We'll Always Have Paris

by Barbara Bretton

  “I thought you were bringing someone,” Kate said.

  Ryan frowned. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  They both turned to look at their middle child, who looked back with an innocent smile on her face. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “I hope you rented a four-wheel drive,” Kate said to Ryan. What had happened to Hello or It’s good to see you? Why did she have to go straight to the negative.

  “I’m crazy, but I don’t have a death wish,” he shot back. “I rented an all-wheel drive at the airport.”

  “There’s a blizzard out there,” she pointed out.

  “That’s not a blizzard,” he said. “You need higher winds to qualify as a blizzard.”

  “That’s still an awful lot of snow.” Shut up, Kate. Where is this going? What’s the point?

  “It was clear sailing from Hartford on. The worst is on its way to Maine.”

  Kate opened her mouth to pursue this meteorological debate, but the look on their daughter’s face stopped her.

  Alexis was looking from Kate to Ryan, her blue eyes wide with puzzlement. This was her day. Kate and Ryan could save their bickering for some other time.

  That look of puzzlement quickly turned into something very different when Gabe Fellini walked into the room.

  There was something both sad and beautiful about new love. Alexis and Gabe were so innocent, so trusting in their love for each other. They hadn’t a clue about the curveballs life would throw their way. Right now they believed that they were special, that the gods had decided to rain down all the blessings of the universe on their heads and protect them always from harm.

  She and Ryan had been that way, too, and for a second Kate thought she was looking at their younger selves.

  And Ryan saw it, too. Their gazes locked above their daughter’s head and everything else fell away. The years. The problems. The fact that they were a half step away from finalizing their divorce.

  They exchanged a smile in the foyer. They squeezed past each other in the back hallway. She smiled when she caught him watching her as she popped more crab puffs into the oven. She blushed furiously when he caught her peeking at him through the back window when he stepped outside to bring in some more firewood.

  By the time they found themselves alone on the back porch, the attraction between them was so powerful that they were in each other’s arms in the space of a heartbeat.

  He told her what he wanted to do to her.

  She told him if he didn’t do it in the next thirty seconds she would do it to him.

  In a flash they were in the backseat of the Toyota with the windows fogging up all around them. Hot. Sweet. Intense.

  Too intense. She was losing control and if she didn’t get out of there right that second she would say something she would regret. Something like I still love you or Maybe we should give it another try, and she would have to endure the look of pity in his eyes.

  Kate scrambled into her clothes as if the car were on fire and she had ten seconds to save her own life.

  Which, come to think of it, may not have been that far from the truth.

  She had made a big fat mistake. One of those mistakes that happened to other, dumber women who ended up crying their eyes out on some relationship expert’s shoulder on national television.

  She hadn’t planned to sleep with her own husband. It was winter, for crying out loud. She hadn’t even shaved her legs.

  For three weeks afterward she held her breath, praying to God and all the saints that their stupidity hadn’t resulted in a middle-aged pregnancy. She had the feeling Ryan heard her sigh of relief all the way up there in Boston.

  Not that they had had any direct communication since the engagement party. They had been hiding behind Alexis and their lawyers, passing messages back and forth like grade-school kids behind their teacher’s back.

  If their daughters ever got wind of what had happened, they would immediately jump to the wrong conclusion. Her children were adults, but they clung to the childish hope that their parents would somehow get back together.

  She had bumped into Alexis as she ran upstairs after the incident in the Toyota. Kate had been wild with emotion, almost crazy. She had yanked her wedding ring off her finger and flung it into the deepest recesses of the top drawer of her old dresser. It wasn’t until she turned around and saw her middle child standing in the doorway looking both puzzled and horrified that she managed to pull in the reins on her romantic craziness and settle back down into being the mother of the bride.

  She thought about the ring sometimes, but she had yet to drive back out to the house and retrieve it. There was always something else to do, somewhere else she needed to be. She knew she could ask Taylor to FedEx it to her but she hadn’t done that yet either.

  Maybe there was something symbolic about tossing the ring into the darkness of a forgotten drawer. At first she had felt naked without her ring, but after a while she grew used to the feeling. Maybe she should gather up all of those old, troublesome memories and throw them into the darkness with the ring and be done with all of it.

  The truth was that fiery interlude in the rental car hadn’t changed a thing between them. The wheels of divorce kept on rolling as the weeks slipped away. In fact, they could have signed the final papers yesterday before she flew out of New York but somehow it didn’t seem right for parents to end their marriage one week before their daughter’s wedding.

  Weddings were about living happily ever after. Nobody wanted a reminder that sometimes not even love was enough to keep two people together.

  She wouldn’t be able to avoid him once Wedding Week began. That much was certain. They would walk their daughter down the aisle together. They would pose for pictures together. They would step out onto the dance floor together as the parents of the bride.

  Temptation would be everywhere, but this time she would be prepared.

  She would stay away from champagne, hide indoors when the moon was high and bright in the sky, and she would definitely stay away from rented Toyotas and the men who drove them.

