Shadowed Heart

by Laura Florand

  This breakable sensation to his happiness was waking up every crazy part of him.

  She bumped him back from her. “Will you go away and let me brush my teeth?” she said, embarrassed.

  Well, he could understand why she would be embarrassed. He kissed her nape. “I love you,” he whispered and left her to it.

  That kind of put paid to the mommy porn fantasies, he thought, as he settled back onto his side of the bed. Still, he was glad he’d been able to help. He had helped a little bit, right? Even though it was her body that had wrenched helplessly. Even though he had knelt there perfectly fine, while she suffered. Even though she’d pushed him away.

  Shit, he wished he could have helped.

  He closed his eyes. Focusing on the nape of her neck as he had kissed it. Worrying about her worry about miscarriages. Trying not to think about that second tab, the one she hadn’t been looking at when he came in but which had been looked at some time and still lurked there on her screen, a click away—an airline ticketing service.

  Chapter 8

  Summer looked at the baby swing doubtfully. It would be nice to have someone to debate this with. Not Luc, obviously. He was too busy working. His only day off, Sunday, the stores here were closed, so baby shopping was clearly going to be a solo deal.

  Maybe her phone? She could imagine the conversation without even pulling it out.

  So this one has the Consumer Report rating, but some reviewers on Amazon said its motor quit after two weeks.

  Phone: I’m not sure I understand.

  And this other one looks really cute, and it has that side to side swing motion that some reviewers said was good, but it’s all pastels, and I thought I read babies could only really see black and red.

  Phone: I found fifteen places matching swing dance clubs. Thirteen are fairly close to you.

  Look, money is no freaking object, can I just have a swing that is perfect for my baby?

  Phone: Here’s what I found on the web: “How to Perform the Perfect Golf Swing”.

  You are a terrible substitute for human companionship.

  Phone: OK, I found this on the web: Human beings are innately social and are shaped by their experiences with others (en.wikipedia.org).

  Damn phone. She shoved it into her back pocket where it had a high chance of ending up in the washing machine.

  Maybe she could fund some start-up that could design baby things that were genuinely perfect.

  Hey. Wait a minute. That might actually be a good idea. She could find a couple of MIT grad students who were eager to make their mark on the world and had enough self-confidence to not feel threatened by Summer just because her father had so much money he could buy off God. They might even like her because she was the source of their funding, and she would be able to talk to them and bend over tables with designs and lay out plans.

  What if it was something like working with Cade and Jaime Corey on Jaime’s project to bring young people up from cacao-growing regions to learn the other end of chocolate production? That had been fun. Cade and Jaime had brains, and they acted as if it was okay for Summer to use hers, too. If she opened her mouth, they didn’t give her that look women usually did, as if they wanted to claw her skin off, starting with her face.

  Maybe she’d been moving in the wrong social circles, before her island. Maybe she could find some more brilliant, go-getting women who didn’t have time to bother with jealousy. Or knew her as someone other than an infamous, attention-hungry socialite.

  And she might have some people she could talk to, that way.

  Not be here trying to figure out how to get raising her baby right entirely alone.

  She tried the mobile on the red and black one and winced. Surely a mobile should play actual music instead of electric sounds?

  Darn it. How could a simple swing be so complicated? She wandered away from them, through the frightening array of things she probably needed to correctly select for her baby. What did that do? The blue thing to help them sit up—was that really necessary? Was that even good for them? And these sling things—they didn’t suffocate the baby? How did you wear them?

  She was damn sure no one had ever worn her close and warm in a sling as if she was too precious to be left alone.

  (Even Luc, these days, didn’t seem to have any trouble leaving her alone.)

  (Shut up. He’s just working. Find something worthwhile to do yourself and quit whining.)

  She put three different slings in her basket. Surely one of them would work. And whether her baby was loved—that was one problem she could solve. She would do all the loving that baby could possibly need.

