Nico bit back a grin. “You going to go gleaning with me, Luc?”
Oh, God, that sounded like one of those cheap horror films where your past kept sticking its damn hand out of the grave. But…Summer had really loved that peach. It and pickles were the only things he had gotten right in this pregnancy so far. Not that he had been responsible for either one of them—the pickles had been Cade’s accomplishment, and the peaches Nico’s.
It would be nice if something his wife needed actually came from him.
“Sure.” He thought the word came out fine. He thought it didn’t get stuck in his throat.
Surprise on Nico’s face, and then a quick, bemused flick of that hazel gaze over him. “You, uh, going to do it in one of your Dior dress shirts or can I persuade you to put on a T-shirt?”
Luc closed his eyes. “I’ll put on a T-shirt.” He did actually have some. He wore them under his chef’s gear and sometimes on Sundays, when he could relax with Summer. Sunday. Pure longing ran through him. Coming up soon.
Nico grinned. “Got any jeans with holes in them?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Luc went back to his side of the kitchen.
Chapter 14
Summer waved the apprentices off with a smile and took some deep breaths of the pine and sun and sea breeze. She wouldn’t go so far as to say her stomach felt delightful, but it was calmer here, in this open air. The tutoring session maybe hadn’t been her best—every time she bent too close to the young men and the cooking scents on them hit her, nausea had stirred again—but the apprentices had seemed to appreciate it anyway.
She closed her books, sneaking a glance at the table of women next to hers. They were laughing and chattering, exclaiming over the belly of the woman with the curly brown hair, who was beaming smugly. It made Summer’s chest hurt.
She recognized them vaguely. They crossed paths around town. The child that woman carried would presumably go to school with her own child. They certainly knew her, in fact probably thought they knew everything there was to know about Summer Corey and none of it good. And she didn’t usually allow other women power over her. She knew how that worked out, when she showed other girls she was lonely and desperate for their friendship. Her competitive, rich girl’s boarding school had taught her that. No, a silky smile as she strolled past, as if they couldn’t even dream of touching her much less hurting her, was by far the best way to handle other women.
But…would all those women’s kids grow up to be friends and go to each other’s birthday parties, while Summer’s was the one everyone hated? Just as people had hated her?
Even though all that lay between their tables was dry, light, pine-scented wind, the barrier felt like this thick, stretchy, transparent thing through which female laughter and solidarity could be seen blurrily but never reached. This elastic and unyielding barrier at which she could push and push but never push her way through.
She took a breath. And then, in the same way she’d learned to push herself out into public over and over at her parents’ insistence, with a silky, insouciant smile that hid her intense shyness, she stood and pretended to need to pass their table to leave. She paused, with a careless, friendly smile. “Congratulations,” she said to the woman with curly hair, nodding at her hands on her belly.
All four women looked at her with instant, visible chill, and Summer’s throat clogged, but she kept her smile. Only the pregnant woman gave a tentative half-smile back, wary but a little curious. “Thank you.”
“When is it due?” Summer asked. Do you know more about this than I do? How nauseated have you been? Did you figure out any tricks to calm your stomach?
“Just before Christmas,” the other woman said.
So six or seven weeks ahead of Summer. Should she tell them? A group of strange women already looking at her with closed expressions? No. Their reaction to her approach to their table had told her the answer already. But their solidarity made her so hungry. That hunger gnawed in her belly, this terrible ache, until she was afraid if she couldn’t feed it, it would hurt her baby, too. That her baby would grow up isolated from all the damn world the same way Summer had. “I’m, ah—” Summer hesitated, and then even good manners couldn’t quite cover her shyness as she touched her own belly. “Me, too.”
But nobody laughed for Summer. Nobody exclaimed in delight. “Are you?” one of the other women said coolly, as if Summer had just tried to steal something from them.
“Félicitations,” the pregnant woman said. A couple of murmurs of félicitations followed hers. Then the other women just watched Summer, clearly waiting for her to move on and quit ruining their moment by trying to insert herself into it.
Summer didn’t stop smiling, but a knot lodged deep and hard in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down. She smiled over it. “I’m, ah, Summer,” she tried.
The women exchanged ironic glances. “Yes, we know,” one of them said.
Oh.
No one offered a return introduction. Well, why should they? They didn’t need friends. Definitely not filthy rich, spoiled brat friends with an international reputation that even four years in the South Pacific hadn’t lived down.
“When’s yours due?” the pregnant woman finally asked politely.
“Early February.” A February baby, for two people who had originally agreed to marry each other on Valentine’s Day.
“Should you even be telling people yet?” one of the expectant mother’s friends asked coolly. “You know what they say.”
Summer took a step back, her hand covering her belly. “N-o.” And I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what they say.
The mom-to-be sent her friend an appalled look and pinched her arm. Yeah, because the friend was a bitch. Summer had gotten that part. “Félicitations,” Summer said again, her own voice gone cool, too, because fuck you. She walked on past the table and across the place, determined just to get through an archway and be out of sight, not to cry, damn them. She wouldn’t give them that.
And her stupid, stupid hormones were not helping with the effort not to cry.
