Free Christmas in Paris by Anita Hughes

can’t order it up like a soufflé.”
    â€œI’m almost thirty, I spent the last two years eating rainbow trout and rib eye steak at wedding receptions at the Philadelphia Club and Rittenhouse Hotel,” she began. “Now my mailbox is full of announcements with yellow ducks and blue soccer balls and baby names written in cursive. If I don’t find a man and get married soon, I never will.”
    â€œI know what you mean, every couple I know is pregnant,” Alec grumbled. “It makes you wonder if anyone listened in health class. All that talk about safe sex and abstinence was useless.”
    â€œSometimes when I discover a new stock or see a dip in a foreign market, I know something big is going to happen,” she mused. “It’s like a sixth sense. I get a tingling in my fingers and it creeps through my whole body.”
    â€œThat’s carpal tunnel syndrome,” he said. “I get the same thing when I hold a pencil too long.”
    â€œI have that feeling now,” she continued. “I’m sure the fortune-teller is right, I just need to find a French aristocrat.”
    â€œThat all sounds fine.” Alec shrugged. “Why are you telling me?”
    Isabel stood up and walked to the window. She gazed at the gold-and-silver Christmas tree in the Place de la Concorde. She turned around and her brown eyes sparkled.
    â€œBecause you’re going to help me.”
    â€œMe?” Alec laughed. “How would I do that?”
    â€œWhen I was looking for things to do in Paris, I read about the Red Cross charity ball,” she explained. “It’s held every year at the Petit Palais and it’s the most important ball of the season. Tickets are two hundred euros and the attire is formal. It sounds glorious: men in white dinner jackets and women in glittering evening gowns and a sit-down dinner of veal sweetbreads and strawberry Chantilly for dessert.” She paused. “I checked with the concierge and tickets are still available. You’re going to take me.”
    â€œThat’s a month’s rent!” he exclaimed. “And I’m a terrible dancer, I always step on my own foot.”
    â€œI can’t go by myself,” she insisted. “A single American tourist would be as welcome as a bad cold. I’ll pay for the tickets. You must own a tuxedo, you were getting married.”
    â€œI did buy a white dinner jacket for the rehearsal dinner.” Alec hesitated. “But you’re not planning on spending four hundred euros on a few glasses of fizzy champagne and a plate of overcooked meat and buttery vegetables.”
    â€œIt’s an investment.” Isabel’s eyes were huge. “My whole future is riding on it.”
    â€œYou’re serious about this?”
    â€œWhen I was in college, I took the Eurostar from Paris all the way to Vienna by myself. I’m perfectly capable of balancing a checkbook, and my father taught me how to change a tire.” She paused. “But I can’t make oatmeal for one person without burning the bottom of the pot, and whenever I throw only one pair of socks in the dryer, they never seem to dry. I might be old-fashioned, but everything is more fun when you share it with someone. I don’t want to miss out.”
    â€œEverything does seem to come in pairs. The maid left two hazelnut truffles on the pillows even though Celine’s side of the bed is empty,” he sighed. “All right, I’ll do it. But I’m not staying past midnight. I have to catch up on sleep or I’ll never finish drawing Gus fighting a shark on the Great Barrier Reef.”
    â€œI thought you weren’t going to have Gus swim in the ocean.” Isabel frowned.
    He stuck a pencil behind his ear. “I changed my mind.”
    *   *   *
    ISABEL STROLLED DOWN the Boulevard Haussmann and stopped in front of a stone facade. She glanced at the striped awnings