Nights In Black Lace by Noelle Mack

signed by the greatest master of the art.
    Henri Cartier-Bresson was his favorite photographer. Odette must have thought he was making that up, along with his degree in marine biology. Not like he could sit around and talk ocean currents with her, right?
    Good thing he hadn’t commented on the oddball paintings on the wall—she would have laughed.
    Did he get to ask questions from here on in? Now that he thought of it, she’d deflected quite a few so expertly he hadn’t known she was shining him on.
    Bryan looked down at his Newport Beach tank and neoprene jacket. Clothes made the man. She must have taken him for a studly surfer, and figured he had the brains of a boogie board. But he couldn’t forget the way she’d looked at him, clothed and naked…like he meant something to her.
    Yeah. Sure he did. A fresh entry in her Filofax under M for Men. No, make that H for Hommes . Beach boy, American, subspecies, California. How many stars would she give him for the sex? One for each of their three days. Over and out.
    Bryan was crushed just thinking about it. He turned around when he heard the clatter of cups and realized that the first girl was going off her shift, and a new one was just starting. Serious-looking, thick glasses, and was that a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s essays she’d just set on the counter?
    Yup. She would make a point of ignoring him.
    Bryan opened up the Bonjour Paris website again, looking for more photos. Hell. There he was, grinning like a fool. That witchy interviewer had practically stuck the mike up his nose while he answered questions he only half-understood.
    Smile and wave. He was waving to his mom. But he didn’t look too bright doing it. He photographed okay. No wonder the rich and powerful Odette Gaillard had mistaken him for a California gigolo with sand in his flip-flops. Weird that she’d wanted him anyway.
    Christ. Was his name in the captions? What if the graduate admissions officers looked him up on Google and laughed their fucking heads off? No, he hadn’t broken any laws or revealed any personal parts, but if they had to chose between Joe Nerd and Beach Blanket Bozo, all other things being equal, they would chose Joe Nerd and not him.
    He scrolled through all the photos and peered at the text. The interviewer had spelled Bryan as Brian and Bachman as Backmann. He was safe. He really couldn’t be angry with Odette. She’d had no way of knowing anything about him, and she’d only wanted to protect herself. That was understandable.
    And she’d wanted him, gone out of her way to talk to him. Something he found even more flattering. Being taken for a boy toy by a hot, sophisticated Frenchwoman wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
    He didn’t have to mention the encounter when he e-mailed his mother. Gloria Bachman would be thrilled to hear that he’d won a ticket to an honest-to-God runway show. He’d send her the link to the website; she’d enjoy the pictures. She was that kind of mother. No matter what he got himself into, his mom kept right on thinking he walked on water.
    Now, if there was some way he could take her on a virtual tour of a Paris fashion house…Odette could help with that.
    No, he wasn’t going to guilt-trip her into it. Bryan had no idea how to even tell her that he knew who she really was.
    The more he thought about it, the more he remembered how she’d looked when she came up to him at the back of the showroom, ignoring all the craziness onstage, and the glamorous crowd.
    Almost like she didn’t want to be there either.
    No one had recognized her when they’d gone clubbing—she’d blended into the raffish crowd like she belonged anywhere she wanted to be, drinking and dancing and living it up.
    And after they’d ended up at her place, she’d really let down her hair. He would never, ever forget how they hit the heights of lust and came