We'll Always Have Paris

by Barbara Bretton

  Alone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  RYAN COULDN’T SLEEP.

  It wasn’t the couch’s fault. Or the fault of the bright late-afternoon sun streaming through the windows or the ancient creak of the elevator as it ferried guests between floors.

  He couldn’t sleep because the only woman he had ever loved was curled up in bed not twenty feet away from him and it might as well have been twenty miles.

  He had sensed her watching him from the doorway. You didn’t love a woman for as long as you could remember and not know when she was watching you. He heard the familiar sound of her footsteps as she stepped back into the bedroom, the silken rustle as she slid between the sheets, her soft rhythmic breathing when she finally drifted off to sleep.

  It would have been an easy thing to climb into that bed with her. To sleep next to her one more time, wake up with her in his arms and slip away before she awoke. His wife had slept through hurricanes. She would never have known.

  Which was one big reason he stayed on the sofa. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to want him there next to her. Anything less was second best.

  They had slept together every night for almost three decades. She would curl into him, her bottom against his groin, soft breasts warm against his arm, and he would listen to the rhythm of her breathing as it grew slower, more regular, and she dropped into sleep. Deep in the heart of the night he felt closer to her than he did during the day, more sure of his place in her heart.

  Had he ever told her that? He couldn’t remember. They had been thrown into the deep end of the pool right from the start. Pregnant, married, and barely eighteen years old—the odds had been against them, but somehow they had loved each other enough to make it work for a very long time.

  They had survived three kids in seven years, more trips to the E.R. than either one of them could count, money problems, job stresses, changing priorities, answered prayers and then suddenly when it seemed like they had left the tough stuff behind and it would be smooth sailing from hereon out they fell apart.

  And he hadn’t even seen it coming.

  Maybe he should have. Maybe she had been sending him signals for years and he hadn’t been paying attention.

  If he had a dollar for every maybe he could score them a suite at the Plaza Athenee for a year and have money left over to send his future grandkids to Harvard.

  He wanted her. He wanted to feel her soft body against him, breathe in the smell of her hair, her skin, her breath. He wanted to make love to her, every inch, every secret place, until the separation, the upcoming divorce, all of it fell away and it was just the two of them alone with their dream of Paris.

  But that wasn’t the way life worked.

  He lay on the couch while his wife slept sweetly in the other room, and he listened to the sound of an ancient elevator creaking its way past the sixth floor until, exhausted, he finally slept, too.

  * * *

  A SURPRISE VISIT from Helene, their chambermaid, startled them both awake a little after six o’clock. Helene didn’t speak much English so they communicated through an amalgam of French, English and hand gestures as she bustled about the suite, fluffing pillows, swapping damp towels for dry fluffy ones, and doing anything else that needed doing.

  “What’s her problem?” Ryan asked as the door closed behind the maid. “She looked pissed off.”

  “She’s accustomed to Celeste,” Kate said after the woman left. “I think we’re too self-sufficient for her taste.”

  Ryan looked sleepy and rumpled. She was very partial to sleepy, rumpled men.

  “I’d better push off,” he said, combing his hair with his fingers. “I need to find a place to stay.”

  It was now or never.

  “I think you should stay here.”

  He looked as surprised as she was by her words. “You’re playing right into Celeste’s hands, you know that. If what you say is true, that’s exactly what she wants.”

  “It’s a beautiful suite,” she said, refusing to heed the alarm bells going off inside her head, “and we’re two mature adults. If you don’t mind the couch…”

  He studied her for what seemed like forever. “The couch is fine. If you don’t mind the company.”

  “There’s safety in numbers. Between the two of us, we should be able to duck our daughters until we get to Milles Fleurs.”

  Lame, Kate. Why don’t you try something subtle, like throwing yourself into his arms?

  “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I can’t wait until ten or eleven o’clock to eat dinner. I’m on American time.”

  She let out a huge theatrical sigh of relief. “I’m so hungry I’d brave an early-bird special.”

  “Get dressed,” he said. “We’re in Paris. Let’s not waste it.”

  * * *

  SHE LOOKED like a girl as she dashed off to the bedroom to dress for dinner. Her curly auburn hair was soft and loose around her face. Her body, slender but curvy, was clearly visible through the thin T-shirt and silky pants. Thirty years and three children later and she was as beautiful to him now as she had been at the start.

  He wasn’t blind to the changes the years had brought with them. The faint lines at the outer corners of her eyes. The narrow white streak over her left temple. The sadness behind the easy smile. They had been through so much together. She had held him tight when he lost his parents. He had been there for her when her mother fought a losing battle with cancer. Nobody on earth knew him the way she did. Nobody else ever would.

  In a few days they would gather with family and friends to celebrate their daughter’s wedding. A few days after that they would show up at their respective lawyers’ offices and sign the papers that officially ended their marriage.

  How the hell had it gone this far?

  He had never met a problem he couldn’t solve, a wall he couldn’t break through. When he set his sights on a goal, it was as good as done.

