CHAPTER 15

JE NE SAIS QUOI

"Bonsoir." Emily said with a small smile.

She had decided to make him wait, but not more than five minutes. She liked a worked up French guy.

"Good evening, Lauren." The guy tried not to be obvious as he checked her from head to toes…and then back up, and then back down again.

Emily looked damn good and she knew it. She felt that way, too. There was something about Dior that gave her a boost of confidence. She was rarely one to splurge on designer things, so when she owned a piece like that, she appreciated it all that much more. This time, it was complimentary.

The man literally took a bow in front of her and kissed the palm of her hand, now that she was sober enough to know that waving at him was not etiquette.

Everything about this situation was making Emily want to laugh. Never in her whole entire life had something so random happened to her.

As they stepped out of the hotel, his car was waiting for them.

At the sight of a Porsche Taycan Turbo S, Emily's jaw dropped. That car, along with its metallic silver color, was a vision of perfection. She has never been a car geek, but Tara had been yapping about amazing concept cars for long enough so that Emily picked something up.

"Nice car." She said teasingly.

He chose not to reply and something in the air felt awkward.

"Oh, I've already been in it, haven't I?" Emily, the profiler, profiled herself as an idiot who had been drunk enough, at noon, to not remember a piece of art, like this car.

He drove around Paris, just because, why wouldn't he? He had a beautiful lady in a beautiful car. Also, being Parisian, he didn't even mind that he had to stop at every single red light and wait for ages for it to turn green again.

Emily looked out of the tinted window. It was starting to get dark and all the city lights had come out to play. She had always loved Paris. Well, France in general, but Paris had a special place in her heart. There was this weird, unknown something about Paris that made it so…mysterious, amazing, melancholic. That thing, the famous je ne sais quoi.

They stopped in front of the restaurant and a guy tended to the car after Richard handed him the keys.

"After you." Richard opened the door for her and he noticed how she turned around one more time, wanting to see the city before they walked in.

"First time in Paris?" He asked curiously.

"Uhm…" Emily Prentiss had been in Paris before, but she had chosen to pretend to be Lauren Reynolds for this short, spontaneous vacation.

"Yeah." She said, even though this was most definitely not Lauren's first time tasting France.

"Would you like to try some typical French food?" He held the menu in his hands, although she was sure he already knew it by heart. First of all, because a menu at such a place probably only consisted of three dishes and five drinks; and secondly, because a guy like him, with a car like that, had surely taken other women there, too. In fact, he had been greeted by his name by three different restaurant employees, just on the way to their table.

"Oh, God, not the onion soup." She did not mean to sound whiny. It was just that…this was the most disgusting thing she could think of. Also, the most French one.

He laughed genuinely. "Oh, you are so American." In a way, this was his revenge for when, earlier, she had called him out on being French.

"Do you trust me?" He only meant that he would like to choose the food.

"No." She grinned devilishly. "But go ahead."

He shook his head. This woman was not like anyone else he had ever met.

He then went ahead and placed an order. Emily tried not to eavesdrop as he spoke to the waitress, as she genuinely wanted to be surprised. She was, also, hoping that onions wouldn't be hanging out of the plate. It was a deal breaker, at that point.


Bryan made a shush sound as Angie started whining about the discovery of what had happened to Amanda.

It sounded like a loudspeaker in the distance, and they realized this was their morning wake up call from Dan and it came in much earlier than expected.

They sprinted back, now finding it so much easier to understand directions, being able to see where they were going.

"What did we miss out on?" Bryan asked one of the guys in front of the building.

"They announced a day off." The guy shrugged and went out for his morning jog.

"A day off? The first week of Academy? I don't think so." Angie did not like the sound of this.

"I'm starting to think that this is about Amanda…" Bryan shrugged lightly, as they walked towards a bar for breakfast.

"I think I read somewhere that if there had been a fatality on campus, all activities must be interrupted for the whole day. Since it happened last night, I guess this is it – the reason why we have nothing on our schedules today." Jack said while hurrying over to a table at the outside area, the only free table he could spot. He wanted it, he got it.

"Wait, whoah." Angie looked at him disapprovingly. "The fact that they don't require us to do anything specific today does not mean that we would just sit on our butts and wait for tomorrow. Guys, we must do something. And I don't mean just physical training!"

"That's dumb, though." Ever since the night before, Angie had started seeing traits in Jack that she did not like and this statement of his only made things worse.

"No, it isn't. Guys, I'm not going to apologize for wanting to be here. I'm also not going to have a day off. First of all, I am here to work my ass off and to push my limits and I would certainly not achieve that by wasting a precious day. Secondly, my freaking roommate just died and if I don't blow off some steam, I'm going after the idiot who facilitated it."

Jack gulped, hearing her last words. So, apparently, she did blame him for what had happened to Amanda.

"Uhm, I never said anything…" Bryan said in his defense.

The waitress brought them their coffee and Angie stood up.

"I'll actually have that to go. Thank you." She wanted to make her point in a dramatic way, but soon realized that it looked like she was stealing the ceramic mug that the coffee was served in.

"I'll come back later to return that." She whispered to the waitress and she walked away.


"Wow. I have to say, the food was delicious." Emily was only half-happy about it.

The food had been great, yes. But the servings were unbearable. In her opinion, expensive French restaurants should not call their food "dishes", but rather "tongue teasers".

She was starving.

Richard waved at the waitress and Emily got the impression that the woman put it on his bill. Yes, quite surely he was a regular there.

