“They’re some of the bits and pieces that constitute the whole. Don’t you think we should see how those pieces fit together before getting in any deeper?”
“I don’t, but you obviously do.”
If this was a business decision, he would ruthlessly override what he privately considered trivial objections. He’d made up his mind. He knew what he wanted.
Sarah did, too, apparently. With a flash of extremely belated insight, Dev realized she wanted to be courted. More to the point, she deserved to be courted.
Lady Sarah St. Sebastian might work at a magazine that promoted flashy and modern and ultrachic, but she held to old-fashioned values that he’d come to appreciate as much as her innate elegance and surprising sensuality. Her fierce loyalty to her sister, for instance. Her bone-deep love for the duchess. Her refusal to accept anything from him except her grandmother’s emerald ring, and then only on a temporary basis.
He could do old-fashioned. He could do slow and courtly. Maybe. Admittedly, he didn’t have a whole lot of experience in either. Moving out and taking charge came as natural to him as breathing. But if throttling back on his more aggressive instincts was what she wanted, that was what she’d get.
“Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
* * *
He started toward her again. Surprised and more than a little wary of his relatively easy capitulation, Sarah let her raised foot slip to the floor and pushed out of her chair.
He stopped less than a yard away. Close enough to kiss, which she had to admit she wouldn’t have minded all that much at this point. He settled for a touch instead. He kept it light, just a brush of his fingertips along the underside of her chin.
“We’ll kick off phase two,” he promised in a tone that edged toward deep and husky. “No negotiated contracts this time, no self-imposed deadlines. Just you and me, learning each other’s little idiosyncrasies. If that’s what you really want...?”
She nodded, although the soft dance of his fingers under her chin and the proximity of his mouth made it tough to stay focused.
“It’s what I really want.”
“All right, I’ll call Patrick.”
“Who? Oh, right. Your executive assistant. Excuse me for asking, but what does he have to do with this?”
“He’s going to clear my calendar. Indefinitely. He’ll blow every one of his fuses, but he’ll get it done.”
His fingers made another pass. Sarah’s thoughts zinged wildly between the little pinpricks of pleasure he was generating and that “indefinitely.”
“What about your schedule?” he asked. “How much time can you devote to phase two?”
“My calendar’s wide-open, too. I quit my job.”
“You didn’t have to do that. I’m already past the business with the photographer.”
“You may be,” she retorted. “I’m not.”
He absorbed that for a moment. “All right. Here’s what we’ll do, then. We give our statements to the Brigade criminelle at nine tomorrow morning and initiate phase two immediately after. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Good. I’ll have a car waiting at eight-thirty to take us downtown. See you down in the lobby then.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers.
“Good night, Sarah.”
She’d never really understood that old saying about being hoisted with your own petard. It had something to do with getting caught up in a medieval catapult, she thought. Or maybe hanging by one foot in a tangle of ropes from the mast of a fourteenth-century frigate.
Either situation would pretty much describe her feelings when Dev crossed the room and let himself out.
Sarah spent hours tossing and turning and kicking herself for her self-imposed celibacy. As a result, she didn’t fall asleep until almost one and woke late the next morning.
The first thing she did was roll over in bed and grab her cell phone from the nightstand to check for messages. Still nothing from Gina, dammit, but Alexis had left two voice mails apologizing for what she termed an unfortunate misunderstanding and emphatically refusing to accept her senior layout editor’s resignation.
“Misunderstanding, my ass.”
Her mouth set, Sarah deleted the voice mails and threw back the covers. She’d have to hustle to be ready for the car Dev had said would be waiting at eight-thirty. A quick shower eliminated most of the cobwebs from her restless night. An equally quick cup of strong brew from the little coffeemaker in her room helped with the remainder.
Before she dressed, she stuck her nose through the balcony doors to assess the weather. No fog or drizzle, but still chilly enough to make her opt for her gray wool slacks and cherry-red sweater coat. She topped them with a scarf doubled around her throat European-style and a black beret tilted to a decidedly French angle.
She rushed down to the lobby with two minutes to spare and saw Dev had also prepared for the chill. But in jeans, a black turtleneck and a tan cashmere coat this morning instead of his usual business suit. He greeted her with a smile and a quick kiss.
“Bonjour, ma chérie. Sleep well?”
She managed not to wince at his accent. “Fairly well.”
“Did you have time for breakfast?”
“No.”
“I was running a little late, too, so I had the driver pick up some chocolate croissants and coffees. Shall we go?”
He offered his arm in a gesture she was beginning to realize was as instinctive as it was courteous. When she tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow, she could feel his warmth through the soft wool. Feel, too, the ripple of hard muscle as he leaned past her to push open the hotel door.
Traffic was its usual snarling beast, but the coffee and chocolate croissants mitigated the frustration. They were right on time when they pulled up at the block-long building overlooking the Seine that housed the headquarters of the Brigade criminelle. A lengthy sequence of security checkpoints, body scans and ID verification made them late for their appointment, however.
Detective Inspector Marie-Renée Delacroix waved aside their apologies as unnecessary and signed them in. Short and barrel-shaped, she wore a white blouse, black slacks and rubber-soled granny shoes. The semiautomatic nested in her shoulder holster belied her otherwise unprepossessing exterior.
“Thank you for coming in,” she said in fluent English. “I’ll try to make this as swift and painless as possible. Please, come with me.”
She led them up a flight of stairs and down a long corridor interspersed with heavy oak doors. When Delacroix pushed through the door to her bureau, Sarah looked about with interest. The inspector’s habitat didn’t resemble the bull pens depicted on American TV police dramas. American bull pens probably didn’t, either, she acknowledged wryly.
There were no dented metal file cabinets or half-empty cartons of doughnuts. No foam cups littering back-to-back desks or squawking phones. The area was spacious and well lit and smoke free. Soundproofing dividers offered at least the illusion of privacy, while monitors mounted high on the front wall flashed what looked like real-time updates on hot spots around Paris.
“Would you like coffee?” Delacroix asked as she waved them to seats in front of her desk.
Sarah looked to Dev before answering for them both. “No, thank you.”
The