Ashley Learner looked out the window at the grey sky and fumed. Paris sucked. That was her appraisal after five days stuck in this hotel room with her family watching endless rain fall. Some vacation.

"Hey, Ash!" her 7-year-old sister, Lissie, shouted from the balcony. Ashley got up and walked to the back door.

"What the hell are you doing out there? Mom said to watch you until she and dad got back with dinner. And you're going to fall off the railing and die if you don't watch out," she yelled.

"You cussed," Lissie said. "I'm telling."

"Telling who? The doorman?" Ashley said. "What are you doing out there?"

"Watch," Lissie said. She leaned over the railing and looked down where a bald-headed guy was sitting at the open-air restaurant below them on the ground level. Then she pursed her lips, took aim and spit with surprising force.

The man touched his dampened head in puzzlement and looked up. Lissie jumped down from her perch, giggling hysterically. "Perfect score!"

"You little brat!" Ashley said. "They're gonna come up here after you."

"They can't see me," Lissie said.

Ashley smacked at her sister half-heartedly, then walked back into the dreary hotel room. She walked into the bathroom, which was a mistake, for it had a full length mirror. She hated that mirror. Her blond hair was limp and her figure was all wrong -- her breasts way too big for a teen her age, her butt a mile wide, or so it seemed.

She sat on the commode and let tears of self-pity fall. In two days, they were going home and all her hopes of a Paris romance would be so much nothing.

A key turned in the hotel room door. Ashley listened to her parents come in the place, chatting cheerily. How could they be so damn happy? She flushed the toilet, though she'd done nothing except cry over it, and exited the bathroom.

"Hiya, sweetness," her dad said. "We're back."

No kidding.

Lissie came screeching in from Saliva Launch Central on the balcony and tore into the paper bag of snacks their parents had brought back.

"Can I go out for a while?" Ashley asked.

"I wanna go!" Lissie shrieked.

"I think you certainly may go out, Ashley. Just be back by dark and don't get lost. And no, Lissie, you stay with us this time," Ashley's dad said.

Ashley practically ran from the room that had been her prison all day and most of the week. It had finally stopped raining. Maybe she could have some fun after all.

She was not interested in any history. But she could certainly check out the local malls.

Two hours later, exhausted and with her allowance spent, Ashley found a little bistro and stepped inside. Feeling grown-up, having survived a day alone in this big city, she ordered herself a cup of black coffee with her last handful of euros. She sat at a little table and watched the people pass by. She watched one young guy in particular. He caught her eye and looked back and she ducked her eyes, feeling the red creep up her face.

Next thing she knew, he was standing at the empty chair beside her. "This seat taken, madam?"

He spoke perfect English but he had the sexiest French accent!

"Umm, non, no, umm, c' est no," she stammered.

He smiled, showing perfect white teeth, and sat down beside her. Her heart pounded. She had to be dreaming.

He pulled out a pack of American cigarettes -- Marlboros. "Mind if I smoke?"

"No, I umm, don't mind," she said.

He lit up, blowing out a little cloud of smoke which he averted from her.

"How long have you been in Paris?" he asked.

Ashley stammered and stuttered her way through small talk. He stood up, clearly put off by her flustered state.

"You are perhaps too young to talk with strangers. I am sorry," he said, getting up and reaching to retrieve his pack of cigarettes.

Do something! her brain screamed. Don't lose this guy like this!

In a burst of impulse, she grabbed at the cigarettes.

"I just need a light," she said.

"You smoke?" he said, surprised.

"Of course," she lied, struggling to control her voice.

Ashley held the pack with shaking fingers and knocked loose one cigarette. She lifted it to her lips. It felt ridiculously light, like it almost wasn't there. She hoped her lips were holding it right.

How to light it?

He solved that dilemma, leaning in close to touch a lighter flame to the tip. Surprised, she inhaled sharply as the flame ignited the tobacco grains so frighteningly close to her face.

Burning smoke filled her mouth and lungs and she couldn't help it, she expelled it in a fit of coughing. He hadn't moved and to her horror, she realized she had blown it all in his face.

He just smiled. Did he realize she had never smoked before?

"Marlboros aren't my regular brand," she lied, releasing one last smoky little cough.

That maddening, sexy smile, still! Why wouldn't he talk?

She was furious -- but not at him, at herself. She was just a clumsy, awkward kid. Well, it was about time her body cooperated. She lifted the cigarette again to her lips and clamped them tightly around it and inhaled fiercely, determined to drag in as much smoke as she possibly could. Damn her virgin lungs! They'd learn to do what she told them.

The cherry tip of the cigarette glowed deep orange with the intensity of her inhale. When she no longer had strength to suck in any more, she dropped the cigarette in the ashtray, elegantly enough, she hoped, and held the smoke in her lungs though it burned like fire.

The burning wasn't only in her lungs. She felt a warmth spreading through her whole body, an incredible, pleasurable lift. She hadn't expected that.

She had to exhale. Do it right, she urged herself. She shaped her lips into an "o" and channeled the creamy white stream of smoke through the little opening, still suppressing with all her might her body's urge to cough.

She realized, chagrined, that she had forgotten to avert her head and she was blowing her smoke right into the young man's face again.

But he hardly seemed to mind. In fact, he had half-closed his eyes, as if in concentration. She realized, with mixed repulsion and attraction, that he was sipping in her exhaled smoke.

This was too much. She stood up, shaky from the strange power of the cigarette, feeling like she ought to go home. Then she cursed herself again. A kid would run away like this. A lady would behave more properly.

"I need to use the restroom," she said. He looked her over, enjoying the sight of her standing there so young and pretty.

"How can you look at me? I'm so fat," she stammered. It was such a stupid thing to say, but her brain was acting funny all of a sudden and she half-felt like she was floating in the air.

"Fat?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "You are not at all badly-proportioned."

"It's my ass," she said, shocking herself with her daring.

He burst out laughing. "You American girls! You watch too much t.v. and perhaps read the wrong magazines. An 'ass' is what the old man uses to plow the fields. Here, we call that marvelous part of your anatomy 'le derriere.' And yours is most shapely."

She felt his hand suddenly touching her, running softly over the curve of her, er, derriere -- not in a dirty way, but with the loving caress that a wine-fancier might use across the cheek of a particularly fine bottle of premium vintage.

She felt her face reddening and her heart pounding like the piston of an engine. She scooped up her neglected cigarette and took another puff. Was she hoping to distract him? Or entice him even further?

"Your only problem," he said, "is that you must stand up straight. Not slouch like a surly child. Walk like a woman. Don't be afraid to, how you say it, wiggle a little."

"Like this?" she said, completing a sexy jaunt around the table, cigarette carefully balanced in her upraised hand.

"Yes, but relax. Life is for people who like to have fun," he said.

"I'll be back,"she said, a sudden jolt in her bladder reminding her that she had delayed her trip to the lady's room long enough.

She walked across the bistro, taking one last puff of her cigarette as she did, blowing the smoke out in a lovely, misty cloud and holding herself erect, feeling for the first time that numerous eyes were scoping her out -- and liking it.