A murmur from table behind her, and a woman’s voice exclaiming: “Well, what? The nerve of her, trying to steal all the attention for herself! She doesn’t have enough already? She probably isn’t even pregnant!”
I hate women. I hate them. I hate them. Summer walked faster. I want my island. That island, where she didn’t hate other women at all, because they didn’t hate her. That island, where she could have hugs that felt soft but strong, that wrapped a feminine scent around her, that said, We’re happy for you, happy to welcome your baby into our world. And don’t worry so much. You’ll be okay. We did it, and we are. Now here’s some monoï oil. Rub your belly every day so you won’t have stretch marks, and remember to rub it into the baby’s scalp when he’s born so he’ll have beautiful hair...
Women’s voices, from other conversations she had heard when other women got pregnant, that she tried to pull now from her memory and wrap around herself as if they were for her.
“Pardon,” a woman’s voice said just behind her, and she stiffened, not wanting to look around in case her eyes were shimmering. The other pregnant woman came even with her and took a deep breath, blinking.
“Sorry,” the woman said again. “Sometimes when I move too fast these days I get dizzy. The doctors said it’s something about the blood vessels dilating. Have you started feeling sick?”
Summer’s gratitude for that tiny connection surged so strongly that it took all her will to strangle it back and not let it come out as a flood of tears. “Yes.”
The other woman made a face. “I’m starting to get over that, I think. I could almost look at chocolate the other day. Croisons les doigts.” She held up her crossed fingers, smiling awkwardly.
“Well.” Summer nodded. “I hope so. Congratulations again.” Thank you. For pretending I’m a human being, too.
“What Chloë said,” the other woman added in a rush. “About not telling p
eople yet. That was just stupid. Don’t pay any attention to that.”
Summer rubbed her belly involuntarily. “I think I’ve learned my lesson,” she said, low and dry. But I bet I could tell people on my island.
She could almost taste it, the sense of happiness that would wrap around her, the exclamations of delight, the encouragement and support. Mamie Louise would be bringing her some magic food that pregnant women could actually eat, like green mangoes with chili powder, and...
Green mangoes with chili powder. She had never even liked them, and all the sudden her teeth ached from the need for the crunch and the pea-apple flavor covered with heat.
You idealize your island too much, Summer. You had to work hard to develop friendships there, too.
Maybe the problem, still, is that you believe in the possibilities for happiness on that island more than you believe in the possibilities here.
“What did you eat?” she asked the other woman suddenly.
She made a face. “Not much. Chips. Sorbets some. We’ve been eating in restaurants a lot, or we go to them, but I usually find out that whatever I was so convinced I wanted at that restaurant is something I can’t even stand by the time we actually sit down at the table. But it’s been easier than trying to survive the smells from cooking in the house, I guess. I’m starting to get better.”
This time Summer’s smile was almost spontaneous. “Well, that’s good,” she said. Her gaze skimmed the other woman’s belly again, quickly, curiously, as she tried to imagine that roundness on herself. As she tried to imagine feeling a little better.
“I’m still very tired and draggy, though,” the other woman said ruefully.
Oh. Was that normal? Not just Summer being…spoiled or something?
Summer wished desperately that she could figure out some way to extend this moment, to develop it into an actual friendship, but she couldn’t come up with one single thing. Even her island friendships had taken time. “I’m Summer,” she said again suddenly, extending her hand.
“Amélie,” said the other woman, and Summer smiled again. She would smile her heart out, if that would help make future friends for her baby.
“And if you want to try our restaurant sometime, when you think you can eat, it’s on me,” Summer said swiftly.
Amélie looked both pleased and a little confused by this generosity from a near-stranger.
Summer shrugged a little, trying to slide some silk over the moment. “A little present for the baby. To say, ‘Welcome’.”
“Thank you.” The other woman’s face softened into a smile.
The two of them stood there a moment, awkwardly.
“Well. Congratulations,” the other woman said, having done her part to make up for her friends’ behavior.
“You, too,” Summer said wistfully and headed back down the cobblestone streets toward their house, leaving the other woman to rejoin her friends and all that excited support.
Still, it gave her a little hope. Maybe Luc will come home early tonight. And we’ll get a chance to talk. To be excited together.
He does want this baby. He really does.
On a sudden wave of tenderness, she realized that Luc, too, must be bogged down in his own emotions. They packed in him so tightly, and he had so little idea how to handle them beyond making desserts and, these days, making love to her. And, boy, had he ever had a messed-up childhood.
But he’d loved the idea of having a baby. His face would just light every time he talked about it, back there when they were on her island, lying in hammocks, planning their future for which he and she would both sacrifice every other happiness and sense of worth they had ever found for themselves. Her island and her teaching. His restaurant in Paris.
That’s okay, they’d always said. We’ll have each other.
***
Asleep, Summer curved toward his side of the bed, one arm around his pillow, her face buried in it. It was one a.m. Again. The damn restaurant was eating him alive.
