Paris Rose (6 page)

When his car pulled up next door, Lucy pressed a hand to her heart and took a deep breath before leaving the house and ringing on his doorbell. Her hair was loose and curly around her shoulders, the way she knew he liked it, and she was wearing a bright red T-shirt and blue jeans. She wanted to make love with him again. She wanted to hold onto him and never let go. Her heart began to thud as she heard approaching footsteps. The door opened and she smiled, suddenly feeling shy.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Lucy.”

Her smile slipped a notch. She’d expected him to haul her into his arms, but his expression was guarded as he looked at her, and suddenly she wasn’t sure what to say.

“You’d better come in,” he said, almost reluctantly, and following him into the kitchen, she felt a brush of foreboding.

“Coffee?” he inquired politely. “Or something cold?”

“Water, please.”

He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to her distractedly.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she ventured.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened, too,” he said. “The sex was always great. I guess that much hasn’t changed.”

“For me, nothing’s changed,” she said. “I still love you.”

Still he didn’t look at her. “Lucy, what the hell did you expect to happen after last night? Did you expect us to get back together or something?”

She blinked as if he’d slapped her, suddenly feeling small and stupid.

“I can’t just forget what happened,” he said. “I can’t forget what I saw when you opened that hotel door.”

A familiar sense of despair began to seep through Lucy. “We’d just kissed, that’s all. I would never have let it go any further.”

He shook his head. “I’ll never forget seeing you with him.”

“I know I can’t prove nothing happened, but I need you to believe me.”

“I just don’t know if I could ever trust you again,” Nick said, his voice quiet. “I love you, but I don’t think that’s enough.”

Lucy nodded slowly, trying to stay calm as her heart broke into a thousand pieces. “Okay,” she managed, her voice raw. “I—I just thought...” Her voice trailed off. It didn’t matter what she’d thought—she’d already made enough of an idiot of herself for one day.
God, for one lifetime
.

She walked from the house without another word, and he didn’t attempt to stop her. Her mind felt numb, her body leaden. Inside her own house, she crawled onto the bed and curled into a tight ball, squeezing her eyes shut. It was time to give up this dream she’d never let go of, that in spite of the divorce, in spite of everything, Nick couldn’t live without her any more than she could live without him. Only she was going to have to, because he didn’t want her anymore.

For a long time, she lay still, until shadows filled the bedroom and it was time to feed Dexter. When she crawled off the bed finally, there was an awful ache in her heart where earlier there’d been such hope and joy. She wondered if she’d ever be able to stop loving him.

****

Nick usually loved all aspects of managing his business, but the following day, he could barely think, barely raise a smile. Vaguely, he looked around the store he’d opened the previous year. Business seemed to be good. Several customers sat at the tables, with more lined up at the counter, eyeballing the array of biscotti and muffins displayed beneath the glass. The place was filled with the rich, pleasant aroma of brewing coffee. Nick tried to remember what he’d been planning to ask Jason, the store manager, about.

“Are you sick, Mr. R?” Jason asked, peering at him with concern.

“No, I’m not,” Nick snapped.

“Sorry,” Jason mumbled.

Without apologizing, Nick stalked into his office and tried to lose himself in paperwork, in plans and figures and projections. It just wasn’t happening. Visions of Lucy paraded through his brain. He saw her with tears in her eyes, furiously throwing a squirrel at him, he saw her sweet smile as she chatted to his parents, he saw her naked, writhing beneath him as they made love.

Swallowing convulsively, Nick closed his eyes, wishing he could clear his head of her. The worse thing about all this was that his feelings were tinged with guilt, when he had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about—that was how badly she’d messed with his head. He knew he’d never be able to rid himself of the memory of finding Lucy with her old boyfriend and the utter humiliation of it. And he’d always wonder what might have happened if he hadn’t knocked on the door at that moment.

