Once In Paris

Once in Paris is a 1998 Mira romance by Diana Palmer, published as a 377-page paperback.

Brianne Martin meets Pierce Hutton in Paris and brings him back from grief, which gives the two of them a bond that neither can treat casually. He is old enough to be uneasy about the attraction and refuses to act on it, while she is certain that he is the only person she would want to trust. The novel's threat comes from a different direction: a corrupt associate of her stepfather is determined to have her, and is willing to arrange a marriage between their families to get it. Pierce will not court a woman half his age, and the man pursuing her is a corrupt associate of her stepfather whose plan is a marriage that would merge their two family businesses.

The rescue that resolves the plot reverses the opening, since the man she once pulled out of despair ends by saving her life. Palmer wrote numerous romances with an age gap and a protective older man at the centre, and the Mira edition here is at the longer end of that work, with the Parisian and family-business material supplying the complications around the central pair. The older man's restraint and the other man's appetite put the difference in age at the centre of the plot rather than in the background.