  Except with Kate.

  There had always been a tiny part of Kate, a spark of something indefinable, that he had never been able to capture long enough to understand. He dealt with raw power and muscle, batting averages and earned-run averages, pass-rush averages and turnovers and receptions. Tangible things you could count up in neat rows and keep track of on a graph or pie chart.

  Kate was quicksilver in his hands. There was nothing calculated about her, no artifice at all, but somehow she managed to keep him slightly off balance in ways he couldn’t predict or defend himself against. She had been the most dependable wife and mother on the planet and still he had found himself waiting for her to wake up one morning and say, “This was fun but I’m out of here,” and take up the life of an artist.

  Which in many ways was exactly what had happened when he took the job in Boston.

  He should never have let her go.

  * * *

  THEY FOUND a cozy little brasserie around the corner from the Plaza Athenee that the guidebooks all claimed made the best roast chicken with rosemary on the planet. A pair of chunky ivory candles glowed softly on the table. The Beaujolais shimmered like rubies in the heavy wine goblets. Music, unfamiliar but wonderful, floated toward them from some unseen source. A Cavalier King Charles spaniel slept at the feet of his owner at the table near the door.

  “The eavesdropping would be great here,” Ryan said, “if I could understand a word they were saying.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Kate said with a laugh. “That couple over there—the ones with the baby asleep between them? You can tell they’re talking about something serious, but so far the only words I’ve been able to make out are chicken and butterfat.”

  “A serious discussion about chicken and butterfat?”

  She pretended to be insulted. “Hey, I only translate. I don’t analyze.”

  They kept up the banter over a seriously delicious dinner of golden roast chicken, crisp pommes frites, and a frisée salad garnished with cornichons. The wine flowed freely and to their surprise
so did the conversation.

  He told her stories about the radio station where he worked, the crazy callers, the pressure to grow the ratings, adjusting to the rhythm of a different city.

  I miss you, Katie. I miss our home, I miss New York, I miss the life we had together.

  She told him about the leap her career had taken. She told him about the new portrait commissions, the small write-up in next month’s Art Journal.

  I must have been crazy. I can paint anywhere on the planet. Why did I let you leave that way? she thought.

  He toasted her latest commission.

  Are you in love with someone else, Katie? Am I too late?

  She toasted his latest market share.

  The girls worry that you might have found someone else, Ryan. Don’t you ever wonder if we’re making a big mistake?

  Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the fact that she had nothing to lose. But she decided to throw caution to the wind.

  “The girls told me you’re seeing someone.”

  “The girls are wrong.”

  “They said she’s a producer at your radio station.”

  “Ellen?” He started to laugh. “We’re friends. She’s married with three kids.”

  “So are you.” Great. Another oops moment for the memory book.

  “I’m not seeing anyone, Kate.” He leveled her with a look. “What about you? Taylor said you went out to dinner with some Wall Street type you met at a gallery.”

  “I did.” She paused for effect, liking the look of pained curiosity in his eyes. “He told me it was time I thought about planning for retirement. He actually deducted the cost of our dinner on his taxes.”

  God, she loved his laugh. Maybe if they had taken more time to laugh in the past few years they would still be together.

  “Looks like our girls were trying to stir things up a little.”

  “I guess it comes with the territory.”

  “For the record, there hasn’t been anyone since you, Kate.”

  She met his eyes across the table. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. I wanted you to know.”

  She nodded. It shouldn’t matter to her but it did. “I’ve been concentrating on my painting. I haven’t had time for anything else.” Was that relief she saw in his eyes? She hoped so.

  “Things are good?”

  “Things are good. I have more commissions than I know what to do with.” She knocked twice on the tabletop. “I think I’m finally on the right track.” She had finally stopped painting from her head and started painting from her heart and from that moment on her fortunes changed.

  “And Manhattan puts you right in the middle of the art world.”

  “Good for business, bad for work,” she said, polishing off the last of her wine. “I find myself driving out to the house whenever I want to settle down and concentrate.”

  “I thought every artist dreamed about setting up a studio in a SoHo loft.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” she said, throwing caution to the wind. “Turns out I do my best work on our old back porch. I don’t think I’ll renew the sublet.”

  “I miss writing my old newspaper column,” he said. “The radio call-in show is fun but I’m just the ringmaster.”

  “Why can’t you do both?”

  “Because I don’t have you.”

  It wasn’t the answer she had expected and she looked down at her empty dinner plate. It was the answer she had been praying for without realizing it for two years.

  “Don’t say anything,” he told her. “Just listen.”

  He said things she had never heard before. At least she hadn’t heard them the way she was hearing them tonight, with her heart wide-open. It wasn’t that he hadn’t told her a thousand times how much he loved her, how much he valued who she was and what she brought to his life. Somewhere along the way she had stopped listening, but she was listening now, letting the words slide past her defenses and find their mark.

  The server wheeled over the pastry cart and they went a little crazy, choosing one of just about everything. They ate and they talked. They sipped after-dinner cordials and talked some more.

