“Absolutely.” He lowered his hands to her bottom and pulled her against him. “With the sexiest broad ever to come out of Atlanta.”
“Lil’ ol’ me?”
“None other, sugar pie. So,” he drawled with a lecherous grin, “wanna fuck?”
“Uh-huh.”
They raced each other to the bedroom, stripped off their clothes, and made love. Afterward, while Debra was catching her breath as she lay amid the rumpled sheets, Dillon slipped from the room and returned with the gifts he had brought home. He laid them out in front of her.
“What do these three items have in common?” he asked.
“They’re all bribes.”
“Cute. Try again.”
“You must have had a terrific day at work. What’s going on?”
“Will I have to find another girl to play with, or what?”
“Okay, okay. Flowers, wine, and bread,” she mused. “Does it have anything to do with spores or mold, something like that?”
He shook his head. “It’s not so much the flowers as the ribbon around them.”
“Red, white and blue striped.” She began to sing. “ ‘My country ’tis of Thee, sweet land—’ ”
“Another country whose colors are red, white, and blue.”
“England.”
“Another.”
She picked up the bottle of wine and read the label. Then, lifting her quizzical gaze to Dillon, she said, “France?”
He broke into a wide grin. “Congratulations, young woman! You win first prize.”
“Which is?”
“Two years, maybe more, in Paris!”
“Dillon?”
“Actually just outside Paris—Versailles, where the palace is located. I don’t think you’ll mind living in the suburbs, will you?”
Debra squealed, “Dillon, what are you talking about?”
He told her about the job Pilot had offered him. “It’s for an international insurance firm. They were building a new office complex for their European headquarters. The contracting firm turned out to be incompetent, and the work was scrapped until a new one could be hired.”
“Pilot bid on the project?”
“Right. Now Pilot needs a troubleshooting engineer to go over there and whip this mess into shape.”
“And Forrest G. Pilot chose you.”
He spread his arms away from his naked body and tried in vain to look humble. Debra launched herself against him. He toppled over backward, carrying her down with him and squashing the loaf of French bread.
“Can you believe that he thought living in France would be a drawback?” Dillon asked. “Little did he know that my wife’s main ambition in life is to go to France and hone her skills in the language.”
“Did you tell him that?”