“How much time before we have to be at the party?” she said.
He laughed. “Bella, we probably always have enough time for me, but I suspect it wouldn’t be enough time for you.”
“Can we be late?”
“Fuck, I wish,” he said regretfully. He was getting aroused just at her attention.
She gave a long look down his body to linger on his erection, which finished straightening right up under her gaze. He groaned and pulled the shower door closed between them. “Go away. Lock the door behind you.”
“Now that’s just rude!” she called, laughing.
“You’re evil!” he retorted through the glass. But he stayed disciplined.
Well, she had liked his self-discipline from the start. She had no desire to damage his career by tempting him into a choice that would look bad. It was just another proof of something she had never really thought about before, over on the other side of the water, where he was on vacation—how dominant the role his career held in his life. More important than sex, even, she thought wryly.
She went back into his bedroom and put on the very unsatisfying dress she had found in Calvi, a plain sheath in a teal that was not her favorite color, but it was at least better than her casual beach dress. The shoe selection had also been pretty pitiful, and the shoes she had found hurt her feet, but again…better than sandals.
The president was at the party, briefly. She actually got introduced to him, and he seemed to take to her quite well, the womanizer. Lucien took possession of her hand and tucked it into his arm, engaging with the man with a military neutrality. Well, at least she knew the guy was going to be voted out long before Lucien’s rank was so high he had to pay too much attention to what the president thought of him. The man was deeply awkward and fake around so much military and, after finding Lucien expressionlessly unreceptive to leaving Elena alone in his company, gave a brief speech of farewell and flew back to Paris.
Then the cocktail party got really tricky. Oh, Lucien was perfectly happy in it. He was surrounded by colleagues who, for the most part, clearly thought highly of him. They were relaxed.
Elena, on the other hand, had to speak to wives. And that was another shock to her system. Of the eight captains on base, five were married. Then there were lieutenants’ wives, and two majors’ wives, and the colonel’s wife. There were the NCO wives, but there were some hierarchy things going on there. It became very, very quickly clear that there was a whole negotiation of status in this tight little society that was entirely dependent on the husband’s role and had nothing whatsoever to do with the women’s careers. Although a couple of them did mention early in the conversation how much they volunteered with the schools.
So it did matter to them what they accomplished, they were just stuck in a situation where their possibilities for accomplishment were very limited by being on a base on a very insular island with few job opportunities. And so they focused on the behavior of their kids, how well they kept their houses, the schools. What their husbands were accomplishing.
Oh, boy.
That familiar, grievous sinking of doom in her stomach, the one she had known so many times as a child. When her mother stopped remembering to feed her, and she ran out of money to go down to the épicerie herself, and the social worker was coming, so she knew that once again, something was going to end. When the family fostering her grew tenser and tenser, the parents fighting, everything coming apart, and she finally realized that when they split, they were only keeping their real children. When the older real brother started acting creepy around her as a teenager and she tried to minimize herself as much as she could, but he kept on, and she knew that soon, she would have to find another home.
Yeah. She knew, none better, when something she wanted so badly just wasn’t going to work out.
Because there was no place for her.
But like these military wives, with their polished, diplomatic smiles, their negotiated welcomes of her, their subtexts—are you staying? where will you fit in our pre-established hierarchy? will you be someone we want to have in our little circle?—just like them, Elena kept her expression smiling, but not too smiling, friendly but not gushing, diplomatic. Restrained. Staying in her place as Lucien’s companion.
“You did great,” Lucien said afterward. “They’re going to love you.”
I don’t want to have to play someone else’s games to be loved, she thought. She had done far too much of that as a child. Trying to learn better table manners at eight, for example, because from the stairs at night, she could hear her foster parents complaining in scathing terms about hers. Maybe they would love her if she got it right? Wanting and afraid to be pretty, at thirteen, because if she was pretty, maybe someone would love her, and yet it seemed to be the more she developed, the more dangerous it got to be her. She didn’t want to be her mother or her grandmother, getting pregnant with a stranger to try to fill a void, but oh how she had wanted to be loved.
But she was different now. She had grown bigger. In her life in Grasse and Sainte-Mère, she didn’t really play anyone’s games anymore. She did a good job, and she was herself, and the friendships she had were all ones developed naturally with people who liked her just the way she was. It was one of the glorious parts of being an adult and on her own.
“Thanks,” she said, keeping it simple. “You were pretty awesome today.”
And he looked pleased.
She’d gotten so much better at that since she was eight, pleasing.
Fuck, Elena.
She turned and went to his window. He had a beautiful view of the sea.
He came behind her and pulled her back against his chest. She closed her eyes and rested her weight against him.
This is going to be so hard.
One more night, okay?
Nothing wrong with pretending for one more night. She’d done it so many times.
She pretended for a night, and she pretended for a morning at the beach, Lucien relaxed and happy, content to stretch out with her on the sand after yesterday’s intense day. Happy to play with her in the waves. Happy to kiss her. I love you. Little, wistful wavelets of it, like the water against the sand, and she’d always known there would be an undertow in the end, she’d always known that loving someone else wasn’t a secure, warm, happy thing like this Mediterranean island, it was a riptide disaster that left you alone on a bit of debris in the middle of the Atlantic.
