Owning It
Page 14
Gunthar and Giorgio are on their way out but pause in my doorway. Giorgio looks at me and whistles a catcall.
“Rigby, she tell me about your date,” Giorgio says, winking. “You are going out with a French man, no?”
“Yes, I am going out on a date with a French man.”
“Why not an Italian?” Giorgio sighs and shakes his head, fixing me with a mournful expression. “The French, they have the reputation for being clever, fashionable, and romantic, but everyone knows they steal from Italians. Napoleon, Corsica, the Mona Lisa, Carla Bruni. The mirrors hanging in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles? All Italian!”
“The heart fancies who it fancies, regardless of nationality.”
“True, bella.” Giorgio brightens. “If things don’t work out with the French man, you will let me sit you up with a nice Italian, yes?”
“Sit me up?”
“I think he means set you up,” Rigby laughs.
“Si! I set you up.”
“Okay.”
I don’t really want Giorgio to sit or set me up with another man, but I have found acquiescing to be the fastest way to end a humiliating conversation.
“Ciao, bella.”
Gunthar gives an awkward wave and follows Giorgio. A second later, there’s a loud, hollow thud, like the sound of a ripe cantaloupe being thumped . . . or Gunthar’s head striking a low-lying beam.
“Verdammt,” Gunthar curses.
“Don’t worry,” Rigby whispers. “I told them you were going on a date, but I didn’t reveal the identity of Monsieur Tall, Dark, and Hot.”
“I’m not worried,” I say, smiling. “I know you aren’t the type to blab.”
“How?”
“How?”
“How do you know I’m not a blabber?”
“I read your aura when we first met.”
“You did?”
I nod.
“What did it look like?”
“Loads of loyal blue, sensitive purple, and honest yellow. It was pure.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Rigby smiles so big, her upper lashes touch her brows and her cheeks look like two shiny apples. It’s the kind of smile that makes others feel like they swallowed sunshine. All warm and glowing.
“I have to go. I am meeting Matthias for dinner.” She gives me a hug. “Come to my room when you get back and tell me all of the juicy details.”
“Okay, but I doubt I will have much juice.”
“Yes, you will! You’re meeting a French man for drinks and you’re dressed like a wide-eyed sex doll. You’ll have big, fat, juicy details, my friend,” she says, walking out the door. “I am sure of it.”
“Wait!” I hurry over to the door. “A wide-eyed sex doll? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Rigby laughs and disappears down the stairs.
I walk back into my room and take a last look in the mirror. I am wearing a black baby doll dress with cap sleeves and my ankle-strap pumps. It’s the most va-va-voom outfit in my wardrobe, and I am worried it might have one va too many.
My heavy bangs hang to my eyebrows, and my thick lashes emphasize my round blue eyes. My lips look like a wine-colored bow fastened to my pale face. I am a giving off a serious doll vibe. One of those unblinking, slightly creepy porcelain dolls that sat perched on shelves in Victorian nurseries, but not a naughty sex doll. I don’t even know what a sex doll looks like. I saw a plastic blow-up doll at a bachelor party once. The bassist for our band booked the gig and didn’t tell us what it was until we got there. Awk-ward.
I blink several times, clearing the memory of the bachelor party and the blow-up doll. I really don’t want to meet Gabriel with images of sloppy drunk men pretending to hump a sex doll in my head.
Maybe I should change into something less . . .
My iPhone suddenly starts emitting a loud foghorn sound. Bwah-wah-wah-wah. I grab my iPhone and slide my finger across the screen, silencing the alarm.
Great! It’s seven o’clock, which means I am late, late for my very important date. Hopefully, my baby doll dress and Rigby’s big-girl perfume will distract Gabriel from my tardiness.
* * *
Gabriel is standing beneath a wide, green-striped awning outside La Belle Hortense when I arrive. He’s wearing a suit with a crisp white shirt opened at the throat and a black trench coat. His hair has been combed back in a serious, suitsexual style. He looks devastating in his suit, but I think I dig him more in jeans and with his hair flopping over his forehead.
