by Fiona Harper
He yawned. ‘What’s the time?’
She leaned over and looked at her watch on the bedside table. ‘Nine.’
‘Nine!’ He jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. ‘I never sleep in until nine. Seven at the most. You—’he pointed a finger at Grace before disappearing into the bathroom ‘—must be a bad influence on me.’
Grace lay back on the bed and stretched. He was being lovely. No guilt trip. No tiny reminders that she had chickened out of their wedding night. She decided to play along. ‘I do my best to live up to my reputation. Anyway, what’s the hurry?’
His head appeared from around the bathroom door. ‘Paris. We’ve only got three days before we go home and I want to show you everything.’
Grace sat up in bed. ‘Everything?’
‘Well, lots. I need to come back here in around three months’ time for a book launch, so anything we miss now, we can do then.’ He looked her up and down. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Grace folded her arms across her chest. ‘Coffee. I’m not going anywhere until I’ve had coffee.’
They went out for breakfast and had warm croissants and strong black coffee at Les Deux Magots. They climbed the Eiffel Tower, marvelled at Monet’s waterlilies and ate ham baguettes and cold Belgian beer sitting under bright red canopies in an outdoor café in the Jardin Tuileries.
Noah had done all these things before, but doing them with Grace brought a freshness to the experience. She flung herself headlong into every sight, every sound, every taste. There was one place he was desperate to take her, but he was saving it for last.
Since they were close by, they wandered round the Louvre, even braving the crowds to remark on how much smaller than expected the Mona Lisa was and wondering what the Venus de Milo’s arms really would have been doing had they not been lost, and if anyone had actually found them and not realised what they were.
But, even in the face of such a wonderful day, Noah felt a little sad for Grace. She really ought to be here with someone who could give her the romance he feared she secretly craved. But he was selfish. She may have settled for second best with him, but he didn’t want to let her go so she could find it with someone else.
By three o’clock, Grace went on sightseeing strike. They were back in the Jardin Tulieries, the vast building of the Louvre behind them, and she sat down on a low backless bench amidst the trees and refused to budge.
He tugged at her hand until she consented to stand up. ‘One more stop.’
‘Do we have to?’ she said, her voice muffled by his jacket as she leaned against him.
‘We do. Come on, it’s just across the Rue de Rivoli.’
Under the large stone façaded arcades of the Rue de Rivoli was a place that was as close to heaven on earth as Grace could get. Angelina. The café famous for the best hot chocolate in Paris, and the pastries! Oh, the pastries!
It was all Noah could do to get her off the street and in through the door. But she found the inside was just as fabulous, with an ornate curved counter filled with works of art. Pink macaroons, stuffed with raspberries and topped with delicate flecks of silver leaf, pistachio bombes the colour of fresh green shoots with contrasting pink icing, éclairs, mille feuille, tartes…It was almost criminal that anyone should think of eating them.
When they were seated at a small round table beside a square ivory column, Grace had no problem in deciding what she should order. It had to be their signature dish, Mont Blanc, accompanied by Chocolat Chaud des Africains. When it arrived, she spent a good minute memorising every swirl in the chestnut purée covering the fluffy white meringue before daring to break into it with her fork. The hot chocolate was just as good: thick gloopy melted chocolate—none of this powdered nonsense—infused with spices and served in individual jugs accompanied by glasses of whipped cream to dollop into it. She didn’t understand the reason for the glass of cold water the waiter served her. But then she tasted the hot chocolate. It had a wonderfully thick bitter taste, but a sip of cool water was definitely needed every now and then to clear her palate.
Noah had been going to order just coffee, complaining he’d eaten enough sweet stuff already in the last few months, but she wouldn’t let him off the hook. He smiled at her, and she knew he liked it when she got bossy, so she grinned back at him.
He’d done this for her, had planned it all out. A trip to Angelina was all the wedding present she could have wished for. Just like that, all her fears about the future melted away and the anchors holding her in the past let go. This was her life now. This was her husband. And he was funny and caring and sexy enough to eat with a dollop of whipped cream.
She couldn’t stop looking at him as he paid the bill and they made their way through the crowded café to the front of the shop. She didn’t even break her stride to look at the cakes behind the counter again. She was totally focused on him.
The cool spring breeze was welcome on her face when they stepped back out into the street. She stopped him by tugging his hand, making him come back to her. Now it was her turn to call the shots, to bestow the gift. She leaned in close and kissed his ear before whispering, ‘Take me back to the hotel, Noah.’
‘But—’
‘Take me back to the hotel.’
All the way back in the taxi, they held hands, played with each other’s fingers, unable to stop touching, caressing, stroking. For most of the journey they just smiled and stared out of the window, but they saw nothing, their whole attention given to the tips of their bodies that were intertwined.
It was the same in the lift at the hotel. They stood at the back, behind the other guests, and shared a secret with each other.
Once in the hotel room, there was no place for nerves. Grace didn’t even remember she’d had any as they began to kiss and peel layer upon layer of clothing from each other. Sometimes they were hungry and impatient, sometimes slow and teasing.
She was lost. Lost somewhere where there was only Noah. Noah’s hands, Noah’s lips.
