by Nic Saint
“If our families are on the best of terms, why would we elope?”
She had a point there, but he didn’t care. “Stay with me, Gracie. Don’t go just yet. We’ve only just begun to get to know each other.”
He didn’t want to express the silent fear tugging at his heart. That once she was in the bosom of her family again, her memory would return, and she would forget all about him and what had transpired in the two days they’d spent together.
She leaned up, and placed a tender kiss on his lips. He took the opportunity to pull her in close, and the kiss soon turned into a heated affair. Being so close to her, having her in his arms, felt so good, so natural, that he simply couldn’t imagine being apart again.
She placed a soft hand on his cheek, and finally broke the kiss. Gazing up into his eyes, she whispered, “Thank you for everything, Jack. You saved my life.”
“You saved mine,” he murmured.
She smiled at that, and the torrent of heat he felt raging inside almost had him reach out and drag her upstairs like the caveman he felt himself turn into each time they were close.
A loud honking interrupted them. It was the third time Gracie’s father had expressed his impatience, and this time she finally heeded his call and broke the embrace.
“I have to go, Jack.” She hesitated for a moment, giving his hand a little squeeze. “I’ll call you, all right?”
“Promise me you will not forget?”
That lovely smile broke through the clouds of worry again, and struck his aching heart like a shot to the chest. “I won’t.”
He watched her walk out the door and out of his life, then, and joined her on the front step to catch a glimpse of her father.
As he stepped out, he caught a glimpse of a diminutive old man, a patrician nose adding to refined features, white hair neatly in place, lips pursed in disapproval at the sight of Jack. It surprised him that Franklin Travers had decided to drive himself. His own father never traveled without a driver these days, and something told him Gracie’s father wouldn’t settle for less than his great competitor.
Mr Travers quickly averted his gaze, even if it meant ignoring his daughter. Only when she’d opened the passenger door and stepped into the emerald Jag, did his face light up, and did he lean over to give her a cursory embrace and kiss her on both cheeks.
Then, without a glance at Jack, he put the car in gear and drove off, whisking the woman he loved away from him.
She might have waved, but Jack couldn’t be sure. Her father’s bulk obscured a clear line of sight.
He stared after the car until it had disappeared at the end of the street, and then still he couldn’t go inside. Stepping into the house meant returning to his old life, the one he’d lead before Gracie had entered it, and he wasn’t ready for that just yet.
Returning to his old life meant long days at the office, business meetings with demanding customers and weekly parties with Mike.
Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, he felt as if he simply couldn’t go on the way he had for the past fifteen-odd years. Something new and wonderful had happened and it had changed him. Gracie had happened and she had taken the old Jack and turned him into a man he didn’t even know but intensely liked.
Gracie had made him a new man, a more considerate, loving man, and he liked the effect she had on him.
He knew right then and there what his next course of action should be, and cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner.
With resolute step, he returned indoors, and sought the number of the finest jeweler in town. For the first time in his life, Jack Carter was going hunting for an engagement ring—and it had better be stupendous.
Chapter 29
“A fine mess this is,” grumbled my father.
I’d explained to him all that had happened over the course of the past forty-eight hours and this was his first comment.
I was shocked and dismayed. Though the sight of the older man had resulted in a surge of memories flooding back into my brain, one thing stood out amongst the welter: my dad was a bit of an asshole.
“What? Of all the people you could have turned to for help, you had to choose Jack Carter’s son. Don’t you know what he did to me—to this family?”
“No, Dad,” I replied with some heat. “I was unconscious, remember? And if Jack hadn’t pulled me out of the canal, I’d be dead now, so perhaps instead of cursing a fate that brought Jack Carter into my life, you should be thanking your lucky starts instead. At least, if you wanted to see your daughter alive again.”
These harsh words did little to appease him, for he continued grouchy.
“What were you doing in Belgium in the first place? I thought you said you were going hiking in Alaska?”
I shook my head, another fiery retort on the tip of my tongue, but then I thought better of it. How I had ended up in Belgium was one of those mysteries that still hadn’t been solved, as was this Alaska business.
Vaguely, I now remembered I did have a friend called Natasha, but what in the name of all that was holy would induce me to travel all the way to Alaska with her I couldn’t say. I loved warm climates, I loved the beach, that much I knew. So why would I willingly choose to freeze my tush off in chilly Alaska?
I shook my head. “I have no idea, Dad.”
He glanced over. “Your memory, huh? Still not fully restored?”
“I see glimpses of my life, but not the complete picture. It’s as if I’m looking at the sky, and from time to time catch a piece of the puzzle, but then a cloud drifts across the vast expanse that is my life, and it’s all gone again.”
“What did the doctors say?”
“With time, it will all come back to me.”
“Time and rest. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, honey. Now it’s time you took it easy for a while. You’ll move back in with us, of course, so we can give you the care you need.”
I pricked up my ears at this. “Move back in with you?”
“Of course. That loft of yours is no place to recover from this episode. And besides, I don’t think you’ll be safe in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. From what the police told me, it’s one of your artist buddies who snatched you in the first place.”
