Pamela Hearon - Moonlight in Paris

Tara’s cheeks warmed. She’d already laundered the borrowed clothes and had thought about inviting Garrett and Dylan over for a light meal to repay their hospitality when she returned his things—having bought too much food for just her would be the perfect excuse.

The butcher’s mouth turned up in a knowing grin. “Ah, I see you have someone in your thoughts. Bien.” Using his knife as an appendage, he pointed to where he thought the cut should be made. “Enough for two, oui?”

“Actually, three.” Tara held up three fingers. “But one is a little boy with a big appetite.”

He laughed pleasantly and moved the knife over a couple more inches before making the cut and wrapping the portion in the quintessential white paper. He insisted she try some of the fresh pâté, which was exquisite, and she bought some of that also.

Before she left, he gave specific instructions on what to pair the purchases with. “Serve with le fromage, the honey, une baguette, les cornichons and, of course, le vin. If you do this, you will never eat alone.”

She thanked him and left the shop feeling as if she’d made a new friend. He’d given her advice on where to find the best of everything on his list, even pointing out the specific shops that were his personal favorites, so those were her next few stops.

Everyone who waited on her immediately switched to English as soon as she started trying to speak French. Josh had told her that just the effort on her part would be appreciated, and that seemed to hold true. The Parisians, it appeared, would rather speak English than hear their beautiful language butchered by her American tongue.

The two cloth totes provided with the apartment filled up quickly with the butcher’s suggestions and the fresh produce from the open-air market. After tasting the samples, she couldn’t pass up the tender asparagus spears or even the turnips, which she would never have considered serving raw at home.

She had to rein in her sweet tooth at the pâtisserie with its shelves crammed with decadent, scrumptious-looking pastries. She escaped with only three items by promising herself she could have one treat each day.

Who was she kidding? Everything she ate for the next month was sure to be a treat. Like the butcher said, this was Paris!

She purchased a small bouquet of daisies from a wizened old woman who stood on the street corner with two pails of flowers—they would be perfect for what she had planned. And two bottles of wine—one white and one red—from the wine shop filled her second tote to the top, giving her arms as much weight as they could bear for the walk home.

Once she moved away from the wide avenue, the side streets all looked the same. Twice she lost her bearings and had to backtrack to the park with the rose garden surrounding the statue of the man on the horse, but eventually she found her way back to the apartment building and surly Madame LeClerc.

This time, Tara would follow her dad’s lifelong advice to win over the enemy with love. She held out the bouquet of daisies and said the little speech she’d looked up in the phrase book and memorized before she left to go shopping. “Bonjour, madame. Merci beaucoup pour votre aide ce matin.”

The woman looked stunned, her eyes moving from Tara’s face to the daisies and back. For an uncomfortable moment, Tara thought she was going to refuse them. But then, the woman’s demeanor changed. She smiled a smile so sweet, Tara would’ve thought it impossible a few minutes before.

“Merci, mademoiselle.” Madame LeClerc’s voice shook a little as she spoke. “Merci beaucoup.” She lifted the flowers to her nose for a quick sniff as she buzzed Tara through.

Thanks, Dad.

The thought closed her throat as she headed up the stairs. She hoped her mom and dad had worked out their problems. Oh, they’d tried to act as if everything was okay when she and Thea and Trenton were around. But there was a heaviness that pervaded the atmosphere around them, as if the elephant in the room was sitting on everyone’s chest. How long would it take until someone from the church took notice? If Sue Marsden got the slightest whiff of the juicy tale that lay within her grasp, she would burn up the telephone lines.

Tara unlocked her door and entered her flat, her shoulders now heavy with guilt. She tried to distract herself by putting her purchases away. It was too late for regrets. She was here to find her birth father, and she was prepared to face any ramifications that may come.

Her good friend Summer Delaney had once talked to her about the ripple effect—how every action is like a rock thrown into the pond of our lives. The first ripple causes a second, then a third. They multiply and spread, yet they’re all connected at the source. And there’s no stopping any of them.

Her mom and Jacques Martin had thrown a rock into the water one night, and twenty-eight years later, the ripples just kept coming.

She poured herself a glass of wine. Grabbing her laptop, her handheld GPS and the phone book from the apartment, she headed out to the terrace to kick off the official search for the stranger who gave her life.

CHAPTER SIX

“HI, TARA!”

Dylan sprinted across the terrace, a baseball glove clutched to his chest and a delighted grin on his face. When he came to an abrupt stop beside the table she was working on, Tara saw the ball nestled in the glove.

“Hi, Dylan. Have you been playing ball?”

“Not yet. My dad’s not home.”

An uneasiness gripped Tara’s insides. “Do you stay home alone?”

Dylan shook his head. “Monique stays with me.”

Ah, there’s a Monique. Why she was surprised—maybe even a tad disappointed—by the news that her sexy neighbor had a woman in his life? He hadn’t mentioned anyone that morning, but she should’ve figured a guy like him would be attached...on some level.

Right then, a petite young woman—maybe even a teenager—stepped onto the terrace. Her glossy black hair was pulled into a high ponytail and she had a cell phone to her ear.

“That’s her.” Dylan waved.

The woman spotted him and gave an answering wave, then went back inside.

“She talks on the phone a lot to Philippe. They’re going to get married soon.”

Tara scolded herself for the little flutter that news caused. “So Monique is your babysitter?”

“Yeah.” His attention made an abrupt swerve to the small GPS device she held. “Whatcha doing?”

“Well.” Getting into personal details wouldn’t be prudent, but the child’s curiosity was natural. “I may have some family in Paris. So, I’m looking up names in the phone book, then I’m using the laptop to map where that address is, and then I’m putting the address in my GPS to get directions in case I decide to visit...um, that location.”

“Cool! Can I see?”

She handed over the small device and watched the child’s unabashed wonder as he examined it thoroughly. The kids at the summer camp where she’d been a counselor had the same reaction, and that memory gave her an idea. “Have you ever been geocaching?”

Dylan shook his head. “What’s that?”

“Here. I’ll show you.” She logged into the geocaching website she was a member of and typed Paris into the search box. A list, several pages long, appeared instantly. She pointed to a few of the items. “Each of these gives a description and the location of something that’s been cached—that means hidden—here in Paris. But the location is given in latitude and longitude.” When Dylan’s bottom lip protruded in thought, she reminded herself he was only six. Precocious, but still only six. “Those are just numbers like addresses. Anyway, you put those numbers into the GPS, and it leads you to the thing that’s hidden.”