A Wedding in Paris Page 15
“You must have missed your family, being away from them so much,” she said. She had fought almost constant homesickness her first weeks in Paris.
“I can’t say I missed them much.” He glanced at her. “We’ve never been terribly close, though I’ve enjoyed being with them this week more than I’d anticipated.”
She could not imagine being so cut off from her own family, or not having a real home for years at a time, as was the case with Marc. There was so much about him she did not understand, but still she was drawn to him.
He put his arm around her shoulders and they began walking again, across a small canal onto a black-and-white marble path that wound among the trees of a thickly wooded forest.
MARC COULDN’T SAY why he felt so at ease with Lacey. Maybe it was because he didn’t feel the need to impress her or seduce her or do anything but relax. After all, he was only going to be in Paris a few more days, so there was no point in starting anything serious with her. Not to mention she wasn’t his type. He preferred sophisticated, experienced women—ones who understood that not every relationship involved romance.
“This is the Garden of Islands,” she said.
“It reminds me of part of Central Park,” he said. There was the same sense of being in a wilderness in the midst of a bustling city.
“Do you live in New York?” she asked.
“I have an apartment there, though I’m not home much.” Now that Nancy had moved out he expected he’d be there even less, at least for a while. While he never minded traveling alone, rattling around in an apartment by himself made him feel too…empty.
“Well, at least you’ve enjoyed seeing your family this week,” she said.
“Yes… Some of them anyway. It’s good to see Gabe, and Uncle Frank and some others. It’s been a long time since we were all together like this.”
“I don’t have as big a family,” she said. “But I do miss them.” She sounded wistful. He imagined she had never traveled much before now and was probably homesick.
“You said you were from Iowa?” he asked.
“Yes. A little town called Ames. It’s a nice place, though not very exciting.”
“Not like Paris.”
“No, not like Paris.” She looked around as they exited the Garden of Islands and moved into a space where giant metallic kites hung in the trees overhead. “There’s nothing like this in Ames.”
He looked down at her upturned face, at the joy reflected there, and felt something give inside him—as if some binding had broken. He felt a little breathless and…lighter, if that was even possible. “I’d like to photograph you,” he said.
A faint pink blush washed over her cheeks. “Me? Oh no, I really—”
“No. Please. Stay there, just as you were, looking up at the kites.” He pulled his camera from the bag and snapped off the lens cover. Somewhat awkwardly, she stepped back and looked up at the kites again. But now she seemed stiff, the joy of the previous moment gone.
“Forget I’m here,” he said. “Think about something that makes you happy. Something that makes you feel like flying with the kites.”
As he spoke, she began to relax, her shoulders dropping, the stiffness going out of her smile. She looked up at the kites, then raised her arms at her sides, as if she would soar with them. He snapped off a series of shots, shooting from different angles. The joy in her expression was contagious and he couldn’t help smiling.
“That was great,” he said, letting the camera hang by the strap around the neck.
She laughed and rushed to his side. “I can’t wait to see what they look like.”
“Here, I’ll show you now.” He switched the camera to viewing mode and turned the screen toward her. One by one he scrolled through the images.
She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my. I look a little silly, don’t I?”
“Not at all. You look beautiful.”
Their eyes met and held. Once more he had the dizzying sensation of free fall. His gaze shifted away, only to focus on her lips, so pink and inviting….
She stepped back, breaking the spell. Her face flushed, she fumbled with the clasp on her purse. “If you have the pictures printed, will you send me copies?” she asked.
“I will.” They continued their walk. “What were you thinking about back there?” he asked. “When I was photographing you.”
She smiled again, a secretive look. “I was thinking of the wedding, and how wonderful it would be to be married in Paris on a beautiful spring day like this one.”
“And that made you so happy?” He would never understand this fascination women had with weddings and romance.
“Of course.” Her smile broadened and he felt again the pull of her joy. “I was thinking of love. What could be better?”
What could be better? Especially if you were someone who had never known a love like that? A kind of love that seemed impossible to him, except when he looked at Lacey. Like the fantastic gardens she led him through, she made him believe all kinds of impossible things could become reality.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHILE THE WOMEN of the wedding party fussed and fretted about shoes, dresses, flowers and food, the men tried to stay out of the line of fire. They most often congregated at tables under the trees at the back of the inn’s property, where they played poker and told stories, often involving outrageous adventures in their younger years.
Marc was surprised by how much he enjoyed those lazy hours spent with Gabe and his other cousins and Gabe’s friends. After years of being on the go nonstop he’d expected to be bored by even a few days of forced family closeness. Instead, he found himself wishing the time would last longer.
The night after Marc’s sightseeing trip with Lacey was the much anticipated bachelor party. The men descended en masse on Place Pigalle, to tour the city’s red-light district. They began with dinner at Le Moulin Rouge, its famous neon red windmill revolving outside.
“Is it true the girls who dance the cancan don’t wear any underwear?” Gabe’s best man, Josh, asked.
“I don’t know, but I guess we’ll find out!” someone said.
