by Nora James
She finished her soup and went back to her room, taking off her shoes in the stairs to relieve her sore feet. Back in her apartment she took a shower and thought about heading out again. Instead, she decided to curl up on her luxurious bed for a few hours and read a book. It wasn’t wasting the opportunity to explore the city, was it? Of course not, she could venture out later. Her feet were still hurting and anyway she couldn’t go months without reading. Besides, it would take her mind off Paul until the lesson this evening when there would be no other option but to spend time with him again. She shook her head. It would have been so much easier to teach Julie!
She pulled out her e-reader and lay on the soft velvet covers, a luxurious mountain of pillows propping her up to read. She sighed at the thought of facing Paul again in just a few hours at the English lesson, but what else could she do?
At least for now she could let herself slip heart and soul into the love story she was reading and escape into another world, even if later in the day there’d be no escaping gorgeous Paul.
Chapter 10
Paul waved to Michel who gathered his belongings and headed out the door. He was the last one to leave, Yvonne and Pépette having gone home almost half an hour earlier. Now that he was alone Paul picked up the phone and dialled Julie’s number, swallowing hard as he waited for his boss to answer. Tonight he had to face his failure and tell her how few people had come to the poetry reading. The Café des Amoureux had lost money today, a lot of it, and it was his fault.
It rang and rang and he was about to hang up when she finally answered, her voice sleepy. The guilt he’d been feeling quickly turned to worry about his older friend.
“Julie? It’s Paul. Did I wake you? Are you sick?”
“Paul! It’s nice to hear your voice. No, I was having a little nap. You can do that after lunch when you’re not working your life away, you know. One of the rewards of making it to my age.”
He breathed a sigh of relief and tapped the table lightly. “Good, good.”
She let out a little squeal of surprise. “Good you woke me?”
Paul rubbed his forehead. “I mean I’m sorry I disturbed you but I’m glad you’re not ill.” Even the chit-chat was proving difficult and his mouth had gone dry. He wasn’t sure where to start. “I thought I’d better report to you as we had our first theme lunch today.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot about that. I’ve been too busy, between having pedicures and finding the nicest beaches down here, my schedule is rather hectic.”
She chuckled. It should have made Paul relax, since she didn’t appear too anxious about the running of the business, but he still felt a tightness in his chest. It was better to get it over and done with, so he simply blurted it out. “Nobody came. The whole thing was a total failure. I’ve let you down.”
There was silence at the other end of the line, silence that seemed so heavy to Paul and he wished he hadn’t put Julie in this situation. She probably wanted to blast him but was too polite and too kind to do so.
When she finally opened her mouth she let out a gentle sound, a sequence of vowels that immediately showed compassion. “Let me tell you a secret. I have two failed businesses behind me.”
“Really?” Knowing that lightened Paul’s load a little, but he still felt terrible. Failing with his own money would have been bad enough, but here he was, squandering Julie’s wealth.
His boss continued. “That’s what it took before we found the recipe for the Café des Amoureux which overall has been a solid business. Success takes practice.”
He hung his head. “I don’t want to lose your money practising. You just said it’s a solid business.”
“I said it has been, overall. It’s not what it used to be, although we are still fine.”
“Maybe I can only make it worse.”
“My dear boy, you needn’t worry too much. It’s your first attempt. There’s a little room for error, a little room to move. We are not about to go broke. Try something else. It takes time to find the right angle, the right product, the right plan. It’s like finding the right woman. Speaking of which, how is Elise?”
She was so casual and understanding about it that a weight lifted from his shoulders and he relaxed. Still, he noticed the association of the words “the right woman” with Elise’s name. He quickly dismissed it as a meaningless segue and prepared to answer Julie’s question without commenting.
How was Elise? He wanted to say that she was gorgeous and annoyingly so. He wanted to say that despite his better judgment he thought of her from time to time, in fact far too often for his liking. He felt like telling Julie that the woman she’d chosen for his English teacher had a good heart, too, sticking around at the poetry reading when she probably couldn’t understand a word dreamy Jean Desbois said, and that was something he truly admired in a woman.
Instead, Paul did his best to seem detached and barely interested in the woman who very clearly had the capacity to turn his world upside down. “Elise? Oh, I think she’s fine. I don’t see that much of her. Actually, I nearly forgot, we have a lesson in a few minutes.” He hadn’t forgotten at all and something told him he never would.
“I’m so glad I reminded you, then,” said Julie.
Paul thought he heard a touch of playfulness in her tone. Perhaps she was implying that she didn’t want to waste her money paying Elise if he didn’t remember the lessons. Yes, that must have been it. They said their good-byes and as Paul was about to put the phone handset back in its charger, there was a rather loud knock at the door.
“Oui?”
He looked up and saw Elise poking her head into the kitchen. She smiled in a way that seemed so sincere he couldn’t help the warmth in his heart. He gestured for her to come in. “Please, sit down.”
She pulled out the chair next to his and sat, her hair brushing against his arm as she did. It felt soft and silky, the hair of a child, and he imagined reaching out and touching it, running his fingers through the long, shiny locks. And Elise would tilt her head back and he’d…He pulled away and crossed his arms, annoyed that he’d had that vision of her. She was there to teach him English, and he was there to learn the language so he could keep his job, nothing more. This was business. He took a breath, emptied his mind, donning the emotionless mask he put on with difficult customers.
