“Same here,” Lacey said.
“But you were coming down the stairs…” Giselle’s gaze drifted up, then she grinned knowingly. “I see. You are coming from an assignation with someone in this house.”
“What about you?” Lacey asked. “You’ve obviously been out with someone.” Her gaze fixed on the smeared lipstick and she hazarded a guess. “Was it Monsieur Gautier?”
“The man is impossible,” Giselle protested. “He presumes to tell me how to cook and he thinks he is so charming.”
“He is charming,” Lacey said. “And even if you won’t admit it, I think he’s charmed you.”
Giselle’s smile was warmer now. “There is something to be said for a charming man,” she said. “Come, let us go to the kitchen and make that chocolate. I also know where there are some decadent butter cookies I have been saving for a special occasion.”
Once in the familiar sanctuary of the kitchen, Giselle tied on her apron and heated milk while Lacey grated chocolate. Giselle whipped the chocolate shavings into the hot milk until it frothed, then poured the drink into two thick mugs, topped with more shaved chocolate. She produced the tray of cookies and the two women sat on either side of the worktable.
“Ahh,” Giselle said after her first sip. “Even the great Hugh Gautier has not had chocolate better than this.”
“I bet Monsieur Gautier likes you precisely because you’re not impressed with him,” Lacey said. “In any case, you’ve obviously enchanted him.”
Giselle nodded. “When I am with him, I fall under his spell, but when we are apart…” She gave a Gallic shrug. “I wonder what I see in him. Or any man. They are all so full of themselves.”
Lacey thought of Marc. She wouldn’t have described him as self-absorbed. Rather, weren’t all people, including her, caught up in their own lives? Learning how to mesh your life with that of another was one of the tricks of a successful relationship, she thought.
“And you, were you with that arrogant American, Monsieur Kendrick?” Giselle asked.
“Marc isn’t arrogant,” she said. “He’s really very nice.”
“They all are when they want you in their beds.” Giselle sipped her chocolate. “Then again, a man’s bed is not always a bad place to be. It’s usually out of it that trouble starts.”
“I think I’m in love with him.”
Lacey hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, least of all to Giselle, but there they were, hanging in the air between them.
To her surprise, Giselle did not mock or laugh. “If it is true, I am happy for you,” she said softly. “I only hope he returns the feelings.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope so, but…how do you know if love is enough?”
Giselle shook her head. “I am not the person to ask about love. I have not been lucky in love. But wasn’t there a song…love is all you need?”
“But is it?” Lacey set aside her half-empty cup. “Marc and I are so different. He makes his living traveling to dangerous, exciting areas all over the world.”
“Even world travelers like someone to come home to.” Giselle studied her over the edge of the cup. “Besides, you are not exactly a homebody. You came all the way to France to study at Le Cordon Bleu. You could travel with him. Or he could decide to stay home with you. Or you could arrange passionate meetings all over the world in between assignments.”
“That sounds like a strange way to live,” Lacey said. “It seems to me the whole point of being in love is wanting to be together.”
Giselle waved her hand. “People live all kinds of lives. Who says you can’t have a great love if you don’t see your lover every day?” She smiled. “Maybe it’s even better that way. The passion does not fade from boredom.”
Giselle made it all sound terribly romantic, but Lacey had her doubts. She enjoyed her daydreams, but she knew reality was not as neat and pretty. “I’ve made mistakes before,” she said. “Falling for the wrong man. My mother says I choose men who are too different from me—that if I want to be happy, I should find someone more like myself.”
“Someone from Iowa, U.S.A., who also cooks?” Giselle arched her brow. “I think your mother was trying, the way mothers do, to keep you from leaving home.” She chuckled. “She was probably afraid you would be swept off your feet by some charming Frenchman.”
“Like Hugh Gautier?”
“Like Monsieur Gautier.” Giselle stood and gathered their cups. “I will tell you what I tell myself all the time—men are not worth losing sleep over. Women spend too much time trying to contort themselves to fit the desires of the man of the moment. It is time we expected them to compromise for us.”
“So I should ask Marc to live a different kind of life?” She shook her head. “I could never do that.”
“You don’t have to do that. But don’t think you have to live a different life, either,” Giselle said. “There are all sorts of ways of being in love. If this man truly returns your feelings, you will both find a way to make this work. If not—” she shrugged again “—then he is not worth having.”
Later, Lacey lay in bed for a long while, Giselle’s advice replaying over and over in her head. Marc was definitely “worth having.” He was a man who made her feel things she’d never known with anyone—passion and tenderness, and her own ability to accomplish anything.
She believed Marc loved her, but was that enough—especially for a man who didn’t believe in romance, a man who cut himself off from love and family because being alone was easier than risking being hurt? Lacey could promise Marc she would never hurt him, but such a promise would be a lie. Even she, with all her fantasies, knew that love sometimes hurt.
Marc risked everything to get the photographs that had made him famous. But how could she, a small-town girl whose one talent was cooking, convince him she was worth risking his heart?