But between the wine, the smoke and the dazzling lights, not to mention the swirling skirts and high kicks of the dancers, Marc couldn’t say what the cancan dancers wore. Nor did he particularly care.
The men left the Moulin Rouge and joined the crowds on the street. Marc inhaled deeply, grateful for somewhat-fresh air after the smoky closeness of the cabaret. “Those French dancing girls are hot, aren’t they?” someone said.
“They’re pretty, but none of them look as good to me as Alexis,” Gabe said.
This was greeted with groans, though Josh patted his friend on the back. “Spoken like a man in love.”
Marc winced at the words, not because he didn’t believe Gabe was in love, but because he’d only the moment before been thinking that none of the painted and exotically undressed women onstage looked as good to him as Lacey and her fresh-faced simplicity. But that certainly didn’t mean he was in love with her. He scarcely knew her.
He shook his head, as if he could physically rid himself of such a ridiculous idea, and threw himself into the spirit of the evening. The men crowded into yet another cabaret and ordered over-priced champagne. Scantily dressed women descended on them and plied an embarrassed Gabe with kisses, until his face was covered in lip prints.
Marc lost track of the places they visited. One of the men had his wallet stolen by a pickpocket, while yet another drank too much and had to be bundled into a cab and sent back to the inn. Marc began alternating drinks with mineral water halfway through the evening, unwilling to risk his money or his life by losing his wits in the rough-looking crowd.
He did his best to enjoy himself, raising toasts to Gabe and tipping the dancing girls, but again and again he returned to the thought that he’d had a much better time the day before with Lacey.
At midnight, he found Gabe and told him he was headed back to the inn. “I’m
packing it in,” Marc said. “Guess I’m not the partyer I used to be.”
“Don’t go,” Gabe said, his grin lopsided. “Don’t leave me at the mercy of these animals.” He indicated the others.
“You’ll be fine,” Marc said. “Just don’t forget to come home to Alexis.”
Gabe’s expression grew dreamy. “Alexis. She’s a wunnerful woman,” he slurred.
“I’m sure she is.” He patted his cousin’s shoulder. “And she’s lucky to be marrying you.”
“You should get married,” Gabe said. “There’s nothing like knowing you’re gonna be coming home ev’ry night to the woman you love.”
“I’ll leave that to you,” Marc said. “I’ve never felt that way about anyone.”
“Not yet. But I hope you do.”
He left Gabe in the care of the other men and several dancing girls and went out onto the sidewalk and flagged down a cab. Gabe’s last words echoed in his alcohol-fogged head. What would it be like to know there was always someone waiting for you? Always someone who loved you, who accepted your love in return? Lacey’s face flashed into his head and he shut his eyes, dizzy. She was a woman he had just met. How could she be anyone special?
When he reached Milles Fleurs he was still feeling unsteady. He saw a light in the kitchen and decided to see if he could find some coffee. Caffeine and food would help clear his head.
The room was empty, though he was surprised to see bowls and cooking utensils had been left out on the counter. He smiled to himself as he searched the cabinets for coffee for the espresso maker in the corner. This must be another of Giselle’s secrets—that she didn’t always clean up the kitchen before she left for the day.
He had his head deep in a cupboard when he heard a startled cry behind him. He backed out of the cabinet and almost collided with Lacey, who cradled a bag of flour to her chest and gaped at him. “Marc!” She put a hand to her heart and laughed shakily. “You startled me. I thought you were a burglar.”
“That’s me. The coffee thief.” He held up the bag of coffee beans he’d found. “I needed caffeine.”
She smiled, and he felt a shakiness he couldn’t entirely attribute to the alcohol he’d drunk. “Coffee sounds good,” she said. “May I join you?”
“Sure. Do you know how to work that machine in the corner?”
“Let me do it.” She took the bag of beans from him and gestured to the prep table. “You sit. How was the bachelor party?”
“Like all bachelor parties—a bunch of grown men trying desperately to hold on to the freedom of youth by drinking and ogling women.” That was how he’d felt all evening—as if he was acting out an expected role, sampling the sinful wares of the red-light district because it was expected, not because it was anything he wanted.
“You make it sound terrible.”
“Not that bad. Just not something I enjoy so much these days.” He peered into one of the bowls on the counter and saw a lump of dough. “What are you making at this hour?”
“Brioche. It’s for my basic pâtisserie class. The first batch came out horrible, so I had to start over.”
She ground the coffee beans, then fed them into the machine, which began to purr like a cat. Soon the enticing odor of freshly brewed coffee filled the room.
“Why did you decide to go to the Cordon Bleu?” he asked.
“Because I like to cook. And because it was a way to see Paris.”
“There are other ways to see Paris.”
She nodded. “But I didn’t just want to visit. I wanted to live here. To soak up the culture. The romance.”
That word again. “Romance is important to you, isn’t it?” He had never put much stock in romantic notions, thinking them the stuff of novels and movies. But watching Gabe tonight, hearing the tenderness in his voice when he spoke of Alex, Marc had been jealous. He had never known that kind of closeness to another person, and feared he never would.
