24 Hours in Paris

Chapter One

The Night Before

Mira had always believed that laughter was infectious. It had the power to spread from one delighted face to the next, but here, in the corner of this chic Paris bistro where the brash American laughter surrounded her in waves, she managed to stay immune.

She pressed her lips together tight, a defensive move to avoid being lumped in with the rowdiness of her tablemates. Mira was simply different from the loud tourist stereotype too often proven right in the train cars, cafés, and cobblestoned streets of Paris. She was different from them, dammit, and everyone in this bistro needed to know.

The staff seemed unbothered by the elevated noise, but was it any surprise? Each successive round of laughter meant another round of drinks: more champagne, more pricey vintage reds.

The husband-and-wife owners exchanged a knowing look as they brought out a few more bottles from the cellar. Given that they owned a restaurant off Avenue Montaigne—a notable street in the 8th arrondissement and home to the famous Plaza Athenée—Mira could only assume they were well acquainted with the platinum card–carrying demographic. Early summer was an especially busy period, with swarms of jet-setters descending on Paris, particularly on a night like this, when the glitzy Haute Couture Fashion Week had just gotten underway.

Not that Mira and her crew had anything to do with fashion. They were merely another rowdy group of white-collar Americans who just happened to be in Paris on business. The business of pushing the latest in sparkling beverages, to be exact.

The owners now made a beeline to Frank, Mira's fifty-something boss, who sat at the head of the long wooden table. Even in the soft glow of candlelight, his tailored suit and looming presence made it clear he was the one in charge. In their office back in New York, that meant rejecting an idea with a simple shake of the head. In this bistro, however, that meant being the one in charge of appraising the wine, which he now carefully did by examining the labels.

"Not a bad selection," he acknowledged, his accent a faded tribute to a childhood growing up in Queens. "We'll take both."

The owners shifted their focus to refilling everyone's glasses. They worked their way down the table slowly, starting with the smartly dressed middle-aged executives, and moving on to the younger, more fashion-forward employees.

Mira, at the younger end of the table, could feel her taste buds anticipating a fresh dose of wine, but before her glass could get some attention, it was the thirtysomething man with sandy brown hair and pale blue eyes who received his refill first. He grinned as each ounce cascaded into the glass, a smarmy look that expressed an affection for company-sponsored unlimited refills. The smarm paired well with the hair gel sweeping his shaggy hair into a greasy salesman dome. Without all that product, he could've been one of those intensely handsome bed-headed men you'd see reading books on the subway, men whom Mira had been known to crush on during her A train trek to the office. Instead, the greasy gel had sealed his fate (and his hair) in her eyes.

Hair aside, he was tall and broad shouldered and had probably been the captain of the rowing team in college (and had likely done a good job of making sure everyone knew it). She noticed him unfasten the top two buttons of his shirt, a sign that he was probably a few glasses in.

"It's hot in here," he said, before holding his fresh glass of wine to the light. "But it's okay; I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy." He snickered at his own lame joke, ignoring Mira's immediate groan. After gulping some wine, he elbowed the male colleague to his left. "We men can handle our liquor, amirite?"

"It's not liquor, it's wine," Mira muttered, her brown eyes
narrowing in disapproval. She tucked a few strands of long black hair behind one ear, frowning at the presence of this irritating dude. She'd always heard that frowning was the dangerous road to deep-set wrinkles, but up until now her South Asian genes had been good to her, and she was often still mistaken for a woman in her twenties, despite being weeks away from turning thirty-five. This ego-boosting clerical error hadn't yet occurred on the business trip, but for the moment she had other pressing problems on her mind. In addition to her latest groan, she'd served up two eye rolls, three smirks, and countless raised eyebrows in the hours since the evening had begun, all of it brought on by the irritating man-child sitting across from her.