“What now?” she asked, feeling awkward.
He stepped out and offered her a hand. Then he put a giant towel around her shoulders and rubbed her from head to toe to dry her, starting with her back and then moving to the front, not looking her in the eye—focusing only on what he was doing. Her heart was pounding as she watched him move his hands over her.
He brought some lotion from the counter, rubbed it into his hands so that it was warm, and then, starting with the tips of her fingers and working his way up her arm, smoothed it into her shoulders very near her breast but never touching it. Then he started in on the other hand, repeating the motions, working the lotion into her skin all the way up to her shoulder, again dangerously close to her breast. It gave her goosebumps. Every nerve ending felt alive.
“Can I … should we …”
“Not yet.”
He did the same thing with her legs. One by one, he applied lotion to her toes, her ankle, all the way up her calf, knee, thigh, dangerously close to another body part that was now on fire.
And the other foot, calf, thigh … impossibly close to oblivion.
“You’re killing me,” she said.
“Je l’espère.”He stood to face her.
“Can we go to your bedroom?” she asked.
“Be patient. Just stand there.” He was in control, and she was both happy to give over and dying of anticipation to know what would happen next.
He grasped the edges of the towel but paused.
“Je peux?”
She nodded and he slowly opened the towel to step in close to her.
“Mon Dieu,” he said. “Que t’es belle.”
“Toi aussi,” she said. He was beautiful too. So beautiful.
He looked down at her and moaned.
“You can’t make that sound and expect me to be patient,” she whispered.
And then in one move, he grabbed both sides of her waist and hiked her up as if she were light as a feather. The towel dropped as she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and he walked her to the bed.
That night, lying awake and listening to Guillaume breathing, she’d had a deep sense that everything was all right—better than all right; that she was in safe hands (and what hands they were). She let herself fantasize that they might have a future, given they saw eye to eye on so many things, and, even better, that she learned new things from him. New ways of thinking, oflooking at problems, and feeling powerful enough to know they were solvable.
Marlow woke up in his king-size bed. He was already up and gone. Her clothes had been cleaned and ironed—ironed!—by Madame Klein, like your mother finding the shirt you puked on at a secret high school ravine party and surreptitiously cleaning it. The jig was up. Oh well.
Marlow pulled on her clean clothes, overwhelmed by everything: her night with Guillaume, her job prospects, her relationship with her daughter. And Rémy’s decision about the sale of Maison Perdue was also on the horizon.
Tackle the problems one by one. First up—she dialed Yves before she could talk herself out of it. She’d swallow her pride, be totally professional.
He picked up after only one ring. “Allo, Marlow? Is everything all right?”
“Well, if you forget about Sabine staying with you without so much as a single message from her or you since she first told me, I’m awesome, thanks. I didn’t even know she was in Paris. They were supposed to be a half-hour from here with friends, but no, she lied for the first time ever, and it figures you’d be involved.” So much for being professional.
“I had no idea you did not know she was here,” he said. “That’s not good.”
“It’s not good to have her with you under any circumstance. You’re not her father.”
There was a silence. How had it taken her thirty seconds to mess this up?
“She feels I am her father,” he said slowly, “and that’s perhaps more important than what you or I think. It is fair to be angry with me for not being present while she grew up, but there is some need in her to know me, and it would be cruel to keep that from her, don’t you think?”
Marlow gripped the phone. Her head pounded.
