The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) (33 page)

I would probably never know.

All I could do was help Marie, be grateful to Louis for giving me that—yes, he had given that—and . . . carry on.

I wanted to believe that time would be medicine, a painkiller if not a cure. With enough of the salve, I might forget the feelings until everything we had shared was just a painting in my mind. A singular, two-dimensional artistic representation that portrayed, in a forty-second glance, the brief love affair gone wrong. A brokenhearted, naive peasant girl.

I climbed the last steps, glanced at the restaurant sign, La Petite Palourde, and prayed it was air-conditioned inside. I also hoped, looking back over my shoulder, Marie would not make the connection just yet.

I thought of the Michel Gatineau who had introduced himself at the chef’s home dinner event Chloé had arranged. How he’d said he was a restaurateur. How he called his girlfriend
ma petite palourde
.

How
no one
in my life seemed to be who they said they were.

I unclenched my fists. What a rat bastard. As soon as I’d made the connection earlier today, I
knew
. Why I had felt a certain comfortableness with the friendly stranger in the chef’s home kitchen. How he’d asked about my mother, to get a read on me. How he had probably tried to wiggle his way into my French MeetUp tutoring sessions (had he been tracking my phone?), and invited me to meet him here. Why had he canceled that day? Had he realized I’d been followed by one of Louis’s men?

I had called the restaurant an hour ago, and left a message for a reservation for two under LaSalle. No more games,
Dad
. I would know what kind of man he really was any minute now. He had a lot to account for, least of all to me. He owed Marie. He owed me to help her now.

I didn’t wait for her to get to the top step. I turned the door knob—
it wasn’t locked
—and let myself into a dimly lit room, breathless. The wall of windows declared it was dusk, and as Marie joined me from behind, I quickly scanned the elongated room. It was empty, except—my eyes narrowed—for one table set for three, glowing with candlelight.

Oh my God. At least Laurent Gautier wasn’t a coward. I found this far more consoling than I ought to have.

Sheer fear cut me to the quick. Had I done right thing coming here? Would Marie survive this? The man she thought was dead, being alive, back in our lives?

Too late now.

“Oh,” I heard Marie exclaim, arriving behind me.

“Yes, I booked the whole restaurant,” I muttered as cover, “so we could be alone. Can you two wait outside this time?” I said to my guards in French. “Sorry, I will order something for you to go.” They hesitated, and looked to Marie, whose face was full of disagreement.

“Marie, I wanted to surprise you. It is a celebration of all your success, and a way to thank you. Privately.” I had never asked for anything before. She owed me this after all her late nights and I could tell this crossed her mind.

She pursed her lips, nodded at the officers, and we proceeded to the table. We sat down across from each other, and the silence in the space was a sort of delirium. I sat on the edge of my seat strained with nauseating anxiety.

A man moved out from the kitchen, and I stiffened. He was carrying a water jug. Not Laurent. “Fleur, what is this really about?” she asked me, after dabbing the sweat on her lip and brow. The waiter poured water in our glass. “Who is this third person joining us?” She motioned to the place setting.

I cleared my throat. “Mom, I—”

Her eyes popped open wide. That was the first time I’d called her mom, at least, that she’d heard. I grabbed my water glass and took a big gulp.

“Fleur, you make me nervous.” She looked around, half smiling.

“I had a hunch,” I started. “I had a couple of hunches, actually, and I think I was right . . .”

My voice trailed off as I watched a tall debonair man, the one and the same from the at-home chef dinner, come out of the kitchen. His hair was full and silver, his features a tad too refined for the less fair sex. He was so well groomed one would instantly assume he went to a spa weekly for massages and manicures. Crushing anxiety stole my breath. This was a mistake. Mom, heeding my wide open eyes, turned to look, and—as recognition hit her—her body physically jolted.

“Marie,” said my father, quietly, frowning.

My mother’s face was a ghostly mask. The shock was too much. He turned to me.

“Fleur. My clever, clever daughter. It is lovely to see you again.” He leaned over and greeted me with a trio of kisses.