“Romance is important,” she said. “It’s like…like the butter that gives the brioche its flavor. Without romance life would be as bland as bread without butter.”
Had his life been bland? He refused to believe it, and focused instead on the rising dough in the bowl. “What did you do with the first batch?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, as if wanting to question the abrupt change of subject, then pressed her lips together and shook her head. “They’re in here.” She reached under the counter and produced a basket of misshapen rolls, some overbrowned. “I had the oven set too high.” She laughed. “I still have trouble translating the French recipes, and adjusting centigrade and Fahrenheit.”
He selected a roll from the basket and bit into it. “It still tastes good,” he said. “Even better with butter and jam, I imagine.”
She took the hint and produced butter and jam from the cooler, along with a thick crockery pitcher of cream for their coffee. When the espresso machine finished dripping, she poured two mugs of steaming café au lait. They sat across from each other at the counter, munching brioche and sipping coffee.
Marc found himself watching Lacey as she buttered a piece of bread and added a dollop of jam. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but tendrils had escaped and curled around her face so that she resembled one of Lautrec’s café-society women. She had a smudge of flour on one cheek and faint circles beneath her eyes, but he thought she was more beautiful than any perfectly made-up model or chic sophisticate.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
He blinked, coming out of his daze. “What?”
“You were staring at me. Why?”
“You have a smudge of flour on your cheek.”
She put a hand to her face. “Where?”
“Right…there.” He leaned across the counter and reached up to wipe away the smudge. But when his fingers brushed her cheek, he stilled. Her skin was soft, as velvety as anything he could imagine. He wanted to savor the feel of her. To touch her more.
Their eyes met, hers dark and intense, filled not with fear or outrage at the liberties he was taking, but encouraging him to go further. She put her hand up to cover his and he moved closer, focused now on her lips. They were rose-pink, the lower slightly fuller than the upper, parted in a wordless invitation.
He bent and covered her mouth with his, his hand moving to the back of her neck to cup her head, cradling her as he parted her lips with his tongue and tasted her sweetness.
LACEY LEANED into him, eyes tightly shut, afraid if she opened them she might discover this was merely another of her fantasies. As soon as Marc had looked at her this evening, his hair tousled, his eyes slightly bloodshot, his expression that of a lost child, she had wanted to kiss him. To be kissed by him.
She gripped his shoulders and stood on tiptoe, leaning as close to him as she could get. If she’d been able to, she would have crawled right across the counter to press her body to his, to make love to him on the flour-dusted surface, the scent of coffee and strawberry jam mingling with their musk.
Instead, she had to settle for communicating her ardor with lips alone. He responded in kind. With a groan, he deepened the kiss and threaded his fingers through her hair, freeing it from the elastic band so that it fell down her back. The muscles of his shoulders tightened beneath her hand. She kneaded them, the soft cotton of his shirt sliding against her skin.
A softly ringing bell startled them, and their lips parted, though they still held on to each other. “What was that?” Marc asked, his voice rough-edged.
“The…the timer.” Reluctantly, she pulled from him and shut off the digital timer she’d set to remind her when to shape the rolls.
She avoided looking at him as she washed her hands. Now that she was no longer completely under the spell of his kiss, she wondered at the wisdom of abandoning herself to such passion. What good could come of losing her heart to a man who would only be in Paris a few more days? One who had chosen roaming the world and following adventure over the simpler things she loved?
“Yeah.” He said nothing for a long moment; she could feel his gaze on her. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said at last. “I’d better get to bed.”
“Good night,” she said, looking up in time to see him disappear through the door into the hallway. She sagged against the counter, a weariness that had little to do with the late hour dragging at her. Who was she kidding? It was too late to worry about losing her heart to Marc Kendrick. It was already lost.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, Lacey looked for Marc at breakfast, but he wasn’t there. Neither were the groom or most of the other male members of the wedding party. “They’re all in bed nursing hangovers,” Taylor, the bride’s younger sister, said, rolling her eyes when Lacey commented on the men’s absence. “Serves them right for staying out all night carousing.”
“Wasn’t the bachelorette party last night also?” Lacey asked.
Taylor grinned. “Yes, but I guess we women hold our liquor better.”
Lacey returned to the kitchen and began mixing omelets. She doubted Marc was hungover. He hadn’t seemed drunk at all when they’d talked in the kitchen last night. And she didn’t like to think it was alcohol that had led him to kiss her.
It had been such a magical moment, that kiss. The stuff of dreams, but she was sure it was real. When she closed her eyes, she could almost feel his lips on hers again, his hand caressing the back of her neck.
“If you don’t watch those eggs, they will burn,” Giselle reprimanded her.
“I’m sorry.” Lacey turned her attention once more to the omelet pan. “I was up late last night, working on my brioche.”
“I saw.” Giselle’s expression softened. “It turned out perfectly, chérie. You are coming along.”
“Thank you, Giselle. Coming from you that means a lot.”