"Listen, you don't need to pay for everything." She felt a little weird. Emily only ever let her close friends pay for her. "But I'm keeping the Dior." She added, lamely.

"Yes, please, keep it." He nodded with poise. She could almost swear that he was the upper-class, old money type of a rich guy; from an amazing family; with exquisite taste of clothing, fine dining, cars and, apparently women, too. It was either that, or she was dreaming.

"It wouldn't look as good on me." He said as he stood up and made a gesture towards her chair, helping her stand up as well.

He also accompanied that joke with a gesture of pulling his dress jacket aside, revealing more of what his body structure was actually like, as if to prove that he wasn't suitable to wear a tiny dress.

Emily contained herself from biting her lip. Again.

Richard seemed like an extremely well-built man – tall, muscular, but not too much; with a body frame that Emily had seen in those calendars…the firemen type. It only took her a second to imagine him with his shirt off.

"Lauren?" Apparently, he had been talking to her while she was daydreaming.

"Huh?" She came back to reality.

Realizing that they barely even spoke during dinner and that they were now walking towards the car again, which only meant that the date had finished; made her frown.

"I would like to…how do you Americans say this…get to meet you better." He said while they waited for his car to be taken to them.

Emily froze. Yes, he was hot, but she was suddenly not so sure how she wanted that night to end.

"Oh, no, no. I don't mean anything rude. Excuse moi, I only meant that while eating, one is not able to have a good and long conversation, so I would like to take you someplace else. To just talk. You seem very mysterious and I want to find out more." He corrected himself and this time it all sounded a lot better.

"Get to know you better." Emily finally corrected him, finding it sweet how he used a mix of both languages and sometimes translated things literally and they made no sense in English.

"And yes, I would like to get to know you better, as well." As she pronounced those words, a weird feeling came over her. Truthfulness. She actually meant those words. For once, it felt good to be able to say what she thought. Maybe going undercover as Lauren, but in real life, wasn't such a bad drunk idea after all.

He drove off in an unknown direction. Even without her gun, she felt quite safe, knowing that, if needed, she could simply just strangle him with her bare hands. She wasn't worried about herself.

It was completely dark by that point. She noticed him take another tour around the city – he had driven down the same street twice, and he went through the same intersection twice, each time driving down a different one of the main boulevards of Paris. Seeing him so eager to allow her to have a good time, made her smile again.

"Do you like Paris so far?" His eyes abandoned the road for just a second, wanting to see her again.

"Oui." She nodded, looking back at him.

If someone dared to let her know that, at that very moment, her cheeks matched the color of her dress, she would probably strangle them too.


Bryan had excused himself from the coffee bar and he had followed Angie back to her room.

He walked right in, as the door was cracked open.

"Can you, please, stop getting naked in front of me?" He turned around as she started to change clothes. She had seen him enter the room and yet, decided to change.

"Bryan, stop being an ass. Jack is more than I could take today." She said as her training top fell down in place after she threw it over her head.

"Plus, you have seen me in my swimsuit and it is much more revealing than my sports bra and my undies. So, please, grow up." She added.

He made a mental note to himself to try to explain to her, some day, how a man's mind really worked.

But for the moment, he decided to let it go.

"What's on our agenda then?" He was already dressed for sports, so it would be much easier to follow her around.

"Our agenda?" Her eyebrow raised a little bit.

"Yes, our agenda!" His confirmation made her smile. "Or have you forgotten that we are doing this, together?"

"I don't know what we could do. I guess we could start with some running and then I need to work on my pull ups." She was now sitting on the edge of her bed, tying her shoe laces.

"Pull ups are not required by all trainees. You could easily get away with not being able to do as many." It was true.

"I know, only candidates for the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team need to do those, but that doesn't mean I could just slack and do less than the rest of you." She seemed to be very well informed about everything, when it came to the Bureau.

"I mean, I'm trying out for that spot, so I must do pull ups. It would be fun to teach you a few things. Come on, grab your water bottle and let's go." His hand rested on her shoulder for just a second and it felt so nice. It was the kind of warm support she needed at the moment, without it being too obvious and pushy.

Five miles later, they were catching their breath, walking off the adrenaline of their run and swiping sweat off their foreheads with their sweat-drenched tops as they neared the training area.

"Okay, first thing – the grip." He jumped up and held the bar before doing a few pull ups and his hands slipped.

"See? This grip feels very comfortable, but doesn't hold for long. It wears you off quickly and, if your palms sweat, you risk falling and hurting yourself." He kept on talking.

"Now, show me how you grip it." He urged her and it took her a second to become a monkey.

She jumped up and held the bar, her feet swaying in the air.

"Think a little less jungle." He laughed at her and held her feet steady.

"Now, your grip is not bad, but push your knuckles more in. Ah, there you go. Now squeeze." He let go of her feet.

"But that's uncomfortable." She winced. This sucked. She was not enjoying it.

"Exactly." He grinned at her. By now he knew that Angie was not a girl who liked to be told what to do, but who preferred to learn from her mistakes. "You do not have to grip so tight. That's the magic trick. Because, when you grip too tight, the muscles on your hand get tired and give up. But when you find the right grip, it gets easier."

She tried to do a couple of pull ups gripping very tight before she switched to a lighter grip and noticed the difference. First, she did two, then she managed to do five, using the same amount of energy.

"Please don't become a genius and take away my intern spot, though!" He said threateningly, because, if she put it in her mind, she would definitely achieve it.

"Oh, not a chance." It was her turn to smirk now before she continued to exercise her technique.