by Alix Nichols
He answers on the third ring. “Dana?”
I explain my predicament.
Without interrupting, he listens, then says, “I’m coming over.”
He hangs up before I can object.
11
Ten minutes later, Thomas is in the loge. I explain why I’m hesitant to call the police. Thomas doesn’t seem to share my concern for Nico’s future, but he has his own misgivings with regards to the cops.
“I think you should call them either now or tomorrow,” he says. “But I doubt they’ll drop their more important matters to take care of your trivial problem.”
“You sound bitter.” I search his face. “Is that what you were told when you turned to them for help?”
“Word for word.”
I can’t help wondering what kind of situation had made him seek help with the police, and why they wouldn’t help him, but I don’t dare to ask.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Four years ago when things got out of hand with Nico, the police helped me.”
“You got lucky. So, what’s the plan this time?”
“I don’t have a plan.”
He looks around. “I can sleep on the couch, and when Nico shows up in the morning, I’ll have words with him.”
“Out of the question,” I say. “He’s my problem, not anybody else’s. I just… I just need you to help me figure out how to deal with him in the morning.”
He tilts his head to the side. “You want honest advice?”
“Yes.”
“Come out of the closet. Confess that you’re gay and tell him you have a girlfriend now.”
I smile. “That won’t work, seeing as I’m not gay.”
His mouth falls open.
Despite all my anxiety about tomorrow’s confrontation with Nico, I can’t help laughing at Thomas’s confounded face.
“So, you’re bisexual,” he says, recovering his cool.
“I wish! But no. Manon and I are just very good friends.”
He opens his mouth as if he’s not sure how to say what he wants to say.
I take pity on him. “You misinterpreted what you saw that day, walking out of the gym. And I’ve been neglecting to put the record straight.”
He’s silent for a moment. I can almost hear his brain humming, as he recalibrates the idea he’d formed about me.
He gives his head a shake. “In that case, I could tell him I’m your new boyfriend.”
“He won’t buy it.”
“We’ll make him buy it!” There’s so much enthusiasm in his eyes they’re practically sparkling. “We’ll spend a lot of time together, go on dates, hold hands, and such. We can make it look very convincing.”
I shake my head.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he says. “Right now, you need to decide if I’m staying here or going over to my place.”
I open my mouth to make fun of his bossiness before remembering I did ask for his help. Being a vet, he practices the comprehensive medicine modern “human” doctors are no longer qualified to do.
Thomas is a general practitioner, surgeon, heart doctor, ob-gyn, shrink, and a few dozen more specializations all rolled into one. People bring their fur babies to him, and he takes it from there. And, if I’m being honest, I do like that about him.
Along with a couple hundred other things.
So, instead of teasing him, I ponder his offer to stay. If we end up brainstorming late into the night, it does make sense to consider the sleeping arrangements. He’d sleep on the couch in the front room, and I’d requisition Liviu’s bed in the back room, giving both of us plenty of privacy.
Yeah, that could work.
“I propose we go to my place with Baloo,” Thomas says.
“You think the couch is too short for you?” I ask, sizing it up.
He follows my gaze. “Hmm… now that you mention it, I believe it might be. But that wasn’t my concern.”
“I can’t leave the loge without finding a replacement first,” I say quickly.
“But this is an emergency.”
Right.
“If we go to my place now, you won’t have to confront your ex tomorrow morning, if you don’t feel ready,” Thomas says.
“What exactly is your plan?”
“Come morning, I’ll go out first,” he explains. “You’ll stay back and wait for my call. If he’s here and you choose to face him, you can do that. I’ll plant myself on the other side of the street, so I can intervene if things turn ugly.”
Is it terribly selfish that a part of me likes his plan?
“And if you don’t feel ready for the face-off,” Thomas adds, “you can just stay in my apartment until I get back from work, and we’ll reassess.”
“Impossible. Baloo needs—”
“I’ll walk Baloo.”
Boy, it’s tempting.
Except I can’t. Thomas’s offer would cause him too much inconvenience. Letting me stay at his place, taking care of Baloo, getting in a brawl with Nico… I can’t let that happen.
I open my mouth to thank him and refuse when he adds, “Besides, I do like to sleep in my own bed and in my pajamas. It would be cruel of you to deny me that.”
I shut my mouth.
“Let’s go.” He jerks his head toward Baloo. “Does he need his crate for the night?”
“Baloo stays here.” My voice is firm. “I’ll be back first thing the morning.”
His gaze holds an unspoken question.
“I’m going to confront Nico,” I say. “If I wait until I’m ready, I’ll be running from him for the rest of my life.”
With a determined nod, I stand up and gather a few things for my night away. Thomas helps me roll the communal trash cans out for the early morning collection.
There’s a trail of white dust on the hallway floor—the floor I take pride in keeping spotless. Unsurprisingly, outside the entrance we find two big bags filled with bits of plaster and mixed rubble.
I stomp my foot. “Grrr! These people!”
“What’s wrong?”
“The owners of one of the second-floor apartments are redoing their kitchen.”
His mouth quirks with mirth. “And that is very wrong.”
