And after a few more swigs, like magic, my confusion was swept away, along with my memory of the awful conversation I’d just had with Paul.
The one thing that remained was Julien’s face.
I leveled my gaze with the bottle and decided I would keep going until he disappeared.
***
“Chloe, wake up.” A distant, deep voice called out to me. I must’ve been dreaming.
“Chloe!” he said again, his voice stronger this time.
A warm hand cupped my cheek, then another one behind my neck. My eyelids fluttered open, then shut again, and finally back open.
Scruffy cheeks, worried brown eyes, and a rustled head of chestnut hair met my gaze.
“What’s going on?” I asked as Julien propped my head up onto a pillow.
“I came back from the hospital and couldn’t find you in the house. I thought something had happened. I thought Claude had come back and . . . never mind.” He shook his head, the worry disappearing from his eyes. “I see that you just took a walk.” He waved an empty bottle in front of my face. “And you found some wine.”
Ugh. My stomach curled as the smell of alcohol wafted past my face.
“Get that away from me.”
Julien held back a grin. “So you are a drinker now? I never thought I would see the day.”
“I’m not a drinker.”
“Of course not,” he said as he pulled me up to a sitting position.
“What time is it?” I asked, squeezing my eyes closed to stop the spinning.
“Three o’clock.”
My head swayed slowly from side to side and as I turned to focus on Julien’s face, I noticed his head was swaying too.
Damn, I was still drunk.
Julien placed his hands on my shoulders. “You are a little wobbly, no? Do you feel okay?”
“Mmhmm. I’m fine. Just a little . . .”
“Drunk?” he finished for me.
“If that’s what you want to call it, fine.”
“You need to eat something,” he said as he leaned me back against the couch cushions and stood up.
“I did eat. I ate that cheese. That camenamburt stuff.”
“You mean the camembert?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Is that all you’ve eaten today? Some cheese?”
I nodded.
Julien swiveled around on his heel and headed toward the kitchen, mumbling something under his breath. I closed my eyes as I heard him banging around in there, when suddenly a thought came to me.
I shot up from the couch and charged into the kitchen.
“We have to get out of here!” I gripped the counter as I felt myself toppling over. Maybe I’d stood up too fast.
He turned, an amused expression on his face. “What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t our place,” I hissed. “I broke into some artist’s cottage. We can’t just take their food. We have to leave. Now.”
Julien laughed, then turned back to the refrigerator. “You are the one who broke in first and stole the wine and the cheese. If anyone gets in trouble, it will be you.”
A sinking feeling seized my stomach as the room swirled in circles around me. “I’m not getting in any more trouble. We have to go.”
“Relax,” he called over his shoulder. “This cottage belongs to me.”
“What?”
“It’s mine. I bought it from my father when I moved back to the vineyard two years ago. I’ve only been staying in the house with my mother since my father died.”
“Oh,” I said, a hiccup escaping from my lips.
“So, you broke into my cottage and stole my food and wine. I should have you arrested, you know.”
“Very f . . . funny,” I stuttered, once again taking in the paintings of Paris, of the kissing couples, adorning every bare surface of the cottage. “Wait a second, so you’re the artist? You painted all of these?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I did. And I was not very happy to see that someone had run in here and knocked over my latest work in progress.” Julien raised a brow at me as he set a plate of fruit, vegetables and bread on the table, then filled up a tall glass of water. “In case you are worried, which you do not seem to be, the painting you flung to the floor is not damaged. Now sit. You need to eat.”
Dumbfounded, I plopped into the kitchen chair. “I didn’t throw your painting onto the floor. I tripped over it. And how come you never told me you were an artist anyway? Where did you learn to paint like this? Is there anything else I should know about you?” I grabbed a sliced carrot and stuffed it into my mouth.
Julien sat across from me and watched me nibble. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “You women are very dramatic, you know that? All I ask is to have a simple life. To live in my nice little cottage, paint my paintings, drink some wine, and of course help the police arrest other conmen like me. But as long as there are women in my life, such a simple existence is never possible.”
I glared at him from across the table, while secretly feeling relieved that he’d fixed me this plate of food. Raw veggies had never tasted so delicious.
“I think you like the drama,” I told him.
“That is ridiculous. No man likes drama.”
“Even French men?”
“Even French men.”
“Well, I’m just about the least dramatic woman you’ll ever meet, so if I’m too dramatic for you, then you might as well . . .” I trailed off, losing track of where I was going with that. The giant strawberry in my mouth was making it hard for me to remember.
“Might as well what?” Julien asked.
“I don’t know. You get the point.”
He laughed, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “So finally, I get to see the relaxed version of Chloe. It took quite a lot to get to this point, you know?”
“I’m not relaxed,” I told him through a mouthful of strawberry.
“Oh?” he arched an eyebrow. “But you are free and clear. The police do not care about you anymore. And you are going home tomorrow. How could you not be even a little bit relaxed?”