“Wowowow. You mean to tell me I live alone?”
Dad gave me a sideways look of concern. “Of course you live alone. You’ve lived alone for three years now, ever since you finished art school, remember?” Then he grimaced. “No, of course you don’t.” He sighed. “You do know that you’re a painter, don’t you? Even though I objected very much to the decision? Your chosen artist name is Valerie Lorgnasse, a name you chose when you were eight, by the way. You always knew you wanted to be an artist?”
A painter. I stared out through the windshield at the raging traffic. Cars were honking, and a light drizzle had started to come down, messing up the traffic even more. So I was an artist, was I? And this Rainer guy, he was one of my friends?
It was hard to imagine. I stared down at my hands, and held them up for closer scrutiny. I’d figured I was employed in some menial job, but a painter?
The notion buoyed me, and filled me with a feeling of exhilaration. Suddenly my mind’s eye filled with colors and shapes, each one more outrageous and uplifting than the next. I couldn’t wait to see my studio and experience my art firsthand. “Am I any good?”
Dad gave me a critical look. “Your mother seems to think so. Me? I’m... not much of an art critic, honey. I simply wouldn’t know.”
“But I like it, right? I like my life?”
His eyebrows rose, and he seemed resigned. “I guess you do. Except for the strange company you sometimes keep. Those bohemians do have a habit of getting on your nerves sometimes. Or so you led us to believe before you took off on your holiday.”
I suddenly was reminded of something. “Dad?”
“Mh?”
“Do I have… a boyfriend?”
He laughed at this, the first time I’d heard him laugh since I’d s
tepped into the car. “Honey, you have lots and lots of boyfriends, one even crazier than the next.”
“But... no one special?”
He frowned. “Well, that’s more your mother’s department I’m afraid. If I can keep track of this constant stream of young men it’s only because she is adamant about keeping me in the loop.” He frowned again. “I do seem to remember her mentioning some guy called Benjamin. Or was it... Olivier?” He shook his head, the effort of recalling the exact details of my love life clearly beyond him. “Ask your mother. She’ll know.”
I studied him for a moment, the memories all tumbling into my head and snapping into place.
“Dad?”
“Yes, honey?”
“I’m glad to be home.”
His lips curled up into a smile that spread to his eyes, and when he returned my gaze, he was the father I’d just remembered. The man who had taken me to ballet class in spite of his insistence I should go to math class instead. The father who’d dandled me on his knee even when business associates had demanded an emergency meeting one late night, and I couldn’t sleep because my tummy hurt.
He was the father I remembered from bedtime stories read and impromptu soccer games played, from movies watched in one of Paris’s oldest cinemas to a waltz he’d taught me by placing my little feet on his big ones and carrying me around the living room to the sound of...
Suddenly, I remembered where I’d heard the violin concerto before. It was one of my father’s favorites. Over and over again, he’d play it, taking me around the room with him, as we whirled to the divine strands expertly wrought by Francine Bruniau on her Stradivarius.
A thought formed in my mind. The thought that perhaps the animosity between Jack’s dad and mine had deeper roots.
I decided not to ask him. The mere mention of the name Carter seemed to turn him into a raging tiger.
“And... we’re home,” spoke my father with a happy sigh. I immediately recognized the white facade of the three-story house, with its porticoed porch and lacquered burgundy door complete with brass knocker.
As I turned to look, the door swung open, and my mother came rushing out of the house and at the sight of her, my heart soared.
Home. I was finally home.
Chapter 30
“Don’t go there, son. Don’t even think about it.”
Jack looked up at the vehemence with which his father spoke these words, and decided to thrash this thing out once and for all.
“Look, Dad. This thing between you and Franklin Travers? It has nothing to do with me or Gracie.”
“It does. More than you know.”
“No, it doesn’t. I love her, Dad. I want her to be my wife, and no silly business dispute will come in the way of that, so—”
“Silly business dispute? Is that all you think this is?”
Jack’s dad looked incredulous, and if Jack hadn’t seen his face as he spoke the words, he’d have dismissed them out of hand. As it was, his old man looked positively shocked at the prospect of becoming Gracie Travers’s father-in-law.
They were seated in the back garden of the Carter family home, a place Jack and his brother rarely visited these days. When Mom had still been alive, they used to spend every holiday at home, even when he and Frank had flown the nest for their own respective bachelor pads. And even when Frank settled down and got married to the love of his life, the whole family still trooped together any opportunity they had, such was the centrifugal force of his mother’s magic pull.
The moment she had passed away, their family had pretty much fallen apart, his father burying himself in his work, while his brother was more and more sucked into his wife’s family’s orbit and started to neglect his own.
Not that Jack minded. He spent most of his time in Brussels, and partied his way through the weekends. The years passed, and now for the first time, he noticed how fine a job Dad had done with the house. The garden looked just as neat and well-tended to as when Mom had still been there to lend it her magic touch, and even the house was in ship-shape condition.
“Tell me the whole story, Dad. I have a feeling you’ve neglected some crucial part.”
