Will had been a hero, but he certainly owed her nothing. He'd already gone the long mile to help her out. "Okay," she said brightly. "If you'd just let me use your phone…"

He gave her a look she didn't understand. Then he steered her into the room with the balconies and the high tin ceilings, handed her a phone and left.

She appreciated the privacy. But twenty minutes later, she was pretty close to curling up in a ball under a couch. Any couch.

Will showed up in the doorway. "Not doing too great?"

She sighed. "I couldn't seem to make a direct connection, so I had to use an operator. She didn't speak much English. Or want to."

"Yeah. You're in France."

"Got past that. But my mom wasn't home. I tried her landline, her cell. Twice. Left messages. Twice."

"Okay." He scratched his chin. "I thought you said you had a fiancé."

She straightened. "I do."

He looked at her. She wasn't sure what he was thinking, why a sudden silence fell between them, but whatever wheels were turning in that interesting brain of his, he suddenly seemed to come to a decision. "Come on. We're getting out of here."

FOUR HOURS LATER, Will still wasn't sure what he was doing. She wasn't his problem, he kept telling himself. And once she brought up the fiancé, he'd normally have backed off faster than lightning.

It had taken him a long time to cultivate an irresponsible, don't-give-a-damn, love-'em-and-move-on kind of lifestyle. Poaching was a bad idea. Not because it was right or wrong but because it was inviting trouble.

Only this was different. Really. The thing was, Kelly kept bringing up this so-called fiancé, but the infamous fiancé wasn't the one she wanted to call for help, wasn't the person she'd left records with, wasn't the person she wanted to ask for money.

As far as Will could tell, if the fiancé existed, he was in the toad class.

Maybe that didn't totally explain how they ended up at Pont d'Alma on the Left Bank, with Will forking over major euros at the ticket counter, but by then the day had been so irretrievably awful that he needed a pick-me-up.