“It won’t work,” he said. “I’m going to bed. Dr. Doucette wants to meet with me before I go to the university.”
“What for?” Did something show up in the tests they ran today?
“To fit me for a white cane, I presume. He mentioned something about transition lessons. I won’t need breakfast.”
The last part meant to remind her she was back to being a housekeeper. Very well, she’d let him have his way tonight. She sighed. “Yes, sir.”
As it turned out, Frederic found a reason to not need breakfast or dinner the next two days. For all she saw of him, he might have been the one who took a room at a hotel. Not that he ignored her. No, he talked to her when their paths crossed. Politely worded requests about laundry and other household business. In other words, they’d turned back the clock to when she was simply his housekeeper.
On the third morning, she found him asleep in his chair.
He must have come home very late. She’d waited until well after midnight before going to her rooms.
For a few minutes, Piper contented herself with simply watching him sleep. Kind of on the obsessive side, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t had a good look at his face in two days, and she needed to see how he was doing.
In England, she had noticed how Frederic’s features would relax while sleeping. His lips would part in a smile as if he was dreaming happy thoughts. There was no smile today. His face was drawn tight. “You foolish man,” she whispered. “We could be sleeping together.”
A lock of his hair hung over his eye. She brushed it aside, letting her fingers linger on his face. Felt so wonderful to touch him again. It might have been only two days, but it seemed like an eternity.
Frederic stirred. “Mmm, nice,” he said in a drowsy voice.
This was the Frederic she knew in England. Stuck between sleep and consciousness, he hadn’t raised his defenses yet. Piper’s heart ached for his reappearance. “You fell asleep in the chair again.”
“I was watching the tower.”
With his eyes still closed, he curved into her touch, catching her hand in his and pressing a kiss to the palm. Piper gave a soft sigh. I missed you.
His eyes fluttered open. The defenses returned. “Piper...”
She lifted her hand away, but it didn’t matter. The moment was there, between them. Frederic could protest all he wanted, but it was clear that the feelings they discovered in England weren’t about to go away.
“Nothing’s changed,” he said, pushing to his feet.
“I can tell,” Piper replied.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” She watched as he stalked his way to his favorite window. He stood with his hands pressed against the molding, the muscles in his shoulders playing beneath his jacket as he attempted to push the wooden frame apart. “This isn’t going to work,” he said. “You staying here. Let me...”
“Find a hotel? No, thanks.”
“For God’s sake,” he said, spinning around to face her again. “Why are you being so stubborn?”
“Why are you?”
When he didn’t answer, Piper stepped closer. “Tell you what.” She kept her eyes locked with his, so he would be sure to see the determination on her face. “I will leave if you can honestly tell me you don’t care about me as much as I care about you.”
Frederic looked away. “You know I can’t.” Piper’s heart skipped a beat.
“But,” he said, raising his eyes again, “that doesn’t mean we have a future. Not even a short-term one. I can’t.”
Good Lord, but she was tired of hearing the word can’t. He most definitely could, if he let himself. “What are you so scared of?”
“I’m not scared of anything.”
“Liar. I think you’re terrified. You’re afraid of the day you wake up and can’t see anymore.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been expecting to go blind since I was fifteen years old. I know exactly how my life will play out.”
“And how is that?” she challenged.
“Alone.”
He said the word with such finality, it ripped her insides in two. Did he really believe that he was meant to be by himself for the rest of his days? How could one man be so incredibly wrong?
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said.
“Yes, it does. I’ve known that since I was fifteen years old, too. I will never turn the life of the person I... I care about upside down the way my father did ours.”
“Even if the person is willing to take the risk?” She touched his wrist, offering.
“It’s always easy to be willing at the beginning. It becomes obligation.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Says the woman who is attending a school she hates because she owes her sister.”
Piper stepped back. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Frederic asked. “Then tell me when the last time was that you enjoyed cooking?”
When she made him pot roast.
“Do you even like French food?”
“What does that matter?” she countered. “People cook things they don’t like all the time.” Why were they talking about school all of a sudden, anyway? This wasn’t about her.
Narrowing his eyes, Frederic stared down at her with so much intensity it made her insides squirm. “The other night you asked me ‘what if’ to prove your point, remember? Now it is my turn. What if Patience hadn’t been so excited about you going to Paris? What if she hadn’t sacrificed so much? Would you still be here?”
“I...” She couldn’t say the answer aloud.
“That’s what I thought. You’re so determined to give back to your sister. Have you ever asked if she cared what you did for a living?”
“She sacrificed for me to be here.”
“No, she sacrificed for you to have a good life. You were the one who decided that meant being a French chef.”
“Not true.” France was both their dreams. Hers and Patience’s. Frederic was using this as an excuse.