“Not the renovation itself, but the way they go about it,” I say, trying to sound testy.
But I’m not feeling the anger anymore. Actually, I’m smiling.
Two minutes later, we walk into his scantily furnished lair.
He motions me to the shiny new sofa in the main room. “Wine? Beer? Scotch?”
“Would you happen to have any tea?” I ask. “I need a clear mind.”
“Sage choice.” He nods and heads out of the room.
While he’s brewing tea in the kitchen I look around. In addition to the sofa, the furnishings include a chair, placed in front of the sofa, a laptop placed on said chair, and a dresser.
Thomas returns with two steaming mugs. “You must find this place too stark.”
“After living in my crowded loge, I yearn for stark.”
“There was no point moving my cheap furniture from Bordeaux. So, I gave everything away, except for grandma’s dresser. And now I’m buying new things.” He hands me my mug and sits down. “When I have time.”
The one piece of decoration in the room is a framed photo sitting atop his grandma’s dresser. In it, a beautiful young woman looks straight into the camera. Her almond-shaped eyes are laughing, playful, as the wind fans out her long hair.
“Your girlfriend?” I ask, hoping I sound breezy enough… and also hoping he’ll say it’s his sister.
“My fiancée.” He looks at the portrait.
That is so not what I wanted to hear.
Thomas’s voice is hard and laced with bitterness when he adds, “I haven’t seen her since August 22. Of last year.”
“Did she leave you?”
Except… if she did, why does he still have her portrait? And why didn’t he call her his ex-fiancée?
Thomas turns to me.
“That’s what the cops think.”
“Not you?”
He shakes his head, but instead of telling me what he thinks, he sets his mug down on the floor and pivots to face me. “We’re here to talk about how to deal with your ex, so let’s do it before we’re too sleepy for rational discussion.”
“OK.” I angle my body toward him.
“So, how about my pretend boyfriend idea?”
“Even if I was willing to give it a try,” I say. “It would never work.”
“Why not?”
“Because I suck at lying.”
He scrunches up his face. “How bad?”
“Couldn’t-prank-a-toddler-to-save-my-life bad.”
“That’s… bad,” he says, eyes sparkling once again.
Gone is the set jaw from a minute ago. The joyful, magnetic twinkle in his eyes transforms his face. And it’s infectious, too.
Suddenly, I find myself smiling. I forget the wretched event that led to this conversation. All I want is to stare into Thomas’s eyes until I forget the wretched person I am.
“Do you know the cause of your inability to deceive?” he asks, eyes laughing. “It’s so rare in humans. In animals, too, for that matter.”
“Baloo can’t lie…”
I begin before recalling all the times he would sneak behind the armchair to go to potty. And then, when I would discover the crime scene, he’d act like he had ab-so-lute-ly nothing to do with it.
“Actually, you’re right,” I correct myself. “He can.”
“But you can’t. Why?”
“Just one of my many manufacturing defects, I guess.”
He frowns at my self-deprecating reply but says nothing.
We finish our tea in silence.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll tell Nico to leave me alone,” I say.
“And what if he doesn’t? What will you do then?”
“I’ll threaten to report him to the police.”
“Will that make him stop?”
Will it? “Honestly, I don’t know.”
Thomas taps the side of his mug.
“Alternatively,” I say. “I’ll brush up my self-defense skills and repeat my killer right jab from four years ago.”
His eyes widen. “You punched him?”
“I knocked him out.”
Thomas tips an imaginary hat. “Respect.”
“It helped that he was hammered.”
“As an FYI, my right jab isn’t too shabby, either. It’s been effective even on sober guys.” He squints at me. “Just saying.”
I raise my palm. “As I said before, Nico is my problem—”
“Not anybody else’s,” he finishes for me. “That’s what you keep saying, but I beg to differ. He might also become Liviu’s, if you don’t let your friends help you.”
I stare at him, anxiety knotting my stomach. He’s right. This isn’t just between Nico and me. We kept Liviu out of it last time, but how can I be certain Nico will demonstrate the same kind of restraint this time around?
Thomas takes my hand. “You look terrified. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
His touch is so gentle, so comforting that I almost break down and cry. But I get a grip. I can’t afford to break down. With a feeble smile, I pull my hand away.
“Is there anyone reasonable in Nico’s entourage?” Thomas asks. “Anyone you could talk to?”
“His mom.”
But of course! Why didn’t I think of it myself?
“She dotes on him, and he adores her,” I say. “The last thing she’d want is to see him getting in trouble again now that’s he’s finally doing well.”
“Do you have her number?”
“Not anymore, but I should be able to find her in the phonebook. Otherwise, I’ll just go to her place tomorrow.” I look up at Thomas. “This could work.”
He smiles. “I hope so. But if it doesn’t, remember I’m here. OK?”
“It’s very kind of you, but you don’t want to get entangled in this, trust me.” I squirm. “We hardly know each other.”
He holds up his watch. “The night is young. More tea?”
“I’m good.”
“I’m from Bordeaux,” he says. “What about you?”
“Bucharest, Romania.”
“I did hear a delicious little accent! But I couldn’t place it.”
I can’t help blushing a little at “delicious.”
