He eased closer. “Samira…”
She blinked, squared her shoulders and pointed to his plate.
“Eat your dinner,” she said, and marched off toward the children.
Chuckling, he watched her go until his phone buzzed in his pocket. Maintaining careful control of his delicious plate, he fished the phone out and discovered, with a nasty start, that it was his former lover Daphne wanting to video chat. He had ended things with her last week, before he met Samira, but Daphne continued to refuse to get the message.
“Merde.”
He started to shove it back into his pocket, but thought better of it. Why not clear the air, once and for all? It was always best to end these relationships as pleasantly as possible, and he’d certainly tried to do that with Daphne. Hadn’t he let her down as gently as he could? Hadn’t he promised to pay her Manhattan rent through the end of the year? She’d gone into their affair with eyes wide open. She knew how these things were done and how they ended. Yet she continued to call and text nude photos with escalating frequency. Continued to cling like a constrictor suffocating a rodent.
Enough was enough.
What if she reached out again when Samira was around? Samira had overlooked Daphne’s overtures once, but she wouldn’t a second time. He’d stake his fortune on it. And he was not about to have his incremental progress with Samira ruined by a woman he’d never cared about anyway.
“Daphne.” He left the gazebo with his plate and walked toward the edge of the park, where no one could see or hear his conversation. He switched to clipped French, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Qu'est-ce que tu veux?” What do you want?
A burst of electronic music forced him to turn down the volume. He sighed as the picture resolved on his screen. Daphne sat behind the wheel of her car on some indeterminate street, looking the worse for the wear. Her caramel face was flushed and her heavily made-up eyes were smudged and bleary from the vodka martinis she’d no doubt been sipping despite the early hour. Her tumbled black waves were a mess around her shoulders—she wore some low-cut top with thin straps—and he could see why as she ran a manicured hand through her hair, ruffling it further.
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“Still in Journey’s End,” he said, keeping a tight hold on his temper. “As you know. I’m at a Halloween bonfire, so I can’t talk.”
“Are you with someone?”
“None of your business. What do you want? You shouldn’t be driving if you’ve been drinking.”
“I thought you might want to see what you’re missing tonight.”
“I don’t,” he said quickly, but it was already too late.
Flashing him the sultry smile that had graced dozens of glossy magazine ads, she ran the phone down her torso and nudged aside one half of her bodice (in fairness, it required very little nudging because it barely covered her curves as it was), revealing a round breast with pointy brown nipple that would probably be sucked into some other man’s mouth before the night was over.
And all Baptiste could do was marvel that he’d had fun with this woman as recently as a couple of weeks ago and fume because he’d picked someone whose greed for his money outweighed any pride or dignity that might have prevented her from continuing to throw herself at a man who no longer wanted her.
His only comfort?
That they’d religiously used condoms and he therefore had no further ties to her.
“You’re drunk,” he said when the phone made its way back up to her face again. “Are your friends with you? Someone needs to take you home.”
“I want you with me,” she cooed. “When are you coming home so we can work things out?”
Home.
He thought of visiting Daphne down in Manhattan or, worse, returning to his life in Paris. Returning to the echoing apartment, the club scene and the women he’d always known.
Everything inside him seized up, turning to ice-encased marble.
He wasn’t going back to any of it, and no one could make him.
“Everything’s worked out between us already,” he said. “It’s over. You need to move on with your life.”
She pouted prettily and seductively, something she did with the skill of Picasso holding a paintbrush.
“I want you back. I want your cock in my mouth. I want it inside me.”
Left unsaid? That she also wanted his money in her wallet and her ass on his private plane.
“I don’t want to be hurtful, but you leave me no choice. Stop calling me. Stop texting me. I don’t want to hear from you.”
Drunk as she was, it took her a few seconds to hear the finality in his tone, but she eventually got there, and her features twisted accordingly.
Ah. There it was. The nastiness that never hid very far beneath her beautiful exterior.
“Who is she?” she snarled.
As if he’d in any way expose Samira to this craziness.
“My private life is none of your concern.”
“You’re not just going to throw me away like garbage, you fucking bastard. I can have anyone. I can snap my fingers and have ten guys offer to take me home.”
Amazing how all that ugliness could live inside such a lovely body.
He lowered the phone’s volume again, looking around to make sure no one was within eye or earshot. The convergence of the life he’d led and the new possibilities here in Journey’s End jarred him down to the pit of his churning belly. Above all else, he planned to keep these two worlds separate.
“I wish you the very best, Daphne,” he said. “If there’s nothing else?”
“Fuck you, you fucking asshole!” she screamed. “If you think—”
Click.
Fuming, Baptiste went to his phone’s settings and blocked her, which was something he should have done the day he ended things. He was tempted to throw his phone into the trees for good measure, but somehow resisted the impulse.
A male voice spoke from the shadows.
“Everything okay, Frenchie?”
Daniel.
Just the friendly and sympathetic presence he needed at the moment.