I didn’t move, or respond. I was paralyzed by horror. Tears were forming in Marie’s eyes as she turned her glazed lenses onto me. He leaned over, without hesitation, and kissed her square on the lips. She didn’t move. He whispered something.

Laurent sat down with us, two mannequins, took out his serviette, placed it on his knee, and proceeded to pour champagne. “You will need this, Marie. And to celebrate our reunion, I think,” he said, winking at me.

Marie was beginning to accuse me with her eyes, like she had with Louis, and this time I had no defense. I felt like an executioner. A repentant executioner.

“Do not look at our daughter that way, Marie. She had no idea until recently,
c’est vrai
?” he asked me. “I did not intrude on her life or interfere in any way, did I?”

I shook my head. I would delve into how he had tracked me, how he knew about my MeetUp tutoring and the dinner with Chloé, another time.

“Not that I didn’t want to, Fleur,” he added. “I apologize for the deception of our one encounter. I simply had to see you, touch you”—I thought of his warm hand on my arm—“hear your laughter. But I stay away because I knew it was Marie’s wish. It was, after all, why you stole
my child
from me all those years.”

He’d turned on Marie, and slowly she focused away from me and onto Laurent. I watched her clasp her throat, as though she were choking.

I never once thought Marie had given me away to punish Laurent. But now . . .

I’d never seen Marie scared before. I wanted to throw myself at her feet and tell her everything was going to be okay. I wanted to beg her to tell me everything was going to be okay.

“Let’s go,” I stood up quickly. “I’m sorry. I thought this was . . . Marie?” She stared up at me from her chair as though I were a stranger. She shook her head.

The woman who gazed over Laurent was not the woman I knew. She was young and so vulnerable. Her face was plastered tense, with one question:
Why?

“But . . . you’re dead. I checked the body myself,” she said in French.

I sat back down, helpless. I had brought us here. What did I think would happen? I had hit the button marked “blow-up.”

“I wanted to retire.” He shrugged. “Dying was necessary to create the illusion. Imagine my surprise when one week after my funeral, the love of my life flies to America, and soon brings back a beautiful young woman she introduces to the world as her daughter.”

Marie hardened. She glanced at me protectively. “I wanted to keep her safe—from you.”

Laurent scoffed, looked at me, and down at his empty plate.

“No. You wanted to punish me.”

“No. I wanted to save her from a life of lies with you.”

Laurent smiled coolly at me, eyes astute.

“She worries
I
will corrupt you. Fleur, are we here tonight because of me? Or because of your mother?”

I gasped.

My mother’s back stiffened.

“Why did you call this meeting so suddenly?” he asked. “Tell us. We would both like to know, I think we both deserve to know,” said Laurent.

Anxiety burned up my gut, spilled into my throat.

I stared back and forth at my parents, and felt tears run down my cheeks. My mother said, “You found him?”

I nodded, wiping them away.

“I made the connection. With
petite palourde
, here at the restaurant, at the chef dinner, and with the letters you showed me, Mom.”

Laurent turned to Marie. “You kept my letters.” He was pleased. Marie was a wall, fortifying her nation. She turned back to me.

“But why, Fleur? Why this way, now? Did you wish to see him? I would not have stopped you,” she said quietly.

“You stopped her for twenty-three years!” he barked, and she jumped in her chair.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted, surprising myself. “You abandoned her. Do you know the damage you did? Do you have any idea? You have no right to cast judgment!”

I heard Marie gasp, and I glared at his light green eyes—the same color as mine. I liked to believe I saw pain inside, but there was anger, too.

Oh God, it was going the exact opposite way I had hoped. A soap opera.

“I did what I thought was right for your mother,” he answered firmly. “She was unhappy with my lifestyle. I told her I could not change who I was, as I could not change who she was. I don’t understand your reaction. She has had a highly successful career, which is what she always wanted.”

Oh God. I stared at Marie, who stared at her plate.

“Is that what you told yourself?” I asked him.

His eyebrows clenched together.

He was wrong. That was not what she’d always wanted. I remembered her words,
“I never knew goodness was a choice.”
It had been a way, thrust upon her, by someone else’s choice.

