Seven Letters from Paris (13 page)

“No, I'm not sick. I'm perfectly fine,” I said. “But just look at this field. Look how beautiful it is.”

“I thought it was something serious, but it's only
des
tournesols
,” he said, gripping his heart in a mock heart attack. “I suppose you want to take a picture.”

He already knew me so well.

There is nothing more French than passing by an endless field of sunflowers in full bloom in the summer, ablaze in golds and yellows and oranges.
Tournesol
, the French word for sunflower, as Jean-Luc explained, meant to turn toward the sun, and the field we had pulled in front of was right out of my dreams. Lush yellow flowers tilted their happy faces toward the heavens, their tall stalks dancing in the breeze. Dotted with clouds, the pale blue sky provided a beautiful contrast to the hues on the ground. Camera in hand, I jumped out of the car. With a bemused expression, Jean-Luc watched me try to set up my mini tripod on the hood, but it kept tipping over.

“Come on,” I said. “I don't only want a picture of flowers. I want a picture of us in front of them.”

I placed my hands on my hips and tapped my foot until he begrudgingly exited the Ford. A few trials and errors later, I finally got my shot. Jean-Luc pulled me in for a passionate kiss. “
On
y
va
,” he said. “Let's get going.”

He opened up the passenger door, and one minute later, we were on our way. I shot Jean-Luc a sideways glance. Even his profile was sexy, with his chiseled chin, the sculpted sideburns. I could have stared at him all day. I was so giddy I didn't recognize this bizarre side of my personality. I wanted to kiss him—in fact, I wanted to do more than kiss him. Instead, I took his hand. When did I become
that
girl in love?

Finally, the château came into view and the place screamed, “Romance, romance!” It was reminiscent of a castle, with bright and vibrant rose-colored hydrangea surrounding the main house and cream-colored bricks with gray, peaked, tiled rooftops and scalloped plaster molding.

“
C'est magnifique!
” I exclaimed.

As we stepped out of the car and onto the gravel driveway, a giant black potbellied pig, which immediately lay down and squirmed on its back, begging for a rub, greeted us. Happily, I obliged, surprised to find its fur was rough and bristly. The human proprietor was equally warm and welcoming. She practically leapt down the steps to give us the old European double-cheek kiss and then motioned for us to follow her to our room. We left our bags in the trunk and rushed after her, the French running fast off her tongue. I just smiled and nodded. Inside the château, every wall was painted sunflower yellow, paired with red carpeting. Pretty, in a “look at me, I'm happy although I clash slightly” way, it was quite a contrast from the elegant and much quieter exterior, but no matter, because our room was absolutely delightful, complete with a four-poster bed with billowy white curtains. The woman handed us a key and exited, the smile never leaving her face. I eyed the bed and then raised my brows at Jean-Luc.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Later, my love. After this morning, I think we have to preserve you, and don't you want to visit le Château de Chenonceau?”

After seeing a picture of my dad standing in front of the historic castle in his twenties, I'd done quite a bit of research on the place. Known as the
château des femmes
, the castle sat in all her former glory, her stone cold beauty reflected on the River Cher, her beautiful gardens open to the thousands of tourists that visit every year. Tourists like me. She did not disappoint. Nor did the château we would visit after: Chambord, the largest castle in the Loire Valley. Although he'd been impressed with my knowledge of Chenonceau, it was Jean-Luc's turn to give the history lesson as we waited in line for tickets.

“Château de Chambord,” he began, each syllable drawn out and pronounced in a way I could only describe as being very French, “is recognized throughout the world, not only because of its size but because of its impressive Italian Renaissance architecture.” He said this proudly and his eyes lit up. “Built as a hunting lodge for François I…”

I eyed the magnificent structure, which was almost indescribable with the fantasy of its immense roof seeming to go on for miles, the turrets, the chimneys, and the well-manicured gardens. “Wait a second. This place was a hunting lodge?”

