Christmas in Paris (29 page)

“Of course, the ball.” He nodded. “Your dress is stunning, but what are you wearing on your head?”

Isabel felt her hair and wondered how Queen Elizabeth or the Duchess of Cambridge went anywhere, if people kept commenting on their tiaras.

“Antoine lent me the de Villoy tiara. We danced and drank champagne and ate lobster canapés.” She paused. “Then he took me into the Grand Hotel's private library.”

“Did he try to seduce you?” Alec demanded.

“He was about to ask me to marry him,” she replied. “But then he spilled brandy on his slacks and went to clean it up and I realized I'd been wrong all along. I couldn't act on the fortune-teller's prediction as if it was privileged information in a stock trade. The only way to decipher love is to listen to the voice inside you. I've been falling in love with you since we met, and no matter how I analyze the situation, you come up as the answer. I rushed out of the library to tell you and collided with your sister.”

“My sister!” Alec exclaimed.

“Bettina recognized me right away, apparently she had lunch with you at the Crillon. She was certain you were going to ask me to marry you so she wouldn't be able to evict your mother. You insisted I was in love with a French aristocrat, but she thought you were lying.” Isabel voice faltered. “Why didn't you tell me about your mother, and how could you propose if you weren't in love with me?”

Alec walked to the bar and poured a glass of scotch. He downed it quickly and looked at Isabel. “The French are stoic and the English are even worse, we don't air our family squabbles like the inside pages of the
Daily Mirror.

“I doubt my father ever saw my mother without her cheeks powdered and her lips rouged, appearances are important even in private. What would you think of me if you saw my sister behaving like she was on an episode of
Desperate Housewives?
”

“If you get married by January third, can you stop Bettina from evicting your mother?” Isabel asked.

“Well, yes, but that has nothing to do with us,” Alec implored. “I never wanted to fall in love, it's like walking around with the flu. You break into a sweat and lose your appetite.

“After Celine left, I swore I'd rather take a cyanide pill than go through it again.” He paused. “But you entered my life with your brown eyes and seductive smile like a Bouguereau painting.” He looked at Isabel. “God, if only I could have stopped myself! I've read Stendhal's
The Red and the Black
and Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina,
great love always ends badly.”

“How can I believe you when you lied to me about one of the most important things in your life?” Isabel asked.

“I didn't lie,” Alec corrected. “I didn't tell you the whole truth.”

“You can't keep secrets in a relationship. What if you fall in love with a beautiful redhead and don't tell me because you don't want to hurt my feelings? There's nothing more important than honesty, it's the basis for everything.”

“I can't stop thinking about you. I drew Gus in a field plucking daisy petals and chanting, ‘She loves me, she loves me not.'” He pointed to his sketchbook. “I've never felt this way about anyone, you have to give me another chance.”

Isabel glanced at the sketch of Gus wearing a caftan and making daisy chains and wavered. She so wanted to be in love and live happily ever after. But how could she trust Alec if he lied from the beginning, and how could she risk getting her heart broken?

“Send Gus to a tropical island with some hula dancers, I'm sure he'll recover.” She walked to the door. “I'm leaving in two days, and it's best if we don't see each other again.”

She thought she heard Alec call her name and was about to turn around. Then she turned the handle and closed the door behind her.

Isabel entered her suite and considered running back to the Grand Hotel and telling Antoine she'd had to take an important phone call. Now she couldn't wait to eat profiteroles and drink amaretto and listen to the band play “Le Mer.”

She slipped off her earrings and knew she couldn't do it. She closed her eyes and the image of a playroom scattered with colored blocks and a kitchen filled with juice boxes disappeared and was replaced by a bedroom with a single nightstand. She imagined a galley kitchen with a coffeepot she never used and an oven that was used only for heating up single-serving lasagna.

The Christmas tree in the Place de la Concorde glittered and the lights on the Champs-Élysées sparkled and it looked like a postcard. She was in Paris at Christmas, and she would never be happy again.

