Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran Page B

parading by for her enjoyment as the gentleman at the next table drank his curaçao and spared her not so much as a single look. The waiter had offered her absinthe, even!
    She felt enormously pleased with herself. Her Baedeker’s guide decreed that the cafés on the south side of the boulevards were suitable for ladies, but the author certainly hadn’t assumed that she would be drinking her coffee unchaperoned.
    Smiling, she looked back to the newspaper spread open before her. Galignani’s Messenger printed a daily list of English newcomers to Paris; on Fridays, the list expanded to include notable departures to other spots on the Continent. A scan yielded no sign of Thomas’s name. He was probably still here, then. But where he might be skulking remained a mystery. Her concierge at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre had made discreet inquiries on her behalf, so she knew that he was not lodged there, nor at the Maurice, the Brighton, the Rivoli, or the Saint James and Albany. He had not even stopped in for a chop at Richard-Lucas. For an Englishman, he was proving remarkably unpredictable.
    “Enjoying yourself?”
    She twisted around from the waist, heart thumping. What on earth ? “Alex!”
    “None other,” he said. He made an excellent impression of a well-heeled Parisian: gray suit, gray waistcoat, gray felt hat, gray suede gloves—even a gray necktie, appropriately loosened in the manner of the locals. He looked expensive and sophisticated and, thanks to the dark circles beneath his eyes, utterly debauched to boot: a man who enjoyed his nights as thoroughly as his days.
    He gestured toward the empty chair opposite her. She nodded. What else was she to do?
    As he sat down, the cramped quarters forced his knee into her skirts. He gave her a startlingly broad smile. Perhaps his temperament changed with the country, just like his wardrobe. She tried to look away from his throat, but the sight drew her back again. Since her arrival to Paris yesterday, she’d witnessed a hundred gentlemen with ties thus draped. But on Alex, the effect was . . . startling. As if he’d been interrupted while undressing.
    It occurred to her that the last time she had seen him, he’d just finished kissing her with expert skill. She felt her face warm.
    He threw one long leg over the other and glanced around, utterly at ease, as though he had not just ambushed her in a foreign country. She held very still, overly conscious of her breathing, of the way her fingers itched to fidget. His cheekbones had a dramatic slope to them.
    Loose ladies probably had fever dreams about his lips.
    Those lips showed no signs of moving in speech.
    “What are you doing here?” she burst out.
    He lifted one brow as he looked back to her. “What a disingenuous question. I told you I was coming to Paris.” The smile that curved his mouth seemed to weigh a variety of improper possibilities. “Perhaps I should ask if you were following me.”
    “What a silly question that would be,” she said irritably, “as I had also already expressed my intention to come here during our last conversation.”
    His eyes narrowed. “I believe I stated mine first.”
    “Yes, but my idea was born separately. It had nothing at all to do with you.”
    “You—” He ran a hand over his face and muttered something beneath his breath which she could not make out. Then he sat back in the chair and pasted on a lazy smile. “Ah, what does it matter. Paris is big enough for the both of us.”
    “Then why are you here at my café?”
    A muscle ticked briefly in his jaw. “An excellent question,” he said finally. “My sisters have no faith in your chaperone, and apparently their suspicions are correct. She is napping beneath cucumber slices while you are wandering about collecting wine carafes.”
    “So there’s my answer,” Gwen said triumphantly. “You found the note I left her.”
    The corner of his mouth lifted, but it did not appear to be a sign of good humor. “Yes,”