He shrugged and flipped his hands palms up. “What can I say? The French are extravagant, and this is a masterpiece of the Renaissance, a crowning jewel.
Incroyable!
”

Forget about the hunting lodge and its symbol of the salamander, Jean-Luc was the incredible one. I stared at him, expecting him to start bitching and moaning about how hot it was outside and how the line to get into the castle hadn't budged. He didn't raise his voice or break out into an angry rant. He just stood there, quietly, giving me a history lesson while calling me princess.

“You're not irritated with the line?”

“Should I be?”

“No, no, no,” I said. “I'm just used to a different kind of reaction.”

His eyes widened with understanding. “Honey, I never let the little things in life bother me, especially things I can't change. Understand?”

People operate on two levels: rational and emotional. Judging by the calm tone of his voice and his extra-cool demeanor, Jean-Luc thought things through before spouting off.

He snuck a hand up my dress, caressing my thigh. I swiped his hand away in one quick movement. He ignored my obvious embarrassment and pointed toward the castle. “It was at the young age of twenty-five that François showed the world what a spectacular vision he had. I'm proud to share it with you. I want to share everything with you.”

I was falling deeply and hopelessly in love with this man. Which scared me to death. Of course, I knew when I left on this trip that I had very, very strong feelings for Jean-Luc, but they hadn't seemed quite as well formed. He'd just been a man behind the words, but now he was very, very real, smart, sexy, and funny, better than I had imagined. Before we fell asleep after our day of discoveries, Jean-Luc whispered into my ear, “
Je
t'aime, mon coeur. Avec tout mon coeur et mon âme
. I love you, my wife.”

His words jolted me upright. “Did you just call me your wife?”

He shrugged and popped his lips. “It's the way I feel.
Je
t'aime
.”

“Why?” I asked, not just for an affirmation, but because I was actually rather curious. Jean-Luc regarded me with a bemused expression. I asked him again. “Why do you love me?”

“I don't have a choice. I just do.”

“
Je
t'aime aussi
.” I snuggled into his embrace. Like two pieces of a proverbial puzzle, we fit. Still, doubt crept into my head. Things seemed too perfect between us, and I wondered when the other shoe was going to drop. I tried to think positively, but it was hard when my heart was on the firing line. I clung on to hope like a life preserver. This time I wasn't talking myself out of love; I was diving head first into it.

In the morning, after a light breakfast of buttery croissants and
confiture
d'abricot
, we visited Château d'Ussé—reputed to be the inspiration behind both Charles Perrault's
Sleeping
Beauty
—
La
Belle
au
Bois
Dormant
—and Walt Disney's iconic castle. A true fairy-tale setting, it was located on the edge of the Chinon Forest, on the banks of the Indre River, overlooking terraced gardens.

If I could have chosen one castle in all of France to live in, it would have been this one. Everything about the château promised enchantment, especially the architecture with its gray-blue slate roofs and dormer windows, not to mention its towers and turrets. It was almost impossible to imagine that at one point in time, the château was used as a fortress, complete with drawbridges and battlements.

Jean-Luc guided me through the gardens. “You really made me laugh in one of your letters.”

“Which one?” There must have been at least two hundred shared between us.

“Your crazy letter, the one where you told me passion was like an old pair of socks—”

“I know, I know. Holes included.” I slapped my hands over my eyes. “Please don't quote me.”

“Life without passion is like the sky without the sun, the moon without the stars.” He stopped, took me by the arms, and pressed me against a stone wall. “I cannot live my life without passion. Can you?”

“It's not as if I'd intended on living a passionless life.”

His eyes locked onto mine. “Samantha, I want to give you everything. Everything I have. I don't have much, but what I have is yours. I want you to know joy. You're so special and so unique. I want to give you something you've never had. I want to give you the gift of a child.”

Never before had I heard such words come out of an actual human mouth. I was breathless. A tear crept into the corner of my eye, slowly making its way down my cheek.

