Dancing with Paris (A Paris Time Travel Romance) Read online

  My cheeks flushed as I remembered the way his hands had felt on my skin, the way I’d yearned for him to take me. I tried to make out his face, but I could only feel his strong hands, caressing my entire body, their force, their strength unmatched by any other man’s.

  “Ruby? Are you okay?” Titine asked, snapping me back the present moment.

  My eyes jolted open and I forced in a breath, the panic and confusion now settling deep into my core. “I need to lie down. Please, just get me to bed.”

  She didn’t mask the alarm on her sweet, pale face as she ushered me through the living room, her hands wrapped tightly around my shoulders, keeping me from collapsing out of sheer bewilderment.

  When I turned the corner into the bedroom, I didn’t even have to look to know that the walls would be painted a deep violet and the sheets on the bed would be red.

  And they were. Scarlet red.

  I ignored the flashes of déjà-vu that assaulted me from every direction and instead climbed into bed, desperately hoping for a reprieve from this madness. But just as my head plummeted and I curled up under the red satin sheets, something crinkled underneath the pillow. I slipped my hand beneath the silky scarlet pillowcase to find a small piece of paper folded in half.

  I stared at it, knowing somewhere deep in my gut that whatever was written in this note wasn’t going to help me get back to sleep.

  Just go to bed, I told myself. None of this is real.

  But my desire to uncover the information hidden inside the paper overpowered my reason.

  As Titine left me alone in the bedroom, I unfolded the torn, faded paper. Inside, I found a note scrawled in French in eerie, thick red handwriting. And as I frantically skimmed the words in this foreign language I’d never learned, my brain translated the message directly into English.

  My dear Ruby,

  I know what you did, and if you even think about talking to A., there will be consequences.

  Yours truly,

  T. R.

  Goose bumps prickled my arms as I squinted to get a better look at the signature. Was it signed T. R.? Or S. R.? And who was A.?

  As I gazed down at the hands that held this freaky note, I realized again that they weren’t mine. They had long, manicured fingernails painted a deep red, and they were smaller and daintier than my own.

  Okay, that was it. I had to be dreaming. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t an insane person. These were definitely not my hands, and this was definitely not my body.

  I needed to wake up now. But I couldn’t just lie here in this foreign bed and expect it to happen. I had to take action.

  I jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen, where Titine was reaching for a glass in the cabinet. Yanking the glass from her hands, I filled it with cold tap water, closed my eyes, and dumped the chilly liquid over my head.

  “What in the hell are you doing, Ruby?” Titine shrieked.

  I took a deep breath, peeled one eye open, then the other, but my chest deflated when I realized I was still in this stranger’s apartment. Nothing had happened. I was now not only confused and in a complete state of panic, I was also soaking wet, and Titine was staring at me with her mouth wide open.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she asked, snatching the glass from my death grip.

  “This isn’t my life,” I announced once more as I paced through the apartment, trying to come up with another method to wake myself up from this insane nightmare. “I’m not Ruby. My name is Claudia. I’m a marriage and family therapist who lives alone in San Diego. And I already told you: I’m pregnant. This life, this body, this apartment—none of it is mine! I just need to wake up,” I shouted, hoping the shrieks would snap me awake, but I was still here, in this foreign life, this foreign body, this foreign apartment, with no idea how in the hell I’d gotten here.

  “You need to get your act together, Ruby,” Titine scolded. “I know you’re scared after what happened this week. We all are. We’d all like to conveniently forget what’s been going on around here, but you can’t go around pretending you’ve lost your memory and saying you’re someone else just because you’re under investigation for Gisèle’s murder! It’s only going to make you look guiltier, not to mention insane. Plus, tomorrow night is the biggest performance of our lives, and you cannot mess this up.”

  Titine charged toward me and grabbed me by the shoulders. “I need this chance just as much as you do, Ruby. This could be it for us. Our way out of these sleazy clubs forever. We could become real stars! But you have to stop this nonsense.” She squeezed my shoulders, her lavender perfume engulfing me, her emerald eyes feisty and severe. “Do you understand me?”

