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People tiht as she walked down the street huddled in her coat, but there was really nothing to cohts By early Deceone, the air was crisp and cool and enough of the tourists had left to ust she alondered why on earth she’d chosen to pull up stakes and move three thousand miles away from her family But then winter came, and she remembered all too well

It ht have helped if she could have abandoned the city to the tourists every August, as all the French did, but she’d yet to find a job that included such luxuries as vacations, health care or a living wage She was lucky she’d ed to find work at all As it was, her presence in France was quasi-legal, and h, even if she shared a tiny walk-up flat with a fellow expatriate who seemed to have very little sense of responsibility Sylvia barely remembered to pay her half of the rent, she’d never swept a floor in her life and she considered any piece of furniture or flat surface a place to leave her astonishingly large wardrobe On the other hand, she wore the saht that Chloe did, and she was not averse to sharing She was also single-mindedly deteroal she spentChloe with a littleroom

In fact, it was Sylvia who’d found Chloe her current job translating children’s books Sylvia had worked at Les Frères Laurent for two years, and she’d slept with all three of thejob tenure and a decent salary for translating spy novels and thrillers for the small publisher Children’s books were less of a ly, but at least she didn’t have to ask her farandparents had left her Not that her parents would encourage her Thata

If she weren’t ha a bitWhile her French was excellent, she was also fluent in Italian, Spanish and Ger of Swedish and Russian, and even a few bits of Arabic and Japanese She loved words, alreater talent out of the kitchen At least, that’s what she’d been told when she was disrah respect for tradition

Chloe had never been particularly respectful of tradition, including her family tradition of medicine She’d left all five of the Underwoods back in the mountains of North Carolina Her parents were internists, her two older brothers were surgeons, and her older sister was an anesthesiologist And they still couldn’t believe Chloe wasn’t dying to enterthe fact that there was no one in this world est member of the Underwood family

No, Chloe wasn’t going to get to touch that nice little chunk of ave in and went toto be a cold day in hell before she did

In the etables, and all the walking she did kept the carbohydrates froh they seemed to have developed a fondness for her rear At twenty-three she couldn’t still be built like a coltish teenager, and she was never going to look like a Frenchwoman She just lacked the style even her roolishwoman, had in abundance She could wear Sylvia’s clothes, but she never could htly a butt, too

Les Frères Laurent was on the third floor of an older building near Montmartre Chloe was the first one in, as always, and she put on a pot of the strong coffee that she loved, cradling a cup in her chilled hands as she looked out into the busy street below The brothers kept the heat off at night, and as a junior employee she wasn’t allowed to touch the thermostat, so she’d learned to keep an extra sweater in the tiny cubicle she’d been allotted She wasn’t in the ht azure above the old buildings that surrounded them, and for some reason the adventures of Flora the plucky little ferret didn’t call to her Not enough sex and violence, she thought wistfully Just iven by a skinny rodent in a pink tutu and the s values of an American Republican Just once she wished Flora would yank off her tutu and ju her the eye But Flora would never stoop so low

Chloe took a sip of her coffee Strong as faith, sweet as love, black as sin She wouldn’t be a real Parisian until she started so that far Besides, the farther away her parents were, the less annoying they became

It was another hour before anyone else would arrive at the office, and she told herself that no one would know or care if she wasted a few preciousFlora It was no wonder she was so irritated with the fictional character What she needed was a little more sex and violence in her own life

Be careful what you wish for, a little voiceher coffee Sex had been notable by its total absence for the past ten months, and her last affair was so lackluster that she hadn’t been energized enough to look for a replacement It wasn’t that Claude had been a bad lover He prided hiauche Américain to be suitably dazzled She wasn’t

And she could probably do without violence, which was usually accompanied by blood, which tended to make her puke Not that she’d encountered much real violence in her life Her family had kept her sheltered, and she had a healthy respect for her own safety She didn’t go wandering into dangerous parts of the city at night, she locked her doors and s and looked both ways and prayed diligently before she crossed the homicidal Parisian traffic

No, she could look forward to another peaceful winter in the underheated apart Flora the Plucky Ferret and Bruce the Tangerine, though how a tangerine could have a life of its own had so far escaped her Maybe that hy she was stalling on Flora, knowing her next task was citrus

She’d find another lover, sooner or later Maybe Sylvia would finally hit the entle Frenchlasses and a skinny body and a taste for experi

In the hty little ferret awaited her, as did the daunting task of cohty”

She heard Sylvia before she arrived—there was nothe noisy clatter of her expensive shoes on the two flights of stairs, the edup at work three hours before she usually dragged herself in?

The door sla, not a hair out of place, not a speck of her ed “There you are!” she cried

“Here I am,” Chloe said “Want some coffee?”

“We don’t have time for coffee, dammit! Chloe, sweetie, you have to help me It’s a matter of life and death”

Chloe blinked Fortunately she was used to Sylvia’s dramatics “What now?”