Trish Wylie - The Bachelor's Cinderella - The Frenchman's Plain-Jane Project

She slid.

He caught her.

And kissed her again.

“This was not a press conference,” he said. “This was major torture for me. I can’t take having you look at me like you want to climb into bed with me, especially if you’re doing it merely for the sake of theater. Now kiss me, Meg.”

She did.

He smiled and did that amazing Etienne dimple move. “You were marvelous,” he said. “Don’t do it again.”

“Don’t kiss you?” she asked, teasing him even though her heart was beating wildly, her blood was rushing around her body and her entire being was hot and crazy and on fire for one more kiss, one more touch.

“Don’t tease me while other people look on. Seriously. I can’t take it, Meg. I was in danger of walking over there and pulling you down on the table right in front of everyone. That just wouldn’t be right.”

“No,” she agreed. “Because then everyone would want some of that.”

“You make me crazy,” he told her.

“You make me crazier, but, Etienne?” Reality was returning. Her lips were burning. Reality was intruding and she was afraid. Really afraid. She hadn’t even hesitated or protested or thought while he was kissing her. This man could break her, so easily.

“I know,” he said, brushing her cheek with his thumb. “We can’t do this, and I have no right to blame you, Meg. You were just working the crowd. You really were spectacular. They liked you, all of them. Especially the men.”

He frowned.

“They were just being nice.”

“No. You have what it takes to win people over. You just didn’t know it before.”

Because she’d just never had someone like Etienne telling her things like this before.

“You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be great. You’re going to make it,” he told her.

And she knew that he was thinking about all the things that would happen after he was gone. He had said that there were no guarantees in life, but she could tell that there was one. One day Etienne would board a plane. And then it would be just her. Without him. Forever.

She had to stop wanting him. Right now. The wisest thing to do would be to keep her distance from him.

But that just wasn’t going to happen. At least not yet.

EVER since Meg had fallen into Etienne’s arms like a ripe plum, she had been reminding herself that while she might be enjoying herself now, the time would come when it would just be her and Lightning and the occasional foster cats from the shelter. If she was very lucky, she might find some way to have the baby she wanted, but even then, she would be a single adult. It would be a total mistake to start thinking that having Etienne around could continue for more than a few weeks.

If she did, she was going to die a thousand emotional deaths. And that just couldn’t happen. She needed to channel her fantasies into more productive avenues. No more waking up at three in the morning, dreaming of Etienne in her bed, his lips nuzzled against her neck.

Her dreams had gotten steadily more dangerous. Because of that, she did her best to foster normalcy at work, to plan for her future as a solo adult. So, she read the books Etienne gave her on management techniques. She signed up for some business classes for the fall at a local college. She watched her employees and concentrated on learning their work habits and tending to their needs not only as a friend but as a manager. And she tried not to notice Etienne, who seemed to be driving himself just as hard as she was.

He had been meeting with distributors, meeting with buyers, meeting with everyone but her, she couldn’t help noticing. Not that she blamed him. That press conference had been totally outrageous, and possibly embarrassing to Etienne, even if it had spawned a lot of other meetings and a couple of great articles about the company.

Besides, she knew why Etienne was driving himself so hard. There was another reason. When she had pried into his personal life that day, he hadn’t mentioned the date of his wife’s death, but Meg knew it just the same. There had been rumors in those online articles she’d read about him that last year Etienne had closed himself up in a hotel room and not come out for two weeks. The date was approaching fast. He was obviously trying to work hard, either to punish himself or to forget. Either avenue wasn’t healthy.

That just wasn’t acceptable. Somehow she needed to be a better friend and partner.

Meg put down the papers she had been looking at and wandered out to find Etienne. She found him with Andy, a computer specialist who moonlighted as a graphic artist. Both men looked up when she came near.

“Look at this, Meg,” Etienne said. “This is a mock-up of some ads I thought we might run locally. What do you think?”

She thought that no one other than Mary would have ever asked her that kind of question in the past, but both men looked at her as if expecting her to make an intelligent contribution to the conversation. Warmth swirled through Meg.

“I think the ad and the graphics project have exactly the kind of new look we want for Fieldman’s.” She hesitated.

“But…” Etienne coached.

Meg looked at Andy.

“Give it to me, boss,” he said. “Don’t hold back.”

“The font just seems a bit too…”

“I knew it,” Andy said. “It’s too cartoonish. I should have known.”

Automatically Meg placed her hand on his shoulder. “No, the whole thing looks great, very visually appealing, and I think in other instances we might use this particular font. Maybe down the line once we’ve started winning people over. For now, do you have something…I don’t know. Bold but still classic? Slightly edgier but not so much so that people will notice the font before the furniture?”

“Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” he said. “I think…Yes, I’ve got just the thing. I’ll change this and get it back to you asap. And, Ms. Leighton?”

She blinked. She still wasn’t used to people calling her Ms. Leighton.

“Good eye,” the man said. “Mr. Gavard and I knew that something was off just a bit, but we hadn’t decided what.” And he went back to his work as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

For Meg, however, it was an amazing moment.

“I know it’s nothing,” she told Etienne, “but I didn’t really feel as if I was helping all that much until this moment. It felt as if I was playing at the job.”

“You’re joking, right? You’ve been running rings around all of us, Meg.”

“Not you.”

“Even me. You have a seemingly endless abundance of energy.” And then he smiled. There were those intriguing sexy dimples again. Her breathing kicked in. She concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths so that he wouldn’t see how he affected her.

“I just…when I’m worried, I tend to move faster, talk faster, do everything faster,” she admitted.

“We’re doing as much as we can. I don’t want you to make yourself sick,” he said.

“And I don’t want you to make yourself sick, either.” She raised her chin.

Etienne considered that. “I feel fine.”

“You’re driving yourself.”

“Bad habit,” he admitted.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Don’t you, Meg?” he asked, and his words sounded like a caress. “Why not?”

“Because.” She crossed her arms.

He grinned. “Good reason.”

“I’m working on the reason. No, I know what the reason is, but you might think it’s silly.”

“There’s nothing wrong with silly. Sometimes.”

She considered that. “It’s just…you’ve been in Chicago for weeks. Have you actually seen any of the city? That is, I know that you know a lot about it, but while you’ve been here you haven’t had time to do anything except take care of Fieldman’s and me.”