“You’ll have time to do some shopping tomorrow,” Lucien said. “I can pay for—”
She held up a fast hand.
He stopped. “That is—maybe you’d enjoy exploring the shops a little anyway. Since I’m going to be busy most of the day.”
That was what the wives did here, wasn’t it? Took care of the kids, cooked the meals, went shopping. Maybe some of them managed to get a job in a shop or an office in town, if the owner hadn’t found any Corsicans to fill it.
She grimaced and glanced back at the mainland. “Just don’t do it again.”
“All right,” Lucien said, quite seriously, as if he was making a mental note. For such a hard-willed and confident man, he wasn’t too set in his ways, was he? Willing to listen to her and make adjustments.
That’s a nothing-adjustment. Warning you that you need a dress? Come on. Something about this base was like a big male fist. Only it wasn’t a warm, protective fist, like Lucien’s when he held her hand. It was cold, and unbreakable, and it was tightening around her heart. It had the kind of merciless grip that couldn’t adjust to let her heart beat inside it at all.
Ignore it. This was always about the moment anyway. You’re too smart these days to believe in more, remember? Enjoy the weekend.
“Maybe I could take you into Calvi for dinner?” Lucien said. “I know a good restaurant with a beautiful view of Nice and Cannes at night.”
***
It was beautiful. Almost achingly beautiful. A whole spread of sparkles across the water, a yacht bobbing here and there, stars overhead. Lucien seemed profoundly contented, as if, sitting on that restaurant terrace above the water with her, everything about his life was perfect.
It got to her, his happiness to have her there. Warmed and tickled and confounded her. She found herself reaching for his hand all the time, as if the touch of it could anchor her here and make all this possible and forever.
She liked this so much. Sharing time and thoughts. Sometimes not even talking, but, at the end of the meal, sipping their wine, their chairs shifted side by side, enjoying the view.
It was, maybe, too, a neutral space. Civilian. A beautiful town by the edge of the sea. Very similar to where they had met. A civilian space might not be a neutral space to him. It might be him stepping into your alien world, all this time.
“Not too sad?” Lucien murmured once. “The night water?”
She shook her head and linked her fingers with his. Thank you for making night water hold more bright reflections than darkness.
His fingers flexed on hers, his thumb running along the side of her hand. His expression grew the closest she’d seen it to brooding, as he gazed at the far shore. “Raoul wants me to come back. Permanently, I mean.”
Yeah, the Rosiers were so sweet that way. They believed in people. They had hopes. It was so endearing. She did her best to protect them, so they would never lose their illusions.
“Do you think I could?” Lucien said suddenly. “Give up all this? Go back to being a civilian?”
Oh, that was cruel. To make her face up to her own illusions and admit the truth. “No.”
He turned his head, his eyebrows flexing together. What, had he wanted her to lie? “Well,” she corrected herself scrupulously. “I think you could do anything you want to. But you don’t want to. You want the life you have here.”
“I’m proud of who I am,” he admitted. He glanced around, as if to make sure no one would overhear him, and added, with a little wry quirk to his lips, “I love my men.”
Elena nodded. Tried very hard not to think. Tried very hard not to say, Your family probably keeps hoping you’ll love them more.
The Rosiers were so lovable, though. They weren’t like her at all. How could anyone not love them more?
“I’m glad you understand,” Lucien said, caressing her hand and lifting it to his mouth to kiss it.
Well, yes. She was very good at understanding that other people had priorities which didn’t have room for her.
Just don’t think. She stared across the water, while his thumb rubbed against her hand, reassuring and wonderful. Just don’t think at all.
His house was alien again, so masculine and spare and perfectly clean, as if it had no room for her. But there were the flowers on the kitchen counter—his thought of her, his effort to change his space for her.
He turned her against the door, leaning over her, a shadow in his unlit space. He didn’t worry about coming home in the dark, did he? Not like her. “Merde, it’s so good to have you here,” he murmured, his breath warm on her forehead, his forearms warm against her upper arms, his body big and closing her in, no threat, all security.
She spread her fingers over his shoulders, the shape of him more felt than seen in the darkness.
“Miss me a little this week?” he breathed, nuzzling his jaw against her temple.
She couldn’t admit that. It made her heart tighten in panic, the idea of missing him. She had missed so many people in her life, huddled around a floppy stuffed puppy who never managed to fill the empty spots those people had left in her. “It was only a few days.”
“I missed you.” He brushed the backs of his curled fingers up her jaw, across her cheek, a sensation that made her want to arch into him like a kitten and beg for more petting. “Thought about you all the time.”
“I’m sure you”—her breath caught as his fingers opened and spread in tender roughness across her face and into her hair—“were mostly focused on work.”
“I printed up that picture of you to put on my desk. At night, when I hung up the phone, damn but I wished you were here.”
“I would have liked you there,” she admitted. In my world. With me.
For someone who had had to adjust her life over and over to a new setting, had she developed some kind of phobia to it? Was that why she found his environment so alien? Her own stubborn refusal to let it become familiar? No, it really is alien. All male. All military. All-consuming.
The actual, literal only place for a woman is in the kitchen, in the bedroom, and taking the kids to school, to the pool, to the playground.
