His other hand clamped on her left breast and squeezed. Hard.

She dropped her hold on the purse faster than a hot coal.

The mugger grabbed it and then shoved her, hard. She toppled on the cement walk, stunning both her knee and elbow when she crashed on the hard surface.

It had all happened so quickly. The mugger disappeared into the crowd. Some pedestrians kept on walking, acting as if she were invisible, but a few rushed over to her. jabbering sympathetically in French. Someone yelled for a gendarme-she understood the word for police, but by then she didn't care. It was too darn late for that.

She was fine. Her heart didn't know it yet; she was still gulping down air like a panicked beached whale…but really, she knew she was okay. Her engagement ring, her passport, her money-losing all of it was a nightmare, but she was alive and the jerk was gone.

Everything was survivable except for the loss of those letters. No one even knew she had them, even her mom. Especially her mom. And no one would likely recognize the ratty old envelopes as remotely valuable, because they weren't.

To anyone but her. Unfortunately, they were irreplaceably valuable to her, and the loss hit her like a blow.

"Mademoiselle…" A mustached man in a uniform pushed through the onlookers, bent down to her. A cop. But what good could he possibly do? Find a thief in this kind of city traffic? The guy was probably at the Eiffel Tower by now. And when he got around to opening her purse, he'd undoubtedly take the loot and credit cards and passport and throw out everything else.

Like the letters.

A raw, rusty sound came out of her throat. Kelly told herself to get a grip and turn back into her usual strong, sturdy self, but man. somehow she couldn't find the on switch. Caving was totally unlike her. She'd always been a go-to woman, the kind of woman who could cheerlead through a tornado, who saw problems as opportunities rather than crises. She never had meltdowns. She wasn't the meltdown type.