Читать книгу We'll Always Have Paris - Barbara Bretton - Страница 9

Paris—the following spring

Six days before the wedding

“MERCI.” Kate Finney Donovan fumbled with the fistful of euros then finally handed them all to the impossibly good-looking bellman waiting expectantly by the door. “Merci beaucoup.”

He bowed and said either, “May I be the father of your children?” or “Lady, you’d better take a crash course in the exchange rate,” then closed the door behind him.

She laughed for the first time in eighteen hours of traffic jams, airport security checks, turbulence, and just plain mother-of-the-bride jitters.

Clearly it was a testament to the Parisians that she had made it from the airport to the hotel without incident and with most of her money still in her wallet. She had relied on the kindness of English-speaking cab drivers and her memory of high-school French to keep her from going too far astray and neither had let her down. Although, judging by the bellman’s reaction to the tip she had given him, maybe she had better reread the section on currency in Paris for Tourists before bed.

She was staying in the apartment her great-aunt Celeste Beaulieu kept at the Hotel St. Michel on the Left Bank. Celeste was already at the inn named Milles Fleurs, which was located on the outskirts of the city, for the wedding festivities, and she had suggested Kate might want to spend a few days in pampered luxury before the wedding craziness got into full swing.

Celeste knew all about her lapse of sanity the night of the engagement party. She had listened as Kate poured out her heart a few days later, held Kate’s hand across the transatlantic wires as she alternately blamed herself then Ryan for thinking with their hormones and not their heads. Only Celeste knew what Paris had meant to them and how hard it would be to see the city for the first time as one-half of an about-to-be-divorced couple.

“You will do as I say, chérie,” Celeste had commanded, as only a Frenchwoman from Brooklyn could. “Send on your bags to Milles Fleurs and tell Alexis that you have business to attend elsewhere before you can join them.”

“You want me to lie to her?” Kate had asked, warming to the idea despite herself.

“The business is your heart.” What Celeste apparently wanted was for Kate to discover Paris in her own way, on her own time, so that she would have some control of her emotions when she finally saw Ryan again. Perhaps if she got all of those Paris “firsts” out of the way she would stand a fighting chance.

Considering the fact that she’d burst into tears at her first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, her aunt might have a point. Even through the thick fog of jet lag, the City of Light’s staggering beauty had overwhelmed her as she rode in from the airport. It was every bit as dazzling as she had imagined it as a giddy teenager in love with love and dying for romance. Wide boulevards. Narrow cobblestone streets. Graceful trees dressed in the lacy greens of spring. The Eiffel Tower rising up into the late-morning sky like a dream.

She could almost see the ghosts of Renoir and Monet, Hemingway and Fitzgerald watching over the young artists and writers who sat hunched over sketch pads and laptops and steaming bowls of onion soup, feasting on every wonderful thing the city had to offer.

Why didn’t we do this years ago, Ryan? Before it was too late for us….

She already knew the answer. Children happened. Careers happened. Life happened. And somewhere along the way dreams faded.

Thank God, she had listened to Celeste and claimed this time for herself. Her bags were safely en route to Milles Fleurs. Her daughters thought she was meeting with a gallery owner who was staying in a farmhouse in the Loire Valley.

All she had with her was an overnight bag, some toiletries, and the family portrait she had painted at her daughter’s request. Somehow her daughter’s request had validated her growing success as a portrait artist in a way her many commissions never had. Had Celeste known that traveling light would make her feel glamorous and sophisticated, like one of those world travelers who could put everything they needed in a duffel bag and have room to spare for tchotchkes? More than likely. When it came to life, eighty-something Celeste Beaulieu pretty much had it all figured out.

Celeste was Kate’s grandmother’s older sister who had moved to France in the 1950s, married a handsome Frenchman, and never looked back. She was one of those women who seemed born with an understanding of the inner workings of romance, a throwback to the days of salons and gentlemen callers. Celeste understood without being told that the combination of Parisian charm and Alexis’s wedding might be more than a woman on the verge of divorce could handle.

The sitting room was elegant and quintessentially French. An antique armoire that would have been at home in the Louvre bumped shoulders with an angularly modern chair reminiscent of Vladimir Kagan. The sitting room opened into a library, which led to the bedroom in the rear of the apartment. The bed was short but invitingly wide, a frothy confection of heavenly pillows and down-filled duvets of dove-gray silk shot through with mauve as seductive as a secret lover.