He felt her attentive eyes on him, as if she were studying his every detail to paint his portrait.
“Is everything OK?” she asked after what seemed like ages to him.
He didn’t know how to keep up the facade with her. He threw his arms in the air. “I don’t know. It’s been a difficult day.”
She nodded knowingly, as if she instinctively understood everything. “It must have something to do with the alignment of the planets today. It’s been like that for me, too.”
His eyebrows shot up. She was in Paris on holidays. He’d assumed every day would be filled with fun and delight, laziness and pleasures of all kinds. “Really? But you are not working. You must enjoy.”
“Enjoy yourself. And I do. But I seem to be having so much trouble at the cooking school. I always thought of myself as a great cook. I never imagined having difficulty learning to cook well enough to run a café. I believed it would be a piece of cake.”
He frowned. “A piece of cake? A cake shop?”
She chuckled, shaking her head. “It’s an expression. Something easy and nice, like eating a piece of cake.”
Her laughter was so light and pure that it reminded him of Christine and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Still, he did his best to stay focused on her problem.
“You are going to the Cordon d’Or, yes?”
She nodded.
“I know the place,” he said. “I have heard good things about it, although the teachers have changed recently.”
“Oh? How do you know?”
“Because we were asked if we wanted to send someone from here but we are too small. We couldn’t really give, uh, spare anyone. So what are yo
u having problems with at the school?”
She shrugged. “Everything. This morning I messed up a mayonnaise and I was the only person in the class to do that. And if that wasn’t enough I made a lumpy béchamel sauce, too.”
She batted her eyelids, looking away, and bit her lip, her perfect, smooth lip he suddenly had the urge to kiss. She seemed so vulnerable, he just wanted to take her in his arms and tell her it would all be fine. He could fix things, he could fix everything for her, especially cooking. Instead he tapped his thigh and leaned back in his chair.
Elise pulled a magazine article out of the handbag she’d hung over her chair and unfolded it. “I thought we’d read through this today. I’m sorry if it’s not to your taste, but I don’t have many magazines to choose from and this is the right level for you.” She slid it in front of him.
Paul read the title, “Judge a Book by its Cover—Dressing for Success at the Office.” It certainly wasn’t something that interested him much. It didn’t seem at all relevant to working in a café-restaurant. And after the kind of day he’d had, he didn’t fancy poring over some bland, uninteresting article from a women’s magazine. “Do we have to do this? I understand you do not have many articles. But today…” He sighed.
Elise’s eyes skimmed over the article and then she glanced at Paul ever so briefly, ever so lightly and yet it was enough to send a shiver down his spine. He couldn’t believe the effect this woman had on him. It was purely physical, of course, and that was OK. Men were not made of stone. Fifteen years ago he would have enjoyed every moment and made the most of it, but he wasn’t that superficial anymore. More than that, he now knew exactly what he didn’t need in his life—more problems.
She looked at him again, tilting her head this time. “I guess this would be rather boring for you. Do you have anything here? Any English newspapers?”
He didn’t, so he shook his head. But he had an idea, a much better idea than reading and trying to make sense of articles that were of no interest to him. “Why don’t I teach you cooking? We do it in English, OK? The recipes I can translate if you like, and we can talk, too. That way you learn cooking and I practise my English.”
And that way, he wouldn’t have to sit so close to her the whole hour, smelling her scent and feeling that irresistible magnetic pull she had on him.
Her mouth twisted a little to the left as she pondered the idea and then her eyes widened slightly. It made her look younger, much younger, and he got a glimpse of what she might have been like as a child.
“We could do that,” she said. “We’ll see how it goes. If it doesn’t work we’ll go back to the article.”
Paul thought that was fair and clapped his hands once to indicate his readiness. “And then, if you like, we can eat what we’ve made with any of the food left over here.”
“Sounds good.”
“What is it you want to try today? La mayonnaise?”
She nodded so he gathered the ingredients and his tools: eggs, oil, mustard, vinegar and his favourite bowl, an old, heavy mottled stone-like dish.
“Here. We will do it in this bowl. It came from the Marché aux Puces at St Ouen. Do you know that is the biggest flea market in the world? It is on every weekend in the rain, the snow, and in the sunshine.”
“Really? I’ll have to go there. I love flea markets.” Elise ran her hand over the bowl’s smooth surface.
“I love, too.”
“I love them, too. You need an object in English. You have to love something or someone.”
She blushed, but he pretended not to notice. “Oh, I understand. I love them.”
She looked in the opposite direction. “Why? What is it you love about them?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I like that everything there is different, unique in some way and that it all has a history. This bowl, I think it has been used to hold fat, maybe goose lard in the kitchens of a big country house, with lots of buildings, with many dépendances, what do you say?”
“A country estate?”
“Yes, a country estate, maybe two or three hundred years ago.”