Baptiste sagged with relief and put his phone away.
“Daphne refuses to go quietly into that good night.”
“I’m no lit major,” Daniel said, emerging from the path with a beer in hand, “but isn’t that poem about death?”
“Don’t tempt me,” Baptiste said darkly.
Daniel took a long pull on his beer, watching him over the top of the bottle. Baptiste had told him all about his problems with the lingering Daphne a couple of nights ago.
“Why’s she still hanging around? You giving her mixed signals?”
“I told you. Money.”
“You need to get that shit locked down,” Daniel warned. “From what I can tell? Samira’s not the one for games.”
“I handled it,” Baptiste said with grim satisfaction. “She’s not going to ruin my chances with Samira. You can trust me on that.”
Another measured look from Daniel. “Good. I don’t want to have to scrape you off the ground when Samira dumps your ass.”
“And I don’t want to be scraped.”
Daniel pointed to Baptiste’s plate. “You going to eat that?”
Baptiste snatched it away. “Don’t even think about it.”
“All right. Finish up and come down to the bonfire.”
“See you in a bit.”
Daniel left. Baptiste found an empty spot at a food table, wolfed down his feast (candied sweet potatoes; who knew?) and joined the people surrounding the bonfire just as full dark fell and the flames really took off, leaping high into the air. Children and their watchful parents roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. Popular music played from speakers nearby.
On a sudden inspiration, Baptiste went to have a word with the DJ.
He kept an eye out for Samira the whole time.
When he came back to the bonfire, he saw her several feet away to his left, ins
tructing some little girl on the proper way to roast her hot dog. The little girl beamed up at Samira. Samira smiled back, lovingly smoothing the girl’s head as she said something. The thought hit him that Samira would make an excellent mother one day. No question.
Baptiste stopped and stared, Daphne long forgotten. He watched Samira through the flames, equally enthralled by the way the light flickered across her skin and her patience with the girl. He studied Samira’s lips, wishing he could hear what she said. He watched her face, wondering if she thought about him a quarter as much as he thought about her—
Someone appeared at his elbow. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
Startled, Baptiste looked around to discover Terrance following his line of sight with a tight expression.
Baptiste tensed. His body, acting with no conscious direction from him, widened its stance and squared its shoulders. Even his chin hiked up.
“She’s extraordinary.” By some miracle, he kept his voice pleasant. That was the best he could do. Time to go before his previously dormant territorial impulses got the best of him. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“Actually, I wanted a word with you.” He put a hand on Baptiste’s arm. Baptiste, experiencing the unexpected birth of a snarling creature deep in the pit of his belly, stared down at that hand. Terrance retracted it, watching Baptiste with a healthy new respect. “If you don’t mind. Over here?”
Baptiste debated with himself for a couple of seconds. He remembered his position in this lovely community: newcomer and honored guest. He thought about his relationship’s footing with Samira: tenuous, but filled with enormous potential. He reflected on his hopes for his future here, none of which were likely to be fulfilled if he made a scene this early in the game.
All important considerations.
Yet the snarling beast required that he piss on a few bushes to clarify everyone’s boundaries.
So he followed Terrance off to the side and crossed his arms while the other man turned to face him.
They faced off, the relative silence turning brittle.
“You’re involved with her?” Terrance asked.
Baptiste knew that None of your business was the correct answer.
He just couldn’t give it.
“Yes.”
Terrance’s nostrils flared.
“Is it serious?”
All the potential qualifiers ran through Baptiste’s mind:
We’re just getting to know each other.
As serious as these things can be this early on.
I can’t speak for Samira, but I consider it serious, yes.
Once again, he couldn’t speak them.
“Yes.”
Terrance recoiled, absorbing this information the way he would a backhand across the face. The reaction made sense, Baptiste supposed. Terrance had nearly married Samira and evidently still cared for her. And did anyone ever like being replaced? No, they did not.
Baptiste watched shock and dismay flicker across the man’s face, a distant corner of his brain feeling sorry for him. But the part of Baptiste that was most fully present, the snarling beast, hunkered over Samira in the kind of protective stance with which starving dogs protect steak dinners.
Baptiste needed Samira. He’d be damned if he’d let this man hurt her again.
Even so, Baptiste had made his point. Time to wrap up this conversation while it remained civil.
“Are we finished here?”
Terrance blinked himself out of his emotional pain and focused on Baptiste again.
“You’re not the guy I would have chosen for her—”
“Too bad you don’t get a vote.”
“—but if she’s happy, then I’m happy.”
“Great.” Baptiste gritted his teeth and focused on his determination to be pleasant. In any other circumstances, he and Terrance would probably be cordial. “So we’re done?”
“Just…be good to her. That’s all I’m asking.”
With that, the snarling beast lunged.
“You are quite the hypocrite.” Baptiste sneered. “But rest assured it’s highly unlikely that I’d ever do anything as hurtful to Samira as canceling a wedding the night before.”