Luc stood for a moment looking down at Summer. They had had a hard road to reach an understanding of each other, after they first met. But if he had just been able to watch her sleeping back then, just had the courage to relax his heart to what he saw, he would have understood everything about her: beauty and vulnerability, gentleness, and that sweet hunger for him. A willingness to give everything, if only she could have love in return.
He had hardly been able to stand his day, without her at the restaurant in the afternoon. When the apprentices had chattered their way happily out of the restaurant to go meet her at the green café tables by the boules court, he’d stared after them with such jealousy. Ready to turn himself back into a lowly apprentice again just for the chance to sit near Summer.
He didn’t know how he was going to get through this morning sickness phase, and his anxiety made him feel pathetic. Merde, tough it up. She’s the one going through it.
You’re just a particularly ineffective spectator.
He sat on the edge of the bed and, as he reached for her hand, noticed the slim silver remote tucked between her palm and the pillow. He turned to look at their TV.
His stomach clenched. Photos of Summer’s island life scrolled there. A close-up of a beautiful gardenia. A photo of Summer sitting at some old giant of a woman’s feet, the woman weaving a lei, Summer hugging her knees to her chest, head tilted back to smile up at the older woman. Summer with a pile of black-haired kids spilling all over her, the kids making all kinds of silliness out of their expressions and poses, Summer laughing. His stomach tightened and tightened until he felt like the kid in the Métro again, two days without food, his dad’s face blank behind his accordion, and no mother in sight, only all those glossy, polished commuter women who ignored his dancing, ignored his outstretched hand begging for change.
Had his mother had more kids, after she ran back to her island? Had she, too, ended up laughing and happy there, after she had left Luc behind?
He looked down at the present he had carried home with him through the streets: a frozen lime-flavored sphere graced with raspberries. He’d thought about doing a peach sorbet, but he’d wanted it all to come from him, not part from Nico. And, and…since when do you like lime so much? Since it smells like you.
He had put his heart into it for her, the way he always did. He liked it when she ate his heart. When she licked the spoon clean of him as if she wanted every last drop of what he was.
The sphere was melting now, no longer perfect. Soon it would be an unsalvageable mess.
Going into the kitchen, he tossed it into the sink and stood there staring at it, as it slowly melted away. As the last lump of sorbet slid slowly down the drain, he bent over the sink and clutched his head in his hands, trying to breathe himself sane.
In the bedroom, he stopped suddenly. The island photos were still scrolling randomly. And there was their wedding, both of them garlanded with tiare flowers. They held each other’s hands, the priest just beyond them with his hand upraised. Summer’s face was radiant, tilted up to his own. She looked so happy—relieved, delighted, amazed, as if she couldn’t believe something this wonderful had happened to her. Something as wonderful as marrying him. His own face was wondering, luminous, as if love shone as an actual light from her face and spilled over him.
Slowly, he began to strip down to his briefs, watching those photos. There they were at the pig roast afterward, seated on the ground, Summer leaning into him in some moment of laughter, his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. There they were dancing, and around them, also draped in leis, Patrick and Sarah, Dom and Jaime, Sylvain and Cade, even Summer’s “Uncle” Mack, who’d flown out there for it when her own parents “hadn’t been able to make it”. In the photo, Mack Corey, who made a flower lei look like the ultimate in self-confident, powerful male attire, was just in the process of cutting in on Luc. Summer was laughing with pleasure at the attention and Luc was smiling, relaxed, stepping back to allow his honorary uncle-in-law to partner his
wife, not afraid he would lose her because he had to let her go for a moment.
Ease seeped through him. Why…he was part of her island happiness. It was, in fact, his happiness, too. How was he forgetting that? He couldn’t lose her to something she loved to share with him.
He slipped into bed beside her, propping on his elbow to watch her. Moonlight gilded over her hair and the one visible cheekbone. Gently, he stroked over her cheekbone, down to her lips. So soft. They curved upward in her sleep under the touch of his thumb. Was it bad of him to keep stroking, to hope to wake her up without admitting it? His hands were so callused, compared to hers. He could make his touch as delicate as a butterfly’s wing but its texture would always have that roughness. I love you so damn much. I’d do anything for you. Tell me what to do.
A sigh ran through her body, her smile deepening. “Luc,” she said and kissed the heel of his palm, opening her eyes.
Everything in him relaxed in a rush of utter bliss. His world righted itself. “Soleil.” He rubbed her lips, tugging the lower one a tiny bit. “How are you feeling?”
“Yucky.” She smiled wryly and kissed his fingertips. Funny how sweet that little gesture still felt, even after months of getting used to it. Months. They had met less than half a year ago, and they were having a baby, and—God, that was such a frantically pretentious claim on a lifetime of happiness. Happiness had given him a passing nod and he’d rushed out and told the world they were lifetime best friends. “Thank you for the raspberries you sent over earlier.”
“You liked them?” Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown that lime sphere and its raspberries out. That lime sphere that said I’ll take care of you. I’ll take the best care I possibly can. You’ll be happy with me. Just stay.
“They helped,” she said, which wasn’t quite as enthusiastic an answer as he had hoped for, but that could be good enough for him.
Shadowed Heart Page 9