  I pulled away from her grasp and pointed toward the door. “Get out.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Please, just leave me alone.”

  Titine shook her head at me and sighed. “Fine. But your dramatics aren’t going to work, Ruby. I’m your best friend, and if I’m not buying it, no one else will either. Please calm down, eat something, and meet me downstairs for rehearsal in an hour.” Titine walked toward the door, but before she left, she swiveled back around on her pointy heel.

  “Don’t even think about spouting off any of this nonsense about being a therapist living in San Diego.” The corners of her mouth turned up into a teasing grin. “I mean, if you were going to fake a fall and pretend to lose your mind, couldn’t you have come up with a better story than that?”

  Ignoring the little voice inside my head telling me that this was all too real and entirely too vivid to be a dream, I raced over to the window, ripped the cherry-red curtains apart, and opened up the French windows to find a small black iron balcony jutting out into the wintry air.

  Clutching the ice-cold railing, I climbed onto the tiny platform, fully prepared to jump—not to my death, but to my real life back in San Diego.

  But instead, I could only gasp.

  A scene from the old black-and-white films I used to watch with my grandma Martine played out right before my eyes. Except it was in color. And it was as real as the freezing water still dripping down my face.

  Classic cars in cherry red, sky blue, forest green, and jet black chugged along the busy boulevard below, while men clad in black and gray trousers, long overcoats, and dapper black bowler hats escorted women down the crowded, narrow sidewalk. Some of the women wore dark fur coats with matching hats and hand muffs while others kept warm in less-showy peacoats and sleek white gloves. Elegant, colorful scarves adorned their necks, completing that look of pure sophistication that only a French woman could possess.

  Cafés and brasseries lined the boulevard, their heated terraces filled to the brim with smoking Parisians leisurely sipping wine, reading the journal, or enjoying tiny cups of coffee. Chic clothing stores revealed gorgeous window displays of the most beautiful vintage dresses, hats, and heels I’d ever laid eyes upon. Rows upon rows of black iron balconies just like the one I was currently glued to lined the elegant apartment buildings that surrounded the boulevard.

  Sounds of the French language drifted up to my perch on the balcony, my stupefied brain immediately recognizing the words…even though I’d never before spoken French in my life.

  I’m really in Paris.

  Titine hadn’t been lying. But unless a movie crew was shooting a period film right outside my window, this was not Paris of the twenty-first century.

  I lifted my gaze over the tops of the old stone buildings, past the rows of skinny red chimneys, and caught a glimpse of something I’d longed to see in person all my life—La Tour Eiffel. But as I stared at the top of the majestic tower until swirls of thick gray clouds swallowed it up, a terrifying realization overcame me.

  I’d never dreamed in color before. Ever.

  And even more shocking was the distinct feeling that I’d stood on this exact balcony, gazing out at this exact view of the Eiffel Tower many times before.

  But not in my life as Claudia.

  It hit me then. Like another shot
of ice water to the face. But this time the harsh freeze traveled all the way down to my bones.

  I’m really here. I’m in Paris, in some other woman’s body, living some other woman’s life. A life I remembered. A life in the past.

  I’m not dreaming.

  Overwhelmed at the magnitude of the situation and utterly confused as to what it all could mean, I hobbled back from the balcony and turned to search the apartment for something that had the date on it. Because at least I knew for sure where I was, but now I had to figure out when.

  As I riffled through Ruby’s clutter, I didn’t find a computer or a cell phone or even a television, which confirmed what the old cars and outdated fashions on the street below had already shown me. Then, on the messy black desk in the corner of the living room, I found a copy of Le Monde, a French newspaper. And sure enough, just underneath the heading was a date stamped in bold black ink—lundi 1 décembre 1959.

  Holy shit.

  1959?

  But I was born in 1977.

  How in the hell did this happen?