She’d known it, somewhere, and yet…he had seemed so easy.
It was only when her flight was called that the tears that had been building up in secret all weekend threatened to escape. They pressed tight in her throat and in her eyes until she thought he almost saw them.
“I’m going to miss you so damn bad,” she whispered. “How could I have been so stupid?”
What did you think it meant, to get involved with a captain in one of the most elite airborne assault regiments in the world?
The truth was, she had had no idea. She was a civilian. She’d just thought he seemed so strong and sure and sexy.
But that’s not enough. I can’t give up all my strength and sureness, so I can have his.
“I’ll be there Friday.” Lucien kissed her. “I’ll miss you, too.” But he looked rather pleased that she had admitted she would miss him.
Don’t cry. A lot of the people passing through this airport might be his men. Don’t embarrass him.
Yeah, that would be a constant part of life here on this base, too, wouldn’t it? Not embarrassing him.
And she couldn’t even talk to him about it, because who the hell had suggested she would have a life on this base in the first place?
Stay in the moment, Elena.
But she looked up at him with her eyes stinging. “Never drink limoncello in Italy.”
He laughed and kissed her again. He looked so happy, confident, strong. He was in his element probably anywhere in the world, but here…here he clearly was at the peak of his power. Unshakable.
> “I’m such an idiot,” she said.
He grinned. “Promise me you won’t go see that therapist to learn how to make smarter choices.”
She definitely needed to see that therapist. Clearly she wasn’t making as much progress as she had hoped, getting past her childhood on her own.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight for one long, last hug. Maybe something about that hug penetrated his self-confidence. Because he searched her eyes when she stepped back, at the boarding call. It was a tiny airport, but she still had to get through security.
“Call me when you get in,” Lucien said. There was suddenly a hint of urgency in his voice.
She waved and jumped into the security line.
Lucien came up to the edge of the space, as far as he was allowed. “Have a good flight,” he called. And when she looked back, he held his hand to his face as if he was holding a phone and mouthed, Call me.
She waved again and focused on showing her passport, then dumping her bag in the plastic bin. When she glanced back after she passed through, Lucien was still standing there watching her. She waved and ran for her gate.
Good-bye.
Chapter 24
Elena wished she had taken a ferry. A long ride across the waves, into the sunset, a suitable ending to a romance for an independent woman who could handle her own life.
Instead of a short, cramped hop that made it seem as if Lucien was only a wish away, that any time she had second thoughts she could get to him.
He already has a family.
She should have known.
It had all been in her own head, the whole time. Her fantasy, of a lone soldier who needed her. Finally, someone who needed her, to give him a home.
And she’d cheated right from the start in trying to slip herself into that home, hadn’t she? Quit kidding yourself, Elena. When you made sure your cleavage showed to advantage before you walked up to him, that was for your sake, not his.
Because she’d had again a stupid fantasy. A stupid hope.
She was twenty-eight years old, and still to this day, she persisted in having stupid hopes.
But he doesn’t need you. He’s just playing with the idea of you. There’s no room at all for you in his life.
There never, ever was.
She let herself into her apartment and didn’t even open the shutters. She just stood there in the dark, resting her hand on the pile of lemons in the bowl on the counter, and then sank to the floor, hugging her head to her knees. Elena, you’re such an idiot. Why do you always have to believe?
***
She locked her phone in the trunk of her car, so that she wouldn’t know when he called. Tristan finally poked his head into her office at the museum Wednesday afternoon and gazed at her assessingly.
Tristan had had a much harder time in school than any of his cousins, particularly Damien who had been a brilliant student, but she never could shake the impression that Tristan was really the smartest of all of them. Especially when he looked at you as if you were a perfume whose components he, the famous nose, was deciphering as easily as breathing.
“Lucien asked me to check and make sure you were okay,” he said. “You do seem to be.”
That fast, her eyes stung. She focused fiercely on her paperwork. “I’m fine. Just busy.”
“All right.” Tristan leaned in the door and folded his arms, as if to prevent himself from reaching out and just fixing the problem he could see hanging in the air. “So…not my business, then.”
“It definitely is not.” But she felt a faint stirring of temptation. What if the Rosiers did decide she was their business? That would be nosy as hell of them. Exactly like…family.
“Okay,” Tristan said, but he didn’t move from the doorway. He just studied her, brown eyes thoughtful and not judgmental, long and lean and casually gorgeous, in that way that had slain pretty nearly all the hearts in their high school. Well, Damien and Matt had had their following, too, and she was pretty sure so had Lucien and Raoul, although she had still been in middle school when those two disappeared. She’d had a crush on Lucien, definitely. It had probably protected her a bit from being one of the uncounted masses in her year who had fallen for Tristan.
“Kind of thought you two were really hitting it off,” Tristan said after a moment.
Elena snapped her pen down and stood. “I’m trying to work, Tristan.”