  She stopped at a table of carefully folded onesies. Potion du bonheur, the little pale purple one said. Happiness Potion. She touched it, cautiously. So soft and so tiny. Aww, there was a little pink one that said, Princesse de la Joie. She probably couldn’t get her children anything that said princess on it. People would hate them enough already just because they were hers.

  But still…she stroked the word joie. Joy.

  Tears welled up in her eyes out of the blue, a sneak attack of weakness that just hit her from all the sides where no one stood to share this moment with her, from the back that no one protected, from the side where no one’s shoulder brushed warm and strong against hers. From up a little, at an angle, where she couldn’t glance to share this fragile, scared, she’ll-be-that-little joy.

  She left the store quickly, striding down yellow, angled streets of old Nice to the Promenade des Anglais. She walked along it end to end, blue sea to the left, old, elegant hotels to the right, topless bathers trying to sun on the gray pebble beach, casual tourists and elegant Niçois brushing past her on the walk. When she was incognito, she loved women’s jogging outfits in Nice: the long free hair, perfectly brushed, sliding sexily along shoulders with every little jog, the make-up, the earrings, the elegant shoes that could not possibly be good jogging wear, but hey, they looked classy. When she was recognizable, she knew she was expected to dress like that, too.

  But she had on sunglasses and a baseball cap on her head from a small Midwest college, and among all the tourists in Nice, she should be fine. Plus, she’d been out of tabloid circulation for four years, and even though she’d made a splashy comeback, with all those public disputes with Luc when she first showed up again, surely photos of her looking drugged or ridiculous or upset weren’t worth anything like what they used to be. So she tried to relax, playing guessing games as to which of the joggers were French and which tourists or students abroad from America.

  Probably she shouldn’t be shopping for things for the baby yet anyway. The thought fought its way under the guard of that too-easy guessing game. Probably she was all alone because she was the only one who believed in this baby yet. Luc can’t prioritize a baby who might not even make it the first trimester over his restaurant. The restaurant is his life.

  She covered her belly with her hand, and then descended from the walk onto the ankle-turning pebbles, sitting on a bank of them to stare out at the Mediterranean.

  God, she missed her southern sea. Her volcanic sand beaches. Her mango tree behind her house and the tiare bush by the corner, the jasmine growing up her concrete wall. Her people.

  People.

  Any people at all.

  She picked up one of the rounded galets, the big gray pebbles, and rubbed it between her fingers, then tossed it into the calm sea. She’d lived on a lagoon, so the flatness of the sea wasn’t that different. And the salt smell was more or less the same, if you could filter out the exhaust fumes. You could kind of pretend.

  You could pretend all kinds of things, really.

  That you didn’t need anybody and were just fine on your own. That everything was going to be all right. That you were a strong person. That you could be a good mommy.

  She’d always been really good at pretending herself right into the moments when none of it came true.

  She sighed and leaned her head back, staring at
the sky. Oh, shut up, Summer. Buck up and handle the choice you made and above all take care of this baby.

  Her mouth softened, and her hand snuck back over her belly, caressing it, as a little light filled her, this strange light that was so soft and yet so powerful it seemed to reach to the bright blue sky above where the gulls flew. My baby. Mine.

  I’m going to get this right, kid. I promise.

  She sure missed having someone to talk to, though. She wondered how much trouble her tummy would have with a trip to the island.

  Chapter 9

  Every time Luc glanced at Summer, she was sucking so eagerly on the mango ice pop Luc had made her that a man had to be grateful the length of his chef’s jacket hid his reaction to that eager mouth.

  And yet somehow, the drips on the marble counter below it grew and grew, until he turned back from some issue to catch her swiping one of his sous-chef’s towels to clean it up, the tip of the ice popping right back into her mouth when he looked at her, as she made an eager yum sound. She was letting it melt whenever his back was turned. And pretending to like it.

  Damn it, he was never trusting her when they had sex again. He was going to keep his fingers right where he would know she wasn’t faking anything.

  He drew a breath and let it slowly out. “What flavor did you want?” he asked, not between his teeth at all. “For your ice pop?”