Get real, Dana.
As always when someone says something overly nice to me, I hasten to disabuse them of any fanciful notions. “I’m a boring, poor, soon-to-be-thirty single mom. That sums me up, really.”
A deep crease appears between his eyebrows, but once again, he doesn’t comment on my self-belittling ways.
“Do you like living in Paris?” he asks.
I perk up. “I love it. This city is extraordinary.”
“That’s what I told myself when I left Bordeaux,” Thomas says. “I reminded myself of Audrey Hepburn’s famous words—”
“Paris is always a good idea,” we say in chorus.
He smiles and I smile, too, and I feel my cheeks heat as his gaze lingers on my mouth.
“Except, Audrey Hepburn never actually uttered those exact words,” I say, hoping to distract him from my blush.
It works.
He knits his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“A lot of people think Audrey Hepburn said that in the original Sabrina. But it isn’t true.”
“Who said it then?”
“Julia Ormond in the 1995 remake of Sabrina.”
“What about all those postcards, and notebooks, and posters you see in souvenir shops with that quote signed Audrey Hepburn?”
“All based on a myth.”
Thomas claps his hand to his mouth in exaggerated shock.
I cross my legs. “What Hepburn does say to Humphrey Bogart is this: ‘Paris is for letting in la vie en rose.’ ”
He repeats my words, then humphs. “I like it.”
“And Bogart says to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ ”
He surveys my face. “Were those movies what inspired you to come to Paris?”
“Yes.”
His gaze stays locked with mine for a long moment, before traveling down to my lips where it gets stuck again.
The force of my reaction confounds me. Not only my cheeks burn, my whole body catches fire, and a sweet, achy yearning stirs in my center.
Fight it, Dana! Smother it. Kill it.
Before I get a chance to act, he leans in and brushes his lips to mine.
12
Soft. Warm. Gentle.
My eyelids flutter shut despite myself with the unexpected pleasure of his light, tentative kiss. Something surges in me, sweet and too powerful to fight. I don’t even want to fight it. The joy of discovering the surface of his lips, of their fit and feel against mine, is so great I want this to go on and on. Forever.
Thomas’s hands come to rest on the sides of my face, and his kiss grows harder, but just by a notch.
A small shockwave of electricity travels through my veins. It jolts my body out of its deep hibernation and makes me feel alive. Suddenly, I know exactly what it was like for fairy-tale maidens to be awakened from their coma with a kiss. What a wild tangle of emotions! Exaltation mixed with desire mixed with confusion. Amazing what a soft kiss can do.
Thomas sweeps his tongue along the seam of my lips. On a gasp, I open and let him in. Suddenly, his kiss is no longer gentle. It’s rougher, deeper, hungrier.
His tongue reaches everywhere, strokes everywhere. It explores my tongue, my teeth, my palate, the inside of my cheeks. I welcome it, caressing it with my own tongue. Shamelessly, I suckle on it.
I’ve never been a bold person, so I have no idea where this reaction is coming from. His being so damn yummy? A year without a lover? Thirteen years without a lover whose kiss I enjoyed so much?
It doesn’t matter. All I know is that I want more.
When Thomas’s right hand untwists my bun and delves into my hair, I moan against his mouth. When his other hand strokes its way down to my right breast and cups it, I lean into his touch.
Shouldn’t I be finding him too forward? Shouldn’t I stop this?
No way. Another longer moan escapes me when he rubs my nipple with the pad of his thumb.
He breaks the kiss and draws back a little. His gaze is unwavering, intense. Skin darkened by lust, his eyes are almost black as he stares into my eyes.
Is he trying to let me know where this is going if I don’t stop him now?
I should stop him now, shouldn’t I?
Ever since I settled in France, I’ve done everything in my power to avoid being labeled. From the way I dress to the way I move and how few men I’ve been with, says I am not what some typecast as an Eastern girl—shorthand for loose, cheap, and willing to do anything.
Thomas is the last Frenchman I’d want to think that of me. And yet, even with the threat of giving him the wrong idea, I can’t stop this train from hurtling to its destination. Or, should I say, to its wreck.
To let him know I understand his unspoken question and accept the consequences, I undo a button on my shirt. Something wicked, almost unholy, flares in his eyes as his fingers fly to the second button.
A lick of hell’s fire, my pious grandma would say.
Lust chases her adage away, except for one word—lick.
Yes, please.
Thomas fumbles with the buttons, clumsy with lust, with impatience. I help him. As soon as enough of my shirt is undone to slip his large hand inside, he does so, cupping me again through my bra, full-palmed, tender, and firm all once.
I thank heavens I’m wearing nice underwear today. Low-cut and trimmed with pretty lace, this bra doesn’t look like something I bought back when I was nursing, which most of my other bras do.
Thomas’s eyes are riveted to my lace-covered breasts, when he rasps. “Out of this world.”
He looks up at me briefly. “Your breasts, Dana… They’re God’s gift to mankind.”
His words, the timbre of his voice and the longing in it, interfere with my physiology. This time it isn’t just one shockwave, but multiple charges, ripples, and undulations. They raise my body temperature. They make me ache for him. For more of him.