He steps off the curb and meets me in the middle of the street, casually wrapping his arm around my waist and leading me back to the sidewalk in front of La Belle Hortense. The weight and heat of his arm makes me feel breathless with a nameless anticipation.
When we reach the sidewalk, Gabriel kisses my cheeks.
“I thought you had changed your mind,” he whispers, his breath hot against my ear. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Sorry,” I say, flushing when he fixes his slate-blue gaze on me. “I’m punctuality challenged.”
“You’re worth the wait, ma fleur.”
He laces his fingers through mine and lifts my hand, kissing the tips of my fingers. He opens the door, and I follow him inside.
I had assumed La Bella Hortense was a bistro or brasserie, but it’s a funky wine bar situated inside a bookstore. Shelves line walls filled with artfully arranged books and bottles of wine. Slow, sexy jazz is playing softly in the background. The vibe is totally chill, and the crowd is young, urban, artsy. My kind of people. We take a seat at a small table near the back of the bar. I untie my raincoat, and Gabriel helps me out of it. He folds my coat over the back of his chair and appraises me, his unnerving gaze moving from my face to my toes and back again.
“You make my heart ache with your beauty,” he says, pressing his hand to his chest.
The first thing that comes into my mind: Now, that is just the sort of line a smooth-moving French man would say to a naïve American girl. Not wanting to spoil the mood, I keep my ungenerous and untrusting thought to myself.
“Merci beaucoup.” My cheeks flush with heat. “I like your suit. You look like you were born to wear Armani.”
I like your suit? I never thought I, Delaney Lavender Brooks, would tell someone I liked their suit, but I am being one hundred percent genuine, as real as the heavy, expensive Rolex on Gabriel’s wrist.
“Merci.” He shrugs out of his coat and rolls his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, exposing corded, muscular forearms. “Truthfully? I hate wearing suits, but I had a meeting with my boss.”
“About your upcoming assignment?”
“Oui.”
“Where are you going?”
“Damascus.”
I gasp. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“It’s no big deal,” he says, dismissively.
I have noticed Gabriel is dismissive about important, emotional issues and wonder if avoidance has become his coping mechanism.
“No big deal?” I search my memory for stories I might have read recently about the city. “Wait a minute! Didn’t a radical Islamic group just send suicide bombers to Damascus? Wasn’t there a big explosion?”
“There are always suicide bombings in the Middle East. Sadly, it has become a part of daily life in the region.”
“That isn’t very reassuring. What if you are hurt, or worse, killed?”
“Would you care?”
I grab his hand and squeeze it. “Of course, I would care.”
“Bon,” he says, rubbing my hand with his thumb. “But you have nothing to worry about, I promise.”
“You can’t make that promise.”
“Ah, but I can, ma fleur. I am good, very good, at what I do. This time next month, we will be right here, toasting my return.”
“We will?”
“Bien sûr.” He grins. “You will wear this dress again, and I will kiss you and tell you how much I missed you, that the thought of seeing you gave me a new purpose.”
The waitress appears.
“Bonsoir, monsieur et madame. Would you care to order an aperitif or something to eat, perhaps?”
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Gabriel asks.
“Sure.”
“Du vin rouge ou blanc?”
I remember Johnny Josephs and the green Skittles debacle and imagine my lips and teeth stained an unsightly bluish-purple with wine.
“Blanc, s’il vous plaît.” Even though I took French in high school and college, and was told by Fanny that my accent is impressive, I feel self-conscious speaking it in Paris, especially to order wine. The city is populated with oenophiles, people who were weaned off milk in favor of eau de vie. “Can you recommend a white wine?”
“Bien sûr!” Gabriel says, shrugging his shoulders and holding out his hands, a gesture and phrase that I have learned is the Gallic equivalent of “You must be joking because the answer is an obvious yes.”
He orders the wine and two appetizers: pork rillettes, rich, slow-cooked pork served with pickled dried apricots on grilled bread, and a plate of assorted cheeses.