“You can keep telling yourself that all you want, but I will not be another person to whom you feel obligated.”
“For crying out loud, Frederic, I’m not your mother. Don’t treat me like I am.” It was the only argument she had left.
Like all her other arguments, it fell on deaf ears. “Finish your school and go home, Piper,” he said as he brushed past her.
Piper gnawed the inside of her cheek as she watched him make his way to the staircase. How dare he twist her argument against her? Cooking school was an entirely different situation. For starters, she and Patience dreamed this dream together, meaning it was 50 percent her sister’s. Maybe 60 percent. Or 70.
Stupid “what-if” games. Sinking into the chair, she threw her head back to stare at the ceiling. Maybe she was sticking it out because of Patience. If she hadn’t, though, she never would have started her affair with Frederic. And wanting to be with him was 100 percent her idea. There wasn’t a drop of obligation involved.
Of course, she could see how that might be hard to believe. Why would he think she was sticking with him by choice if her Paris track record said otherwise?
What should she do now? Maybe Patience...
She stopped halfway to her pocket. No. The solution had to be her own. Besides, there was nothing Patience could say that Piper hadn’t heard a hundred times before. Go for your dreams. You can do anything. I just want you to be happy.
Happy.
That had always been her sister’s dream: for Piper to be happy. So long as you’re happy, then it’s all worthwhile, she used to say whenever Piper felt guilty.
She wasn’t happy in culinary school. Face it, Piper, you’d rather be cooking mac and cheese instead of foie gras.
Suddenly Piper was very disgusted with herself.
But it wasn’t the same when it came to Frederic. Being with him, being needed by him, could never be an obligation. She didn’t fall in love with his ability to see. She fell in love with the man who accepted his blindness and survived anyway.
How could she make him see that they weren’t doomed to repeat his parents’ mistakes?
The first step would be to get her own life in order.
* * *
“Leave?” Chef Despelteau said. “There are only eight weeks left in the program.”
“I know,” Piper replied. “Trust me, this wasn’t an easy decision.”
That wasn’t true. Actually, the decision had been very easy, once she thought everything through.
The best way to thank Patience wasn’t struggling to become something she wasn’t simply because she was afraid she would let down Patience. In fact, just the opposite. She was letting Patience down by being so unhappy. If she wanted to truly thank her sister, she should create a life she loved. Cooking would be part of that dream. Just not French cooking.
“I’ve decided to take my cooking in a different direction,” she told Chef Despelteau.
“I am very sorry to hear that. You had the potential to be a great French chef.”
Piper smiled. His attempt at sincerity was uninspired.
She left his office feeling a hundred pounds lighter. Now if she could only get through to Frederic, then she would be truly happy.
* * *
Frederic was there when she returned home. He was standing by his window as usual. Something about it felt off, though. It didn’t take long for her to realize what. Propped against the wall was a white-and-red cane. “Dr. Doucette wants me to use it when I’m walking around the city to avoid accidents,” he said when she asked about it. He didn’t say anything further.
Leaving the floor open for her announcement. “I quit culinary school.”
Frederic turned away from the window to look at her. “You what?”
“You were right,” she told him. “The only reason I was staying was because I thought I owed Patience. I realized that was wrong. She would never want me to do something that made me miserable out of obligation. She would want me to choose what made me happy.”
“Oh.”
That was it? She thought he would show a little more reaction. Maybe not jump up and down, but something more than a flat monosyllable.
“I assume that means you’ll be leaving for home soon, then,” he said. There was a strange note to his voice that Piper couldn’t decide was disappointment or relief.
She certainly knew the emotion deadening her stomach. “No, I’m not leaving,” she said. “Don’t you understand? I quit because I know the difference between doing something for obligation and choosing something I want to do. I know the difference.
“I also know what makes me happy.” What she wanted to say next was important. She cupped his face in her hands, so he had no choice but to look her in the eye. “You make me happy, Frederic. For months I was miserable. I hated Paris—I hated school. Then you shoved a paper towel in front of my face and everything changed. I wasn’t miserable anymore.”
“Piper—”
“Let me finish. Do you know what made me so happy? It wasn’t dancing by the river or a whirlwind trip to the English countryside. It wasn’t just physical, either. It was sitting next to you on the train and listening to you complain that England had terrible coffee. It was hearing you explain why you loved that God-awful mural. It was being with you. You were all I needed to make Paris worthwhile.”
She could see his defenses crumbling. The cracks showed in his eyes. “Everyone feels that way at the start of a new romance,” he said. “You’ll get over it.”
“I don’t want to get over it. I don’t want to get over you. I’m falling in love with you.”
She kissed him, letting her lips do the rest of the talking for her, and for a moment, as he kissed her back, everything slid back into place. Say you don’t love me back, Frederic. I dare you.
