Caught Up in Us (20 page)

The taxi driver stopped at the
light at one of the boulevards, and I admired the buildings. They
had that elegant centuries-old look about them with long, tall,
open windows. When the light changed, the driver zipped across
traffic, took a sharp turn and let me out at my hotel.

As I pressed the button for the
elevator, the desk clerk called out to me.

“Ms. Harper. There is a message
here for you.”

“For me?”

Perhaps it was Mrs. Oliver, but
she was on her vacation. I hoped something hadn’t happened to my
parents. The clerk handed me a small, white envelope. It was
sealed, but my name was on the front. I opened it and unfolded a
sheet of paper.

Kat — Remember when you said if I
ever needed your translation services that I’d know where to find
you? I do need help. Is there any way you can come to dinner
tonight? The woman in charge of the padlocks has a My Favorite
Mistakes necklace. She loves your designs, and would love to meet
you. I think it could seal the deal. I hope you’ll say yes to
dinner at 8. I can send a car for you.

—Bryan

There was a phone number for his
hotel. I stared at the note, as if it would reveal my answer.
Should I go? I still felt raw inside now that I knew the truth. I’d
been tricked, and even if he felt he had to set me free during
college, I’d rather he’d have told me he loved me before he left.
Instead, he said nothing, and I was played a fool.

I was left empty-handed, a
broken-hearted idiot.

But if my presence would help Made
Here launch a new line of cufflinks fashioned from the leftover
promises from the lover’s bridge, well, that seemed fitting, as
well as the sort of thing a protege should do. It was business,
after all. Only business.

I handed the paper to the clerk,
and asked him to call The W and confirm a car for
pickup.

*****

Orange flames glowed in the nearby
fireplace, warming the restaurant. The waiter cleared away our
dinner plates as Gabrielle Roussillon informed him that the meal
was marvelous. She’d had rabbit and asparagus. I’d had chicken and
roasted potatoes, and while I couldn’t vouch for the bunny, my
French yardbird was indeed fantastic. The white tablecloth was now
marked with a splotch of red wine from where Gabrielle had spilled
some of her drink while talking with her hands.

Gabrielle was a
chatty woman and had commanded the conversation. The pleasant
byproduct of her loquaciousness was I could focus on her rather
than Bryan as she told bawdy tales of the time she’d lived in Rome,
and all her affairs with Italian men. I’d laughed, not simply to
humor her, but because she was one of those in-your-face type of
people, who could tell a saucy tale with a special sort of panache.
She was curvy and broad-shouldered, with sheets of jet black hair.
She wore a ring on her left index finger and mentioned a husband
once or twice. I wondered if it was an open marriage. If he had a
mistress, and she has
misters
, like her Italian lovers. It
hadn’t seemed that long ago since she’d been in
Italy.

She leaned back in her chair, and
tapped a charm on her necklace. It was one of mine, and the charm
was a pizza pie. “I don’t know if you remember this, but I ordered
this one online from you a year ago.”

I flipped through my mental file
of necklace orders. I certainly didn’t remember all of them, but a
pizza pie charm stood out. “It’s not often I get a request for a
pizza pie. I think I found it at a toy shop. I can’t believe that’s
yours.”

“Small world.
It’s for all my Italian men.”

“But, of course,” Bryan said. I
didn’t look at him. I’d barely looked at him most of the night. My
heart was still sore.

“And yours?” Gabrielle pointed at
my throat. “What’s on yours?”

I walked her through some of my
charms, telling her the same stories I’d told Bryan that afternoon
in Washington Square Park of the English major I never became, and
the building that I almost moved into.

“And that one?” Gabrielle touched
my movie charm. “Were you almost a movie director?”

I laughed and shook my head.
“No.”

“Then what is this for? Is it to
remind you to stop watching movies?”

“Sort of.” I looked at the
fireplace to avoid eye contact. I’d never told Bryan about the
movie camera. I’d never told anyone but Jill what it stood
for.

“Kat, Kat, Kat. A woman like me
knows when a woman is lying. What is the movie camera
for?”

I returned my focus to the French
civil servant Bryan needed to charm. “It’s for a boy.”

“And who is this boy?”

“My first love. He was my first
favorite mistake.”

“Ah. See! I knew it wasn’t just
about the cinema. Tell me about him.” Gabrielle placed her elbow on
the table and tucked her chin in her hand to wait for a story. I
glanced briefly at Bryan. He was watching the two of us.

“I met him when I was
seventeen.”

“Young love. The best
kind.”

“And he was wonderful. And kind.
And funny. He made me laugh. And he kissed like a
dream.”

“So he
definitely wasn’t a Frenchman, because they kiss like
bores!”

“We used to go to the movies
together all the time, and we made out in the theater.”

“That is why I say young love is
the best kind. You can’t keep your hands off each
other.”

I nodded, as waiters circled the
small restaurant, clearing tables, and serving other diners. Low
music played overhead, tunes like those sung by the torch singer
who lived across from me when I called this city home. Songs of
love gone away, or love gone awry.

“But he broke my
heart.”

“And so you vowed to guard your
heart from that kind of boy?”

“Yes.”

“And you still pine for this
boy?”

“Yes,” I said, a hitch in my
throat.

“You are beautiful and you are
still so young. We cannot have a young, beautiful, smart woman in
love with a boy who doesn’t care for her.”

“He does care
for her.” The words came from Bryan. I turned to him, to look into
his pine green eyes with their hints of gold. Those eyes
practically infiltrated me with the way they knew me. “He always
cared for her. He always loved her. He’s madly in love with her.
She’s his
Love,
Actually
. She’s his
Casablanca
. She’s the one he’d stop
the bus for, the one he’d run through traffic for, the one he’d
drive like a crazy man to the airport for and run through the
terminal to stop the plane. Her name’s above the title for him.
She’s the opening credit and the closing credit. She’s the love of
his life.”

