Dancing with Paris (A Paris Time Travel Romance)

by Juliette Sobanet

She’d sliced Antoine’s neck with the glass, killing him, and then she’d shot me in the head.

  And she would do it again if I didn’t stop her.

  My muscle memory jumped into action, all of the strength and force I’d built up from these two lifetimes kicking in and telling me exactly what I needed to do.

  I lunged for my purse, dug inside, and withdrew the loaded gun I’d been carrying around all day.

  I’d had a feeling I would need it.

  And just as I turned around and pointed the gun toward Solange, who was still flailing and struggling beneath Antoine’s strong hold, a startling realization washed over me. Staring down the barrel of the gun, I had a vivid memory of myself as Ruby pointing this exact gun at someone else before.

  The struggle between and Antoine and Solange went black, and replacing them, a man now stood before me. The memory was so clear, so real, it took my breath away.

  Thomas Riley stood in front of me. Thomas with his slick black hair, his wild black eyes, and his perfect, clear skin that didn’t carry so much as a freckle, let alone a scar.

  Something shiny was in his hand too. It was a knife, and he was pointing it straight at my chest.

  “Put the gun down, Ruby.” There it was. That same controlling whisper. The same one I’d heard on the bridge and in the dressing room. “Put it down or you know I’ll make that scar on your back a lot deeper than it already is.”

  I could still feel the blood that had drained down my back and poured down my bare legs. He’d sliced me with that knife. And as I stared at his cowardly face down the barrel of this cold black pistol, I’d known that if I didn’t want to die, there was no other way.

  And in a split-second decision, I pulled the trigger.

  The realization of what I’d done—what Ruby had done—came like a literal shot to the head—just not my own. It was a shot to Thomas’s head, and I’d been the shooter.

  Which meant that Thomas was dead.

  All along, when I’d thought he’d been following me, that he’d sent me those flowers, that he was after me, he was actually dead. He hadn’t followed me to François’s apartment—it was Alexandre, Solange’s brother—the man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Thomas.

  What about the whispers, though? They’d sounded so real. Had it been Ruby’s subconscious haunting me? Or could it have been Thomas as a ghost?

  As my memory served up the image of Thomas lying on the floor, his black eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling while blood ran down his forehead and covered the wood floor around him, I knew it didn’t matter if the voice had really been him or not. What mattered was that he was gone.

  And Titine knew. She knew I’d killed Thomas.

  That’s why we’d fled New York and come to Paris. And that’s why she hadn’t wanted me to mention his name to the police. Because I was the one responsible for his murder. And since she thought I had amnesia, she must’ve reasoned it would be better for me not to know what I’d done, so that I could never admit to it if questioned.

  A loud shout brought me back to the present. It was Antoine.

  “Ruby, put the gun down and call the police!” he shouted over his shoulder.

  But just as he was turning his head back around toward Solange, she wrapped one leg around his back and kicked him right in the spine with her pointy heel, causing him to lose his tight hold on her. She capitalized on his brief moment of weakness by wriggling her arm free of his grasp. And in that clenched fist of hers, she still held the shiny piece of glass—the piece of glass she would kill him with if I didn’t get to her first.

  As I ran toward them, pointing the gun right at her head, I knew that the first time around, I’d hesitated for a second too long, the memories of my fight with Thomas revisiting me, making me terrified to take another person’s life, even if it was in self-defense.

  Solange’s arm swung toward Antoine’s face. As if in slow motion, my hands moved into place, my fingers tightening around the trigger, Madame Bouchard’s warning ringing loudly in my ears, as if she was right there in the room with me.

  You will have to summon up the courage to take whatever action necessary to stop this evil from occurring again.

  And this time, the courage I needed to rewrite history was there.

  I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t even blink.

  Instead, I pulled the trigger.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Antoine held me in his arms in the cold, dreary police station, the reality of what had just happened settling in my bones.

  I’d killed someone. I, Claudia Davis, had actually killed someone.

  I’d pulled the trigger and shot Solange, then I’d watched as the blood had pooled out from the back of her head while her silvery-black eyes stared straight at me, void of life but still as haunting and deadly as when she’d had breath in her lungs.

  Each time I closed my eyes, I could see her lying there in that ever-growing puddle of her own silky red blood. I could see the shard of glass that had tumbled from her hand as soon as I’d shot her. The glass she would’ve used to kill Antoine if I hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  Antoine placed his hands on my shoulders and squared his gaze on me, his expression one of true regret. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you about my marriage, Ruby. It was wrong of me to keep it from you.”

  “Were you married a long time?” I asked.

  “Only about a year and a half. Unfortunately, after only a few months, it was clear that she hadn’t married me out of love.”

  “Why did she marry you then?”

  “For Solange, it was a marriage built on money. On status. I’d always made it clear to her that I became a surgeon to help people, to save lives. I didn’t do it for the money or the social status it provided. But unfortunately, a few months into the marriage, it became obvious that she’d only married me to appease her wealthy family. She didn’t love me. She never had. And she was insanely jealous of my close relationship with Gisèle…” Antoine paused, his gaze traveling out the window, where the strong rain continued to drown out the sound of the howling wind. “I filed for divorce almost a year ago. But she refused to sign the papers. The past year has been a nightmare. She wasn’t the woman I thought I’d married. But I never imagined she was capable of…of murder.”