I sit quietly, my hands folded in my lap, listening to Gabriel speak in French, feeling like an imposter, a pretend grown-up in false lashes and strappy pumps. If you had asked me a year ago if I saw myself sitting in a chic bar in Paris, drinking wine with a gorgeous French man, I would have told you that you were out of your melon.
Yet, here I am. In Paris. Drinking wine. With an otherworldly gorgeous French man who has a voice that makes my knees feel as wobbly as green Nickelodeon slime.
The waitress moves to the next table, and Gabriel refocuses his gorgeous gray-eyed gaze on me.
“What do you think of La Belle Hortense?”
“Are you kidding me? Books. Wine. Music. What’s not to love?” Gabriel’s smoldering gaze is making it impossible for me to vibe off the chill atmosphere. The room feels suddenly warmer, the jazz slower, more seductive. “It reminds me of a place I would go to in Denver, a gallery that serves artisan cocktails.”
“What are artisan cocktails?”
“Oh, super unusual cocktails, like rum set afire and tossed between two frozen glasses. A martini made of foamed Earl Grey tea. Or a margarita served with a lime covered in what appears to be caviar, but it’s really pearls of tequila that have been frozen to look like caviar. That was Theo’s favorite.”
“Theo?”
“Theodore Wilde. He’s an amazingly talented bike designer, musician, and skier. He’s funny and loyal and . . . well, I just love him.”
Gabriel’s lips press together, and the smolder in his gaze extinguishes, but he doesn’t say anything until after the hostess finishes serving our wine.
“Il est votre copain?”
He is your boyfriend?
The laugh that burst from my lips is explosive and loud. Several of the chic, urban set look our way. I press my hand to my mouth because the thought of Netflix and chillin’ with Theo makes me want to laugh again—or toss my cookies.
“Theo is my best friend,” I say, lowering my voice.
“You are sure?”
I lean forward, resting my forearms on the edge of the table, and look Gabriel in the eye. I am detecting some trust issues with Gabriel.
“I am positive. Theo is not my boyfriend. He was never my boyfriend, like ever. Just the thought makes me want to . . .” I crinkle my nose and pretend to shudder. “Eww. It would be like snogging my cousin, Leo, or my Uncle Milt. No. Just, no.”
Gabriel chuckles. “Okay, okay. I believe you.”
I lift my glass of wine, give it a little swirl like Fanny taught me, inhale the bouquet, and then take a deep drink, the sweet, slightly spicy liquid sliding down my throat and warming my belly.
“What about you?” I wiggle my eyebrows. “Do you have an Amélie hidden away in some quaint corner of Paris?”
“Amélie?”
“Amélie Poulain, the wide-eyed, naïve beauty in the movie Amélie, who dreams of love.”
Gabriel shakes his head, chuckling. “Non, ma fleur. I do not have an Amélie, Stéphanie, or Alexandrie. There is no one.”
I make a raspberry noise and roll my eyes.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I say, taking another sip of wine. “It’s just . . . you’re a total marlin.”
He frowns, obviously confused by my Laney-ism.
“A marlin. One of the fish most prized by anglers.”
“Are you an angler?”
“No, but you’re definitely a catch.”
The smile that spreads across his face is as potent as the glass of sweet, spicy wine I’ve nearly consumed.
“On my honor,” he says, pressing his hand to his heart, “I swear there is not an Amélie, Stéphanie, or Alexandrie who lays claim to my heart, but I am hoping there will be a Laney.”
I look from him to my empty wineglass and back into his blue-gray eyes. I am mentally doing one of those cartoon head shakes because I think he just said he wants me to be his girlfriend. I must be drunk; the fumes from the wickedly overpriced white wine must have muddled my brain and my hearing. I decide to pretend like I didn’t hear what he said.
“Do you like to read?”
Something unrecognizable glimmers in his eyes—humor, irritation, pain? I might not be punctual, organized, or focused, but I have mad skills of perception. I can read people and comprehend their emotions like Pops reads and comprehends Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. It’s my gift. Or I thought it was my gift. Gabriel is giving me serious Sphinx face, stony and unreadable.