They both stared out across the garden from their perch on the bench. It lay at the end of a narrow cobbled path leading from the back porch to a small fountain. This had always been Mom’s favorite spot, and even when she was sick and her health had rendered it impossible to walk around on her own accord, Dad had wheeled her chair out here so she could soak up the rays and enjoy the sheer beauty of this magic spot. Her healing garden, she called it.
“Look, son. I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t go spreading this far and wide, all right?” He fixed him with a scrutinizing gaze.
“I won’t, Dad. Whatever you tell me stays between us.”
“Not even to your brother—correction, especially not to your brother.”
He was growing more and more intrigued by the secret of his father’s dealings with Franklin Travers, but he held his tongue and merely nodded his agreement with these terms.
Dad sighed, and seemed to slump a little. “This all happened a long time ago, and if I hadn’t been sworn to secrecy by your mother, I might have told you about it sooner. As it is, recent events seem to have caught up with me, so here goes...” He licked his lips, and searched around for his drink. Before coming out here, he’d poured himself a generous libation of Scotch, which seemed to help him tell his mysterious tale.
“I wasn’t your mother’s first love, though she certainly was mine. The first time I laid eyes on her, was at a concert organized by the University. We were a rowdy bunch, me and my frat mates, and a violin concerto wasn’t exactly our idea of a good time, but Franklin insisted we go. He paid for the tickets, and only when he promised also to pay for the drinks, did we finally take him up on his offer.
“You see, Franklin had met a girl, and had fallen head over heels in love with her. He’d even managed to catch her eye by showing up unannounced in her dressing room before a concert, and offer her a dozen red roses as a token of his growing infatuation.
“And now he wanted his cronies to meet this wondrous woman, and give their honest opinion as to how to proceed and win her heart. Little did he know he’d already won it, and if he’d only asked, she would surely have said yes. But Franklin, being the fathead that he was, ignored all the signs, and kept his distance, wooing her from afar.”
Dad sighed deeply, and took another swig from his drink. “And then I saw her, and I felt the earth shift beneath my feet. It wasn’t hard to fall for your mother, Jack. You know what a wonderful woman she was. Only hitch was, Franklin had met her first, and was on the verge of laying his heart at her feet.” He swallowed, his gaze fixated on some point in the garden, his mind far away in the distant past.
“I knew I had to move fast, or my chance would forever be lost, so without telling Franklin, I used the intermission to sneak backstage, and pay an uninvited call on Francine myself. She wasn’t surprised. Young men had been running down her door ever since she’d started performing on the stage. But instead of taking things slow, like most of her suitors had done, I decided to use a more forceful approach, knowing full well that time was of the essence.”
“What did you do?” Jack couldn’t deny he was amused by the story. His father? The arduous lover? It was hard to imagine.
“I simply walked up to her, and said that I was deeply in love with her, that she was the most beautiful woman I’d laid eyes upon, and if she didn’t agree to go out with me, I’d devote my life to God from that day onward and join a monastery.”
“You told her that? You cheeky bastard, you.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” He grinned at the recollection.
“And? Did it work?”
“Actually, no. It kinda backfired on me. She was amused, to say the least, but then told me she was engaged to be married to another man, and didn’t want to deny the church the opportunity of welcoming a fine admission to its roster.” He looked
up. “In other words, Franklin hadn’t been entirely honest with us either. He’d secretly proposed to the girl, and she’d accepted.”
Jack whistled through his teeth. “The plot thickens.”
“Wait till you hear the rest.”
“The suspense is killing me, Dad. Get on with it, will you.”
“I knew you’d find it interesting.” He searched around again.
“What are you looking for?”
“My smokes. Have you seen them?”
“I thought you quit?”
“I did. But this whole Travers business made me start again.”
He lighted up one of the cigarillos he favored, and drew in a long, eager puff of the rich aroma.
“Right. Where was I?”
“Mom was joining Franklin Travers in matrimony and you a monastery.”
“Right, right.” A smile lit up his face. “What Franklin didn’t know was that I still had a few cards up my sleeve. You see, Franklin had one vice. He was always an avid gambler. The cards, the ponies, soccer, you name it, and he was in on it. Only thing was, I knew from usually reliable sources that your mother hated gamblers, her own father having been one and practically ruining her childhood by losing half his paycheck as a rule. Or more.”
“Reliable sources?”
“Your grandmother Belle. I’d made sure to pay her a call before I resumed my addresses. Francine’s father had passed away by then, and the two women were very close. Belle took an instant liking to me the same way she’d taken a dislike to Franklin, partly because of the gambling, partly because she didn’t like his face for some reason.
“Anyway. Belle made sure her daughter learned all about Franklin’s gambling habit, and even told her how much money Franklin lost, something of which I kept her informed, down to the last centime.”
“You cheeky bastard.”
“All’s fair in love and war, my boy.”
“And did it work?”
“Not at first. The affection Francine felt for Franklin ran deeper than I’d anticipated, and even though I’d taken up the habit of visiting her at home, under the guise of being a friend of her mother, she refused to break off the engagement, much to my sorrow, for by then I was hopefully in love with her myself.”