And it was one of the very nice things about the Rosiers that even though they wielded major influence over her place of employment, she could talk that way to any of them and face no repercussions. They saved their enmity for threats to their family or, say, Nazis.
“Yeah, I know.” But he didn’t move. “You know, I’ve never been a big fan of cutting off communication with someone you care about.”
Yeah, well, what the hell did he know? Tristan had been the whole region’s golden boy, always handsome, always loved. She had been the unattractive, frizzy, spotty daughter of a woman who had spent most of Elena’s life in and out of rehab. Plenty of people had ignored her calls. Sure, most men would pick up now, but somehow she never forgot that the person hiding under her now-polished surface had never been worth anyone’s forever.
Her jaw worked. “I’m doing the best I can, Tristan.”
Tristan’s expression gentled, although his eyes stayed shrewd. “All right.” He straightened from the door. “If you need any help, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
Elena stared at him, astonished. No. It had never occurred to her that she could let him know.
“If Lucien is being stubborn or stupid about something, for example,” he said. “I used to be able to get through that thick head of his once in a while.”
“Lucien’s not stupid,” Elena said blankly. Stubborn, sure. But far too smart. His eyes were even more astute than Tristan’s. And when they looked at her, even warmer and kinder than Tristan’s, too.
Damn it, she missed those blue eyes so much already. And her throat ached so damn bad.
“Can I see what you’re doing with the perfume book while I’m here?” Tristan said.
Oh, thank God.
She took him down to storage, where Solene was going over the book page by page, her hands gloved with linen, taking close up photos and notes as to its condition. A book restorer, Solene had straight brown hair currently pulled back in a smooth ponytail high on her head, deep blue eyes she was currently either hiding or highlighting with cat glasses, a scattering of tiny dark brown freckles across her cheeks, and the kind of geekily athletic body of someone who actually thought triathlons were reasonable things to do on weekends. Elena had met her when she was following a trail through Paris for an exhibit on Catherine de Medici’s use of Grasse glove-maker perfumers, and had invited Solene down several times since to help with projects, but this was by far the biggest.
Through her glasses, deep, near violet blue eyes shone with her joy in the work. “This is in remarkably good condition, considering,” Solene said.
“I’ve made a file with high definition photos of every page.” Elena handed the thirty-gigabyte card that contained a copy over to Tristan. “But Solene’s assessing restoration and preservation possibilities.”
“It would be criminal not to make every effort to preserve this book in a way that will last for centuries more,” Solene said. “But some of the stains and tears it has accumulated over centuries might be part of its history, too.”
Half an hour of animated discussion ensued, so engaged that the only thing that hurt Elena’s heart was the sight of Niccolò Rosario’s firm but elegant Renaissance hand: J’y suis, j’y reste.
As it said on the inside of the ring Niccolò had given Laurianne, and which Lucien now wore with his dog tags. Maybe it would inspire Lucien to hold some line unyieldingly in a battle one day, to stick by his men no matter what the cost, to be the immovable object no matter how inexorable the force.
Elena focused on a recipe written in Laurianne’s more feminine hand.
Niccolò’s straits had been pretty desperate when he met Laurianne, if all the tales were true. But Lucien was not desperate. That had just been her romantic delusions that day in Italy, when she had convinced herself he needed her.
He didn’t. He excelled at his career and given his age could probably rise to control the whole Calvi base one day.
And I don’t need him either. In fact, the reverse. She could probably become head curator here one day. Maybe now would be a good time to go back to work on her PhD and fill all her evenings with so much work she couldn’t cuddle her floppy stuffed puppy to her and cry.
Somehow, it was time to get off work, and Tristan had gotten her and Malorie to join him for a drink on the esplanade, and there Corsica sat, in the distance.
Damn it. Corsica was always going to be there, wasn’t it? Any time she looked at the sea. I am here and here I’ll stay, it sneered at her.
“Ow,” Malorie said.
“Oh. Sorry.” Elena pulled her foot back. “I think I was kicking Corsica.”
“It is annoying, isn’t it?” Tristan studied the shadow across the water. “I’ve always thought so.”
Yes, it was. And it was on the other side of all that water. She didn’t even like water, unless Lucien was around to help her enjoy it. Didn’t that just figure.
“It has an annoying populace, too,” Tristan said.
“Tristan,” Malorie hissed, glancing around at the other tables. Corsicans could be very touchy about having themselves criticized by Frenchmen. Corscians were French, too, officially, but they were touchy about that as well.
“Italian accent, always claiming they should be independent without the slightest clue as to how to sustain such a small economy without French help, Napoleon, and then there are the legionnaires. Military men.” He slid a sideways glance at Elena. “Who needs them?”
“Will you stop already?” Elena demanded, exasperated. “Tristan, this is not your business.”
Plus, it hurt.
“What’s not his business?” said a voice behind her. She looked up at Antoine, his suit coat slung over his shoulder and his shirt sleeves rolled up, clearly done with work for the day. He kissed her cheeks and Malorie’s, clasped Tristan’s hand, and took a chair.
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