  Antoine cleared his throat, taking my hands in his. “I avoided seeing other women this year because I wanted to wait until the divorce was final. But this past week with you, Ruby, I…I couldn’t stop myself. It was a force so strong that I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried. And when you showed me that note today, I immediately recognized her handwriting, her signature. I knew it was Solange. I left you in the office to alert the hospital security, and to call the police. I didn’t want to alarm you without having the chance to explain first. But when I returned, you were gone, and you’d found the ring and the photo.”

  “If you were finished with your marriage, why did you keep your wedding ring and that photo in your desk?”

  Antoine shook his head. “I didn’t. I’d left the ring with Solange when we separated, and I hadn’t seen that photograph since I left her. She must’ve been following you, Ruby. This whole time. She followed you to the hospital and planted the picture and the ring…and she had her brother wait for you outside. She knew you would run away as soon as you realized I was married.”

  I let out a shaky breath. That woman was out of control. And as difficult as it had been to take her life, I couldn’t say I was sorry that she was gone.

  “I didn’t tell you about my marriage at first because I did not want to bring you into this mess, Ruby. I knew that if Solange found out about us, she would make it even more difficult for me to divorce her. But I never imagined she would take it this far.”

  I squeezed Antoine’s hands. “It’s okay, Antoine. I understand now. You couldn’t have possibly known what would happen.”

  Antoine lifted his hand to my face, cupping my cheek in his palm. “Ruby, you are my angel. You saved me today. You s
aved us both.”

  I leaned into his strong, safe embrace as a stray tear slid down my cheek. “But what if it isn’t enough? What if the police don’t believe us?”

  “It’s all going to be okay, Ruby. Once the police check out our story, they’ll let us go. It was self-defense. You don’t need to be scared.”

  I tried to open my mouth to tell him thank you, to tell him I trusted him and that I knew this would all work out, but I could hardly breathe. I could hardly see straight. So instead of talking, I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. Then I replayed our conversations with the police over and over in my head until I felt like I would explode.

  After we’d called the police, they’d taken us to the station and questioned us for hours on everything that had happened. We told them everything Solange had admitted to, including her involvement in Gisèle’s, François’s, and Robert’s murders; her brother, Alexandre, taking Véronique’s body somewhere outside the city; and I gave them the wedding photo of Antoine and Solange, explaining the diamond earring connection. I told them to cross-check this with the earring found at the scene of François’s murder, as well as with the earring pictured on the female silhouette in the photograph of me and François taken the night Gisèle was murdered.

  And although my face was beat to hell and the bloody rings around my wrists surely proved that I’d been tied up against my will, Detective Duval was still skeptical. After all, he’d just been after me earlier today, thinking I was the main suspect in Robert’s murder, and when he’d arrived at the scene of the crime tonight, he found a doctor and his lover alive, the soon-to-be ex-wife shot in the head.

  I’d be suspicious too, if I were him.

  Antoine placed a finger on my chin and tipped my face up to meet his. “No matter what happens, I will make sure you’re okay, Ruby. You have to trust me. I won’t stop until the police believe our story. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  I still couldn’t speak. All of the energy, the fight, had been drained out of me. And all I could do now was hope that I’d made the right choice. I’d trusted my gut and I’d taken the life of an evil woman, and in doing so had stopped both my own murder and Antoine’s.

  I’d done what fate had sent me back here to do, and now I just had to hope that fate would have my back—our backs.

  Just then, the office door was flung open. It was Detective Duval.

  He sat down across the desk from us and raised an eyebrow in my direction. “You have had quite the day, Mademoiselle Kerrigan, have you not?”

  I had no room left for his dry humor or his rough accent, so I just stared back at him, hoping and praying he wasn’t going to arrest us.

  “I am afraid that we are going to have to retain each of you tonight for further questioning,” Detective Duval stated flatly. “We have not yet located Mademoiselle Véronique or Solange’s brother, Alex—”

  A harsh rapping on the office door interrupted Detective Duval. With a perturbed look on his face, he stood to open the door, but whoever was on the other side wasn’t waiting.

  “Detective,” a young officer called as he barged in. “Delphine Marceau is here, the woman who found Gisèle—”

  “Yes, I know who Mademoiselle Marceau is,” Detective Duval snapped in French.

  “She said she has information pertaining to the murders this week. She needs to speak with you right away.”

  Detective Duval leveled his glare at us. “Stay here.”

  An hour of nail biting and praying later, the detective reappeared, and trailing behind him was a terrified Delphine Marceau.

  She nodded at me as she shuffled into the cramped space then hovered by the door until Detective Duval motioned for her to take a seat.

  “Mademoiselle Marceau, would you like to tell Ruby and Antoine what you’ve just told me?” The detective leaned back in his seat, tapping a pen against the hard wooden desk, the sound like a nail drilling into my skull.

  What was Delphine here to do? Point the finger at me?