THE DAY OF THE WEDDING DAWNED with the bright, clear light that had illuminated the work of famous Parisian artists for centuries. The wedding itself would be a work of art as well, from the masterpiece of a wedding cake that Monsieur Gautier and Giselle had worked late into the night assembling, to the flowers that filled the rooms of the inn that would today truly live up to its name of Milles Fleurs. The bride and her attendants were visions in silk and lace, made even more beautiful by the glow of love surrounding them.
Marc photographed the women in an upstairs bedroom of the inn as they primped and prepared for the upcoming ceremony. He shot Alexis with her attendants, and with her mother and her Great-Aunt Celeste. To his surprise, he found he enjoyed the work, joking with the women and positioning them for the best light. There was none of the urgency here he often felt on a photo shoot. The adrenaline rush that accompanied most of his work was replaced by a sense of accomplishment and ease.
As he wandered from room to room in the inn, and heard the warm greetings from everyone there, he was reminded that he was with family—the people who loved and accepted him not for what he’d accomplished in his life, but simply for who he was. Why had he avoided this feeling for so many years?
For the first time since his arrival at the inn he was able to look upon these wedding photos not as an obligation to be endured, but as his gift to the happy couple. The thought inspired him to work even harder to get the best shots possible, and the ones that would be most meaningful when they looked back upon this record of the day.
He took pictures of Gabe, who was pacing the hallway that led to the garden where the ceremony was to take place. “Times like these, I wish I’d taken up smoking,” Gabe said, straightening his cummerbund for the twentieth time. “It would give me something to do with my hands.”
“Alexis would never kiss you again,” Josh said.
Marc photographed Gabe and the groomsmen together, then Gabe and Uncle Frank embracing. As he watched his cousin and uncle through the camera’s viewfinder, Marc swallowed past a knot in his throat.
He had always told himself he would never enjoy a similar moment o
f closeness with his father, but last night’s conversation with Lacey made him wonder if he did indeed have the power to alter that picture of the future.
He hadn’t seen Lacey since she’d slipped from his room in the early hours of the morning. He’d stood in the doorway of his room and watched her tiptoe away, her bare feet soundless on the hall runner, nearby church bells pealing half-past three.
She was busy now, helping in the kitchen with preparations for the wedding feast. Later, he would find her and they would talk. They had so many things to discuss.
At the appropriate hour everyone gathered in the garden for the ceremony. A large white tent had been erected over a wooden platform and chairs had been arranged in this makeshift chapel. Marc stood at the back, doing his best not to intrude as he photographed the exchange of vows and rings. He caught the moment when Gabe and Alexis first looked at each other as husband and wife, and the joy in their faces left him blinking and wiping furtively at his eyes.
Inside the inn at the wedding dinner, Marc half hoped he would be seated across from his father once more, but Alan and Margie were at the far end of the table. Instead, Marc traded small talk with one of Alexis’s cousins and a friend of Aunt Celeste’s. He watched for Lacey among the servers, but she remained sequestered in the kitchen—the only damper so far on the day.
After dinner there was dancing. The chairs had been removed from the tent in the garden and the family members who were filling in for the ailing band had set up their instruments nearby. Hundreds of white lights draped the tent, sparkling against the growing darkness.
After the bride and groom waltzed to the first song, the others took their turn. Marc stood on the sidelines, feeling out of place among the happy couples. Uncle Frank and Aunt Audrey danced by, and he spotted Shannon in the arms of Josh. Remembering the photographs he’d taken of them playing Monopoly, he couldn’t help but smile.
He spotted his father dancing with Margie. They were smiling at each other. His father looked happy and relaxed, the kind of man Marc might like to know better. As they headed his way, he straightened his suit coat and took a deep breath, then maneuvered among the dancers until he reached them. “May I cut in?” he asked.
Alan looked surprised, but stepped back and allowed Marc to take his place as Margie’s partner. She smiled up at him. “Now this is a pleasure,” she said.
“The pleasure’s all mine.” He quickly discovered Margie was a better dancer than he was, but she covered his missteps nicely. “Where did you learn to dance so well?” he asked.
“Your father and I take lessons,” she said. “He didn’t want to go at first, but now we both enjoy them.”
He filed this away as another tidbit about his father that he hadn’t known.
“You look just like the pictures I’ve seen of Alan when he was younger,” she said.
“I do?” He couldn’t remember seeing a photograph of his father as a young man. After their divorce, his mother had either hidden or destroyed any photos in her possession
“Oh, yes. You’re both so handsome.” Margie’s expression grew more serious. “He’s very proud of you, you know. He tries to buy every magazine or paper where your work appears, and he saves them all.”
With each step Marc’s image of his father was changing, from the callous monster Marc had made him in his youth to someone more vulnerable.
The song ended and Alan returned to reclaim his wife. “You two looked good out there on the dance floor,” he said.
Marc thanked Margie for the dance, then turned to his dad. “How long will you be in Paris?” he asked.
“A few more days. We want to visit the Louvre, see the Mona Lisa—all the things you’re supposed to do in Paris. How about you?”
