Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [171]
She laughed. “There’s something about this city that makes a woman feel nineteen again. It must be something in the air—or maybe it’s just the Pernod. But what are you doing here?”
“Oh, business.” He grinned. “As a matter of fact, I’m playing hookey. I should have been on the Normandie sailing for New York tonight and suddenly I just couldn’t bear the thought of it. I’ve been in Paris three days and I haven’t been to any of my favorite haunts or eaten in any of my favorite bistros. So—I canceled the sailing, checked into the Grillon, and met you. Now, Francie Harrison, if that is not fate, I don’t know what is.”
She thought how nice he was, and how handsome; again she noticed his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed, and that his hair was a little grayer at the temples, and he was tall and lean and devastatingly attractive. She said cautiously, “I admit we seem destined to meet on street corners.”
“Ah, but that’s because it’s impossible to meet you anywhere else. I’ve tried, but Annie Aysgarth won’t let me near you.”
Francie’s heart skipped another happy beat; she couldn’t deny the little crackles of electricity between them. She knew she should say good-bye to him right now but she’d not felt like this since Edward. And besides, she was alone in Paris, the loveliest and most romantic city in the world.
She met his eyes and said conspiratorially, “Annie won’t be here for another four days,” and they both laughed.
“Would madame care for a guide?” he cried. “I am at your service. We’ll start right away.” He held out his hand and she took it feeling like the girl he had said she looked instead of the mature woman she was. She let herself be swept happily into a taxi to inspect some of the wonders of the Louvre, and then on to Notre Dame, where they heard a choir sing a soaring anthem beneath the glowing light from the famous rose window, and then on to browse through the piles of secondhand books at the bouquineries lining the banks of the River Seine, stopping occasionally in their breathless whirl to drink reviving rich black coffee out of small thick white cups. And when he asked her where she would like to go for dinner she said unhesitatingly, “Maxim’s,” and he said, “Maxim’s it is.”
She dithered in front of her closet in an agony of indecision, lifting out dress after dress, holding them anxiously up against her, gazing in the mirror then tossing them onto the bed. Finally, she decided on an ankle-length dinner dress of deep aquamarine crepe de chine, cut on the bias so that it just skimmed the body. The long, tight sleeves were cut into points at the wrists and she clipped a pair of leaf-shaped diamond pins at the corners of the wide square neckline. She swept up her hair and pinned it with the jade combs, then she took it down again and tied it back with a ribbon the way he’d admired it that afternoon. And when she was ready she looked at her reflection in the mirror and knew she had dressed to please him.
She kept him waiting ten minutes while she prowled her suite in case he thought her too eager, and then she went downstairs to meet him. He was waiting in the foyer and she thought, breathlessly, that he must surely be the handsomest man in Paris, and he looked adoringly at her and made her feel like the loveliest woman in the world. The maître d’at Maxim’s knew a pair of lovers when he saw one and he sat them in a discreet booth and immediately suggested champagne.
Francie gazed happily around the famous restaurant and its glamorous patrons and thought that if she hadn’t met Buck Wingate she would have been dining alone at her hotel. “I can’t believe my luck meeting you,” she said impetuously. And he looked steadily at her and said, “Nor can I.” The sexual electricity crackled like lightning between them and she glanced shyly away.
They drank a toast to Paris and ate tiny Belon oysters from a silvery bed of ice and tasted morsels of each other’s dishes. He told her about his trade mission and she told him about her visit to Hong Kong, but