When the last of the barriers between them had been stripped away, he slid his hands down her naked torso and she shivered with delight. Then he scooped her up in his arms so she was cradled against his heartbeat and carried her to the bed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MAKING love with Noah was like nothing else Grace had ever experienced. It was like handling raw fire, but without getting scorched—well, only in a good way. He was so strong, so totally focused, yet so devastatingly good that, for a few moments, she was incoherent with pleasure. Her whole body thrummed.
She could feel his breath against her shoulder as he lay half-draped over her. His ribs moved up and down, up and down, in a deep, even rhythm. Grace lay still, taking comfort from it, and let her eyes wander over her surroundings. Light from a street lamp somewhere shone on the ceiling and wall, creating a strip of distorted light, and she stared at it, wondering why she’d woken and why she couldn’t snuggle back into him and sleep.
With Rob, sex had been good—fun, energetic, playful—but this…Noah…
A different league.
She couldn’t kid herself any more. This was no platonic, mutual partnership. This was the real thing. With honest-to-goodness violins playing and birds singing, even though it was nowhere near dawn yet.
She loved Noah.
And so much for it being safe. It was grown up, all right. Big and scary and very, very dangerous with sharp teeth. No wonder she’d made excuses to avoid getting close to it all these years. She should have listened to her instincts and stayed the hell away.
But then Noah made a sound that was half-snuffle, half-snore and pulled her tighter against him and she couldn’t help but smile, even as her eyes filled with tears. Why did the good things in life have to come with a dark opposite? Life and death. Love and hate. Fear and faith. Why couldn’t she love Noah without the threat of losing him? It would always be there, hanging in the background like an unexploded bomb, waiting to detonate when she finally relaxed and believed it had
all been a bluff.
Losing Rob had been bad enough. For months, she’d only dragged herself out of bed in the mornings because Daisy had needed her cereal. Daisy had saved her life back then without even knowing it. Any moments of imbalance on her mother’s part had been quickly countered by a ponytail of dark waves and a cheeky smile.
Grace wriggled herself backwards so she was as close to Noah as she could get, not even a millimetre of air between them. His chest was warm against her back and beating a reassuring rhythm.
Not yet. Not tonight. But the loss would come. One day. It always did.
And she was a coward, too scared to face it.
She gently kissed the forearm wrapped around her and pulled it close so she could lay her cheek against it.
You should have seen it coming, Grace. You do love and marriage and babies, remember? What did you think was going to happen?
Her only hope was that Noah was taking the same journey she was, that they were going to do as he’d said and work out how they felt together.
The next couple of days were exactly what a honeymoon in Paris should be. Grace and Noah stayed in bed and ordered room service quite a lot, making love whenever the mood took them, which seemed to be pretty often. Even Daisy would have been shocked that her old fogey of a mother could have such an appetite for nothing but Noah. Not that she was going to talk to Daisy about this. In Daisy’s own words, that would be TMI—too much information. For both of them.
On their last morning, after breakfast in bed, which had turned into we might as well stay here for lunch too, Grace snuggled into Noah, her head on his chest and his arm tucked round her.
Even though they were married, there was so much she didn’t know about him. It had all happened so quickly that they’d bypassed a lot of the getting-to-know-you process. And she wanted to know everything about him, to understand him. Partly because she was hoping he was feeling the same way she was, but it was more than that. She loved him. And that meant every new thing she learned about him was a treasure, something precious to be stored away in her mind and wondered at.
‘You know all about me now—my history with Rob, my disastrous dates between then and now—but you haven’t told me anything about you.’ She poked him in the ribs. ‘That’s the problem with being such a nosy parker. You’re too good a listener. And I’m too good a talker.’
Noah stroked her arm and kissed the top of her head. ‘Seems we’ve found the perfect balance.’
She shook her head against his chest. ‘You must have had a couple of serious relationships in your life. I can’t be the first one. And, anyway, I don’t really count yet, do I?’
A pair of hands reached round her waist and hoisted her up so she was lying on top of him. A wicked gleam was in his eye. ‘Believe me, you count.’ And then he started to trail his fingers up the backs of her legs, higher, higher…
‘That’s not what I meant, Noah. You’re avoiding the issue.’
His fingers stopped moving. ‘Maybe there’s nothing to avoid.’
But the gleam in his eye had been replaced by a shuttered hardness. She slid off him. ‘Maybe there is,’ she said quietly.
Noah pushed himself on to one elbow and launched himself out of bed. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Grace. Subject closed.’
She gathered the rumpled sheet around her as he disappeared into the bathroom and slammed the door. Well, there was her answer. Now she knew exactly how Noah felt.
The face staring back at him from the bathroom mirror was not a pretty sight. His brows were slanted together and his jaw was square and hard.
It had started already.
The probing. The questions.
He just hadn’t thought it would happen so soon. Grace had taken him completely by surprise. They’d been having such a good time, just enjoying the moment, and she’d had to go and spoil it with deep and meaningful stuff. Although he knew he shouldn’t be—she was just doing what women did—he was angry with her.