“Mmm,” he said, a deep sound of pleasure and longing, and kissed her.
Her fingers slid over his shoulders, one hand gripping over the smooth, faintly raised skin of his rose tattoo. She traced it like a sign. A map in the dark.
To where? Why had she not thought of this from the very first? Because she hadn’t been able to let herself imagine a relationship? Or because she wouldn’t have been able to conceive of this place anyway? This all-male military universe was genuinely inconceivable from her relaxed civilian world where sexism might not be over but no woman had to form her identity around a man. It kind of made her want to go join some women’s marches to realize it still existed in her country today.
But there were no flags to wave right now. It was dark. His big body nuzzled hers against the door, as if he would like nothing so much as to keep her. The unadorned scent of him was working its way through her, undefinable but so increasingly familiar. Warm, human, faintly salty. Sea and pine.
It was too dark to see the warmth in those blue eyes, that had grown so much for her. But she knew it was there. His hands were stronger and more urgent on her than the first time they had made love, as if he’d missed her through all his body, as if he knew his hands would be welcome. But there was still that care, that tenderness, that refusal to take her over if she didn’t signal she wanted to be taken over.
The alien base faded, back beyond the borders of him and her.
What had he said he wanted the other day? This. This space with you.
Yes.
I mean, it’s probably what all the men here want from their wives, this space away from the rest of the world, and it may never even occur to them that they are asking another human being to devote her entire existence to being someone else’s space, but…shh.
Stop.
Don’t think about it.
Don’t t
hink, said the brush of his knuckles along her jaw.
Don’t think, said his hand shaping over her shoulder, kneading gently down her arm.
Don’t think, said the graze of his jaw against her temple and her hair.
Why would you start thinking now? His fingers kneading over her back, pressing her closer and closer into his body. The rub of their bodies together, the way he lifted and shifted her against him, the way she went up on tiptoes and slid back down.
The hard strength against her. The way her hands could close around lean hips and then stroke up ribs and broad chest.
He pulled away from her to unbutton his uniform jacket, laying it over the back of the couch. The only suggestion of disorder in the entire house.
He came back to her, in his green T-shirt. She pushed that up immediately, savoring the smoothness of his skin pulled taut over muscle, the ridges of his ribs, ah, yes, it still tickled him. She slid her hands around to his back, still pushing the T-shirt up.
He pulled it over his head and threw it toward the couch. Then just swung her up in his arms and carried her through the house to his bedroom. She felt almost guilty to mess up the precisely made bed with her body. He, on the other hand, clearly didn’t mind at all.
Settling down over her with a deep sound of pleasure, everything so warm and dark. She kissed his jaw by accident and kissed across it until she found his mouth. Tangled in kisses, he had said.
Oh, yes. What a lovely tangle to be in.
Tangled in kisses and his voice, deep and hot and telling her so many sexy things, like her name, and incoherent sounds, and you are so damn beautiful. Tangled in his body and his hands, rubbing over her, rough and warm and gentle, urgent and curious and familiar. As if she was coming home.
Tangled in that great erotic sense of trust that she always felt around him, as if he would take care with every part of her and never break her.
She loved making love to Lucien Rosier. She’d never in her life before him had sex that felt like love was being made.
But it did with him.
Despite everything—despite the ominous base outside that pressed down around the house with its proof she could not fit here—she found it easy to hold onto him, easy to kiss him, easy to come, easy to curl up afterward into one of his pillows, with his hand resting on the small of her back, thumb stroking idly against her spine, as they fell asleep.
Easy, just for that night, to believe.
Chapter 23
It was pitch black still when she heard him stirring in the room. His clock glowed 4:00 a.m. by the bed. He bent to kiss her forehead, then shifted to her lips when she reached out a hand to touch his arm and showed she was awake.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I tried to be quiet. I’ve got to go. One of my corporals is out with a broken wrist, so he’ll escort you to the walls when you’re ready, if you still want to watch. I left a note with how to get in touch with him.”
She nodded and fell back asleep, but not as soundly, stirring in the emptiness, uneasy. She ended up getting up at six, excited and a little nervous to see more of what he did. She showered and took a lot more time than he did in the bathroom because, yes, it really mattered to her to look pretty to him. She couldn’t help it. But by seven, she was on the citadel walls.
The corporal offered a crisp salute to the uniformed men already present and introduced her. “Mademoiselle Lyon. Capitaine Fontaine asked me to bring her here.”
Captain Fontaine seemed to be her password to these walls. But the corporal forgot to introduce the uniformed men to her in return. Maybe that meant she wasn’t supposed to bother them, which seemed highly likely. She was the only woman on the walls. In this world with no room for women.
She leaned against the wall in a spot that seemed well out of the way, watching the boats approach the beach. She had no idea of the terms for the boats or what they were doing, but it all looked very exciting, if you liked deadly intensity. Some of the forces were taking the beach, some of them were resisting the invasion. If Lucien was among them, she had no idea from this distance who he was. He would be giving commands somewhere, but probably not physically leading these smaller units, right? Not anymore? This was more what he used to do, when he led a commando paratrooper unit.