“That’s all true. And thank you, for, you know,” I waved my hand back and forth in front of me, “dealing with all of that. But, there is still a problem. A huge problem. My fiancé doesn’t even know if he wants to marry me this Saturday.”
Julien’s smile disappeared. “That is a problem.”
“Two detectives came to our house to question him and now my family knows everything, and it’s going to be horrible when I go home tomorrow. Horrrrrible,” I slurred as I closed my eyes and plopped my forehead into my hands.
“The wine is making a little more sense now.”
“You’d be drinking too if you were me.” I lifted my eyes to his. “I’m sorry. I’m talking all about myself, as if my problems are the only ones that matter. How’s your mom doing?”
“She is doing a little better. She will be released from the hospital in a couple of hours.”
I smiled. “That’s great news. Why did you come home then? You could’ve stayed there with her.”
Julien’s eyes darted down to the table, then back up to mine. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush. “Thanks.” All of a sudden, I remembered yelling at Julien earlier that morning, telling him that he deserved whatever was coming to him. That he deserved to lose this vineyard. That I didn’t care if he ever found the painting.
“You know,” I said softly, as I pushed a stack of carrots around on my plate, “I’m sorry about what I said to you this morning. About you deserving to lose your home. I didn’t mean that. Well, okay, at the time, I might’ve meant it. But that was just because I was angry because I found out about your whole con-man past. I don’t really want you or your family to lose the vineyard. It’s so amazing here.”
Julien’s brown eyes flickered. “It is okay. You were right, after everything I have done, I do not deserve to have go
od things happen to me anymore.”
“That’s not true.”
“Maybe it is not enough to change. Maybe the wrongs I have committed in the past will always follow me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think everyone deserves a second chance.”
“That is just your American optimism speaking.”
“But you’re doing a good thing now. You’re taking care of your mother. You’re trying to help your family. And trust me, I know all about helping crazy families. That’s what I’ve done my entire life. Well, ever since my mom died anyway.”
“I am sorry about your mother. When did she die?”
“It was a long time ago, when I was twelve. She died giving birth to my youngest sister.”
“That must’ve been tough at such a young age. I know how hard it has been to lose my father, and I am a grown man.”
I plopped another strawberry on my tongue and chewed. “Tough doesn’t even begin to describe it. But it’s okay . . . well, it wasn’t okay for a long time. My dad’s anxiety was through the roof trying to raise three little girls and a newborn by himself, so I stepped up to the plate and took over where my mom left off. Every time my dad or one of the girls went off the deep end, I handled it. I made sure it was okay. And I still do. Which Paul doesn’t like all that much because then I don’t have as much time to take care of him. And it doesn’t help that my sisters are totally crazy when they’re all together, and he really can’t tolerate women in large doses. But whatever, he just has to deal with it because he doesn’t have a choice. Because he’s marrying ‘Just In Case Chloe.’ The one who’s prepared for whatever disaster they throw my way.”
Julien looked thoughtfully into my eyes. “Who takes care of you then? Who cleans up your disasters?”
“I don’t have disasters.”
“No? What would you call your trip to France then? An adventure?”
“Fine. With the exception of the last few days, I don’t have disasters. What about you? It seems like you’re the one who handles everything around here.”
“I am a man. I am supposed to take care of my family. That is what men do.”
“That’s a little old fashioned, don’t you think?”
Julien ran his hand along the smooth wood until his fingers brushed over mine. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it abruptly.
“What were you going to say?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Sometimes you’re just as bad of a liar as me. What were you going to say? Tell me.”
“If I was your fiancé, I would take care of you. Not the other way around.”
My drunk mind zipped back to the wedding daydream I’d had in the vineyard a few hours earlier. And how I hadn’t been able to erase Julien’s face from the place up at the altar where Paul should’ve been standing.
No. No. That was ridiculous.
“Paul takes care of me,” I said, trying to sound confident. “It’s just . . . he’s just different. We have more of a modern relationship. You know, where both of us are equal. I have my own career. I don’t need him to provide for me.”
“What if you go to Pennsylvania?” he prodded. “He will not provide for you there?”
I’d almost forgotten about Pennsylvania. “Paul knows I don’t want to go there.”
“Does he?”
I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “So what are you going to do about the painting?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Looks like we both have some pretty shit problems right now, huh.”
“Looks like it.” Julien held my gaze for several seconds before breaking away and staring past me out the window. “I better go back to the hospital. My mom and Camille will be waiting, and Guillaume should be on his way there too.”
“Of course.” I stood up from the table, feeling a little more stable now that I had food in my stomach, but when another hiccup sounded from my mouth, I knew I was still kind of drunk.
Julien laughed, and I whipped my head around to face him. “What’s so funny?”
“When you go home, I think you should start drinking more wine. It is good for you, you know?”
“Whatever,” I said as I plowed my hip into the corner of the kitchen table. “Ouch.”
“Come. I will walk you back to the house. You can sleep off the alcohol while I am at the hospital.”
“Okay.”