“Oui.” He smiles, a Sphinx-like smile. “Do you?”
I nod.
“What are some of your favorite books?”
“I love anything by J.R.R. Tolkien. He’s, like, the end. C. S. Lewis. George R. R. Martin. I devour fantasy and science fiction novels. I read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time when I was, like, six, and it completely blew my mind. I secretly believe that government scientists have developed a tesseract and someday we will all be able to travel through time. I also read a lot of books about artists and art history. What about you?”
He rests his forearms on the edge of table and leans forward, close enough for me to smell his cologne, to see the small, crescent-shaped scar just below his hairline.
“I love Tolkien too.” His words come out like a seductive whisper, as if he were pledging his fidelity, or declaring his intention to make slow, passionate love to me. “Alexander Dumas is my favorite author, though.”
My heart is thud-thud-thudding so violently in my chest I am sure he can hear it, even over the mellow jazz, clinking glasses, and steady buzz of conversation.
“Do you know, I don’t think I have ever read an Alexander Dumas novel?”
“Quelle? Il est criminal!”
“Is he that good?”
“Est-il bon? Est-il bon?” Gabriel emits a noise that can only be described as a half-incredulous, half-outraged grunt. “Horatio Georges’s books are good. Alexandre Dumas’s books are brilliant! Romance, revenge, redemption cleverly woven through plots filled with action and adventure. Incroyable! Brilliant! We must rectify this tragic situation.”
I laugh, but Gabriel is quite serious.
“Can you read French?”
I nod.
“Bon.” He stands up. “One minute, s’il vous plait.”
He walks back to the bar and speaks to the hostess. She leads him away from our corner of the bar, to a shelf in the opposite corner, filled with leather-bound books, and points to the second shelf from the top. The hostess is too short to reach the shelf, but Gabriel is able to retrieve the book with little effort.
Gabriel returns to the table, leather-bound book in hand, and a wide toothy, dimpled grin on his face.
“Voici Le Comte de Monte-Cristo,” he says, setting the book on the table. “It is, perhaps, my favorite Dumas novel. Wou
ld you have a pen in your purse? I would like to inscribe it.”
I open my purse, remove my purple roller pen, and hand it to Gabriel. He stares off, his brows knitted together, and then opens the cover and scribbles on the half-title page, the pen making scratching noises against the heavy paper. A few seconds later, he closes the book and hands my pen back to me.
I reach for the book, open the cover, and read the inscription, written in beautiful, loopy French.
Ma fleur,
In this book you will find one of Alexandre Dumas’s most famous quotes: “All human wisdom is contained in these two words—wait and hope.” I wait and hope for a day when you are as familiar to me as Edmond and Mercedes, the characters in this story.
Yours,
Gabriel Galliard
I don’t realize I am holding my breath until my lungs begin to burn and tiny black dots dance around the periphery of my vision. Gabriel’s inscription is simply the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. It’s breathtaking. It’s the kind of thing a charming, slightly rakish hero in a rom-com says to the beautiful, slightly naïve heroine.
Am I naïve? Is Gabriel a sincere Mark Darcy or a shameless Daniel Cleaver? Will I write good or bad things about him in my diary?
“Gabriel!”
I look up from the inscription in time to see a tall, willowy woman with sleek black hair and an even sleeker black designer dress kiss Gabriel on both cheeks.
“Giselle?”
Gabriel’s tone is flat, but his expression is much, much less Sphinx-like. His cheeks are flushed red, and his aura is swirling with so many colors it looks like a muddled watercolor rainbow. I am having trouble reading him again, but I think he’s embarrassed.
Or angry.
Or aroused.
“Delaney Brooks, this is Giselle Sournois DéLoyalle. She is a . . . friend.”
“Come now,” Giselle says, laughing and pressing her hand against Gabriel’s bare, muscular forearm. “We are more than mere friends, are we not?”
Gabriel looks up at Giselle, his gaze as flat and gray as slate, his lips a grim line across his handsome face. He raises a single brow, but doesn’t speak. Giselle, I notice, has lost all color in her high, knifelike cheeks.