  She heard herself telling him about her painting and realized it had been years since she had opened up to him this way.

  “This is the age of photography,” he said, as they held hands beneath the table. “Why do people still sit for portraits?”

  She launched into an art-school explanation of tradition and cultural expectations within certain economic demographics then laughed when he pretended to fall asleep with his face in the cheese platter.

  “From the heart,” he said. “Why do they want what you can give them?”

  She had taken dozens of classes, sat through scores of workshops while he watched the kids. She had let him see the brushes and the paints and the canvases but she had never once let him into the heart of it.

  “Because sometimes it’s magic,” she said at last. “People change when they sit for a portrait. When the chemistry is right, a portrait not only captures the subject’s physical self, it reveals her heart and soul and maybe the artist’s as well. Cameras can capture what was, but it takes the prism of an artist’s creativity to see what might be.

  “I know how crazy it sounds,” she said when she paused to take a breath, “but you asked.”

  “I’ve asked before,” he pointed out gently, “but this is the first time you ever really answered.”

  “Too much information?”

  He shook his head. “Not even close.”

  By the time they reached the dessert course, they were both pleasantly looped. The cordial served with coffee didn’t help matters. Neither did the delicious rum-soaked cake.

  “Do you think they’d mind if we spent the night here?” Kate asked as she finished the last of the cake. “I’d like to curl up and take a nap.”

  “Good thing we didn’t come by car,” Ryan said. “We’d need to hire a designated driver.”

  “I’m not drunk,” she protested. “Just very relaxed.”

  “Don’t try to walk a straight line when you say that.”

  They floated out of the restaurant on a cloud of great food, great conversation and great cognac. Kate thought she saw her brother and his wife walking toward them and she yanked Ryan into an alcove until the coast was clear. Ryan was sure Alexis and Gabe waved at them from the window of a passing cab. He twirled her behind a lamppost.

  They felt lighthearted, silly, deliriously and unexpectedly happy.

  Linking arms as they walked the cobbled street seemed the natural thing to do.

  “There are more Donovans here than back in New York,” Ryan observed. “Who’s watching the city?”

  This struck Kate as hilariously funny.

  “Yep,” said Ryan. “You definitely had too much brandy.”

  Which was probably true, but who cared? She hadn’t been this happy in years.

  “Oh, look,” Kate said. “I see old Mr. Gardner from the hardware store.” She pretended to hide behind Ryan, who ducked his head and pulled up the collar of his shirt to shield his identity.

  Seconds later he grabbed her hand and started running toward the Eiffel Tower.

  “I’m in heels,” Kate protested, “and I’ve had way too much cognac. Why are we running?”

  “Remember Mrs. Harmel?”

  She thought for a second. “Our home-room teacher?”

  “She waved at us from the window of that bistro over there.”

  She couldn’t help it. She started laughing all over again. They saw the kid who used to deliver their daily paper twenty years ago. They saw her Uncle Bob from New Jersey who was eighty-seven and determined to die without ever once setting foot outside the Garden State. They saw Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and an assortment of cousins, high-school classmates and Mick Jagger.

  By the time they reached the base of the Eiffel Tower they had laughed so hard and so long, their sides ached.

&nbs
p; “What if one of our clan really did see us together?” Kate asked as they leaned against a railing and tried to catch their breath.

  He shrugged. “If they did, they did.”

  “How would we explain this?”

  “We’d tell them it was none of their business.”

  “We couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not? It isn’t any of their business.”

  “I know. But they’re family. They—”

  Her words caught in her throat. The sky was the color of spilled India ink, spangled with stars. The sight of the Eiffel Tower soaring up into the darkness, glowing like a column of diamonds, made her shiver.

  He drew her into his arms and she rested her head against his shoulder and let it all wash over her. The sweetness. The wonder. The pain. She couldn’t escape any of it, and for once she didn’t want to.

  For a little while they were just another pair of lovers lost in their own world. Nobody gave them a second glance. This was Paris, after all, and it was only a matter of time.

  * * *

  THEY WERE QUIET as they walked back to the hotel. Something had changed between them. She couldn’t see it or hear it, but she knew it just the same.

  They were moving toward each other across time and space and nothing short of a meteor strike could knock them off course.

  They nodded to the doorman as they crossed the lobby of the Hotel St. Michel. They nodded to the desk clerk as they walked toward the elevator. They made polite conversation with the elevator operator as they creaked and rattled up to the sixth floor.

  They fell silent as Ryan turned the key in the lock and opened the door to Room 625.

  Small lamps burned in the entrance hall and in the sitting room, casting a soft pink glow. A bottle of brandy and two snifters rested on a tray atop a side table next to a small vase of perfect ivory roses. The sheer curtains at the windows billowed in the fragrant night breeze.

  He tossed his keys on the table and turned to face her.

  Kate’s throat went dry. She met his eyes and years of shared history seemed to wrap itself around them, drawing them closer together until she was in his arms and the room, the hotel, even Paris fell away and all that was left was the two of them.