His hands reached up to cover hers and gently pulled them away. “Then walk away,” he whispered. “Don’t let me drain you dry.”
“Damn you!” Damn him and his parents. She shoved at his chest, then shoved again. “I am so sick of your dumbass self-sacrificing. For what? Because your parents had a bad marriage? Because your dad was a needy jerk? Did you ever stop to think that maybe it wasn’t helping your father that burned your mother out, it was his constantly feeling sorry for himself? News flash Frederic. You’re acting as badly as he ever did.”
“I am not my father.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re not going to drag anyone down with you. No, you’ll just shove aside anyone who cares about you. To hell with what they want.”
Frederic didn’t answer. He looked past her, to the tower, his expression more distant than ever. They were back where they began. Two people, separate and alone.
Piper was done. What fight she had left disappeared as soon as she saw his expression. Some situations couldn’t be fixed, no matter how hard you tried.
“I’m going to Gloucestershire,” she told him. The backup plan she hoped to never use. “Mrs. Lester said I was welcome to come and cook any time I wanted—I’m going to take her up on the offer. I’ll be packed and out of here by the end of the day.”
Halfway across the room, she paused, unable to help one parting shot.
“There’s a difference between needing help and self-pity, you know. Too bad you’re too blind to see it. But then, maybe you’re too blind to see a lot of things.”
Leaving him to his solitude, she went to her room and packed. Frederic never came to say goodbye. She didn’t expect him to.
The Eiffel Tower greeted her as she stepped onto the sidewalk. Tall and gray, it would forever be her symbol of Paris. A reminder of both the best and worst of her time in this city. Taking out her cell phone, she took one last picture.
And said goodbye.
* * *
Time, Frederic decided, was playing tricks on him. When he was with Piper, time whipped by. Their few days together were over before he realized. So how was it the forty-eight hours since Piper moved out had stretched endlessly?
Oh, he was busy enough. He had his classes to teach, and classes to take. The life transition classes Dr. Doucette suggested. There were the social and professional obligations that kept him out until late at night. His eyesight might have dropped another notch, but his lifestyle hadn’t missed a beat. There was only one problem: he missed Piper.
At night, he would lie in bed and remember the afternoon at the abbey. The way her eyes had looked so blue as he hovered above her. Frederic cherished the memory. It had been his last day of clear sight, and life had blessed him with a wonderful view. Funny, he always thought the visual memory he’d long for most would be some piece of art. Or the tower, perhaps. His trusty friend, whose lights twinkled invitingly, albeit a little hazier now.
No. It was the memory of Piper’s eyes that he prayed he’d never forget. He wouldn’t trade the memory of her eyes for a thousand Eiffel Towers.
God, he missed her. Breathing hurt without her. The air was too thin, and his shirt collars were always strangling him. He missed her voice. He missed her smell. He missed her touch. And who did he have to blame? No one but himself.
Thanks to him, she was in a completely different country, charming the locals w
ith her bright smile. He bet she was making plans for her return to America right now, too. All because he was afraid she would bail when things got hard.
You fool. He could have had Piper in his life for as long as she’d have him. Instead, he didn’t have her at all.
There’s a difference between needing help and self-pity, Piper told him. His father had needed so much. He remembered when he was a kid, wanting to go to the tower, but his father had refused because of the crowds. I can’t handle all those people, he’d said. And so Frederic had gone with the nanny while his mother stayed home, because his father didn’t want to be alone. The man couldn’t handle being by himself any more than he could handle being with people.
Was there ever a day when his father didn’t remind them he couldn’t see? How many family events did they miss? How many holidays had to be rearranged? His father wore his blindness like a shield and demanded that it—no, he—be acknowledged at every turn.
Had Frederic done the same? Was his insistence on bearing the burden alone a different version of the same self-absorption?
Exhaling long and slow, he closed his eyes. His brain still believed breaking up with Piper was the right thing to do. His heart, on the other hand, needed her. He’d tried listening to his brain, and as a result, he was sitting in a giant house by himself while his heart threatened to break in half.
It didn’t have to be this way. He could go to England.
Then what? Beg her to come back, and risk her falling out of love with him?
Better to risk than to live as he had the last forty-eight hours. Piper made the days worthwhile. Without her, they were simply days.
It was time he listened to his heart.
* * *
“So I said to myself, why are you playing hardball? There is no reason why you should be hangin’ on to that gorgeous painting when Ana Duchenko is in Boston, heartbroken and alone. You can tell her nephew I am more than willing to sell.”
Digging into the paper bag he set on the table earlier, John Allen pulled out a blueberry scone. Immediately, Mrs. Lester scoffed. “I’ll have you know, there’s a perfectly good scone right here.”
Beauty & Her Billionaire Boss Page 14
