“For what?”
“He thinks I finally agreed to his company’s design for the pneumatic turbine assembly because I was so damned anxious to get back to you.”
“Oh, no!”
She pulled back in dismay. She had no idea what a pneumatic turbine assembly was, but it sounded important.
“You didn’t concede anything critical, did you?”
“Nah. I always intended to accept their design. I just used it as my ace in the hole to close the deal. And to get back to you.”
He bent and brushed her mouth again. When he raised his head, the look in his eyes started Sarah on another wild spin through time and space.
“I don’t want to risk any more mangled verbs,” he said with a slow smile, “so I’ll stick to English this time. I love you, Sarah St. Sebastian.”
“Since...? Since when?”
He appeared to give the matter some consideration. “Hard to say. I have to admit it started with a severe case of lust.”
She would have to admit the same thing. Later. Right now she could only try to keep breathing as he raised her hand and angled it so the emerald caught the light.
“By the time I put this on your finger, though, I was already strategizing ways to keep it there. I know I blackmailed you into this fake engagement, Sarah, but if I ask very politely and promise to be nice to your ditz of a sister, would you consider making it real?”
Although it went against a lifetime of ingrained habit, she didn’t fire up in Gina’s defense. Instead she drew her brows together.
“I need a minute to think about it.”
Surprise and amusement and just a touch of uncertainty colored Dev’s reply. “Take all the time you need.”
She pursed her lips and gave the matter three or four seconds of fierce concentration.
“Okay.”
“Okay you’ll consider it, or okay you’ll make it real?”
Laughing, Sarah hooked her arms around his neck. “I’m going with option B.”
* * *
Dev hadn’t made a habit of going on the prowl like so many crew dogs he’d flown with, but he’d racked up more than a few quality hours with women in half a dozen countries. Not until this woman, however, did he really appreciate the difference between having sex and making love. It wasn’t her smooth, sleek curves or soft flesh or breathless little pants. It was the sum of all parts, the whole of her, the elegance that was Sarah.
And the fact that she was his.
He’d intended to make this loving slow and sweet, a sort of unspoken acknowledgment of the months and years of nights like this they had ahead. She blew those plans out of the water mere moments after Dev positioned her under him. Her body welcomed him, her heat fired his. The primitive need to possess her completely soon had him pinning her wrists to the sheets, his thrusts hard and deep. Her head went back. Her belly quivered. A moan rose from deep in her throat, and Dev took everything she had to give.
* * *
She was still half-asleep when he leaned over her early the next morning. “I’ve got to shower and change and get with Girault to sign the contracts. How about we meet for lunch at your grandmother’s favorite café?”
“Mmm.”
“Tell me the name of it again.”
“Café Michaud,” she muttered sleepily, “rue de Monttessuy.”
“Got it. Café Michaud. Rue de Monttessuy. Twelve noon?”
“Mmm.”
He took his time in the shower, answered several dozen emails, reviewed a bid solicitation on a new government contract and still made the ten o’clock signing session at Girault’s office with time to spare.
The French industrialist was in a jovial mood, convinced he’d won a grudging, last-minute concession. Dev didn’t disabuse him. After initialing sixteen pages and signing three, the two chief executives posed for pictures while their respective staffs breathed sighs of relief that the months of intense negotiations were finally done.
“How long do you remain in Paris?” Girault asked after pictures and another round of handshakes.
“I had planned to fly home as soon as we closed this deal, but I think now I’ll take some downtime and stay over a few more days.”
“A very wise decision,” Girault said with a wink. “Paris is a different city entirely when explored with one you love. Especially when that one is as delightful as your Sarah.”
“I won’t argue with that. And speaking of my Sarah, we’re meeting for lunch. I’ll say goodbye now, Jean-Jacques.”
“But no! Not goodbye. You must have dinner with Elise and me again before you leave. Now that we are partners, yes?”
“I’ll see what Sarah has planned and get back to you.”
* * *
The rue de Monttessuy was in the heart of Paris’s 7th arrondissement. Tall, stately buildings topped with slate roofs crowded the sidewalks and offered a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower spearing into the sky at the far end of the street. Café Michaud sat midway down a long block, a beacon of color with its bright red awnings and window boxes filled with geraniums.
Since he was almost a half hour early, Dev had his driver drop him off at the intersection. He needed to stretch his legs, and he preferred to walk the half block rather than wait for Sarah at one of the café’s outside tables. Maybe he could find something for her in one of the shops lining the narrow, cobbled street. Unlike the high-end boutiques and jeweler’s showrooms on some of the more fashionable boulevards, these were smaller but no less intriguing.
He strolled past a tiny grocery with fresh produce displayed in wooden crates on either side of the front door, a chocolatier, a wine shop and several antique shops. One in particular caught his attention. Its display of military and aviation memorabilia drew him into the dim, musty interior.
His eyes went instantly to an original lithograph depicting Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 landing at a Paris airfield after his historic solo transatlantic flight. The photographer had captured the shadowy images of the hundreds of Model As and Ts lined up at the airfield, their headlamps illuminating the grassy strip as the Spirit of St. Louis swooped out of the darkness.
“I’ll take that,” he told the shopkeeper.
The man’s brows soared with surprise and just a touch of disdain for this naive American who made no attempt to bargain. Dev didn’t care. He would have paid twice the price. He’d never thought of himself as particularly sentimental, but the key elements in the print—aviation and Paris—were what had brought him and Sarah together.
As if to compensate for his customer’s foolishness, the shopkeeper threw in at no cost the thick cardboard tube the print had been rolled in when he himself had discovered it at a flea market.
Tube in hand, Dev exited the shop and started for the café. His pulse kicked when he spotted Sarah approaching from the opposite direction. She was on the other side of the street, some distance from the café, but he recognized her graceful walk and the silky brown hair topped by a jaunty red beret.
He picked up his pace, intending to cross at the next corner, when a figure half-hidden amid a grocer’s produce display brought him to a dead stop. The man had stringy brown hair that straggled over the shoulders and a camera propped on the top crate. Its monster zoom lens was aimed directly at Sarah. While Dev stood there, his jaw torquing, the greaseball clicked off a half-dozen shots.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The