Elise’s face had transformed. He could tell she was there, on some grand property, a château perhaps, with green grounds as far as the eye could see. She was living the moment, walking through the grand corridors in her mind, descending to the enormous kitchen with giant flagstone floors and bubbly cauldrons worthy of a tale of wizardry. He loved that about a woman. Imagination spiced up even the most mundane aspects of life, if you had enough of it.
Paul picked up a fork and held it out for Elise. It brought her back to him and she batted her eyelids like a butterfly gently flapping its wings.
“Uh, thank you,” she said, seeming a little flustered.
“You want me to say the recipe?” he asked. “Or you remember what you did at the cooking school this morning?”
She clicked her tongue, looking pensive again but only for a second this time. “I’m sure I can do it from memory. Only trouble is, I’ll probably make the same mistake again.”
He nodded. “That is perfect. I will tell you what you are not doing good.”
“Right.”
“Yes, I am right.”
She chuckled and the smile extended to her eyes. They sparkled like an innocent child’s and it warmed his heart. “I mean, we say what you are not doing right, not what you are not doing good,” she explained.
“Ah! So I was wrong, not right. The older I get the more wrong I am.” He laughed with her. She was easy to get along with after all. He couldn’t quite remember why he’d thought her difficult until now.
Elise picked up an egg and cracked it open on the side of the bowl. Paul quickly pushed another smaller bowl her way. “For the whites. The yellow goes in the big dish.”
“Yolks,” she corrected him. He repeated the word, closely watching her gestures. She added a teaspoon of mustard, a dash of vinegar, salt and white pepper. He passed her a whisk. She worked the mixture gently.
“Come,” he said once she’d done that. “I will show you other things I love in this kitchen.”
“But I need to add the oil.”
He smiled. That was probably where she’d gone wrong that morning. “There is no rush. If you let it rest for a few minutes, four or five maybe, you will never fail. It will be perfect every time. I can guarantee it.
Elise’s jaw dropped and she let out a long “Oooh!” as if she’d just been given the secret to eternal life. She was a smart woman, not naive, and yet she reacted to everything with engaging innocence and enthusiasm. She was genuine. Yes, that was another thing he liked about her.
“Did the others in the class let it rest a little?” asked Paul.
She rubbed her chin. “Come to think of it, they did. Madame Delapaix showed me the béchamel before I started, or rather, told me off about it, so I had to catch up with the others.”
“You see, it was the teacher’s fault, not yours.” He chuckled. “Madame Delapaix… Hmm, her name doesn’t suit to her.”
“Suit her.”
“Suit her,” he repeated. “Do you know what it means, Delapaix?”
Elise shook her head, so he explained. “It means of the peace. Funnily enough she is not good at keeping the peace.” He gestured to the pantry at the back of the kitchen. “Come. This is my favourite place in the whole établissement.”
Elise followed him to the back of the room. He watched her eyes widen with surprise, her jaw drop and her cheeks flush lightly as she discovered what he called Ali Baba’s cave: a giant pantry housing row upon row of neatly stacked jars of preserved beans and peas, sundried tomatoes, eggplant kept in shiny oil vats. And then there were the sacks of chick peas and dark brown lentils that smelled a little like a haystack in a country field on a sunny afternoon.
She reached up and touched the dried sausages and hams that hung from the ceiling beams. “Did you make all these?”
He nodded proudly. “I did. Michel doesn’t have the time to do this. I don
’t really, either, but I love it. We buy some of it, of course, the coffee, sugar, teas. A few of the meats, too.”
“Do you have a farm?” she asked, patting one of the bags of dried beans.
It pleased him that she seemed so genuinely interested. “Unfortunately we don’t. I wish we did. But I go to Les Halles, you know, in Rungis? Your cooking teacher should take you there. It is the biggest market here for fresh, uh…” He couldn’t remember the word in English.
Elise came to his rescue. “Produce.”
She smiled kindly and he wondered why he ever thought that she would mock him or think less of him because he didn’t master the English language. Now he was so at ease with her, so drawn to her especially in this quiet, dark, private place that he’d shared with her. If he let himself think about it, if he let himself go, he’d wrap his arms around that slender body and kiss those beautiful lips of hers. They looked so soft, absolutely perfect.
She took a step back as if she’d read his mind. Of course, she was going to pull away. He wasn’t the kind of man she’d ever be drawn to. Or had she reacted that way because she, too, felt the attraction and wanted to control it? Was she just like him? How could he tell? He clicked his tongue. “We’d better go and finish the mayonnaise.”
She let out a breath and turned on her heels, heading quickly out the door. He grabbed a can of tuna and followed, and found her already at the table, holding the bowl with the egg mixture in one hand, the whisk in the other.
He did his best to concentrate on the food. He put down the tuna and took two tomatoes out of the fridge.
“We will eat this with your perfect mayonnaise. You will need to add the oil now.”
She avoided his gaze as she reached for the bottle of olive oil. She unscrewed the top and hesitated. “Do I pour it in and whisk? Or pour and hold the bowl?
Yes, concentrating on the food was the answer. He could focus on it without thinking of anything else, without even looking at Elise and certainly without noticing her mouth, her eyes, her divine figure. Oil, eggs, whisks, that he could do anytime.