knelt down on one knee and extended Shelley’s shoe toward her.

She looked furtively around, relieved to find that the proprietor, who was leaning against the sun-drenched stucco wall of his establishment, was totally intent on deciphering the daily racing form.

“I feel quite silly, you know,” she said and reluctantly raised her naked foot.

“You think you feel silly? Imagine how I feel?”

“Then why do it?”

He gave her a lopsided smile, and she noticed the button on the cuff of his sleeve was about ready to fall off.

“Why do it?” he repeated her question as he thought. “Because this may be my one and only chance to play Prince Charming.” He reached for her foot with his free hand and, as he held the back of her ankle, slid on her shoe.

His head was bent, and she couldn’t see his face, only his wavy black hair falling this way and that. It really was too long and desperately needed to be cut, or barring that, combed. She could think of any number of women ready to take on the task. “Actually, in your case it’s Count Charming,” she joked.

But then stopped.

Because his fingers were caressing the sensitive skin at the back of her heel. Should she say something, extricate her foot in some way? Did she really want to?

A noisy seagull chose that moment to swoop over and land on the ground in front of the café. It walked in its stiff-legged gait and poked among the stray sugar wrappers and baguette crumbs that had blown to the ground. From its purposeful stride, it was clear the bird was familiar with this exercise. It stopped a few feet from the table and stared at Shelley with its black, button-shaped eyes.

And just like that the moment was broken. Edmond let go of Shelley’s foot and settled himself back in his chair.

She tucked her legs under the table.

He coughed into his hand.

She became entranced by the sea.

“Another coffee?” he asked.

She brought her gaze back to him. “No. No, thank you. I think I need to moderate my mix of uppers and downers if I’m going to stay awake this evening.” She rubbed her finger on the Teflon-coated tablecloth, with its flower-print pattern. “Not to change the subject too abruptly, but I wanted to tell you how sad I was to hear of the death of your grandmother, Madame la Comtesse.”

“That’s very kind.” A note of formality descended over the conversation. “In point of fact, she wasn’t my actual grandmother since she was my grandfather’s third wife. My real grandmother, along with my parents, died while strolling along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice many years ago when I was quite young. A Milanese banker, distraught at his mistress leaving him for the center-forward of the Forza Napoli soccer team, lost control of his Lamborghini, which jumped the sidewalk and struck them.”

“How—” melodramatic seemed too insensitive “—tragic.” There were worse things after all than having a father run off to the circus.

“Yes, well, they had just finished having aperitifs at the Hôtel Negresco, so I think they were feeling no pain.” The way he worked his jaw belied the flippancy of his remark.

“At least you had your grandfather.” Who later also died on him, Shelley realized. The layers of tragedy were beginning to rival Les Misérables.

Edmond signaled to the waiter and pointed one finger toward his empty cup. The man reluctantly put down his racing form and went inside to make another espresso. “Yes, I was very lucky. And then there were my aunts, of course.”

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