Carnal in Cannes (32 page)
Authors: Jianne Carlo
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Multicultural & Interracial, #African American, #Erotica, #Multicultural, #Contemporary
He broke the kiss abruptly.
“Harry?” Her fingers kneaded his chest, and she cuffed him lightly.
“Martine, what"s wrong?” He cradled her face.
“Why"d you stop kissing me?”
“Because if I continue kissing you, I"m liable to talk myself out of your first swimming lesson,” he replied, tracing her lower lip with his finger. “You scared me spitless when I realized you planned to jump from the balcony to the bridge. After all”—he winked—“we didn"t have a honeymoon night. So swimming lesson first, honeymoon night right after.”
* * *
“Harry?” Martine asked close to dawn.
He grunted, rolled over in the bed, and leaned on one elbow. “Sorry we didn"t get to the swimming lesson. You plumb tuckered me out.”
“What if I truly cannot learn? What happens then?”
“I know you can learn to read and write,” he murmured and hauled her into his arms, tucking her head under his neck. “You"re the smartest woman I know, Martine.” He tipped her chin up and leaned back on the pillow.
“I want you to be proud of me, Harry.”
“I am proud of you,” he said.
“But I am illiterate,” she protested. “It"s shameful.”
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“The shame lies with the government of Haiti,” Harry said. “They failed you, Martine. Let"s make a deal. If you ever want to use the word „shame" in connection with yourself again, I"ll use the word „fornicate" to refer to us making love.”
“Agreed,” she said.
Harry laced their fingers together and brought her knuckles to his mouth.
“When can we go to Port-au-Prince?” She moved her head and skipped a finger over his bicep.
“Don"t know. It"ll depend upon when we can get permission, and I"m not sure you"ll be going, not if cholera, typhoid, and dengue are rampant. What if you"re pregnant? We can"t take that chance. I want you to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario, Martine. It"s possible that your grandmother is not alive.”
She rose on one elbow and lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I know what you"re saying, but here”—she pointed to her heart—“I know Grand-mère"s alive and well.”
“She can live with us if you"d like.”
“Truly, Harry?” Her face lit up like fireworks exploding on the darkest Fourth of July. “You will not mind? She will not be any trouble, I promise.”
“I promise not to mind, even if she turns out to be a nagging mother-in-law once removed.” Harry slid his palm over her belly, and one finger traced her navel.
“Why do you think it"s a girl?”
“I saw her in a dream.” She rolled a shoulder. “In the garden at the farmhouse.”
“Your grandmother can babysit her when we go out for dinner,” Harry remarked as his hand wandered to cup her breast. “Sugar, you know it may take a long time, maybe months before we find her.”
“Oui, yes, I know. I waited four years to be free of Jean-Claude. I have learned to bide my time,” Martine assured him.
Another thought occurred to Harry. “How did you waitress? What about the bills? And the menu?”
“We had no menu. Every day the chef told us the dishes. They wrote it on the blackboard, but I listened and I memorized what he cooked. I know the colors and sizes of the bills and coins, and I can add and subtract.”
“How many times did they tell you the daily specials?”
“Once,” she replied. “I am not stupid, Harry. I listen and I learn.”
“I"d take any odds that when they test your IQ you"ll qualify for Mensa membership,” Harry muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Don"t look like that, Martine,” Harry said as he sat up and hauled her onto his lap. “Mensa membership is open only to people who have a very high IQ.”
“IQ I know.” A smile played with her lips. “How smart you are, n"est pas?”
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“N"est pas,” Harry concurred. “And you, wife, are a very, very smart woman.”
“A smart woman with a pink backside,” she said, wriggling and contorting to try to see her rear.
“Your bottom"s not pink anymore,” Harry commented, “but St. Pete"s suggesting I should make it pink again.”
She smacked his chest. “St. Pete cannot make suggestions, Harry.”
“Oh,” he quipped, arching an eyebrow, and shifted their positions so his cock lay nestled between her legs at the very base of her mound. He tugged her skin to his. St. Pete twitched. “What do you call that, then?”
She giggled, and St. Pete made another suggestion, one she found most intriguing.
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Epilogue
Nine months later
“Harry, stop pacing.” Suresh, who was also pacing but in the opposing circle to Harry"s furious circular stalking, halted and scowled at the other man.
“I"m not pacing,” Harry protested. “I"m walking a circle.”
“Sit,” Sylvie commanded. “Martine is a strong woman. And your son is a warrior.”
Harry glanced at his wife"s grandmother. They hadn"t found Sylvie on their first trip to Haiti, nor the second, but the third time had proved lucky.
Before their second trip Harry had hired a computer-generated-image expert to work with Martine to develop a facial composite of Sylvie. Then he"d had the resulting picture distributed to every aid organization, hospital, convent, and church with an office in the country. He and Terry had also sent copies of the CGI photo to their special-operation team members who in turn had distributed to friends in the forces.
