“She’s my oldest friend.” My mother tries to defend her. “She would never lie to me.”
My father puts an arm across her shoulders and brings her closer. “Chérie.”
“She knew,” she whispers. “She had to have known.”
“Finally,” my grandmother says. “She’s a gold digger, and she was trying to trap Alex, and so help me god,” she says, doing the sign of the cross, “on your grandfather’s grave, I would have objected in church. He never loved her.” She reaches in her bag and takes out a folder, opening it. “This is the look of a man who loves,” she says and shows us a picture taken last night when we were walking into the Eiffel Tower. I was holding Meghan’s hand, and she was smiling looking down, and my head was turned looking at her. It was an innocent picture, but it showed everything.
“How did you get this?” I say, taking the picture from her and looking only at Meghan.
“I have my sources,” she says. “The question is now what?”
“I’m going after her,” I tell them and then look at my father, who smiles at me.
“You’re going halfway around the world for this woman you’ve known for two days?” my mother asks, shaking her head. “She probably just wants your money.”
“Not a chance,” Giselle says. “If Meghan knew all this, there is no way she would have given him a second look.”
My mother glares at her. “You’ve met this woman?” She shakes her head. “It’s too much.”
“I’m getting married.” Giselle takes that moment to break the news. “I’m in love with Guy, and we’ve been together for two years.”
“Four,” he says from beside her. “Four, ma beauté.” My beauty, he calls her.
“I want to be married in three months,” she says, and my mother gasps.
“That’s nearly impossible,” she says. “I can’t plan a wedding in three months.”
“Everything is already done,” she says, shrugging. “I was marrying him anyway, so I planned it myself. The only thing I didn’t pick is the dress. I needed my mother there and grand-mère.”
“We need to release a statement,” my father says.
“I don’t give a shit what you say,” I tell them and then look back down and up. “That’s not true. You tell them we broke our engagement five months ago. That you wish Jacqueline and the father of her child all the best in her future.”
“What about the woman?” my father asks me. “Meghan,” he says her name.
“Tell them nothing about her,” I tell him, and my mother cuts in.
“That will just get them more curious,” she says.
“I don’t even know if she will talk to me, let alone want to be with me. I live in Paris; she lives in Canada,” I tell them, trying to let myself down easy.
“The heart knows no distance,” my grandmother says. “Bring her back. I want to meet her.”
Giselle laughs. “She’s amazing, and he’s going to have to get his knees bruised to get her back here.”
“I need the company plane,” I tell them and then turn to go pack. “I’m also taking a week off.”
“It’s almost harvest,” my father says.
“A week won’t kill harvest, Father,” I tell him. “It’s one week.”
“I think I should come with you,” Giselle says. “I’ve never been, and Kate and Diana invited me.”
“You have a wedding to plan. You aren’t going anywhere,” my mother says, and I stop listening to them to go into my room and finish packing. I pick up my phone and send her another message.
Please, please call me.
I see that it’s three o’clock. She’s been in the air for four hours. I take the phone and call the pilot. “I need a lift to Canada,” I tell him, and he laughs.
“Canada?” he asks again, making sure he heard right. “I’ll fill out the manifest and get everything ready. Give me an hour and we can go.”
“Perfect,” I tell him and go back into the room where the wedding planning has already started. “I leave in an hour.” My phone now beeps with a new message from my private secretary.
It’s a picture of a new newspaper with Jacqueline on the cover crying.
Je suis anéantie.
I roll my eyes and show my father, and he just nods, taking out his own phone and calling someone. “L'envoyer,” Send it out, he says and hangs up.
“Maybe you being gone will be a good thing till this smooths over.”
My grandmother throws her head back. “It’s just beginning.”
And she isn’t wrong.
Chapter Fifteen
Meghan
“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” Diana says when the plane takes off and then looks at Kate. “You think Giselle would have let her brother cheat?”