After two hours of achieving absolutely nothing, Nick left to go home. As he negotiated the traffic, he wished memories could somehow be eradicated. He wished he could forget how good it had felt to come home to Lucy, to be kissed hello, to listen to her chat as she made supper, to see the teasing expression in her eyes when she looked at him. And he wished he could forget seeing another man lying on a hotel bed, obviously ready for sex, and Lucy blinking in shock, her lip gloss smeared. But he could never rid his brain of that image. Never.

Grimly, he turned into Meadowlark Drive and tried to keep his head averted from Lucy’s ranch house, but the bright red and blue For Sale sign planted in the front yard beckoned his gaze.

Nick swallowed.

She’d put the house up for sale. Of course that had always been the plan, but Lucy also said she’d need a year to complete all the renovations. He frowned as he pulled his car into the garage. Well, this was great, actually. His ex-wife would be out of his hair much sooner than planned.

He slammed the car door and entered the kitchen through the garage, pulling a beer from the fridge and popping the top, then realizing he didn’t really feel like it. He felt slightly sick, in fact. Grimacing, he took a determined slug, slid open the patio doors, and ventured outside.

The silence that greeted him felt ominous. There was no explosion of barks, no music drifting from her side of the fence. He couldn’t resist peering into her back yard, and experienced a tug of unease at the emptiness of it. The reclining lawn chair that had been left out on the patio for weeks was gone.

An unexpected panic darted through Nick. She couldn’t have left already—where the hell was she?

Slowly, feeling suddenly old, he retreated indoors. She couldn’t really be gone. The doorbell rang, and he rushed to open it, for some reason sure it would be her. His sister stood on the doorstep, looking at him gravely.

“What happened, Nick?” she demanded, brushing past him and coming inside.

“What do you mean?” he asked a little shakily.

“I couldn’t believe it when I brought Kieran by to say thanks for the cake and a Realtor was banging a For Sale sign into the lawn,” Angie said.

“Did he say where she’d gone?” Nick asked, wishing he didn’t care.

His sister nodded. “Paris.”

He sank slowly into a kitchen chair. Somehow he’d always felt she might return to the city where she’d spent most of her life. She loved it. They used to talk about going there together one day.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Angie said. “I called her on my cell, and she answered, said she couldn’t talk much as she was about to board the plane. What the hell happened between you two?”

“I’m...not sure,” he said weakly.

Angie flopped down beside him on a kitchen chair. “Want to talk about it?” Her hand reached out across the table and touched his.

Stupidly, Nick felt a hard lump in his throat. “I can’t.”

“Maybe it’s her you need to be talking to,” she said softly.

“It’s too late,” he muttered.

“But you can’t go on like this.”

He shook his head. “Like what?”

“You have been impossible to be around since the divorce,” Angie said. “Look, Nick, you have a choice here. You can go on being a miserable, angry asshole, or you can go after your wife and figure out a way to make things work.”

“After what happened—”

“She turned to someone else for a bit of comfort because you turned into a zombie,” Angie said. “Just as you always have when you’re hurt or pissed off. You can’t do that when you’re married.”

“So it was my fault?”

His sister rolled her eyes. “I’ve got to get back to the kids. Will you be okay?”

“Of course,” he said, walking her to the door.

“Why don’t you go to Paris?” Angie said. “It isn’t that far.”

Nick didn’t respond. Life wasn’t like one of the romantic comedies his sister loved to watch, where love problems and misunderstandings were hilariously solved in ninety minutes, and the whole family, including an elderly, arthritic granny, boogied away at a fairytale wedding.

“I don’t really think you’re an asshole,” Angie said, suddenly turning and giving him a hug. “I worry about you. We all do.”

“I know,” he said.

That night, Nick readied himself for bed as he always had since his divorce. He showered with the radio on, even though he didn’t listen to it. He just needed the noise. Lucy had been a chatterbox, right up until the minute they’d switched off the lamp and kissed goodnight. Without her, the silence seemed unbearable. The king-sized bed they once shared was like a vast empty ocean, so Nick let business journals and newspapers pile up on her side now.