An army-officer colleague and his platoon doing a stint in the northern part of Haiti came across Sylvie. Martine"s grandmother had been wandering the country on foot looking for her granddaughter, certain she was alive. She hadn"t been in the convent during the epidemic but had traveled to the village where they used to live to recuperate from her mild bout of malaria.
The memory of Martine and Sylvie"s reunion would always rank as one of the highlights of Harry"s life. He still found it hard to believe that Sylvie had been living with them on the farm for almost five months now. He didn"t know where Martine"s genes came from, but clearly Sylvie"s had skipped a couple of generations.
Barely five feet, dainty and petite, she shared only one physical trait with Martine—not an ounce of body fat. Sylvie ate like the proverbial horse and yet never seemed to gain weight, though her gaunt cheeks had filled in during her months living in France. The two women, his wife often joked, had never met a food they didn"t love.
Sylvie had refused to live under their roof, insisting that couples needed their own private home, so Harry had purchased a mobile home and situated the bungalow within ten minutes" walking distance from their house. Construction of a permanent crofter-style cottage was due to be completed the following spring.
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While Martine had a difficult time spending money on herself, she loved buying furniture and fixings for both residences. The resiliency both women showed in picking the best parts of their pasts to remember never failed to humble him.
During her pregnancy Martine, aided by a village tutor, learned to read and write, and had decided to go for the French version of a high school diploma. Harry had a nagging feeling that Martine would be contemplating college courses in the not too distant future.
Harry understood his wife better for knowing her grandmother. Sylvie could neither read nor write, yet her manners were flawless, and Harry didn"t doubt she could take tea with Queen Elizabeth without batting an eyelash. She could whip together a five-course menu for thirty people in less than ninety minutes, and had the conversational skills of a seasoned diplomat. Sylvie also possessed a few pieces of exquisite conch-shell jewelry her lover had commissioned exclusively for her. The conch earrings Martine wore were part of the collection, and Martine would inherit the whole if no granddaughters appeared on the scene.
Harry glanced down the hallway and checked the clock on the wall for the kazillionth time. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “How in the tarnation long does this damned birthing take, anyway?”
“Sit, Harry. The time is not yet upon us,” Sylvie remarked, nonchalantly losing stitches on the lacy hat she had started crocheting for the baby. “I see your Geoff has called for an investigation of the orphanages in Haiti. I saw Martine"s camera pictures on the television last night.”
“You"ll be happy to hear Geoff thinks they"ll be able to prosecute everyone involved.”
“Including the police chief?” Sylvie"s needle clicked unrhythmically.
“Yes. Damn it.” He paced faster. “Something must be wrong.”
“This panicking is the reason Martine would not have you in the birthing room.”
“I"m not panicking. It"s taking too long.”
Sylvie stopped knitting and stared into space. She smiled. “Your son is coming into this world within the hour, Harry. He"s doing fine.”
Harry gulped. He"d heard Martine"s grandmother predict their child would be a son a zillion times. “How do you know it"s a boy?”
“The way I knew you would find me.” Sylvie lifted a shoulder, and damned if he couldn"t see the endless siren built into her aged limbs. “I have the sight.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Harry muttered. “What"s his name, then?”
He knew Martine intended to name the baby after him, and though secretly he was prouder than the sole rooster in a record-breaking egg-laying chicken coop, he also worried about his son thinking he"d have to live up to the family name.
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Sylvie must have swallowed a whole canary, Harry knew, because he swore he saw the remnants of the bird, a flutter of tiny yellow feathers, tickle the woman"s cheeks when she smiled. “Casmir Harrison Indiana Ford.”
Loose Id Titles by Jianne Carlo
Valentine Voodoo
White Wolf
The HADES SQUAD Series
A Paratrooper in a Pear Tree
The MEDITERRANEAN MAMBO Series
Manacled in Monaco
Notorious in Nice
Carnal in Canne
Jianne Carlo
Jianne Carlo knows multi-cultural romance. Born to an Indian father and a Hispanic mother intent on becoming a nun, she met and married her Dutch-bred immigrant husband in her last year at college. Their children check off the majority of the boxes under the category, Ethnic Origin.
Add to this the fact Jianne grew up on a sixty by forty Caribbean island where the population mixture represents the world's religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity (and some mixtures no one's dreamed up) and you have a multi-cultural woman who believes the word “Mutt” represents the best of human nature.
She's lived and worked in Canada (Ontario, Vancouver), the United States (San Francisco, various small cities in southern California, Miami, and Parkland) and the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Tortola) and South America (Guyana).
Her passions in life center around her proudest achievements: a happy marriage (measure of happiness varies with level of irritation), and three grown sons of the finest caliber she's proud to call friends, although they're never allowed to forget the mom factor.