“We don’t even know them that well,” Kate says and then looks at me. “The good news in all this,” she says, and I look at her.
“There is no good news in any of this. Nothing,” I tell her. “I fell in love with him, and he just played me.” I wipe away a tear angrily.
“I was going to say the good news is that you looked amazing on the cover, and that,” Kate says, “I don’t think he was playing you.”
“I don’t either,” Diana says. “Not with the way he looked at you.”
“I can’t talk about this right now,” I say to them and look out the window at the clouds, watching them move. Last night plays through my head, looking into his eyes while he made love to me. “I would have felt it, wouldn’t I?” I turn and ask them. “If he was playing me, don’t you think my gut would have told me?”
“When Derrick was cheating on me with someone, I had a suspicion,” Kate says. “A woman knows.”
“I mean, not always,” Diana says. “Sometimes you’re just too swept up in the moment to think anything of it.” I don’t answer her. I just close my eyes, but it’s the wrong thing to do because all I do is see his eyes, his smile, everything replays. Everything. Sleep drags me under, and my dreams become nightmares.
The bumping of the wheels wakes me up, and looking out the window, I see that we have just arrived. I get up as soon as the seat belt light goes off to stretch my legs and grab my phone even though I don’t switch it from airplane mode. I grab my bag and follow the girls out. It’s almost as though I’m floating outside my body while I go through the motions through customs and grab my bag.
We walk through the parking lot. “This is not how I thought the return flight would be,” Diana says, and her phone pings ten times in a row. She grabs it out of her pocket and reads her messages while we load the car.
I get dropped off first. “Are you sure you don’t want us coming in?” Kate asks as she helps me take the luggage out. “We can do laundry and order Chinese.”
“No, it’s good,” I tell them both and then walk up the three steps to my front door into my little townhouse. I unlock the door and push it open, the silence greeting me. I walk in, dragging the luggage with me, and leave it by the stairs while I go into my kitchen and grab a bottle of water. I walk to the patio door and open the shades a bit to let some light in.
Grabbing my luggage and making my way up the stairs, I walk into my bedroom and just open those shades a bit too. I turn, looking around my bedroom. It’s the first room in the house I did, and I spared no expense. It’s my own oasis, so I painted the room a crisp white. I had the base of the king-size bed specially made in a light beige material with a matching headboard. The thick white down comforter is tucked in neatly on the side. The gray and beige pillows placed neatly. I sit on the custom-made wooden bench with gray velour top. I kick off my shoes and peel myself out of my sweater, tossing it on one of the beige chairs in the corner. It was the wrong thing to do. His smell hits me right away, and the sob that I have been holding at bay finally comes out. I hold my stomach and let it out—the hurt, the heartbreak, the sadness. All of it the minute I saw his fiancée. His fiancée he’s going to marry.
She’s going to wake up to him
every single morning and share his laugh, his smile. I get up and walk to my private bathroom. I turn on the light and walk to the walk-in shower, then start the water and slowly undress. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror. I avoid thinking that once I step under that water, I will wash him away forever. I get under the rain shower, close my eyes, and take in the heat. I wash every single inch of my body slowly, wondering how to wash away all the memories. I get out of the shower and put on my plush white robe and walk into the hallway to unpack my suitcase. Separating everything, I toss my stuff in the wash.
I walk to my office, open the door, and turn on the light. After turning on my computer on my white desk, I walk out of the room and go downstairs to start the kettle while I search the pantry for something to snack on. I grab some cookies and make tea. I grab my phone and bring it upstairs with me. Sitting at my desk, I click open my email and listen to the dinging. “One week off and I have six hundred emails,” I say out loud. I plug my phone in and begin clearing out my emails.
After making my to-do list for tomorrow, my eyes finally start to burn, so I turn everything off, grab my phone, and make my way to bed. I toss my phone on the bed, go switch the load of clothes, and then go back to bed. I slide under my cover still in my robe and grab the remote. I check the PVR for shows when my house line rings.