  But it had been so wonderful to see him again at the party…to share a secret smile as they toasted their daughter’s happiness…to melt into his arms as she had in the beginning when it was all new and wonderful and Paris still beckoned them like a glittering golden dream….

  Laughter drifted up from the bistro on the corner and carried with it the intoxicating scents of old dark Gauloises, buttery onions and wine so deep and red it stained your lips when you drank it. If she closed her eyes and blocked out the traffic and the laughter, she could almost hear the wistful notes of La Vie en Rose.

  She brought herself up short. These trips down memory lane were getting her nowhere but depressed.

  She was in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world, and she wasn’t going to waste time mooning over the past. Who needed romance when she could window-shop Chanel?

  But first things first. If she was going to enjoy every minute, she needed a long shower, a huge pot of strong black coffee and an obscene amount of freshly baked goodies.

  The women she had noticed on the way into the city from the airport had all been slim and amazingly stylish. She could only hope it had something to do with pastries.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AS IT TURNED OUT, the number-one footballer in England wasn’t big on interviews and Ryan was finished in less time than it took to eat a Big Mac with fries. The superstar’s answers were, in random order, yes, no, I dunno and a firm maybe. Good thing the guy had been given a hard head and a great right foot, because clearly conversation wasn’t his strong suit. But the most important words, “I’m retiring at the end of the season” had come through loud and clear.

  Why Derek Brody chose to hand that exclusive to an American was Celeste Beaulieu’s secret. How his aunt-in-law even knew Brody was a mystery for the ages, but when she phoned Ryan in Boston and asked if he wanted a sit-down interview with the elusive sports star he didn’t have to think twice.<
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  “You caught him on a good day,” one of the photographers said as they left the hotel suite after the interview. “The bloke’s not always that chatty.”

  Ryan was still laughing when he reached the other side of the Channel.

  Originally he had figured to spend a day or two in London before he joined the rest of the family at Milles Fleurs for the start of Wedding Week.

  “I might stick around town,” he told Aunt Celeste over the phone yesterday. “Look up some old friends.”

  Celeste, however, was nobody’s fool. She was the only person on the planet who understood what Paris meant to him and to Kate.

  And why he was trying to stay away as long as he could.

  “Hair of the dog, mon cher. Immerse yourself in my city now, before you see Kate again. London will always be there waiting for you. Now it is time for Paris.”

  What was it about the French anyway? Celeste was French by choice, not blood, but when it came to understanding love, she might as well have been born on the banks of the Seine. He hadn’t told anyone about what had happened at the engagement party, but the old woman’s romance radar had honed in on the change in the status quo with unerring precision.

  “Never underestimate our Kate,” she had counseled him. “Her truest feelings are the ones she shields from view.”

  Apparently she hadn’t managed to shield some of those truest feelings from Alexis on that fateful night. He had received an impassioned e-mail from their daughter the next day, chronicling the sight of her mother flinging her wedding band into a dresser drawer in what used to be their bedroom.

  Why does it have to be this way? Alexis had written in her e-mail. You two were always so happy together. Why can’t love last the way it’s supposed to?

  Four months later he was still looking for the answer to that question.

  So now there he was in the lobby of the Hotel St. Michel on the Left Bank, trying to explain to the concierge that they were welcome to take his bags up to Madame Beaulieu’s suite but he wouldn’t be going with them.

  Back home his French didn’t sound half-bad. He had no trouble ordering off the menu at any French restaurant between New York and Boston. Here in Paris he sounded like a not-too-bright four-year-old with a limited vocabulary.

  “Le bistro,” he said, gesturing toward the corner restaurant he’d noticed when he got out of the cab. “Déjeuner.” He mimed repeatedly raising a spoon to his lips. “Bon appétit!”

  He had to hand it to the concierge. The guy didn’t crack a smile. He nodded and said, “Your bags will be in your suite when you return,” in perfect English.

  “Thanks,” Ryan muttered, not even attempting a pathetic merci. He pocketed the room key and was out the door before anybody else tried to start a conversation with him.

  Kate would have laughed until she cried. She would have teased him in that gentle way of hers, forcing him to see the humor in the situation. Even during the darkest times, she had known how to make him laugh.

  God, how he missed her laughter.

  So why haven’t you called her, Donovan? It’s been four months….

  He wasn’t going to finish that thought. He’d been trying—and failing—to forget what happened between them in his rented Toyota. It wasn’t his finest hour, but he’d be damned if he knew exactly why. You would think a man his age would have learned something along the way, but that night he found out how little he knew about women.

  About Kate.

  They had been curled together in that ridiculous little backseat when she bolted. One second they were lying together, waiting for their heartbeats to slow down to something even close to normal, and the next she was scrambling into her clothes like a crazed contortionist. One of her practical jokes, he was sure of it, designed to defuse the emotions of the moment. He reached for her, expecting her to start laughing that beautiful laugh of hers, when she flung open the passenger door and leaped out. The last time he saw Kate, she was fleeing across the snowy driveway like an Olympic speed skater going for the gold.

  A bucketful of ice water over his head couldn’t have been more effective in bringing him back down to earth.