A couple walked by us, each holding the hand of their daughter, who must have been about three years old. They swung her up into the air, her toes pointing toward the blue sky. She giggled. And then she looked over her shoulder, peeking at me through a blue-bowed pigtail. Her grin got bigger, like she was sharing a secret with me, like she knew what Jean-Luc and I had been talking about, and she was urging me to consider it. The couple and their little girl walked on. I shuddered and ran through the logistics in my head. He couldn't be serious. “Now? You want to have a child now?”

“No, not now. But soon. By this time next year, we'll be married. We'll start then.”

It wasn't a formal proposal, but a promise—one I believed would come true. There was no other way for us. We were meant to be together. I laughed, trying to keep my feelings at bay. “What are you? Some kind of prophet?”

“No, I'm a realist. And as I've said before, according to both our situations, we both have to be extremely patient.”

“But we've just only met again.”

“And now that we have, I never want to lose you.” He stopped midstep. “Sam, you're the most unique and wonderful woman I've ever known.” His face turned serious. “You do want to continue on the path we're on?”

Even before I could ask my own questions, he gave me answers. I couldn't imagine my life without Jean-Luc. I was so attracted to his intelligence, his passion, to everything about him. It didn't matter how things came to be, only that we were now together. Waiting another twenty years was out of the question. I glanced at Château d'Ussé. “Could we get married in a castle?”

Jean-Luc brushed a lock of hair off my face. “If there is one thing France has many of, it's castles, princess.”

Oh, sugar plum trees and fairy-tale wishes, it seemed that all of my dreams were about to come true. I was floating on a magical cloud, trying to take everything in.

After a late morning excursion to yet another castle, Château d'Azay le Rideau, we hit Dinan, a medieval town unique in Bretagne, completely surrounded by ramparts—or in layman's terms, a walled village. History fascinated Jean-Luc. His eyes lit up. Mine were getting a little foggy.

“Honey,” I said, interrupting him as he told me that the walls, nearly intact, were three kilometers long. “I don't want to be high maintenance—”

“High maintenance? What is this? Are you a plane?”

“What? No, I'm not a plane. I'm typically a low-maintenance girl, meaning I'm not demanding—”

“This expression, high maintenance, it's funny.” I frowned. “Princess, what's wrong? Do you feel okay?”

My stomach grumbled loudly and I choked back some embarrassment.

“Honey, I love you, noises and all. We'll stop for something to eat in the next village. I didn't realize it was so late.” Jean-Luc burst out laughing. “It was a very loud night with you.”

My mind raced with all of the embarrassing ways I could have possibly been noisy. I sank into my seat and clenched my teeth, one hand hiding me from his loving gaze. Hopefully he'd just implied that I grind my teeth—not something else, like, heaven forbid, gas. Regardless of the love building between us, I still wanted to impress Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc just smiled and whipped the car down winding streets on a mission to find his princess some food before she suffered a hypoglycemic attack.

My man pulled through, finding a local patisserie, where he purchased a couple of tasty strawberry tarts with flaky crusts. Crisis averted.

We arrived in Dinan one hour later and checked into the hotel. By the way the woman at the front desk flirted and giggled with Jean-Luc, I could tell she was quite smitten with him. When her face flushed with a blush, I was certain of it. Suffice it to say, we'd been so wrapped up with one another, I'd never taken notice of the effect Jean-Luc had on other women.

“She likes you,” I whispered as the woman turned around to retrieve our keys.

“Don't be silly.”

“She's talking to you. And she's all but ignoring me.”

Jean-Luc regarded me as if I was crazy. But I wasn't. We headed to our room and I straddled Jean-Luc on the bed, teasing him. “Are you sure you don't want to trade me in for your new girlfriend?”

He flipped me onto my back and pinned me down. “
Jalouse?
”

“No, I'm not jealous.”

Sure, maybe the green-eyed monster did pay a visit, but it wasn't because the woman was attractive or young. It was because she could communicate with Jean-Luc in his mother tongue. Me? It seemed I had foot-in-mouth syndrome in not one but two languages. But regardless of language or cultural differences, I still had some questions that needed answering. In any new relationship, there were bound to be minor insecurities. Over the past few months, we'd had daily two- to three-hour-long phone conversations, no subject left unturned, both of our histories open books. And since the topic of other women had been breached, I had to get something off my chest now or forever hold my peace.