It had taken Sara much longer to start trying to unravel him but, after a while, the innocent-sounding enquiries had come. What are you thinking, Noah? What are you feeling, Noah? It was like being one giant scab that women couldn’t resist picking at.
At first, he’d tried really hard with Sara. He’d tried to dig deep, had tried to come up with answers she’d like. But it hadn’t been real. He’d invented a version of himself—fictional Noah—whom he’d analysed like one of the characters he created in his books. The real Noah was just as much a mystery to himself as he was to Sara.
So he’d thought hard about fictional Noah’s motivation and what he wanted out of life. He’d prepared pretty speeches to say in case she caught him unawares. Things that Sara wanted to hear, things that would make her happy. After a while he’d got fed up with fictional Noah. The guy had been just too annoyingly perfect.
Maybe that was why his smokescreen had failed after a couple of years. He’d just got sick of the sound of his own voice and he couldn’t stand to regurgitate all that soppy stuff any longer. Then Sara had started talking about glass walls and needing more. She’d picked and picked and picked at him. And when she’d finished gouging away at him, when the scab had finally lifted, she’d discovered the truth. Underneath, there was nothing. And then she’d left.
He really didn’t want Grace to leave.
The last couple of days had been amazing and, despite his glass wall, he’d felt closer to the love thing than he’d ever felt before. But still there was something stopping him. He just wasn’t that deep. There was nothing there to give.
So, he’d just have to distract her or, like Sara, she’d pick, pick, pick and discover what was under the scab that had reformed itself into a hard little shell. No healthy new skin. Just an empty space.
He took a shower to give himself and Grace a few minutes to calm down. As he towel-dried himself he hoped to God she wasn’t crying. Anything he said to crying women just sounded trite. He normally made things worse.
But Grace wasn’t crying when he re-entered the bedroom. She was getting dressed—noisily. She was banging doors and stomping from wardrobe to bed and back. He intercepted her.
‘I’m sorry, Grace. I didn’t mean to snap at you.’
See? Even though the words weren’t over-the-top and gushy, they still sounded fake to his ears, like lines in a play. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean them, just…that he didn’t feel anything when he said them.
She stopped and looked at him, a shoe in one hand. He suddenly felt as if he’d been sliced up, put on a slide and shoved under a microscope.
‘I appreciate the apology. I wasn’t trying to pry. I just think we need to get to know each other better.’
He nodded.
He’d thought he’d be safe from that with Grace. Safe, because a marriage based on nothing to do with love shouldn’t require all the painful scab-picking. He’d been wrong. The thought niggled him. He didn’t like being wrong on a general level, but also about this specific thing. If he’d got this wrong, what else was he mistaken about?
Time to distract.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said.
They ended up wandering up to the Seine and onto Les Pont Des Arts. Grace leaned on the railing and watched the slate-grey water rushing below the bridge. Then she raised her head and looked towards the Ille de la Cite, the spires of Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle poking into the sky. It was so beautiful here, all this pale grey stone, the deep blue of the sky, the vibrant green of the trees that lined the river.
Noah came up beside her and they stared at the water in silence.
He seemed so relaxed, so charming. And she’d not seen anything beneath that until today. It was like the river. She’d been too blinded by the ripples and light bouncing off the surface to see what nasty stuff was lurking at the bottom. There were huge parts of himself that Noah kept hidden and she wanted to know why. She wanted to know why he camouflaged himself so well.
Noah reached out and took h
er hand.
She didn’t pull away, even though she was still smarting from his remark that morning. She accepted his hand, curling her fingers around his warm skin. He was trying, and that was good enough for now.
They walked to the end of the bridge and down a flight of stone steps so they were walking on the grey stone quay right next to the Seine. Other couples passed them, hands caught just like theirs, and Grace knew she should feel a sense of comradeship with them.
I’m in Paris and in love too.
But it wasn’t quite the same, was it? Those other couples were in love with each other.
Now they were close to the silver birches lining the bank she could see that their markings were not just the normal black slits in the pearly bark. Up the entire trunks of every tree, covering every possible square inch, were names and declarations of love in many different languages and scripts. She recognised some English and French and Japanese, but others she just couldn’t put a name to. She’d bet Noah would know. But Noah wasn’t looking at the trees; he was looking at the river and muttering something about Napoleonic architecture.
An echo of the premonition from her wedding day turned her toes to ice.
Noah didn’t love her.
He might never love her.
And he would never carve her name on a tree in Paris.
Back in London, things improved—at least on the surface. Noah and Grace began their lives together. They ate at nice restaurants, attended parties and other functions up in town, and generally stuck to the plan they’d had when they’d married. Noah wrote and Grace started looking at prospectuses for catering colleges, even though she wasn’t sure any more that she wanted to go back to being a student, but it seemed she should explore the option, even if she didn’t pursue it.
And they made love.
For Grace, it was the only thing that kept the creeping cold feeling at bay. Unfortunately, it wasn’t helping with the head-over-heels, desperately in love with Noah thing. It was all such a cliché. Every time he looked at her now, her heart did a triple flip. When he smiled, she just wanted to melt. And when he took her in his arms and touched her with such tenderness, she thought her heart would break with the beauty of it.