“I’m not sure.” How long he stayed depended on a lot of things. “I don’t have an assignment due for a while, so I thought I’d stick around for a few more days, at least.” He studied the toes of his shoes, suddenly nervous, then raised his head and looked his father in the eye. “I’d like us to get together for dinner while we’re both here.”
“I’d like that. That would be great.” Alan smiled, an expression so full of relief and joy that Marc wanted to look away but he didn’t. He kept his gaze fixed on this stranger who was yet so much a part of who he was.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Marc said.
Alan nodded. “We do. We’ll talk all you want.”
Another song started and they were separated again, but Marc knew they’d never be as distant after this as they had been before.
He left the dance floor and wandered back into the inn, where other guests had retreated, as well, to chat in the relative quiet, or to rest tired feet. Taylor sat on a settee, feet up, shoes discarded on the floor, a trio of Marc’s younger cousins paying court.
Smiling, he moved past them, headed without even thinking about it for the kitchen.
He found Lacey in the pantry, putting away the silver trays that had been used to serve the wedding dinner. She stood on tiptoe, her back to him, trying to fit a heavy tray into a slot high overhead. “Let me get that for you,” he said, stepping forward and taking the tray from her.
She turned to him, her arms going around him as naturally as if they’d known each other all their lives instead of only a few days. When the tray was in place, he kissed her. She still smelled like almonds and vanilla and cinnamon. Or maybe it was only that he was standing next to the spice rack. He smiled at the thought.
“What’s so funny?” she asked when they ended the kiss at last.
“Was I laughing?”
“No, but you’re smiling. You don’t smile often.”
He nodded. It was true that he had spent many years being serious. He had not seen a great deal in his life to smile about. But that was changing. “I’m smiling because I’m happy.”
Her own smile earned her another kiss. After some time, she wriggled away. “Giselle will come looking for me.”
“What’s the worst thing she’ll do if she finds you kissing in the pantry? She won’t fire you, will she?”
Lacey laughed and shook her head. “No. She wouldn’t do that.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him. “When I came in this morning to fetch the spices for the chicken, I caught her and Monsieur Gautier kissing in this very spot.”
He looked around them, at the shelves full of cans, bottles, bags and boxes. “I never thought of pantries as romantic before, but I guess they can be.”
She took his hand and tugged him out of the little room, into the bigger kitchen. “It was a beautiful wedding, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“I can’t say I’ve been to very many weddings, but Gabe and Alexis looked happy and I suppose that’s what counts.”
“I slipped out into the garden for a few moments during the ceremony,” Lacey said. “Alexis was so gorgeous in her gown—and Gabe looked so in love.”
He nodded and took her hands in his once more. “Do you believe love can be contagious?”
She laughed again and tried to pull her hands away, but he held them fast. Her expression sobered. “What do you mean?” she asked.
He released her hands and leaned back against the worktable. “I mean, I came to Paris dreading being caught up in the sentiment of a wedding. I hated the idea of romance and thought I’d be bored out of my mind hanging out with a bunch of relatives I hardly knew. I thought photographing a wedding was beneath me. But in these past few days I’ve found out I was wrong about all of that.”
“You were?” She crossed her arms under her breasts and tilted her head to one side, studying him, her lips parted in a half smile.
He nodded. “I found out I have a great family, one that welcomes and accepts me even when I’ve been rude and arrogant. Now I think photographing a wedding is a privilege, not a chore. I’ve spent all week observing Gabe and Alexis and all the other people around me who are in love. And now I think I was wrong about romance, too.”
He held out his arms and she
came to him, and rested her head on his chest. “Then I do think love can be contagious,” she said. “Because I think I’ve been in love with you since the first night you walked into the kitchen, demanding to be fed.”
“I love you, Lacey,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “And I’m glad you didn’t send me away empty that night. I didn’t know it then, but my heart was emptier than my stomach had ever been.”
“I’m glad I was able to fill both your stomach and your heart.” She kissed him again, then looked up at him, her expression serious. “What are we going to do now?”
“What do you mean?” The kissing had been fine with him, though later he might persuade her to slip back up to his room.
“I still have another six months of study at the Cordon Bleu. And your job takes you all over the world.”
“I have a few weeks. I can stay in Paris and we can see where our feelings lead. Besides, I do know my way to the Paris airport. There’s no reason I can’t come back here between assignments. And I assume you get vacation here and there.”
“You’ve had a lot of adventure in your life,” she said. “Are you sure coming back to the same city over and over will be enough to you?”
“I don’t care about the city,” he said, cradling her head in his hand. “As long as I come back to the same woman over and over again. Besides, this is new territory for me. Maybe the greatest adventure I’ve taken yet.”
“I guess love is an adventure,” she said. One she hoped would last a lifetime for them.
After all, they were in Paris in the springtime—when anything is possible.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6838-2
A WEDDING IN PARIS
Copyright © 2007 by Harlequin Books S. A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS
Copyright © 2007 by Barbara Bretton
SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE
Copyright © 2007 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
PICTURE PERFECT
Copyright © 2007 by Cynthia Myers
A Wedding in Paris Page 19