 

chapter seventeen

Alec ate a handful of Brazil nuts and washed them down with scotch. He felt like a rock star on an all-night bender. Except he couldn't afford to trash the hotel suite and there weren't any groupies waiting under his balcony, waving bras and panties.

He glanced at the sketch of Gus wearing a kimono and committing hari-kari. There was a drawing of Gus treading hot coals with a blindfold over his floppy ears. Alec picked up a pencil and studied the sketch of Gus jumping out of a fighter jet. He erased his parachute and threw the sketch pad on the coffee table.

No matter how many disastrous situations he put Gus in, he couldn't get rid of his pain.

When Isabel entered his suite, he had been sure she was going to admit she was in love with him. He wished he hadn't sent back the bottle of champagne and eaten most of the duck foie gras. But then he saw her flashing eyes and glittering tiara and knew it was over.

Why didn't he tell her the truth from the beginning, and how could he have ruined the only thing that mattered?

There was a knock on the door and he answered it.

“Helene had a dream that you jumped into shark-infested waters in Mexico,” Mathieu said, entering the suite. “Pregnant women are so superstitious, she insisted I come here and make sure you didn't drown in the bathtub.”

“I'm fine.” Alec finished his scotch and ate another handful of nuts. “I was having breakfast.”

Mathieu picked up a sketch of Gus falling off a ladder into a wasp nest and frowned. “I miss the drawings of Gus strolling along the Pont Neuf with a cute poodle.”

“I asked Isabel to marry me yesterday,” Alec began. “She said she had feelings for me, but she promised Antoine she would attend the Imperial Ball. So she would let me know tomorrow.

“Antoine took Isabel into the Grand Hotel's private library and he was about to propose.” He refilled his glass. “Isabel realized she was in love with me and ran out of the room. Right into Bettina.”

“What happened?” Mathieu gasped.

“When has Bettina ever missed a chance to cause havoc with my life?” Alec groaned. “She told Isabel she thought I was going to ask Isabel to marry me so she couldn't evict Claudia from 40 Rue de Passy.

“Isabel burst into the suite wearing an exquisite silk gown and priceless tiara and demanded to know if the only reason I asked her to marry me was to stop Bettina.” He sank onto the sofa. “It was like a period drama my mother watches on the BBC.”

“Did you explain that you're really a viscount and were afraid to tell her? You'd never know if she was in love with you or wanted to marry a French aristocrat.”

“She was furious, it wasn't the time to discuss my family genealogy.”

“You have to tell her,” Mathieu urged. “She might forgive you.”

“I insisted my feelings for her have nothing to do with Claudia and Bettina,” he sighed. “She said even if it was true it didn't matter. Honesty is more important than anything. Then she said she never wanted to see me again and stormed out.”

“I begged you to tell the truth,” Mathieu muttered.

“You're an attorney,” Alec spluttered. “You don't even know the correct definition.”

“You can't lie to women,” Mathieu continued. “If you tell her you didn't get the roast beef she was craving because the butcher closed, she'll sniff out the truth like a German shepherd.” He paused. “And never make the mistake of saying she doesn't look pregnant from behind when she's standing in front of a three-way mirror.”

Alec started to laugh and stopped. He would give anything to buy Isabel bonbons when she was pregnant and admire her rounded stomach. God, what had he done! He had given up a lifetime of happiness because he forgot a simple rule: if you love someone, you have to trust her.

“It's too late now.” Alec sank onto the sofa. “She's leaving tomorrow.”

“Do you remember when we were nineteen and got stuck on the metro with some young thugs?” Mathieu asked. “They started hassling us for a packet of cigarettes and you told them you were a black belt in karate.”

“I didn't have a choice, we were locked inside,” Alec laughed. “They believed me. When the doors finally opened, we ran as fast as we could.”

“Sometimes you just have to believe in yourself. If you love Isabel, you need to fight for her.” He walked to the door. “I have to help Helene buy some new bras, her breasts are the size of ripe melons.”

Alec walked to the desk and glanced at a sketch of Gus tied to the train tracks. He picked up his pencil and drew Gus untying the rope. Gus jumped up and stopped the speeding train with his paw.