  “Lime,” she said wistfully. And quickly, “But this is wonderful. You know I love mangoes. It’s so sweet of you to make my favorite.”

  And she didn’t, last time he had checked, particularly like lime. “I’ll make you some lime.”

  “You know what would be delicious?” she asked longingly.

  No, but his whole body pricked awake, ready to give it. Aroused to give it.

  “Pickles.”

  His whole body felt as if it had just taken one to the groin. “Pickles?”

  She nodded eagerly.

  His shoulders slumped. He shifted into his chef de cuisine’s side of the kitchens and sent the first commis he encountered running for some of Nicolas’s pickles. Not jealous in the least that his chef de cuisine got to feed her and not him.

  No. Because jealousy like that would be crazy.

  His chef de cuisine, Nico, who was all about living from the land and using all nature’s resources, had pickled watermelon rinds, pickled pears, pickled peppers, pickled beets, pickled figs, and pickled corn. Probably gleaned from local fields post harvest. The man liked to stroll through farmers’ land, picking up all the leftovers that would otherwise rot. Luc would probably get arrested if he ever tried that kind of thing—not to mention that his whole childhood flinched inside him in desperate panic when he even thought about it—but somehow people let Nicolas do anything.

  Summer picked at every single type of pickle, biting her lip in a clear battle with revulsion. Kind of nice to know he wasn’t the only man failing her right now.

  Except—shit. He had to manage to feed her. He had to.

  Summer tried a watermelon rind and sagged a little, pushing it away. “Just regular pickles,” she said. “Like—” She glanced around to make sure Nicolas wasn’t in earshot and lowered her voice so even Luc could barely pick it up. “From the store.”

  It was a good thing he could count on Summer’s manners in all situations. If she’d said that loudly enough for Nico to hear it, he might be hiring a new chef right now.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t hire a new self, no matter how hard he tried; he could only deal with the self he had. The insane self that kept trying to get out of its padded cell.

  He slipped one of his apprentices some money. “Enzo. Run down to the épicerie and get me a jar of pickles, all right? Don’t let Nicolas see.”

  But when he slid Summer a tiny bowl of the miniature cornichons Enzo brought, she took one bite and grimaced, visibly trying to control a gag. “American pickles,” she said, shoving the cornichons as far away from her as she could. “You know, with dill?”

  Luc went and found Nicolas, breaking it as gently as he could that Summer had refused every single one of his special pickles and only wanted this dill stuff. Nico took it oddly well. He even seemed amused. Sometimes the guy was disconcertingly rough-and-ready, take-it-as-they-come, compared to Paris chefs. “Sure, I can make them. But, Luc,” the burly, brown-haired farmer of a chef said with that kind of callused-hand gentleness of his, as if he was taking care of a newborn lamb, “they take several weeks.”

  Luc stared at him. He knew that. He’d never actually made a pickle, but he’d been working in kitchens all his life. He did know that. He just…went out onto the tiny terrace of the restaurant. Pacing between pots of lavender, he called Sylvain Marquis, a top chocolatier in Paris who had been sufficiently confused about his priorities in life to marry the heir to and vice president of the world’s largest producer of mass market crap, otherwise known as Corey Chocolate. Cade Corey Marquis, Summer’s second cousin. “I need to talk to Cade.”

  “Sorry,” the chocolatier said cheerfully. “She’s only allowed to talk to handsome chefs by prior appointment between 3:14 and 3:15 in the afternoon. What is it? Is it about one of the apprentices? How are they working out for you anyway?”

  “Fine,” Luc said blankly.

  “Are Cade and Jaime sending you the easy ones?” Sylvain asked suspiciously. “Because a couple of the kids I’ve gotten...” He let his voice trail off in a way that spoke volumes.

  “They don’t act that differently than some of my foster brothers.” Luc shrugged. Or sometimes that differently than he himself had once acted. Sylvain came from a happy family, that was his problem. Or rather his lack of a problem. Luc, on the other hand, just trained whatever kids he got and dealt with whatever he had to deal with. And Summer mothered them and patiently taught them letters when they were illiterate, and as far as he could tell, the kids were as happy as bees in honey. They still needed to relax and accept no one was threatening the honey, but from Luc’s personal experience, that might take years.