“Hello?” I answer.
“What in the ever-loving fuck are you doing?” I hear Kate shout into the phone. “Hold on, I’m merging the call with Diana. Diana,” Kate says, and she just hums.
“Meg,” Diana says. “Seriously, we were about to call the cops for a wellness check since I can’t move off the couch, and Kate is buried in legal notes.”
“A wellness check? What the hell is that?” I ask them, scooting down into the bed.
“We’ve been calling you for over three hours,” Kate says, and I hear crunching.
I sit up and grab the phone. “I’m still on airplane mode,” I tell them and switch it online.
The phone goes to searching for my network. “I just turned it on. I was working.”
The sound of pinging fills the room, and I bring the phone up and my heart stops when I see the texts come in from Alex. “How does Alex know that I saw the picture?”
“Um …” they both say at the same time.
I open the texts, and there are four from Alex and one from Giselle. I don’t read them. Instead, I listen to Kate. “I may have texted him and told him that I hoped his balls shriveled up into tiny grapes.”
“What?” I whisper.
“I may have also sent him some not nice choice words. Most were the F word, but the idea in general was that he was a douchebag,” Diana says. “Oh, and I used the knife emoji.”
“Good one,” Kate says, and I just shake my head. “What did the text say?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked yet,” I tell them, and then I hear a soft knock. “Someone is at the door.” I sit up and then hear it again, a soft knocking. “Did you guys really call the cops?”
“No,” Kate mumbles. “We were going to come ourselves.”
I get up and walk down the stairs. “Well, someone is at the door.”
“Answer it,” Diana says. I get to the door and open it, taking in the guy standing there. He’s leaning against the doorjamb with his head down, and then he looks up. The anguish in his eyes stops me from talking. I’m stuck to the spot, and I can’t move. I can’t do anything but blink. My hand comes down off my ear as I hear Diana and Kate shouting into the phone and disconnecting.
“Meghan,” he finally says, his voice almost in a whisper.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him. “How did you know where I lived?”
“I needed to see you,” he says, standing up now, his eyes cloudy. “I have to explain.”
I shake my head. “You have to explain?” I ask him. “What do you have to explain? You came all this way to tell me that you’re not engaged?” I ask him.
“It isn’t what it looks like,” he tells me. “Please, can you give me five minutes to explain, and then I’ll be gone?”
My head tells me to slam the door, to tell him to get lost, to tell him that he’s a liar, but my heart can’t close it, my heart can’t say the words. Instead, I move to the side. “You have five minutes,” I tell him, and he nods and comes in. I follow him to my living room, and he stands there looking around. He starts to pace. “I had this whole speech prepared,” he starts. “I spent the whole plane ride going over everything that I would say.” He looks at me. “But then when you opened the door, I saw your face, and everything went out the window.”
“Alex,” I say softly, shaking my head and trying to be strong.
“It’s not my child.” He starts there. “She was going to pretend it was to keep everyone happy but”—I shake my head—“the child isn’t mine.” He’s pacing now. “She was having an affair with her bodyguard.” He laughs sarcastically. “Guess he really took his job seriously.”
“Alex,” I say, twisting my hands, and he puts his hand up to stop me from talking.
“Our mothers are best friends, so I’ve known her forever. One night last year, we ran into each other in one of our restaurants. We spent the night talking, and I asked her out the next day.
Seven months later, we were engaged.” He says the words that make my neck burn, and my stomach roil. “We were sitting down at the dinner table, and I was talking to my father when I heard someone clink their glass. When I looked over, Jacqueline was standing there with a champagne glass, and she went on to tell them we were getting married and she was carrying my child. I looked over at her, and by the time I wrapped my head around it, I was being congratulated. Something was holding me back.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Something was wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint it.” The pain is in his face for me to see.
I step forward to go to him, but he looks up at me. “It was Giselle who told me. She had caught Antoine and her in bed together.”