Then in a voice
so low only I could hear, he whispered
forgive me
.

With the white tablecloth
obscuring us, I reached for his hand. He laced his fingers through
mine, squeezing tight. I squeezed back, and I let go of the hurt. I
let go of the ache. I let go of the past.

“He is not a mistake then,”
Gabrielle announced.

“He’s not. He’s the one,” I
said.

Gabrielle raised her wine glass,
now nearly drained of its contents. “So we drink a toast to love,
and we drink a toast to business. You have a deal to buy the
padlocks from the city of Paris.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bryan opened the door to the town
car he’d reserved. Gabrielle gave him a kiss on each cheek, then
got inside. He shut the door, and we both waved as the driver sped
off to take her home. We crossed the cobbled street and turned onto
the sidewalk running along the river Seine. The muted yellow
gaslight from the streetlamps flickered and illuminated our path
along the slate-gray ribbon that sliced its way through the
city.

“You were amazing back there,” he
said.

“Oh, you’re too sweet.”

“I would call you a good luck
charm, but I’m pretty sure it’s a hell of a lot more than luck that
just went down in there. Brains, talent, beauty, brilliance. Is
there nothing you can’t do?”

“I’m not terribly good at cooking
or gardening.”

He snapped his fingers as if
disappointed. Then he turned serious. “Kat, thank you. Thank you so
much for what you did.”

“I’m glad I could be of
help.”

Bryan reached
for my hand. “Am I allowed to hold your hand? Or does that break
the
on ice
rules?”

“I’ll bend on this one for just a
moment.”

We turned onto the Pont du
Carrousel that arced over the river. A dinner boat tour floated
underneath the bridge, it lights drawing yellow squiggly lines
along the water. The Louvre watched over us nearby.

“Would you bend on another one?
Because I’d really like to kiss you by the river Seine.”

He gave no room to answer as he
pulled me close and dusted his lips on me, leaving a soft, barely
wet kiss.

“We should stop. We should be
good.”

“We should. But I’m crazy in love
with you, and if makes things better, I’ll never stop telling you
that. Besides, I have five years of feeling it but not saying it to
make up for. So I’ll say it again. I’m madly in love with you, Kat
Harper.”

“Fine,” I said with a smile. “That
earns you one more kiss.”

He pressed his lips on mine,
tracing them with his tongue in a way that made me shiver. I looped
my arms around him, underneath his jacket and against his shirt. I
walked back a step or two until I met the railing on the bridge and
leaned against it. He ran his hands through my hair, moving closer,
as the space between us compressed. My body melted into his and I
inhaled his cool, clean skin. I wanted to feel him, touch him,
taste him, have him. I was crazy to be so close to him. I was
foolish to ever think I could have resisted.

Maybe you could say I was selfish.
Maybe you could say I was stupid. Maybe you could wonder why I
didn’t wait five more weeks.

All of that and more was
true.

But I ceased caring. I stopped
reasoning. I tossed the rules out the window and threw caution into
the river Seine because I was in Paris with the only man I’d ever
loved.

I felt fluttery, twitchy,
agitated. I didn’t know if it was fear or desire. Either way, there
was no turning back. I was going there with Bryan, going to
wherever we were going. I didn’t feel guilty, I didn’t feel
naughty, I didn’t feel wrong. I stepped into our future as I broke
the kiss. “Take me to your hotel room.”

I’d never seen a man hail a cab so
fast in his life.

*****

The taxi slowed down for a light
on the rue de Rivoli. I peered ahead, noting the clogged street in
front of us, the boulevard packed with cars. We wouldn’t reach the
W for another ten minutes at this rate, so I closed the
scratched-up partition that separated us from the
driver.

“It’s like you
can read my mind,” Bryan said, and returned for a deeper kiss. But
I wanted more than kissing and he knew it. He moved his hand across
my leg, his fingers dancing down to my inner thigh. I opened my
legs a little bit, an inch or two, enough to let him know to keep
going.

He didn’t stop kissing me as he
traced the outside of my panties. He’d always made me weak in the
knees with his lips alone; now it was like double or triple the
pleasure with his kisses and his hand. As I tasted the soft
underside of his lips, he dipped his hand inside my panties, first
pressing on my pubic bone, then making his way between my legs. He
kissed me softly, while his fingers explored me, sometimes slowly,
sometimes quickly, always the right way. I barely moved for the
next few minutes, except to subtly push against his hand as his
fingers glided over me and inside me and around me. He traced me
lightly at first, then harder, pressing down in all the right
places, savoring how much my body wanted him.

“Please don’t stop touching
me.”

“I have no intention of
stopping.”

He’d been a pro on the phone,
narrating and guiding me, and bringing me to orgasm with words
alone. He was even better in person, his hands like magic hands
that knew how to make me moan, or sigh, or cry out as his fingers
grazed across me, then narrowed in on the one place I wanted him
most.

“Keep touching me like that. I
want to be kissing you while I come.”

His hungry lips
devoured me as he stroked me. My insides were lava, and my body
ached for all of him. I wanted to fall away from his mouth, so I
could moan, so I could sigh, so I could breathe heavily and say his
name. But he kept kissing me, even as my lips fumbled at his, and I
writhed, my breaths coming faster. He zeroed in and I bit gently
into his lip, managing to gasp out the words
I’m coming
, as I finally let go of
his lips.