  I stumbled into the wobbly desk chair, then scanned the paper once more just to make sure this was real. That I’d really gone from being pregnant and dancing with Édouard Marceau one minute—in the year 2012—only to pass out in his arms and wake up in a completely different and absolutely stunning body in Paris in 1959 the next.

  A bold headline in the center of the front page caught my eye, and my brain—or Ruby’s brain?—effortlessly turned the elegant French words into English as I skimmed the page.

  Sister of Esteemed Surgeon Found Dead in the Latin Quarter

  Twenty-six-year-old Gisèle Richard, longtime star of the booming Latin Quarter cabaret club Chez Gisèle, was found murdered in her dressing room after a performance on Saturday night. Survived only by her older brother, renowned obstetric surgeon Antoine Richard, Mademoiselle Richard lived a lively and scandalous existence until her untimely death earlier this week.

  Replacing Mademoiselle Richard as the lead singer and dancer at the popular nightclub will be Ruby Kerrigan, a transplant from New York City who arrived in Paris less than a year ago. It was this beauty of Irish descent who reportedly discovered the body of her fellow dancer on the floor of the deceased’s dressing room, with a broken neck and a bullet wound to her chest.

  The club’s owner, Jean-Pierre Fontaine, refused to comment on the circumstances surrounding the young performer’s death. Police confirmed a murder investigation is under way.

  A chill slithered down my spine as an unwelcome image invaded my mind. I saw a woman lying on the ground, her neck twisted at an odd angle, her long black hair tangled up in her feathery red costume, her eyes open but motionless, and a crimson stream of blood pooling off her chest.

  It was Gisèle’s lifeless body, just as I’d found her.

  Shaking off the sickening memory, I tried not to overthink the fact that I hadn’t even been here for an hour and I’d already found this new name of mine on the front page of a major French newspaper, connected to a gruesome murder…a gruesome murder that I vaguely remembered. But even more shocking than seeing Ruby’s name in print were the tingles that shot through my body at the mention of Gisèle’s brother’s name.

  Antoine Richard.

  I tossed the paper back onto the desk and ran into the bedroom. I threw the pillows from the bed, and there, crumpled underneath the red satin sheets, was the threatening note I’d found just a few minutes earlier.

  My dear Ruby,

  I know what you did, and if you even think about talking to A., there will be consequences.

  Yours truly,

  T. R.

  Was the A. mentioned in this note referring to Antoine? And what had Ruby done?

  I rushed back out to the living room and riffled through Ruby’s mess of a desk searching for more information. Anything that could help me put together the puzzle pieces of Ruby’s life, find out who was threatening her, if she had, in fact, been involved in Gisèle’s murder, and why I felt so light-headed simply upon reading the name Antoine Richard.

  But as I flung useless, empty notebooks, papers with meaningless scribbles, and old newspapers from the pile, I began to wonder if this was all in vain…and I even began to wonder if I really had lost my mind.

  Maybe my life as Claudia had merely been a figment of my—or Ruby’s—imagination. Maybe I had multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia.

  Maybe none of my memories—my baby, Édouard Marceau, my life in San Diego—were real. Maybe I really was Ruby and only Ruby, and I’d snapped under the trauma of finding Gisèle’s body and being accused of her murder. And as a result, I’d created another life to focus on, to hide behind.

  But as I threw the last newspaper from the desk in exasperation, my eyes landed on two objects that proved otherwise.

  There, lying on Ruby’s desk, was my red journal, and next to it, the People magazine dated December 1, 2012, with Édouard Marceau’s and Solange Raspail’s faces smiling back at me.

  FOUR

  The sight of Édouard with that wispy French woman draped all over him and the word engaged printed over their happy faces made me want to rip the glossy magazine to shreds. At the same time, I felt immense hope over the fact that I hadn’t lost my mind. If both of these objects had traveled here with me, it meant my future life as Claudia really had existed and that all I needed to do was tap back into whatever force had landed me here and hope that it would return me to 2012.

  Maybe it’s the journal.

