The Affair

by Danielle Steel

  “So, little man, you’re coming to Paris to see your papa?” he said as he held him aloft and the baby smiled and giggled. He took him out for a long walk in his stroller that afternoon. He helped Isabelle give him a bath and gave him his bottle and put him to bed. The next morning, Nicolas left and went back to Paris. Isabelle Solon was coming to Paris with the baby in a week. She thought Nicolas was a good man. She was sorry that Pascale hadn’t stayed with him. She knew about Pascale’s new actor boyfriend, but thought he smoked too much dope and didn’t care about the baby. She thought Pascale was a fool for not staying with Nicolas, but Pascale said that writers were too dull, and Nicolas was too old for her. At least he was taking his paternal responsibilities seriously. He had Pascale’s permission for the baby to visit Paris every other week with her mother. She thought it was fine. It was a year since they had gotten involved with each other on the set of his movie, and it amazed him how such passionate feelings had dissipated so quickly. He thought it was a huge mistake to have had a baby when they had such flimsy knowledge of each other, but the baby was here now, and he wanted to make the best of it for himself and the boy.

  Pascale didn’t find it unusual or unfortunate that she had a child now by a man she was no longer involved with and would probably rarely see in the future. She was perfectly satisfied to have him deal with her mother. Isabelle Solon had done the same thing when Pascale was born and left her with her own mother when she was sixteen. But now, as a grandmother, she was more attentive to Benoit than she had been to Pascale, and Nicolas was satisfied that he was in good hands. He was happy to spend two nights a month with the baby and Pascale’s mother, and in time two nights a week. Eventually, Benoit would be able to come and visit him alone, or with a nanny. Isabelle already had a nanny for him now, a few hours a week, so she could get some things done. Nicolas had been paying for it since Benoit was born.

  * * *

  —

  Venetia called Nadia to see how the notaire meeting had gone, and she said it was fine, and very anticlimactic. A few questions, their financial statements, the visitation schedule, the notaire stamping what they had agreed to, and it was over.

  “What happens now?” The divorce seemed so sad to her, especially if Nadia still loved him. She admitted she did, but not enough to go back to him, or forgive him.

  “Sometime in the next two months, we get the papers in the mail, and we’re divorced. The way we did it, there’s no drama.”

  “That’s something at least.”

  Greg called to check on her too, and invited her to dinner, but she said she was too busy. She had a new client and had to get started with the preliminaries, but she promised to see him soon. On the heels of going to the notaire to end her marriage, she didn’t feel ready to throw her arms open to Greg, and something about him always stopped her. She didn’t know what it was. He was too unemotional, or too businesslike. She kept shying away from starting anything with him, although she knew she was interested in him, but not enough. And in an odd way, she still felt married to Nicolas, and as though she’d be cheating on him. She wondered how long it would take for that to go away, and to feel like a fully free woman. Maybe when she got the papers. But just as paperwork didn’t make the essence of a marriage—as Athena and Joe had amply demonstrated—papers alone didn’t end a marriage either, as Nadia was discovering.

  * * *

  —

  She was working late on her first big proposal for her new client, who had bought a beautiful house in the seventh arrondissement and was a friend of another client, when her cellphone rang. She picked it up without looking. She was staring at a drawing on her desk of the kitchen she envisioned for them with a glass sun roof that could be opened on warm days over the garden. It made it feel like a country home, not just a city house. She was startled to hear Nicolas’s voice.

  “Are you awake?” He sounded serious.

  “I’m working. Is something wrong?”

  “Yes…no…I don’t know. I guess the answer to that has been yes for the past year. I’m downstairs. Can I come up?”

  “I’ve got a presentation tomorrow, so you can’t stay long. We can’t talk on the phone?” She would have preferred it. They were almost divorced now.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “The girls are asleep. Don’t ring the bell, I’ll buzz you in.” She sighed and put her pen down. The drawing still didn’t look right to her. There was something cumbersome about it.

  She buzzed him in a minute later, and he came upstairs fresh from a cold rainy night. He left his coat in the hall, came to sit across from her desk in her office, and glanced at her work, as he had a million times before.

  “It’s top-heavy,” he said. “The roof of the glass house needs to be lighter. In a peak maybe?” She looked at it and realized he was right.

  “Thank you. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.”

  “I thought our meeting with the notaire was really depressing.”

  “It would be more so if we fought about it for ten years. I was surprised at how easy it was,” she said.

  “Too easy. Is that what you want, Nadia? You open an envelope one day in the next few months, and that’s it. It’s over. We’re divorced. Why can’t you give us another chance? Why can’t you put me on probation? Punish me. Have me followed. Give me a lie detector test once a week.”

  “I’m not a policeman, and I don’t want to be. I went through hell. Now it’s peaceful. I don’t want to go through that again.” She was definite about it. It was a decision of the head, not the heart, which would have said something different. She didn’t trust her heart either, any more than she did his actions.

  “I’ve learned so much from it. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  She hesitated, not sure what to say to him. She had made up her mind and wanted to stick to it.

  “It might,” she finally said softly. “But I couldn’t go through that horror again. I don’t want to take the chance. I’d rather have no life, with just my work and the girls, than have you break my heart again. What did you do in Brittany, by the way?” She was curious.