“Why didn't you marry the children's mother?”

“She didn't want to. We talked about it, but she was against marriage. After a while, things slipped between us, mostly because of me.”

The French called these living situations
concubinage
. I knew many couples in France lived together without being married, and it was probably one of the reasons divorce rates were so low in their country. As a foreigner, I'd need a visa or a green card to live here, and to get that paperwork, I would need to become Jean-Luc's wife. Just living together and not getting married wasn't an option for us. If we were going to be together, we'd have to be 100 percent committed.

“So you left Frédérique for the Vietnamese girl…”

“For a year. When we got back together, I thought things would change. I thought we could work things out. And then the children were born. Things were great in the beginning and we tried, we really tried. And then—”

“You left her for Anya—Russian girl number one.”

Jean-Luc looked up at the ceiling in remembrance. “Anya was younger, much, much younger. Very pretty—”

I wanted answers, not details. “May I remind you I'm also much younger than you. Seven years younger.”

“Honey, I don't mean anything by it.”

“Oh, come on, Jean-Luc, I'm a confident woman, but I don't need to know how pretty or young any of your exes were. Besides, I've already found both of their Facebook pages.”

His eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“Didn't you ever wonder why I asked for their last names? I Googled them too.”

“My little spy, you have been a busy girl.”

“I was curious about them. Are you bothered I checked into your past?”

“No. I have nothing to hide from you. And I was just trying to make a point.” He sighed heavily. “I had a crisis in my head. I thought being with a younger woman would give me what I wanted from life. But that was not the case and, as you know, my life turned into a living hell.”

Old insecurities die hard, and I couldn't help but ask the one question that kept me from trusting him fully, the one starting this whole line of questioning in the first place.

“So what's to stop you from leaving me? Especially for a
much, much
younger woman.”

A searing heat blazed from his eyes. He rolled off me, onto his back. Neither of us said anything for a minute or two. I didn't want to ruin things with Jean-Luc, but I knew better than to let things simmer under the surface. I'd learned that lesson the hard way with Chris.

Jean-Luc sat up. “Sam, I've told you before, with you things are different. I want to be the best man for you, the best person for you. I know what it's like to be unfaithful. All the lies, all the pain it causes. I want to be able to face myself in the mirror and be happy with who I am. I've made many, many mistakes in my life, and believe me I've paid. I've paid.” He paused, his breathing labored. “I've never wanted to call anybody else my wife. Just you. And I feel you are already my wife and I want to scream it from the mountains. Everything I've shared with you, everything you've shared with me, has been shared in confidence so we can build something solid together, something that will stand the test of time. Sam, I love you with all my heart and my soul.” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “You have to promise to trust me. All relationships take work—both on physical and mental levels—and I think, together, we can do it.”

I bit down on my bottom lip and shook my head. “Jean-Luc, I just needed to erase any doubts or reservations I have. Because you've told me so much about your past, it's been on my mind, not all the time, but a lingering thought picking into my subconscious. Now we've cleared the air and I can move forward without looking back. We promised each other we'd talk about everything and anything. No secrets, right?”

“Never. There will never be any secrets between us.” He pulled me close to his chest and hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe. “Honey, I have to tell you something.”

I sucked in my breath. “Yes. Anything.”

“The hardest day I've ever faced was telling the children their mother died. They'd seen her suffer for years, but in her final days, she didn't want to see them. She was too sick and barely resembled herself. Sometimes, I think the children still have a hard time understanding why—why she didn't want to see them and why she died.” His voice wavered. “You should have seen their faces when I told them…” I squeezed his hand and let him carry on. “Sam, two young kids should never have to see their mother die.” He choked back his words. “I've tried to be the best dad I could be. Now that their mother is gone, everything in their world, in my world, has changed. I thought things with Natasha would get better, I did, but time would only show I'd been hoping for too much. Then you came into my life, and I saw I could have something different. I saw a better life.”