His face changed slightly, becoming at once harder and more vulnerable. “She died when I was eight. We were in Düsseldorf. She caught pneumonia and was gone within the week. She never had time to say goodbye. One day she was fine, a little glassy-eyed and coughing. We were playing Hearts—the card game, you know it? We’d played at least fifty rounds, all afternoon, and she hadn’t cooked dinner, and my dad was so mad when he got home to a cold stove. They had a fight, she went to her room pleading a headache. Dad and I cleaned up the cards, ate toast and beans, which was fine by me, I loved toast and beans. I knocked on her door and shouted good-night, not knowing she was so sick. They told us later that by then, when I knocked, she was already too far gone to save. She never woke the next morning, and died a week later.” He shook his head, gave her a rueful smile. “I’ve never told anyone that before. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

“The Scotch, probably, or the pollen from the cherry blossoms.”

Justine was witty! Imagine that.

“I think it’s you,” he said, those electric eyes on her mouth. “I think Justine Holliday is making me senseless.”

“Pas possible, mon enfant.” God, why had she called him that? A pet name, already? They hadn’t even known each other for twenty minutes. Don’t be an idiot, Justine. She sipped her champagne casually. “We’re simply ships passing in the night.”

An offer, passed on. She noticed Constantine relax a bit, saw right into his thoughts in the uncanny way she had. (Justine isn’t like that, Sutton warned herself.)

He’d been trying very hard to make this a romantic moment, something to remember, perhaps a wonderful anecdote to trot out at parties and tell their grandchildren. “Your grandmother fell in love with me over champagne at a tiny table in a seedy café in Paris, children. Watch, and learn.” He was a man on the make, a man looking for love in the most romantic city in the world. He’d found a willing target and was going to work hard to sweep her off her feet.

He probably had genital warts. Or herpes.

His smile was more relaxed now, too, and his eyes had gone from predatory to warm, inviting, comfortable. She could sink right in, like walking through waves into a deep, blue ocean.

“So tell me about you, Justine.”

“About me?” She touched his bare forearm with a curious finger and the voice in her head said, Watch out for sharks.

A Baby Is Born

A BABY IS BORN

Then