  “I’m having the baby come to Paris twice a month, so we get to know each other.” It touched her that he cared, even though his relationship with Pascale was over and the baby had been an accident. He had always had a soft side that she loved. He liked children and was so good to them. She had loved that about him.

  “That’s sweet.”

  “I am sweet.” He smiled sheepishly at her. “When I’m not being an asshole.” She laughed. “Nadia, please, don’t give up on us. I don’t want those papers to come and just erase everything we had.”

  “They won’t. We have all those memories of the good times,” she said with tenderness in her voice and a lump in her throat. “Nothing can erase those.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” he said with a sigh, and then he walked around her desk, gently pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He didn’t know what else to do or say. He loved her, and she didn’t believe him or didn’t care or didn’t want him anymore. But the pull between them was so powerful and the force so magnetic, that without even thinking about it, she kissed him back, and they kissed for a long time. She made a soft moaning sound when they stopped.

  “Oh, Nicolas, please don’t…don’t do this to me, to us. I’ve tried so hard to put ‘us’ behind me, to stop loving you. Don’t torture me.” She was almost in tears.

  “I love you, Nadia. I don’t want to put it behind us.” He kissed her again with even more passion, and she held on to him in just the way she had missed for months now.

  “You have to go.” Her voice was hoarse and sexy. “You’re a menace,” she said, smiling at him. He had always been the most handsome, sexiest man she’d ever known. He was almost irresistible, but she was resisting, or trying to.

  “Will you think
about it?” he begged her, as she walked him back to the front door and he didn’t resist her.

  “No!…Yes, dammit. You’re impossible.”

  “You can’t divorce me while you still love me. That’s insane.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s probably the sanest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “You don’t divorce someone you love,” he argued. “I’ll tell them we have a dispute, and I don’t agree with your proposals. I’ll recall the papers.”

  “You can’t. They’ve already been approved by the notaire and they’re being processed by the judge.”

  “I hate you. Goddammit, don’t be so sensible. Nadia, this is our life, our marriage. It’s not a business deal. Yes, maybe we’ll make a mess of it, or I will, but can’t we at least try?” As he said it, she thought of her sister, confessing her sins fifteen years later, and Harley walking out on her. Somehow he had forgiven her. Maybe she could forgive Nicolas too. It was the first time she had really thought about it and wondered if they should try. “I know I don’t deserve you, Nadia. But I love you, I really do.”

  “Harley and Olivia almost broke up recently. He actually left her for a few days.”

  “Harley? Why?” Nicolas looked shocked.

  “She did something she shouldn’t have fifteen years ago, and she decided to confess it to him, and he took it badly. Very badly. But he forgave her, and they’re working it out,” she said, thinking about them, and how happy Olivia sounded now.

  “I’m sure whatever she did wasn’t as bad as what I did, but at least he forgave her. Could you take a lesson from him?”

  “I think it just boiled down to the fact that they love each other. And I suppose we do too.” She looked at him helplessly standing in the front hall of their apartment, and suddenly it just seemed like too much work to fight him. Maybe Venetia was right and if they loved each other, to hell with what everyone thought they should do. If it went wrong again, they could still divorce each other, or leave the papers in place. Suddenly trying again didn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen to them. He made her laugh. She had never known another man who could have fun the way he did, or make love like he did, which she had been trying to forget for the past eight months. She hadn’t made love to anyone else since, and hadn’t wanted to. Greg was a very attractive man, successful, interesting, smart, had great taste, but he didn’t excite her. Nicolas did. “Why don’t you stay here this weekend, and we’ll see how it goes? I’ll send the girls to friends. I don’t want to get their hopes up and then disappoint them.”

  “We won’t,” he promised her, and then crushed her against him in an embrace. “Oh God, Nadia, thank you…thank you…I’ll be a saint for the next fifty years. I promise.”

  “That sounds incredibly boring.” She grinned at him. He knew what he had to do and not do. Now it remained to be seen if he could maintain it. “If you have another affair, I’ll divorce you so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  “I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame you. It will never happen again.”

  And then she thought of something. “Are we going to have Pascale hanging around to visit her baby?”

  “She’s not interested in the baby,” he said. “He’s going to live with his grandmother. I can go to Brittany to see him if you want me to. But I do want him to come to Paris for visits. He needs his father.” Even more so with a mother he would probably see very rarely.

  “No,” she said carefully. “He’s your child. He can visit us here. I’m just not ready for that whole family.”

  “Neither am I. I think I should see him, and I want to, but he’ll have a life with them, and visits with us if he’s a decent kid. Pascale isn’t part of it. She doesn’t really want to be part of his life, let alone ours.”

  “That’s sad for him.”

  “I’m going to keep an eye on him, and the grandmother loves him.”

  Nadia nodded. It sounded workable. Nicolas was trying to walk a fine line between benevolent supervision from a distance, and participation to a degree that was comfortable but not overwhelming, which was all she could ask of him. They’d have to see how things developed as the boy grew. He might not even want to be with them, or he might fit in very well. Nadia respected what Nicolas was trying to do.