She realized a tall, stern uniformed man was standing straight-shouldered beside her while she slouched on her elbows looking over the wall. She glanced up at him in a friendly way, and he returned the glance with one of faint amusement or faint bemusement, she wasn’t sure which.
She straightened into ballet posture all at once, as a thought occurred to her.
This man had five yellow bars on his sleeve rank patch. Lucien had three yellow bars.
Part of Elena’s process of tracking down Lucien had included combing through every available media photo—and Facebook post, because of course the elusive, legendary Foreign Legion posted every minute of their days on Facebook now—to see if she could spot a face that was recognizable as an adult, weathered version of the photos the Rosiers had of Lucien as a teenager. And once she had found him, she had had to look up what the insignia on his uniform meant. So she knew what the regimental insignia meant—and this man’s was the same as Lucien’s. She knew that Lucien’s three yellow bars meant he was a captain.
Five yellow bars meant two ranks above him, then. In the same regiment.
Oh, good God, she might be offending the commander of his base.
She had no idea how to act inoffensive, no clue what the etiquette here might be for her, and refused to reduce herself to too much submissiveness to be safe. So she just stood as straight as all the men around her, although more ballet-inspired, graceful rather than stern, her hands clasped behind her back, more or less imitating the corporal over there but with some female ownership of the pose.
“Mademoiselle Lyon, c’est ça?” the gray-haired officer said. “La femme du Capitaine Fontaine?”
French had a linguistic quirk that meant that “Captain Fontaine’s wife” or “Captain Fontaine’s woman” were exactly the same expression. It didn’t mean the officer assumed they were married, a wedding he would presumably have been invited to. But it did mean he assumed their relationship was long-term and not casual.
Maybe Lucien wouldn’t have asked a corporal to escort a casual affair up onto the walls to observe these exercises.
“Oui”—Elena’s glance flicked over those five yellow bars again—“colonel.” If she’d erred a rank too high, he could correct her. But she sure as hell didn’t want to err a rank too low.
He didn’t correct her. Oh, crap. That meant he really was the colonel. “Do you see where he is?”
“Non, colonel.”
He handed her binoculars in a tanned, scarred hand that was starting to show age but still tough and pointed to a rocky cliff across the bay.
It took her a minute or so to pick out Lucien, but finally she did. Camouflage-painted and in the thick of things, speaking orders and moving at the same time. He looked in his element. Well, he was, right?
Actually, all the men she could see looked as if they were having a hell of a good time. An intensely demanding exercise where no one was likely to be hit by an actual bullet or step on a mine and die. For guys who liked to challenge themselves, this must be the ultimate game of paintball. As she watched, Lucien’s painted face parted in a fierce grin.
She handed the binoculars back politely and stood quietly, quite paralyzed by the fear that she could do the wrong thing and put some kind of black mark on Lucien’s career. One of her default modes when she was unsure was to deploy an ironic, confident sexiness, but the possible sabotage to Lucien’s career and social relations of accidentally attracting one of his superior officers chilled that instinct down to a frozen little ice cube, and she mostly intensely wished she could snap her fingers and re-appear in the lovely streets of Sainte-Mère, maybe packing up a picnic to go hiking with her friends. The only etiquette you needed to master in Sainte-Mère was to be re
spectful to your elders and always say bonjour, madame and merci, monsieur.
A woman arrived with two young kids in tow and greeted the men there politely. Elena eyed her hopefully for some sign of how she herself was to behave, but the woman took the kids to an out of the way section of the wall, and the three of them began to use their own binoculars, presumably to pick out Daddy. The other woman did glance at Elena curiously but didn’t approach her or encourage approach. No other women showed up that morning.
Elena found the exercise itself fascinating, but she still escaped with the corporal long before it was over. From Senegal, the corporal was tall and muscled and scrupulously neutral and respectful. He had clearly received orders to escort her all day, waiting politely by his jeep while she went shopping in Calvi, where she utterly failed to find a dress that satisfied her. She ground her teeth at Lucien. Then the town filled with the Legion band, and—oh, there was the president, Lucien only a few men away from him, wow.
Like most of her countrymen, she had grown up pretty leery of armed men in uniforms, but when you trusted the man wearing it, it was impressive as hell.
Then, later that afternoon, there was the giddy, glorious excitement of seeing him lead his men out of a plane, their parachutes opening one after the other like aerial dominoes, a whole company in the sky at a time. It was incredible. She clapped and cheered and wanted to learn how to skydive.
Bet Lucien could teach me.
He finally could meet up with her at his lodgings again at six p.m., rolling his shoulders and neck as if his muscles were starting to ache after his non-stop, intensely physical day. “Still got that cocktail party,” he told her ruefully, as he stripped efficiently and stepped under the shower. “Your day go okay?” he asked her from the shower, scrubbing himself with the matter-of-factness of a man who had quite frequently stood naked under a shower while surrounded by other men.
She leaned in the doorway and raised her eyebrow at him.
He slowed down and cocked his head. Then his cheeks creased, and his eyes gleamed, and he flexed into a bodybuilder pose that showed off every muscle from his shoulders to his calves.
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