  Delphine’s long lashes batted over her big brown doe eyes before she spoke. “I know who murdered Gisèle. I know it wasn’t you, Ruby. I’ve known all along. And I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything, but she’s been threatening me to keep quiet. She told me she would kill me and my family if I went to the police. I saw her that night in the wings. I saw her running from Gisèle’s dressing room right after I heard the shot.” Delphine turned her gaze to Antoine. “It was Solange, your ex-wife. I’m only sorry that I didn’t have the courage to say something sooner. I could’ve saved all of these people from getting killed.” She looked over to me, the guilt in her eyes almost unbearable. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I’m so, so sorry.” Then she buried her sweet, innocent face in her hands and cried.

  I reached over and took her hand in mine. “Thank you for coming forward, Delphine. For telling the truth.” The realization that Delphine was Édouard’s mother hit me over the head once more, the full truth of this situation too much for me to grasp at the moment.

  Detective Duval cleared his throat. “In addition to this latest confession, it seems there is more news to support your defense, Mademoiselle Kerrigan. My partner has located Alexandre’s car. And just as you said, Véronique’s body is inside.”

  “Was Alexandre in the car?” Antoine asked.

  The detective shook his head. “No, but we have dispatched a team to locate him.”

  Relief surged through my body, all of the tension, the fear, the anticipation that had built up in my chest finally releasing. “So, does this mean…?”

  Detective Duval nodded at me, the tiniest hint of kindness in his voice. “Mademoiselle Kerrigan, I apologize for making the assumptions I’d made earlier today regarding your involvement in the death of Robert Maxwell. It is clear now that you and Docteur Richard were the victims of a woman who would stop at nothing to get her revenge. Go home and get some rest. We’ll notify you as soon as we have found Alexandre. In the meantime, though, you may want to see a doctor. Those bruises on your face are quite severe.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” Antoine said for me as I sat in my chair, unable to speak or move, the relief so great it had paralyzed me. “I’ll see to it that Ruby is taken care of.”

  Delphine blinked over at me one last time on her way out of the office. “I wanted to tell you, Ruby, you were stunning up there last night. You’ve never danced so well. It was almost as if…”

  “What is it, Delphine?” I asked, knowing by the look in her eyes that she was onto me. She knew I wasn’t the same Ruby she’d known before.

  She bit her bottom lip, a tiny grin popping onto her face, instantly making me remember Édouard’s handsome, charming smile. “You’ve changed, Ruby,” she said. “And I like the new you.”

  Delphine left the musty police station, taking with her the dark cloud that had hovered so closely these past few days.

  Antoine and I stood to leave, but the detective held his hand up to stop us.

  “There is just one last thing before you go.” Detective Duval cast a curious glance in my direction. “This ex-boyfriend of yours, Thomas Riley?”

  I swallowed hard, wishing I had listened to Titine and kept my mouth shut about Thomas.

  “We looked into it, and it appears there was a Monsieur Riley who matches the profile of the man you described. He was shot and killed in his Brooklyn apartment last year. They never found the murderer.”

  His words lingered in the air around us while I forced myself to keep a neutral expression.

  “It also appears that this man was notorious for beating up the women he dated. With no leads on the case, the New York police have closed the investigation. Which means you have nothing to worry about, Mademoiselle Kerrigan, and you can go home.”

  I released the breath I’d been holding, thankful that I’d made it out of this insane nightmare alive, and with Antoine by my side. “Thank you, Detective. Thank you so much.”

  Antoine held me tight, kissing me on the forehea
d. “It’s over now. Let’s go home.”

  As Antoine took my hand and led me out of the police station, I noticed that day had turned into night and the rain had finally stopped. We passed by a smoky club in the Latin Quarter and slowed our walk as a sultry jazz tune filled the night air. And as the piano notes calmed my frayed nerves, I suddenly realized that nothing about this moment felt familiar to me.

  The déjà-vu was gone.

  I’d stopped my own murder from taking place, which meant that each new moment was fresh and had never been lived before.

  I squeezed Antoine’s hand and rested my head on his shoulder as we strolled down the narrow cobblestone sidewalk together and let out a collective sigh.

  I knew then, deep down, that everything would be okay. I’d made the right decision. I’d accomplished what I’d been sent back to do and had corrected the gross error in fate that Solange’s evil heart had caused.

  But as we walked down a road we’d never traveled before, with only the glow of a dim Paris streetlamp to light our way, I thought of my baby, the little girl that awaited me in my life as Claudia, and one blaring question remained.

  What would happen next?

  THIRTY-THREE

  * * *

  * * *

  Four months later

  * * *

  * * *

  With the sun shining high in the sky and gorgeous, fluffy white clouds floating calmly overhead, I strolled down the bustling Boulevard Saint-Michel and hummed a tune to myself as the scent of tulips, buttery croissants, and steaming coffee danced around me. I stopped walking for a moment and smiled as I took it all in, this place I now called home.

  Springtime in Paris in the fifties was absolutely magical. And what was even more delightful was that I was experiencing it all for the very first time. Gone were the jarring flashes of déjà-vu, the ominous memories and premonitions that had plagued me when I’d first arrived. Instead I felt more vibrant, more alive, and more at home here each day than I ever thought possible.