  “See you this weekend,” she said with a cautious smile. She was nervous about it, like a first date. She had never had those feelings about Greg, the butterflies in the stomach and sweaty palms. But Nicolas always gave her all those feelings and more. He still did.

  He kissed her one last time before he left. She stood in the hall for a minute after he was gone, wondering what she’d done, and if she was crazy, but it felt right to give him another chance and try. Much better than getting divorced, or trying to feel something for Greg that she knew she didn’t, and never would. Or for someone else she loved less than Nicolas.

  She went back to her office to call Venetia and tell her what had happened. This was what her sister had suggested when they talked about it. Nadia thought she’d be pleased.

  She picked up her phone to call her, and the phone rang in her hand. She saw that it was from Venetia, and she laughed as she answered it.

  “You’re psychic. I was just going to call you. Nicolas was just here and we were talking.” As she said it, she heard a terrible groan at the other end, and she suddenly realized that her sister didn’t sound well, she sounded like she was in pain. “Are you okay?”

  “No…they think I might be in labor. I’m having terrible pains. Ben is getting dressed to take me to the hospital now. Don’t tell Mom. I just wanted you to know. I don’t want Mom to worry.” And then she started to cry with the next pain. “I’m so afraid I’ll lose her. I’m only five months pregnant. She wouldn’t survive.”

  “Just take it easy. Go to the hospital and see what they say. Are you bleeding?”

  “A little.” That didn’t sound good.

  “I wish I were there.”

  Ben helped her stand up then, and Venetia had to go. He half carried her out to the Uber he had called. Fortunately, they were in the city.

  Nadia spent the next two hours waiting to hear from her, and talking to Olivia and Athena. She didn’t hear from Venetia until four in the morning in Paris. She sounded slightly drunk and said they had given her something to stop labor, and it had worked.

  “They’re putting me on bed rest for a month or two and we’ll see what happens. How am I going to run my business?”

  “You can do designs just as well in bed at home. You don’t have a choice,” Nadia said firmly.

  “I know.” Her voice was very small and she sounded very scared. Nadia talked to Ben after that and he said the baby looked fine on the monitors and sonograms, they just had to keep it in now until it was cooked.

  They kept Venetia in the hospital for a week to observe her and do tests. After that, Ben drove her home. She was lying down on the back seat of their SUV. As soon as they got there, he carried her straight to bed. They had a live-in nanny, so she was covered for childcare, but running her business from bed was going to be hard. Venetia wasn’t easy to keep down. She had her finger in every pie, came in and out of design meetings all day, and looked over everyone’s shoulder. They decided to put a video screen up in her office, with another screen in her bedroom, so she could see people and participate in meetings. Ben called and checked on her half a dozen times a day, and she was afraid to spend too much time out of bed. As soon as she did, she started having contractions. They had to keep her from having the baby for four more months. It sounded like an eternity to Venetia. With three young children and a booming business, it was going to be a huge challenge to stay in bed.

  When Venetia felt better, Nadia told her that she and Nicolas were going to try to work things out.

  “I don’t know if it will work, or if it’s too late for us. But you’re
right. We love each other. I don’t want to throw that away yet.” Venetia was happy for her. It was what she had hoped would happen all along.

  Chapter 14

  Nadia flew to New York to see Venetia for a few days. Venetia had been in bed for a month, but she was busy too and had several new clients. She was doing one presentation after another. And things were going well with Nicolas so far. He was walking on eggshells, but they were both starting to relax. She told Venetia about it when she brought her Thai food on a tray.

  “It’s not like it used to be, but it’s getting there,” Nadia told her. She hadn’t seen the baby yet, and Nicolas didn’t push her to. He still had his rented apartment, and had Isabelle and the baby stay there for their visits. The girls had gone to see him and thought he was very cute. Nadia said she hadn’t heard from Greg Holland again since she told him that she and Nicolas were giving it another try.

  Nicolas was on his best behavior. They had spent several weekends at the château with the girls, and Nicolas and Nadia had gone to Rome alone for a weekend. He was writing full steam ahead again, and it was flowing. They were both busy and working hard. And he was staying at the apartment with her and the girls. She had told her mother about it and Rose said she was cautiously optimistic. He was going to have to prove himself to her.

  Olivia and Harley were doing well too. Venetia thought they were even closer than they’d been before. But the explosion between them had been brief. Nicolas and Nadia had been apart for many months, and the damage had been more extensive.

  Rose was relieved that they were back together, and hoped it worked. Everyone was wishing them well.

  * * *

  —

  They had been together for three months when Nadia came home from the office one day. The girls were at their gym class with the babysitter, and she opened the mail that had been left on her desk at home. There was a thick unmarked envelope that she opened last. She had brought work home from the office, and had a dozen things on her mind. Nicolas was back in the room he used to write. When she pulled the letter out of the envelope, she stared at it, shocked. She sat down and read through it, and then got up and hurried down the hall to his office. He was correcting some pages he had written the day before on the computer and looked up in surprise when he saw her. She hadn’t knocked. She didn’t say a word. She walked over and handed the papers to him and he stared at them in shock, as she had.