Long casement windows overlooked the wide street below and, just beyond, the legendary Seine made its way to the sea. Once upon a time the hotel had been a haven for young artists and Kate’s sharp eye caught faint smears of phthalo-green and alizarin-crimson on the sill.

“I’m in Paris,” she said out loud to the empty room and waited for the rush of excitement she’d been expecting since her plane landed.

To her dismay, despite the beauty all around her, she might as well have been in Philadelphia.

It was the timing.

Who would have thought the Fates would conspire to grant her fondest wish two weeks before she and Ryan signed the papers that would officially mark the end of thirty years of marriage? Apparently fate had a twisted sense of humor, but for once Kate wasn’t laughing. Paris was everything it was supposed to be and more, but Ryan wasn’t there to share it with Kate and that made all the difference.

It took her a moment to realize the telephone on the escritoire was ringing.

“Bienvenu, chérie!” Celeste said when Kate answered. Celeste was truly ageless. She still retained the enthusiasm of a twenty-year-old-girl. “I have been phoning for two hours now. You had a safe trip?”

Kate rapped her knuckles against the mahogany table. “Knock wood. Slow but safe.”

“And you are settled into the apartment?”

“It’s beautiful,” Kate enthused. “I can’t thank you enough.”

Celeste made one of those Gallic sounds that could mean just about anything. “And what are your plans for the day?”

Good question. Everyone said traveling west to east was easy, but she felt as if she had spent the flight strapped to the wheel well. “I guess I’ll order up some room service and take a nap. Try to get myself adjusted to the time change.”

“Mais non!”

“Mais oui,” she countered, laughing. “I’m not as young as you, Aunt Celeste. I need a nap before I go sightseeing.”

“A nap!” Celeste’s outrage was formidable. “I forbid you to nap. You’re in Paris, chérie. You can nap in New York. Comb your hair. Put on fresh lipstick. That’s all you need.”

Maybe that was all Celeste needed, but Kate’s list was growing longer by the second with caffeine in the top position.

They chatted a few minutes about the wedding. Neither one mentioned Ryan, which was fine with Kate although he was clearly the blue suede elephant in the room. Alexis and Gabe had talked to Celeste last winter and the family matriarch had bestowed her seal of approval on the match.

That didn’t surprise Kate at all. Gabe Fellini was everything Kate could have asked for in a son-in-law. With Aunt Celeste’s help, he and Alexis had arranged the entire wedding festivities with flawless precision and so far there hadn’t been a ripple of discontent from anyone involved.

The extended Fellini and Donovan families were crazy about one another. Alexis’s sisters Shannon and Taylor had happily granted the middle child her day in the sun. And the only thing required of the mother of the bride was that she show up a few days before the Big Day with her dress and the family portrait she had promised them on the night of their engagement party.

Which was otherwise known as the night she lost her mind.

There was no other way to explain what had happened. Not even to herself. It was as if her body had been taken over by an alien being whose sole purpose was to leap into that Toyota and have her way with Ryan.

When the girls told her, so very gently, that their father had said he was bringing someone with him to the party, Kate had steeled herself for the sight of another woman at her husband’s side. He was a gorgeous man. Sooner or later he was going to realize there was a world of women out there and he could have his pick.

She was braced for a twenty-year-old bimbo with fake breasts, porcelain veneers, and thighs the likes of which Kate could only dream about.

But it didn’t happen that way. Long Island’s snowstorm had moved north and flights between Boston, where Ryan hosted a successful sports radio show, and New York had been cancelled.

Kate was ashamed of the quick surge of relief she experienced when she realized she would be spared the sight of him with another woman.

“We can’t have this party without Daddy here,” Alexis had said, but Kate had been firm in her resolve.

“He told you to go ahead without him and he meant it, honey. Your father wouldn’t want you to cancel your engagement party because he couldn’t get a flight down.”

In a world of change, the one constant was Ryan’s love for his daughters. He wanted the best for them and would do anything to make sure they got it.

About an hour into the party, Kate was carrying a tray of shrimp appetizers into the living room when she heard familiar laughter ringing out in the front hallway.

Ryan had rented a car at Logan Airport and driven down to Long Island through the storm to be there to celebrate his daughter’s engagement. Kate thought her heart would burst through her chest from longing when she first caught sight of him in the foyer. Snowflakes glittered in his hair beneath the overhead light. He laughed as he brushed them off and handed his scarf and jacket to a beaming bride-to-be.

“Mom, look!” Alexis said as Kate stepped into the room. “Daddy drove all the way down through the blizzard to be here with us.”

“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.