Page 50 of The Stranger

“Not that I know of. Not in the same sense, at least.”

“I’m sure Primrose has contributed to many people’s lives.” Her eyes catch mine, and I note her surprise.

“See, you could be a doctor, if you wanted to,” my daughter insists, swinging back to face me.

“My number one fan,” I murmur, curtailing a small smile.

“Don’t worry, Primrose.” She reaches to pat the back of the nanny’s hand. “I’m sure you will also save a life one day. Just like my papa!”

“I’m sure Primrose would’ve done the same for me.” Apparently, the devil sitting on my shoulder would like to play because, how was it she put it again? If I was the last man on the planet, she happily be its sole survivor.

In other words, she’d let me choke.

“How did you manage to stop her from choking on the olive?” Felix asks from the other side of the table.

From the corner of my eye, I notice Zoe entering the dining room… then silently backing out again.

“I simply gave Primrose several hard thrusts.” Her head jerks up, like she misheard. “Between her shoulder blades,” I add evenly and with a glance my son’s way.

“It’s lucky he was in the kitchen.” Felix addresses Primrose before feeding a piece of beef into his mouth. “You owe him your life.”

Primrose grimaces. Or perhaps that was a smile. I’m sure she’s trying to work out how much of the conversation I overheard. The conversation about my sex life, or lack thereof. And how she had no plans on rectifying it. While I understand the tabloid press have an interest, I didn’t realize I was suffering the same scrutiny under my own roof.

Sadly, Zoe was, on some level, right. I haven’t been intimate with a woman for quite some time. Save for the short interlude in Ardeo when I found I couldn’t stop myself.

However, she was incorrect in assuming a lack of sex has made me sour. Life did that. Not that I’d explain myself to anyone, and not that Primrose would believe me.

I’d visited Ardeo less over the last year. And that night, I lost myself in Primrose in a way I never had before. The experience reminded me of happier, more fulfilling times. And that terrified me.

So the door. And self-preservation.

The lingering sense of disloyalty to my dead wife. A betrayal.

But I do wonder how Primrose happened to be there.

I discard the thought immediately. Whatever the reason, it was clear she wasn’t there to fuck. If she had been, though. If we’d had a little more time in the basement before⁠—

I’d just feel worse.

“I owe your father him a lot of things.”

My attention slices up at the pique in her tone. If looks could kill, I’d be face down in my Tian Provencal, I’m certain.

My smile quickly falls because, what the fuck am I doing? I didn’t force her to come to Spain to be my entertainment—not at the dinner table and not in my bed. She’s here because she tried to manipulate me. And no one gets the better of me. No one.

There were also the obvious benefits to her accompanying us, of course. A continuity of sorts for the children, who took to her immediately. The fact that she’s trustworthy and honorable. And I have been considering taking on a doctor as part of the domestic operation.

But mostly, she’s here as punishment. Though I am beginning to wonder which of us is paying the higher price. Watching her eyes warm as she speaks to my children, then cool as they slide my way is an odd kind of torture. And though I enjoy our exchanges, a battle of polite barbs that are pitched above the children’s heads, what I don’t appreciate is how I seem to have memorized the shape of her lips. Or how, in the quiet dark of the night, I find myself recalling the press of them.

Then earlier in the kitchen today, fuck, I’m certain I aged ten years in those few frantic moments. As she’d turned to the sound of my voice and inhaled strangely, I’d felt the triumphant smile slip from my face. She coughed, her hand flying to her throat and my heart seized.

She was choking—gasping for air—her fear palpable. I’d felt the weight of the moment so squarely on my shoulders it was as though I pushed the olive down her throat myself.

I rushed to her, turning her to face the countertop. I wrapped my arm around her front and braced it there as I’d used the heel of my palm to issue three hard raps to her upper back. I’d already begun to roughly formulate my next steps when the olive dislodged itself, bouncing across the marble. And Primrose took in a deep breath.

Relief rushed through me as I took to rubbing her back, offering quiet words of reassurance while, in my mind, I gave a prayer of thanks.

She sucked in lungsful after lungsful of air, her chest heaving and her voice hoarse, as her fingernails left pierced hard enough to leave half-moons on my forearm. Relief or madness, I can’t be sure, but my body stirred. I became acutely aware of her shape, her positioning. The heat of her breath and her perfume like sensory memories.