The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(119)

Now they were all just costumes in a play that I would be performing practically against my will. It was a part that I once took pleasure in playing, because I knew that each and every member of that audience would walk out of the theater a changed person. Most of them for the better. A play that would have an impact on people. But now it was as if I was being shoved onto the stage to bring to life a production that no longer felt meaningful.

Because all I felt was pain.

And that performance was starting now. Curtains up.



JAMIE WAS right on time.

I opened the door wide and smiled as if he were the only person in the world I wanted to see behind that door.

"Well," he began, his face quickly lighting up. "Someone's excited."

"It's Paris! Why wouldn't I be excited?"

He laughed and leaned in to hug me. As he pulled away he started to go for the kiss. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was kissing Josh Duhamel, not some cheating scum of a husband standing in my living room about to take his girlfriend to Paris.

But the moment his lips touched mine, I remembered again what it was like to kiss him. The smell, the taste, the softness of his lips, the heat that began to rise in the pit of my stomach.

I quickly pulled away, disturbed by my involuntary reaction. "C'mon. We're going to be late!" I said, pulling my large suitcase behind me, and at the same time, using my free hand to push Jamie back out the front door.

I turned and locked it behind me.

There was a long, black limo parked outside my building, and as soon as we emerged from the front door, a chauffeur appeared and took my luggage. I climbed into the backseat, and Jamie followed quickly after me. A few moments later we were off.

We drove in silence. I immediately wondered if I should start talking about something. Strike up a conversation. Kill the silence. That's what I would normally do if I were on any other assignment. Or at least that's what Ashlyn, the pro, would do. Never let the silence last for too long. Always keep the conversation light and flowing smoothly.

I started to open my mouth to spew out some insignificant little-known fact about the history of our destination city when Jamie said, "Oh, I almost forgot."

He opened the cabinet under the limo's bar and pulled out a small blue gift bag with red and white tissue paper sticking out of the top and handed it to me.

"Pour toi," he said in a thick American accent.

I looked at the bag with confusion. Of course I recognized the colors: blue, white, and red, the colors of the French flag. But I didn't have the slightest idea what might be inside of it.

"What is it?"

"It's your airplane bag," he replied with a knowing smile.

The hand that was holding up the bag suddenly seemed to lose all of its strength, and it dropped heavily into my lap, bringing the bag down with it.

"My what?"

"Your airplane bag. You know, 'like a bag with lots of stuff in it... stuff for airplanes.' I think that was the official description."

I stared at it quietly. Completely speechless. He had remembered the story about my airplane bags? That as a kid I used to make them for every trip I went on with my family? I had told him about that on our second date as we lay on the hood of his car and watched the planes land. And he had actually remembered.

"I had to visit the official Web site to get the exact protocol for building a professional airplane bag," Jamie said, sitting back in his seat and resting his hand innocently on my leg.

I looked down at his hand and forced out a weak laugh. He wasn't the only one who remembered that conversation. I remembered all of our conversations. Because they actually meant something to me. Because I thought one day I would look back at them and smile. Now I just looked back at them to try and figure out how on earth I could have been so blind to all the signs. That there was someone else in the picture. They had to be there... somewhere. I just hadn't found them yet. Like a Where's Waldo? picture. You know he's hidden in there somewhere. Behind the sailboat, next to the lion's den, under the traffic bridge. You just have to keep looking. So I would. For the sake of my own sanity.

"Well, aren't you going to open it?" he asked.

I wanted to shake my head determinedly. Like a child who refused to get into the bathtub. The truth was, I didn't want to open it. I was afraid of what might be inside, that the contents of the bag might actually be even more heartbreaking than the thought of the bag itself.

But I couldn't not open it, because that's what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to be so touched by his thoughtfulness that I couldn't keep myself from eagerly tearing out the red and white tissue paper and rummaging inside.

I slowly pulled out the tissue paper.

"I hope the contents are to your liking," Jamie said. "I'm really just a novice at the fine art of airplane-bag making."

The first thing I pulled out was a container of Silly Putty. I smiled and placed it on the seat next to me. "You even remembered the Silly Putty," I stated absently, my mind in a daze. "What did you do, tape-record our conversation?" I was only half joking.

"For training purposes only," Jamie said as my hand reached into the bag again.

Next out was a bag of Goldfish Crackers, followed by two packs of gum, one bubble and one spearmint.

"I didn't know what type of gum you liked. I figured you can't go wrong with one bubble and one mint."