The Klone and I: A High-Tech Love Story - By Danielle Steel Page 0,11

had lunch at the Deux Magots, alone, listening to the Parisians and watching tourists. I felt incredibly grown up as I left the hotel. This was true independence. I had finally made it. Victory. In French underwear. I was wearing the pale blue set I had bought that morning, and stockings with garters. But who would know it? Only the police, if I had an accident, a cheerful prospect…. Like my thoughts of Sam earlier on, I could just hear the French gendarmes commenting to each other what fabulous underwear the corpse wore. But I managed to stay alive, underwear intact, all the way to the bistro. And then I saw him.

I had just ordered a Pernod, a bitter licorice-flavored drink I'd hated all my life, but ordered because it seemed so French, and a plate of smoked salmon. I wasn't really hungry but thought I should eat something, and I found myself staring at him when the waiter set the Pernod down. I was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, and an old pair of black loafers. I'd left the high-heeled sandals back at the hotel in my suitcase. I wasn't trying to look sexy here, just enjoy myself until I met the children. I had left Roger a message that morning about where to bring them, so he didn't put them on the plane to New York.

The man I was staring at was tall and slim, with broad shoulders, and eyes that seemed to take everyone in. He was long and lanky, and had a way of sitting there, leaning back in his chair, as though he had a part in a Humphrey Bogart movie. I guessed him to be somewhere in his early or mid-fifties, and for some reason suspected he was either English or German. He had that kind of cool look about him. I knew he wasn't French, and surmised from his somewhat complicated exchange with his waiter that he didn't speak it either. And then I saw him reading the Herald Tribune.

I have no idea why, other than sheer loneliness, or boredom, or chemistry perhaps, but I was fascinated by him. With hordes of Frenchmen wandering nearby, I couldn't take my eyes off him. Something about him mesmerized me. He was handsome, certainly, but only slightly more so than other men I'd seen, but there was an aura of undeniable attraction about him, and worse yet, I suspected that he knew it. Even reading the Herald Tribune, he looked sexy.

He was wearing a blue Oxford shirt, no tie, khaki pants, and loafers like mine; and as I watched him sip his wine, I realized he was American. I had come all the way to Paris and was fascinated by some guy who was probably from Dallas or Chicago. Pathetic. Talk about wasting the price of a ticket. And then he turned, and saw me. His eyes met mine, we stared at each other for a brief time, and then he went back to his paper, clearly unaffected by what he'd seen. He was obviously holding out for Brigitte Bardot, or Catherine Deneuve, or some French girl who looked like Helena. What did I expect, I asked myself, for him to knock over his chair, fall at my feet, and beg me to have dinner with him? No, but he could have come over to say hello, or offered me a glass of wine. Not in this lifetime. Men in real life don't do that. They glance at you, look you over a couple of times, and go back to their wives in Greenwich. I had decided by then that he probably lived in Greenwich or on Long Island. He was a stockbroker, or a lawyer … or a professor at Harvard. Or another deadbeat like the ten thousand men I'd met in the past two years. Probably an alcoholic. A child molester maybe. Or another giant bore, who wanted to talk about his stock portfolio, or his ex-wife, or the only rock concert he'd been to in his life, when he was in college. Either the Rolling Stones or the Grateful Dead, both of which I hated.

There was no doubt in my mind that he was married. He looked like he'd gone to Yale, or maybe Harvard. He looked like he'd break my heart, or walk out on me one day, like Roger. He was so goddam sexy, just sitting there in his khakis and Oxford shirt, I couldn't stand it. And just looking