  Which was where he had pretty much been ever since.

  He almost called her a thousand times. He’d punch in the speed-dial number on his cell phone and the second it rang he’d hang up like a teenage boy with a crush on the head cheerleader. Young people make stupid, careless mistakes. You weren’t supposed to make those same mistakes when you were well into your forties. Somewhere along the way you should have learned something about caution and responsibility.

  But when it came to Kate, in many ways he was still the same kid who had fallen in love with her back in the sophomore year of high school. He was the jock who secretly wanted to write. She was the math whiz who longed to be an artist. They had nothing in common and yet they had everything. The fact that they found each other so early always seemed like a miracle to him, the best gift God could have sent his way.

  But somewhere, somehow, they had managed to lose track of each other. A man and woman could live in the same house, eat at the same table, sleep in the same bed for years and never see it happening. One day you turn around and nothing looks familiar, not your place in the world, not even the woman you loved.

  He nodded at the doorman as he stepped onto the sidewalk. Laughter rang out from the corner bistro. A street musician played something unrecognizable on an old violin while a pair of young lovers nuzzled nearby. The air was redolent of garlic and wine and cigarette smoke, of river water and old books.

  It was everything he always imagined it would be, this dream city, and he didn’t feel a damn thing beyond the need for a cup of coffee and something to eat.

  The corner bistro didn’t look bad even if they did seem to seat as many dogs as humans. A huge Newfoundland dozed near his master’s feet at one of the sidewalk tables while a fluffy white poodle flaunted her superiority from a window seat inside. A chalkboard menu rested on an easel to the right of the front door. He stepped closer. Boeuf. Okay, that was a gimme. Maybe a steak? A burger? Poulet was chicken, but he couldn’t tell what they were doing with the chicken. He was scanning for something familiar like French fries when the word omelette jumped out at him. He liked eggs. Like most men, he could eat breakfast any hour of the day. Besides, you couldn’t screw up an egg.

  He did a double take. Did that say fish omelet? Nobody ate fish omelets. He knew that he’d probably screwed something in the translation, but he wasn’t going to take a chance. They had Golden Arches in Paris, didn’t they? Maybe he would take the easy way out for his first meal and sample the local cuisine later.

  The Eiffel Tower seemed as good a direction as any and he was about to head out when he caught sight of a woman sitting at a small round table near the window. He couldn’t see her face, but there was something about her that tugged at his heart. Kate’s hair was crazy curly like that, too. It dipped across her cheek when she bent her head and caught the sunlight the same way.

  Impossible. Kate wasn’t due at Milles Fleurs for another two days. She was probably back home in New York raiding Barney’s for the perfect mother-of-the-bride outfit.

  “…vers la droite!” a voice behind him called out.

  His mind went blank. Was droite left or right? He moved to the right just in time to keep from being knocked over by a young woman on bright red roller skates. An apple-cheeked baby smiled at him from a backpack as they sailed past.

  By the time he turned back to the bistro window, the woman with the crazy headful of curls was gone.

  C’est la vie, he thought, chalking it up to imagination and caffeine withdrawal. A mirage. It made sense that Kate would be uppermost in his mind. She was the woman who had dreamed this dream with him for as long as he could remember.

  The curly strawberry-blond hair. The way she ducked her head when she took a bite of food. The blue topaz pendant dangling from a slender chain around her neck.

  He burst
into the bistro like a madman. The hostess, a woman of great style and indeterminate age, stepped in front of him. Immovable object, meet the irresistible force.

  She said something to him in French that he didn’t understand.

  He said something to her in French that neither one of them understood.

  She glanced about and he had the distinct feeling she was about to call for security.

  “La femme,” he said, pointing toward the empty table next to the window. “Cheveux rouges…” He twirled his index finger in the air. What the hell was the French word for curly? “Bouclés!” You would think he had split the atom. “La femme avec les cheveux rouges bouclés.”

  Contact! The woman’s face relaxed into a wide smile and she led him to the table where he’d seen the woman he now wasn’t so sure was Kate after all. A half-eaten bowl of onion soup sat atop the scarred wooden tabletop. A wineglass with a smudge of peach lipstick along the rim. Kate didn’t drink red wine. Or did she?

  The hostess motioned for him to sit down. He hesitated. What the hell had he gotten himself into? A strange woman was going to walk back to the table and see some nutty American guy sitting there and probably call for a gendarme.

  But the hostess was beaming a smile at him and people were looking, so he sat down on the bentwood chair and smiled his thanks when a busboy handed him a small, handwritten menu.

  The thing to do was get up and leave before the woman came back to reclaim her seat. There was an exit near the bathroom. All he had to do was stand up, head for the bathroom, then detour out the door before he was arrested for stalking.

  He pushed back his chair and stood up. Nobody noticed. He casually walked in the direction of the bathroom. Nobody paid any attention. He was less than six feet from the exit when the bathroom door swung open and he found himself face-to-face with the woman he had married thirty years ago.

  His almost ex-wife Kate.

  CHAPTER THREE