He switched off the lamp, and the darkness and silence seemed to press in on him from every side. He was a man who came home to an empty house each night, drank a little too much beer, and hung on to his self-righteous anger as if it were something precious. He carefully planned his business and financial future because the part of his life that mattered most had gone spinning madly out of control.

Nick liked problems that had solutions. He liked columns of figures that could be neatly dealt with and dilemmas that could be sorted out with a little creative brainstorming. But when the baby Lucy had been carrying died, there’d been no answers, no solutions. The doctor simply shrugged and told them these things happened sometimes. Lucy wanted to talk about it, to dream about their child that would never be born, to ask why this had happened to them. But he’d had no answers, and there hadn’t been a thing he could do to make things turn out right. Grief cracked them apart. Nick closed his eyes, knowing she wouldn’t be back.

****

A Realtor brought prospective buyers to view the property next door over the following weeks. Nick watched them come and go, wondering who his new neighbors might be. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. Summer faded into fall. Kieran started kindergarten, and Rosie sprouted her first tooth. Leaves drifted into Nick’s yard, a bright golden carpet he raked up without noticing their beauty.

Even though he didn’t want to, he thought about her living her new life in Paris, baking cakes and running around with Dexter, getting over her ex-husband if she hadn’t already, meeting some guy and having kids, growing old with some stranger, lighting up somebody else’s life.

He dreamed of her one morning, just as his body was preparing to wake. She was lying in the bed beside him, smiling, her expression sweet and patient. Nick blinked at her in amazement.

“How did you get in here?” he said, thrilled, reaching out.

“I’m always here. Didn’t you know that?” she grinned.

He woke to find he had dribbled slightly on the pillow. The bed was empty, except for a pile of crumpled newspapers and magazines. Nick thought of Lucy’s words, and considered the truth in them. In a way, she was always here. No matter how much he painted the walls or rearranged the furniture, he couldn’t ever quite manage to chase her away. She haunted the house, just as she haunted his dreams. And groaning, Nick realized it was time for him to give up.

****

Lucy sat in the front pew of a crowded sixteenth-century Parisian church, worrying about profiteroles. Had she made enough? Since yesterday morning she’d been whipping up mini beef Wellingtons and tiny raspberry muffins, grating chocolate and arranging delicacies on plates for Jean-Luc’s wedding to Anita, an American socialite ten years his senior. For the past week, guests had been pouring in from the States, and Lucy suddenly found herself helping with accommodation, currency, language difficulties, and transportation for Anita’s large family, in addition to devising a menu for the reception.

Trying to smother a yawn, she glanced around the church. The dim interior of the ancient building was lit up with hundreds of tiny white fairy lights, each giving off an ethereal glow. Lucy sighed, fighting off memories of her own wedding day to Nick. The ceremony was held in a small church, witnessed by his family and a few friends. Predictably, her parents hadn’t been able to make it. Nick had held her hand, slid the ring on her finger, held her gaze with a look of such love tears filled her eyes. She’d felt so beautiful, and so sure only happiness awaited her.

Three months had passed since she fled Meadowlark Drive, saying a final, brutal goodbye to her fantasy of a future with Nick. Lucy had spent the time since trying to invent a new life for herself as the busy manager of La Maison Rose, one of Jean-Luc’s restaurants. She’d acquired a tiny ground floor apartment and as soon as his quarantine period was over, Dexter would join her.

She yawned again, and then sat up straight as the wedding march began and Anita began to glide slowly up the aisle on her father’s arm. Approving murmurs rose up as the guests drank in the sight of the beautiful bride, resplendent in a tasteful, simple white gown. She was radiant. Lucy pasted a happy smile on her face and turned to face the front of the church. Don’t think of the past, she told herself firmly, and repeated the words over and over like a mantra as the ceremony began.