A Rendezvous with Passion

Chapter 1

Hate. That’s what Jessica O’Neal felt as she watched the man retreat from the library’s check out desk, the treasured book underneath his arms. And when he turned at the exit and smirked, she had to muster all her self-control not to dash after him and jump on his back. She dug instead her freshly manicured nails into her own palms and gritted her teeth.

As she took a deep breath, she was taken aback by the strength of her emotion. The last time she had felt such hatred was in high school, when one of the most popular football players, Tom Carrington, humiliated her in front of her friends by joking that he wouldn’t be caught dead taking someone like her to the Prom. Seven years later and she had blossomed into a respected and recognised journalist based in New York who had the world at her fingertips. And where was Tom Carrington? Last time she checked, he was still rotting in the same small town they’d grown up together and which she had successfully escaped.

That hate for Tom Carrington had turned into a throb of irritation a long time ago whenever she remembered high school and the shy, insecure girl she had once been. Hate was a word and a feeling she had learned to live without.

Which is why it was so surprising to her that this nearly uncontrollable feeling had bubbled up in her after so many years dormant. And all because of this stranger…

When she had first arrived at Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale de France, she expected no more than an hour navigating the library’s shelves before succeeding in getting her hands on a copy of A Rendezvous with Passion, the out-of-print diary of French/American actor Jean Guillaume. She had especially flown from New York to Paris for this copy, too impatient to order one of the exorbitantly priced ones from private collections or wasting the rest of her life rummaging through second hand shops in the Village in the faint hope of finding a copy.

“But fly to Paris?” her best friend Jo gasped. “Isn’t that a little too extreme for just a book?”

“Not really,” Jessica smiled, the summer glow of a New York Sunday afternoon lighting up her kitchen. “It’s cheaper than the copies on eBay, plus I could do with a little break from this crazy city. The research I have to follow from that book can be done just as easily from a Parisian café as from this apartment.”

Jo shook her head in admiration while sipping a freshly brewed cup of coffee. Jessica hid a smile inside her own steaming cup, thinking what her editor Rupert Lloyd would make of her little holiday escapade. She was usually very good at getting things past him but this was one occasion where she had a hunch that couldn’t wait for his authorisation. She had a good feeling about it and she was going to follow it all the way to the JFK, across the Atlantic and into the cosiest Parisian hotel she could find that wasn’t too far from the library. She knew she was onto something.

“How will you borrow the diary when you are not a Parisian? When you don’t have a library card?”

“Don’t worry Jo,” Jessica patted her hand. “If I can sit down with that diary in the library and reserve it for a week, I should be fine.”

That had been Jessica’s plan. Until, that is, the man had picked up the diary from the shelf just as she was about to reach for it and taken it to the check out desk. She had followed the man apprehensively, not quite believing her bad luck, panic forming awkward French sentences in her mind. She had to convince him not to borrow the book.

He was about ten years older than her, tall and wide-shouldered. He wore a black Italian jacket, blue jeans and smart loafers, his auburn hair thick and casually messy. He seemed unaware of her as he flicked through the diary impatiently, the librarian busy with another customer. Jessica thought he might be an academic or a writer. Perhaps one of Jean Guillaume’s many admirers.

She counted to three and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excusez-moi…”

He straightened up and turned to face her, a wary look in his eyes. Up close, he was taller than she had first judged.

“Oui?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak French very well. The book you have-” and she pointed at the copy.

“Oh yes?” He smiled. There was something odd about his smile, she thought. As if he had been expecting her all along to approach him.

She involuntarily brought her hand up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear and immediately regretted it.

“You see… I was about to pick it up – borrow it. That book.” She gave him her friendliest American smile. The one that had got her all those waitressing tips when she was in college.

“This book?” he parroted, his French accent thick like a purr.

“Yes,” she sighed. Then she made the mistake: she extended her hand – the universal gesture of demanding something to be handed over. His face came down like a shutter.

“But I found the book first,” he said.

“I understand but – vouz comprenez – I came all the way here, specifically for this copy-”

“So did I,” he was indignant.

“I mean I came here from New York!” She had felt her voice grow louder but couldn’t control herself.

The librarian joined them and observed the exchange with an air of disapproval, as if she suspected a shouting match was about to ensue. Or at least that’s what Jessica had concluded afterwards when she replayed the scene from a nearby café while licking her wounds. The way his cheek had flushed crimson and his blue eyes grown hard with defiance. His determination not to let her have her way.

“Messieur, it’s very important that I study this diary!”

“And so it is for me, mademoiselle, to read it.” He gave her his back and pushed the book towards the librarian, one hand fishing his membership card from a leather wallet. Jessica moved to his side, closer to the diary.

“I’m a journalist from New York. My name is Jessica O’Neil. Perhaps you might have read some of my pieces in the New York Star?”

“Yes, I know who you are Ms O’Neil,” he said. “And I know what you want to do with what’s inside this diary.”

She didn’t think at first she had heard correctly.

“Oh?”

“I know what you are here for.”

The librarian scanned the diary’s barcode and flipped open the first page to impress a date stamp. It was obvious the librarian didn’t understand a word of English though there was a strain to her face as if she were trying to guess the meaning to their conversation. And it was also obvious she faulted Jessica for whatever the problem was.

“What do you mean you know me?” Jessica asked. Later, at the nearby café, she would recognise this moment as the first breach of the gates that held her hate at bay.

“I know you are here to do a dirty job,” he said. “But I won’t give you that pleasure.”

He tucked the book underneath his arm and walked away. Who was this stranger and how had he known she was in Paris after A Rendezvous with Passion? How did he know she would be at the library on that day and time? The way he had turned one last time to look at her, to triumphantly smile as she recognised she had been out manoeuvred, made her face explode in red rashes. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.

Only a few hours later, replaying the scene for the third time in her mind as the Parisian café came to life around her, did she finally recognise the name she had read on his membership card.