  Decades.

  A lifetime, at the rate he himself was going.

  A vision of Summer’s face, the patience and warmth as she sat there with those kids.

  He grabbed the image and fed it to the insane him he was keeping locked in a padded cell. She’s maternal, you fucked-up idiot. She loves kids. She would never, ever run out on her baby.

  What do you know? Insane Him asked. Maybe your mother was maternal, too. Before she had you. And then you were so damned difficult, you ruined that for her.

  He slammed the cell door back on the bastard.

  “Listen, is Cade there? I have an American question.” Maybe he should have called Jaime. She and Dom had been together for over a year now, and Dom was starting to act mildly sane about her. It gave a man hope for his own case.

  Sylvain laughed. “All right, but you only get one minute. I’m timing you!”

  “Ignore him,” Cade said as she came on the phone. “It’s the only thing to do. What do you need?”

  “Pickles,” Luc said.

  A tiny silence on the other end of the connection. Possibly a choked sound. “Pickles?”

  “Whatever kind of American pickles that you and Jaime and Summer would have been eating as kids, I assume. Can’t you eat normal pickles like the rest of us?”

  More amusement on the other end. “Well, one person’s idea of normal, Luc, is another person’s crazy.”

  When they were talking about food, he was pretty sure the French got to decide what was good and what was crazy. For God’s sake, her country had invented peanut butter! And then put it with chocolate! But he needed a favor, so he resisted rubbing it in. She got touchy about those ghastly Corey products sometimes. “Whatever you consider normal pickles. I think that’s what I need.” And, realizing that required some explanation: “Summer’s pregnant.”

  At the startled gasp and then the squeal of excitement, he suddenly realized he should have let Summer break that news. “No way!”
Cade was exclaiming. “Is she really? That was fast! You guys just got married! Oh, man, wait until I tell Jamie! When’s it due? Is it a boy or a girl? Do you need a—”

  Luc held the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Cade knew how to squeal? Cade Corey? Damn, he really should have let Summer be the one to receive that first burst of delighted enthusiasm from her cousin. Shit, he just hadn’t realized. The news had hit him with terror. “I need pickles,” he said firmly. “American pickles. With dill.”

  “There’s an American store here in Paris,” Cade said. “Can I overnight them or do you want a courier to bring them down today?”

  Sometimes he just loved knowing so many billionaires. “Today,” he said. Made for kind of expensive pickles, but he’d never had a particularly good grasp of money anyway, and ever since he’d married Summer, the excessive amounts floating around all these Coreys had completely lost him. Whatever it cost, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t break anyone’s bank account.

  When Summer got her pickles, she devoured them. He nibbled one, puzzled, watching the pleasure on her face, trying to imagine what was going on in her mouth, that the crunchy burst of acid would feel so good to it. Then she threw her arms around him and kissed him to say thank you, and he tasted the vinegar on her lips and almost, for a second, knew.

  Chapter 10

  Summer was still smiling a little bit, a jar of pickles in one hand and a plastic box of lime ice pops under one arm, when she let herself into their house up on one of those rugged, Mediterranean cliffs, where lavender and stone walls framed the garden and terrace from which she could look out over the sea. The silence of the house echoed back at her, and her smile faded before she could stop it.

  She didn’t want it to. She clutched at her jar of pickles and said, No. We’re fine. But her smile defied her and wouldn’t come back out. No one’s here to see. I don’t have to come out if I don’t want to.

  You’re all alone.

  She set the jar of pickles down slowly on the kitchen counter, and the little noise it made clicked all the way through the silent house. It made her skin prickle, how completely no other sound responded to it. She set down her purse, in as bustling a way as she could, turning on music. Oh, was that the right music for the baby? Was she supposed to be listening to classical music or something? She put the lime ice pops in the freezer and went online to download Beethoven’s Ninth.