He remembered receiving a letter from a boy in Montreal who said he fended off bullies at school because he read
Gus and the International Drug Ring
and told the other boys he was actually CIA. There was the note from a little girl in Madrid who was sure her cancer was in remission because she read
Gus and the Hospital Stay
and knew miracles were possible. He still cried every time he read it and had sent a copy to the pope.

He couldn't disappoint children all over the world by letting Gus be eaten by cannibals. Somehow he had to convince Isabel that he had lied for the right reasons and it would never happen again. But first he had to do something he should have done a long time ago.

He glanced in the mirror and thought he really had to stop wearing this sweater. Christmas was over, and red made his skin look washed out. He pulled it over his head and put on a white button-down shirt and twill slacks. He grabbed his leather jacket and walked to the door.

*   *   *

“ALEC, WHAT A
surprise,” Bettina said when he rang the doorbell of her apartment. “I was taking down the Christmas ornaments. Now that your wedding is canceled, Édouard and I are leaving for Mustique.”

Alec entered Bettina's living room and wondered how she kept it so pristine. You could dust the glass coffee table for fingerprints and find nothing.

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by.” Alec wished he could ask for a scotch and soda. But it was too early for a drink, and if he showed any sign of weakness, Bettina would pounce like a lioness on an unsuspecting rabbit.

“I ran into Isabel at the Imperial Ball last night. She was wearing a Chanel gown and diamond-and-ruby tiara.” Bettina sat on the white silk sofa. “I was mistaken, I don't know how I imagined you together. She's quite beautiful and apparently she's a successful analyst.”

Alec remembered when he was five years old and Bettina took him to show-and-tell and introduced him as her younger brother. He was very proud until he heard the other children whispering that Bettina was right, he had unusually large ears.

After school, his mother found him in her dressing room, examining his ears in the mirror. She gave him a bowl of chocolate mousse and assured him his ears were normal.

He couldn't let Bettina get under his skin. He had to behave like an adult.

“I have a proposition,” Alec said. “You can have my portion of our father's assets in exchange for allowing Claudia to remain at 40 Rue de Passy.”

“What did you say?” Bettina asked.

Alec had rehearsed the speech on the metro, but now he felt like something was stuck in his throat.

“I'll sign over my share of Alain's stocks and other monies as long as Claudia can stay in the house for the rest of her life.”

“Sometimes when people go through a dramatic breakup, it affects their rational thinking,” Bettina replied. “I can have a technician in Édouard's neurology department do an MRI or CAT scan.”

“There's nothing wrong with me, but there is something wrong with evicting a woman who spent her whole life making her family happy,” Alec spluttered. “Do you think you would have got braces if it was up to our father? He wouldn't have noticed if you had teeth like a donkey. And who let you borrow her makeup and wrote a note that you had the flu so you wouldn't fail a chemistry exam?”

“That was the only test I was not prepared for,” Bettina retorted. “And I stopped wearing Claudia's makeup when I was fourteen. She bought her lipstick at the chemist.”

“I refuse to have my mother thrown on the pavement like a Christmas tree on New Year's,” he fumed. “Mathieu will draw up the agreement.”

“Édouard and I could buy a six-room apartment on the Avenue Montaigne,” she mused. “But how will you pay for upkeep on the house? The plumbing is from the Middle Ages and the back porch is sagging.”

Alec treated publishing like a gentleman's profession and didn't talk about money. The point of illustrating children's books was to bring joy to thousands of children, not to own an Audi and spend three weeks in Monte Carlo. But surely Gus was selling well enough to ask for a raise.

He would ask his agent to pursue more merchandising opportunities. He pictured Gus on the side of a lunch box and at the bottom of a cereal bowl, and his chest puffed out.

“I'm an internationally best-selling children's book illustrator, I can afford to replace a few planks of wood,” he said hotly.

“I'll discuss it with my attorney and bring you my terms.” Bettina looked at Alec. “You are a quick learner and have a strong basis in the classics. You should take continuing education classes, you never know what you could achieve.”