  My fingers brushed over its worn spine and thick, yellowed pages, but I didn’t feel myself falling or transporting anywhere. I stayed right where I was, grounded in this surreal moment where I was living in someone else’s life, touching a journal I’d brought back with me from the future.

  I opened the cover and flipped frantically through the pages, just to make sure my life was still all there. The good and the bad of it. I didn’t want to lose a single moment, a single memory.

  But with each turn of the page, the dark-blue ink I’d always written in began to fade. Lighter and lighter it became until whole dates, lines, and stories disappeared right before my eyes. I swallowed the knot forming in my throat, hoping I was imagining it. Hoping my life, my memories, wouldn’t be gone forever.

  I wasn’t imagining it, though. Not any more than I was imagining this entire bewildering experience.

  When I reached the middle of the journal and watched yet another line of my neat handwriting vanish into thin air, suddenly the sonogram photo of my baby girl slid out from between the pages. I picked it up, praying the picture would transport me back to my life. But when I focused on the ultrasound picture, I noticed the tiny black-and-white specks that made up my baby’s head beginning to fade too.

  The room spun around me as I clutched my flat stomach, wondering what in the hell was happening to me, to my life, to my baby. Where could my unborn child possibly be if I was here? Would I ever get her back?

  I didn’t care anymore that her father had turned out to be married, that he wanted nothing to do with our child, or that I was going to be a single mom. I’d give anything to go back and have that amazing opportunity again.

  In a desperate rage, I shot up from the desk, ran to the open window, and shouted into the freezing winter air, “I want to go back! Send me back!”

  Meeting my frantic plea, a violent torrent of wind whipped through the small apartment, snatching the photograph from my hand and swirling it up above my head. I lunged for the picture of my baby, not willing to let this crazy experience leach anything else from my grasp. But the wind grew stronger, scooping up every loose piece of paper in Ruby’s apartment and spinning them around like a tornado until I couldn’t see straight.

  I grabbed onto the chair and closed my eyes. The unmistakable scent of roses drifted past my nose, surrounding me like a pillow until I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet.

  Within seconds, a harsh beeping noise replaced the howling wind,
and my feet landed on solid ground.

  And when I opened my eyes, I spotted a green 1950s Renault Dauphine rambling down a busy Parisian boulevard, its beady round headlights heading straight for me.

  I lunged out of the way, stumbling onto the uneven cobblestone sidewalk and gasping for air. It took me a few moments to gain my bearings, but as I stood in Ruby’s skin and gazed at the chilly Parisian streets and the life that buzzed all around me, I realized this was the exact view I’d seen from Ruby’s window just moments ago.

  But standing here now, with my feet firmly planted on the sidewalk, the wind whipping my new curly blonde locks against my face, and the landscape of Paris laid out before me, I had to steady my entire body against the building to keep from passing out.

  Newsstands and crêpe stands dotted the sidewalks, boulangeries speckled the narrow little rue to my right, and the picturesque cafés I’d seen just moments before now looked all too familiar. I could see myself—as Ruby—packed inside their smoke-filled interiors with groups of fellow dancers, drinking wine with handsome men dressed in suits, their ties loosening with each glass, each flirtatious glance, each brush of their hands on my thin, toned legs.

  Shaking myself from the vivid memories, I noticed a woman smoking a long, skinny cigarette, walking her tiny dog with an air of elegance and sophistication of which I knew nothing from my beach life back in California.

  I tried to wrap my mind around my mysterious voyage—not only to 1950s Paris, but from Ruby’s fifth-floor apartment down to the street below—but instead, all I could think about was the distinct notion that I’d stood on this tree-lined boulevard before.

  I’d seen the way the thin branches twisted and reached toward the sunlight, hoping, waiting for spring to arrive in Paris. I’d breathed in these same mouthwatering aromas of strong French coffee and freshly baked baguettes. I’d heard the bizarre sounds of sirens and squeaky car horns. I’d smiled to myself as the elegant music of the French language swirled endlessly through these bustling Parisian streets.