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eyes.
    Claire smiled back, breathing a small, sad sigh of relief as the woman passed her without speaking. She was always reluctant to respond to the friendliness of strangers when she couldn’t even summon a word of French. There was no way she could explain to the chauvinistic French that her lack of the language wasn’t arrogance or laziness. It was at times a torment for her, to be locked away in silence.
    So intent was she on her brief moment of self-pity that she didn’t notice the rough figure coming up the path behind the elegant old lady. That he saw her made no difference, he wasn’t about to move from the center of the path as he continued on his way. He crashed into her, knocking her to one side, and moved onward without even a backward glance.
    Claire had a jumble of impressions. The dark, twisted cruelty of the man’s face, the iron hardness of the body that had plowed into hers, his huge leather boots with their incongruous shine. She’d fallen against another man, and his indignant protests washed over her as she stared after the dark man’s disappearing figure. A slight shiver passedover her, as if a goose had danced on her grave, her grandmother used to say. And summoning her best smile, she turned back to offer an apologetic shrug to the voluble and much-offended Frenchman she’d landed on.
    The apologetic shrug was not quite enough. The innocent smile, the damnable English words, “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t speak French” only seemed to make matters worse. There were times when Claire considered pretending she was Lithuanian or Bulgarian, anything but English-speaking. Her obvious nationality never failed to elicit a negative response.
    The gentleman was waving his arms and shouting now. He’d been eating an ice cream cone, and her ill-timed descent had managed to squash it all over his elegant black suit. It looked like coffee ice cream too, Claire noticed mournfully. She tried again.
    “I’m really very sorry,” she began, when a voice interrupted her, smooth and fluent, and a strong arm snaked around her shoulders, squeezing her very lightly, a reassuring squeeze, telling her he would handle things. She subsided, looking up at her rescuer as he reasoned with the angry man.
    He was American, there was no doubt about that. He was also quite tall, well over six feet, with the bony sort of awkwardness that she’d always found oddly attractive. He had thick brown hair that was used to having hasty fingers dragged through it, bright blue eyes, and a big, friendly mouth. His hands and his feet were in keeping with the size of him—huge and well-shaped, and his rumpled blue jeans and jacket fit with what looked suspiciously like the faintest tracing of early spring freckling across his impressive nose.
    He turned back to her, his long arm still firmly planted around her shoulders, and grinned. “The gentleman forgives you,” he said.
    Sure enough, the elderly Frenchman was no longer gesturing and shouting. He was smiling, a warm, paternalistic smile, and there was even a hint of worry in his eyes, as if he was afraid he might have upset her. He took her handbetween his and spoke long and movingly. Her companion answered, the old man laughed, and then she found herself being walked back up the pathway, that strong, comforting arm still around her shoulders.
    “What did you say to him?” she said finally, knowing she should shake his arm free, for the moment not bothering. After all, they were in a public park. The man didn’t look like a lunatic, and even if he were, he couldn’t hurt her, not with so many witnesses. And while she couldn’t speak French, she could certainly scream at the top of her lungs, and that was a fairly universal sound.
    He smiled down at her. It was a warm, enchanting smile, full of friendliness and nothing else. “I told him you were my pregnant wife and you had occasional dizzy spells.”
    She considered several outraged responses. Instead she found