“Marie,” he said quietly. “I stayed away because I thought you were happier without me. But . . . I never gave you up. I checked in from time to time. I was at your father’s funeral.”

She gaped at him—pale. Maybe she could see what her life to date had been like, shown to her by a ghost of the past, and she didn’t like what she was seeing.

“You stayed away because you didn’t love me,” she whispered, like a young girl damaged by an older man who should have known better.

“No, I stayed away because I didn’t care for your judgment. You expected me to live with someone who could never accept me?”

“I would have!”

And I exhaled. She wanted a second chance. Goosebumps spread.

“I was so young, Laurent. You think I knew what I really wanted? You made the choice for me. I would have accepted you. I would have,” she whispered, sobbing quietly.

I shuddered from the weight of my mother’s despair, and wished I could leave them alone. “I should leave,” I whispered. “But,” I swallowed, “there’s something else, the reason why we are here.” I absorbed the shock on Laurent’s face. And the loss. Two decades of lost time.

“I need your help. Mom is about to make a terrible mistake. And I am not sure I can stop her.”

Marie’s head popped up. She stared at me red- and wet-faced, and I watched her eyes flicker with darkness. That’s okay, I told myself, longing for a flak jacket. She won’t see me as the enemy later—I hoped. I opened my satchel and with shaking hands, took out my laptop.

She stared at me genuinely confused. Our eyes held an invisible line, a rope, of love, trust, and faith.

I opened it, clicked open the files, so they would play right to the time-stamp when she transfers the drugs, and turned it toward her. She viewed the screen for three seconds, and all light left her face. She closed the lid, quickly, gently, eyes cast down.

“Don’t go through with it,” I said. “You can’t. You can’t let them win. He didn’t hurt me, Mom. He made me stronger.”

Her brows dug deeper and then elevated sky-high. She shook her head as if to say
impossible
.

I got up and went over, kneeling at her chair. I placed my hand on her thigh. “It’s not too late. You have to fix this. You can finish his brother another way. Another day. But you can’t do what you planned.”

She was crying heavily now. “Remember, you once told me if I wasn’t careful, the bad will eat the good. You do have a choice this time. Please, Mom,” I added.

Laurent was watching us with what I suspected was grifter astuteness.

I had thought he could help. His aged eyes were cast with lines that represented years of excess.

Why? Why had I thought someone who robbed for a living could save Marie?

Because—I closed my eyes tight—I wanted the world to be a place where loyalty, trust, and love superseded morality. Because I wanted to live in a world where love wasn’t mere acceptance of the things you couldn’t change or limited by what you didn’t know, but where love could be a source of aspiration.

“Marie,” he said, inhaling deeply, reaching for her hand. “What have you done?”

The tone in his voice was stern but gentle, and full of love.

I rested my forehead on my mother’s knee. Maybe, maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe . . . maybe they could save each other.

Need to ship home clothes, I sighed, sitting on my suitcase after failing to zip it up. Sylvie had offloaded a bunch of her unsold spring wear on me when I resigned yesterday, and I wanted to give some of it to the girls.

The decision to go home, which I’d brooded over for three weeks, arrived as an epiphany the night before. I was listening to music and writing a blog about infinite variations in recipes and
bam
. Wow, I thought. How lucky was I to have two lives, and two families, two countries to call home.

And I knew then that going home wasn’t an ending. I was simply putting the path that lay ahead for me in Toulon on pause. And when I returned? I would be a different person. Events and the grace of time would make sure of that. Just as my mom and the girls in Austin would find me changed from my time here.

I found a last-minute seat on a flight and booked it.

I stared at the made bed, and my phone, anxiety surging in me. Still, I would miss the here and now. The pace of life in France was undeniably better than in America. Being surrounded by the architectural beauty of the past slowed down the urgent sense of future I had always felt in America. Shopping in street markets under the watchful eyes of gargoyles perched high, you live your life surrounded by centuries-old monumental greatness—why rush to chase your own? I’d even come to appreciate the way French culture had disciplined my generosity of heart. I didn’t need to be a revolving door when it came to assuming the best in others. Kindness wasn’t anointment.