“Oh my god,” I say softly.
“I’m not engaged, and I’m not going to be a father,” he says. “I never lied about any of it,” he says softly. “Nothing about us was a lie or was fake or was staged. Nothing.”
“You came all this way to tell me this?” I ask him softly, and he nods. “You could have called me.”
“Would you have answered?” he asks, and I shake my head, making him laugh, the sound making my heart feel full again. “So I had to come all this way.”
“How long are you here for?” I ask the dreaded question.
“One week,” he says. “I was hoping that maybe we could spend some time together.”
“I have to work,” I tell him.
“What about at night?” he asks me. “We could get together at night.”
“Where are you staying?” I ask him, my heart starting to beat faster and faster.
“I have no idea. Giselle said she would handle it when I ran out of the apartment.” He shrugs.
“I have an extra bedroom,” I tell him, and he looks straight at me; the butterflies start again in my stomach, my palms get sweaty, and my heart starts to race. “It’s nothing like yours.” And I can’t finish because he’s stalking to me, taking my face in his hands, and smashing my lips with his. I put my hands on top of his, and then I press into him, my hands going to his neck now as I try to get even closer to him. We kiss till we are breathless; I kiss him till he slowly lets my lips go.
“Meghan,” he whispers, placing his forehead on mine. His arms wrap around my waist, and my hands go to his chest, feeling his heart beating. “I swear I never lied to you. I swear to you that I will never, ever lie to you.”
I swallow down the lump forming in my throat, I swallow down all the fears I have, and I swallow down all the reasons why this will never work. I swallow it all, and instead, I whisper, “Or you can just stay in my room.” His hands drop from my waist, and he scoops me up in his arms. I put my head on his shoulder, and we don’t talk while he wal
ks up the stairs, or when he walks into my room and smiles.
“This is you,” he whispers, placing me on the bed. I sit down, and he stands between my legs, taking the elastic out of my hair and letting my hair fall. “I spent the past eight hours replaying every single minute we spent together. I kept thinking of the way your hair fell and how it felt like silk between my fingers,” he says, running his hands through it. “The way your eyes light up when you smile.” He rubs my cheek with his thumb. “The way your breath hitches right before I kiss you.” He holds my face again. “I replayed everything.” He leans down to kiss me. “Everything,” he whispers. Pushing me on my back, he proceeds to show me everything that he remembered.
Chapter Sixteen
Alex
I look down at her, and my heart suddenly starts beating again. For eight hours, I went over my speech, and if I’m honest, I was expecting to grovel so much I’d be lucky she’d let me sleep on the couch, let alone in her bed with her.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her, running back downstairs and grabbing my bag from outside on the porch. Running back upstairs, I find her standing next to her bed with one knee on the bed and her robe discarded beside it, leaving her naked. My bag drops to the side of my feet, and I walk to her, or pounce, and I don’t stop until my hands are lifting her up and throwing her onto the bed with me falling on her.
Our hands are frenzied. I’m trying to squeeze her tits and roll her nipples, and she’s trying to rip the shirt over my head and get me naked. When she finally gets my shirt over my head, I bend down and take a nipple deep into my mouth, biting it at the end. Her back arches, and she moves her hand to my belt where she tries her best to focus on getting the button open, but I take my hand and run it down her stomach and through her slit, finding her wet. Her moaning is the last straw that makes me snap. I slide down her body, throw open her legs, and hold her thighs back as my mouth feasts on her. My tongue slides in her, and her fingers slide into my hair. She raises her hips to my mouth and presses my head more into her. My eyes look up at her while I tongue fuck her and move one of my fingers to her clit, making her jump. She tries to rotate her hips to get the friction she needs going. I laugh while I suck in her clit that she wants me so desperately to rub. I slide one finger in her, then another, and I slowly kiss my way up her stomach as my fingers continue to fuck her. Her eyes close as I slowly lick her neck all the way to her ear, sucking in her lobe.
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