Terrance had the decency to look away.
“You’ve only been here for ten minutes,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve loved Samira for a long time. And I feel protective because I know how much I hurt her. She doesn’t need a player sniffing around and taking off when he gets tired of hanging out in the country with the middle-class folk.”
Terrance looked him in the eye again, his expression hard and defiant.
Baptiste’s instinct was to drop the leash on his jealousy monster and let the thing maul Terrance into bits, but, once again, after a deep breath or two, he managed to keep himself in check.
A closer look at the other man’s face revealed a lot less anger and jealousy and a lot more pain. Terrance’s heart was in the right place, clearly. Who was Baptiste to interfere with someone determined to be a true and loyal friend to Samira despite his past mistakes?
As long as that was all Terrance wanted.
The real question here was, what did Samira want? Maybe she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship with Baptiste, which was fair. But his healthy ego refused to let him believe that Samira preferred some other man—this man—to him.
Not with the chemistry between them.
Not with their growing connection.
Baptiste knew it.
“Maybe I’ve only been here for ten minutes.” Baptiste shrugged. “But that’s nine minutes and fifty-five seconds longer than I needed to know how special Samira is.”
“Christ.” Terrance’s eyes widened. “You’re in love with her.”
Much as Baptiste wanted to keep his feelings closer to the vest, he couldn’t manage a denial. And Terrance was the second person to diagnose him with this particular malady in the last several hours.
Best to focus on outlining his boundaries.
“You care about Samira. You’re a good friend to her,” Baptiste continued. “But you’re not the man in her life now. I am. So it is my great honor to protect her. To provide for her. To make sure she’s as happy as she can possibly be. As long as we agree about that? We’ll be the best of friends. But Samira and I need the time and the space to figure out our relationship without interference from the man she once thought she’d marry.”
A nightmare image of Samira’s face if she caught the two of them discussing her like this flashed through his mind, making him cringe.
“And I may be wrong, but I suspect that if Samira heard us like this, we’d both be in big trouble. I’ve never met such a fiercely independent woman. So perhaps we should put an end to this conversation,” Baptiste concluded.
The beginnings of a smile flickered across Terrance’s face.
But then he sobered.
Baptiste thought he saw the shimmer of a tear in the man’s eyes.
“It’s not that easy.” Terrance swiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Letting go.”
Letting go of Samira? Since Baptiste knew he would find that an impossible task, all he could do was bow his head in agreement.
“Take good care of her,” Terrance said.
Baptiste nodded.
“Let’s go.”
They walked back to the bonfire, where the leaping flames now threatened to singe the eyebrows and nose hairs of everyone within a one-mile radius.
Terrance clapped him on the back as he turned to go. “Good talk.”
“Agreed.” Baptiste hesitated, then decided to just say what was on his mind. “Look…Everyone who is important to Samira is now important to me. Maybe we could…grab a drink. One day. Eventually.”
Terrance’s jaw dropped. “Weren’t you just about to rip my head off?”
“Well, yes.” Baptiste shoved his hands in his pockets and ducked his head, trying not to look too sheepish. “But because you mean so much to Samira, I
would have done it as quickly and humanely as possible. And now I see that you and I are on the same page because we both want good things for her.”
Terrance laughed and eyeballed him closely for several long beats.
“Yeah, okay. Drinks. That might work.” Long pause. “One day.”
Baptiste grinned, pleased with this new accord. “I wish you great happiness. With Jeremy or whoever else you wind up with.”
Terrance looked surprised.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Appreciate it.”
They shook hands. Then he walked off, leaving Baptiste to weave his way through the crowd circling the fire and try to locate Samira again. He found her without too much trouble, helping another little girl with her marshmallow.
Then the opening bass line to Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” came over the speakers as the DJ honored Baptiste’s request.
Samira immediately straightened and looked around for Baptiste, her gaze intense and excited as it swept the crowd. And then she saw him, through the flames, and the sparks flickering up to the sky were the perfect symbol for the sparks leaping between them.
He took a deep breath. Tried to ignore the gooseflesh rising over his skin and the unrelenting certainty—so unexpected, such a precious and undeserved gift—deep inside his bones. Gave himself a stern reminder of what both Daniel and Melody had told him—to take things slow and give Samira the time she needed. But as their gazes connected and held, he could no more keep his heart from her than he could reach out and stop the Hudson from draining into the Atlantic by using a bucket.
He wanted this town. This life. This woman as his home.
Her, or no one.
In the end, it was exactly that simple. Regardless of how foreign or unsettling the idea seemed.
Was he in love with this woman?
Absolutely.
Through the flickering flames, Samira smiled at him.
Until a woman emerged from the crowd, tapped her on the shoulder and whispered something in her ear.
Samira’s smile slowly faded as she glanced at the other woman.
Then both women looked at Baptiste.
There was something about the woman’s expression—smugly triumphant—that he didn’t like. He took a closer look at her face.
Beyond Ordinary Love Page 5