I may have been drunk, but not drunk enough to ignore the way Julien rested his palm on the small of my back as he walked me past painting upon painting of kissing Parisian couples, and out into the fresh, warm air. I also couldn’t ignore the way he kept his hand on me for our entire walk through the vineyard.
What I did choose to overlook though, was the fact that I liked it.
Twenty
“So thees is Julien’s new American girlfriend! Finally, she is awake!” bellowed a plump old man with a black beret barely covering the top of his bald head and a gray mustache hovering over his lips.
I stood in a state of confusion in the back doorway of Julien’s house, still groggy from my four-hour drunken siesta, as a slew of French people sitting at a long table, which appeared to be set for a feast, turned around to look at me—Julien’s new American girlfriend.
Oh, God.
The old man smiled a toothy grin before standing from the table, the view of the sun setting over the vineyard just beyond his beret. Then he waddled up to me, leaned in and kissed both of my cheeks. “I am Pierre-François, Julien’s uncle.” He leaned closer and whispered gruffly in my ear. “Julien said you were a beautiful girl, but I did not expect you to be quite thees beautiful!”
Julien had told his uncle that I was beautiful? Obviously it was just part of the act since apparently we were now telling not only his mother, but his entire family, that we were an item.
My cheeks flushed all the same as I smiled back at Pierre-François and glanced out at the others, who were still eyeing me curiously, tossing hushed whispers across the table.
“Come,” Pierre-François instructed as he placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “I introduce you to the rest of Julien’s family.” He leaned in and whispered again, softer this time. “They are a crazy bunch, so do not get scared and run away. Julien will take care of you—he is the most normal one of us all.”
If an ex-con who worked undercover for the government and secretly painted portraits of couples kissing all over Paris was the most normal one of them all, this family had some serious issues.
As we walked over to the table, I scanned the relatives for Julien or Camille or their mother, but instead found a mixture of their traits in the faces that waited to greet me—deep brown eyes, dark shades of hair, from chestnut brown to black, and even a few of them carried the same high cheek bones of Julien and his siblings.
Pierre-François started at the left and worked his way around the table to the right, introducing me to all twelve of Julien’s relatives who’d come by for dinner out on the tree-covered terrace. “Thees is Julien’s Aunt Caroline, his cousin Aurélien, his Uncle Manu, Manu’s wife Coralie . . .”
I lost track after Coralie, so I just smiled politely at each of them and twisted the diamond on my left ring finger around so they wouldn’t see it. I’d forgotten to take it off before I came downstairs. But then again, Julien hadn’t informed me that I would be meeting his entire extended family.
Just as the family took their focus off me and began passing around one of the five bottles of Beaujolais wine that sat uncorked on the table, I felt a familiar hand on my lower back.
Heat flooded up my spine as I turned to find Julien with a wide grin spread across his face, his other hand holding a steaming platter of chicken, rice and vegetables. “I see you have met my family.”
I nodded as Aunt Caroline, or was it Aunt Coralie—well, whatever—thrust a glass of wine into my hands. “Merci,” I said with a smile, thinking that I would be hit with a wave of nausea at the
smell of it. But as the fruity scent passed under my nose, my stomach growled.
Julien set the dish down on the table in between his relatives, then leaned into my ear. “You don’t have to drink that. I will get you some water.”
“It’s okay,” I told him.
He gave me a funny look then led me over to an empty seat in the middle of the table. “Here, have a seat. Camille and I will be out with the rest of the food in a minute, after we wake Maman up. I made a quiche for you, and a salad.” He winked at me before crossing the terrace and disappearing into the house, leaving me amidst a group of jolly, babbling French people.
Why was Julien including me in his family dinner? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just tell me to stay upstairs for the evening?
“Chloe, are you végétarienne?” one of the aunts asked me from across the table, interrupting my silent questions on Julien.
I nodded as I took a sip of water, making sure to keep my left hand under the table.
“How interesting. That is a very American way of life, no?”
“Actually, I don’t have many friends at home who are vegetarians. I suppose in France there are even less of them.”
Julien’s Uncle Manu groaned. “A life without meat! I cannot imagine!”
They all laughed as they passed a baguette around and tore pieces off, not caring about the crumbs spilling all over the table. As their warm laughter traveled with the gentle evening breeze, I couldn’t help but laugh with them.
“So, tell us, Chloe,” one of the female cousins said, once the laughter had died down a bit, “How did you meet Julien? He tells us you have only known each other for a short time, but I can tell by the way he spoke of you, he is already in love.”
I choked on my water and began coughing furiously, tears springing to my eyes. What was the matter with me? Julien was just a really great liar. He had to pretend like I was his girlfriend since we’d already told his mother, so whatever he’d told them about me, it was all just for show.
When my coughing fit finally calmed down, I peered around the table to find that everyone’s eyes were still glued on me in anticipation. I opened my mouth to respond, not sure what the hell would come out. But suddenly the crowd’s attention shifted to the back door of the house where Julien and Camille stood with their mother.
Kissed in Paris Page 20