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Charlotte’s words landed on Bastien’s heart with a boom whether or not he wanted them to. He guessed for someone faking it, she deserved an Academy Award or maybe she was speaking her own heart. Maybe that was why everyone was telling him to open up his eyes.
“Well, that is quite a visual. Maybe on the seventh day, he’ll rest. So, you were just waiting around for a single billionaire to show up?”
“Mother! Stop being insulting. You are talking to the woman I love!” With the conviction and clarity of a Southern Baptist preacher on a Sunday morning, he shouted his feelings before even knowing them himself. The words burst out of his heart and onto his tongue without the filter of thoughts to contain them. He turned quickly to see how they had landed with Charlotte. Her beaming smile told him everything he needed to know. Perhaps she was no longer playing a role, and neither was he.
“So sorry. How did you meet then?” Annette said in a sheepish retreat he had never seen from his mother.
Charlotte covered his hand as if to say, I've got this. Bastien was relieved she was more than holding her own in the grilling from Annette. “I live next door. Sadly, I didn't get to know Chloe because I'd been busy setting up my shop, but I brought them dinner one night, and that's how we met.” She blushed and lowered her head. “Every time Bastien came to visit, he'd spend time on the shore, which is where we built our relationship. I have a little ritual of numbering things I find on the beach, and I offer them back to the sea with a wish.” She pulled something from the pocket of her dress, and when she opened her palm, he saw a white and pink shell with a faded black number. Before he could say anything, Charlotte smiled. “I found a wish, and by my calculations, it's been tumbling in that water for close to thirty years.” She rubbed at the almost-gone number.
“If it wasn’t a single billionaire, what did you wish for?” Annette asked, seemingly trying hard to make a joke about her poor insinuation earlier. Bastien thought it could be a step in the right direction but did not hold out any hope that his mother would just give up.
Charlotte couldn’t refuse her question without seeming resentful and standoffish. “Happiness.”
He kissed her cheek. “How lucky are we? It was granted, for both of us.” Bastien hoped he wasn’t overselling, but it was exactly how he felt.
“Sorry for the delay.” Cricket placed dishes on the table. When she put his mother's salad in front of her, she looked as if it were crawling in cockroaches. “This is fried chicken!”
“Welcome to the South, ma’am. Would you like a map and guide to Southern manners with your salad dressing?” Cricket said with a chuckle.
His mother pushed the salad away. “I need to be off, anyway; I'm planning a wedding,” she responded.
Cricket stepped back, surprised. “Oh? Who's getting married?”
Charlotte raised her hand, an ear-to-ear smile stretched across her beautiful face. “That'd be us. Me.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Charlotte heaved a sigh of relief when the tapping of Annette’s stilettos went silent after the diner door closed behind her. She stared out the window and watched as Annette climbed into the back seat of the waiting cab and drove away. “Well, I thought that went a lot better than expected,” she said, gazing at Bastien, awaiting his reaction.
“What just happened? I thought things were set with Tiffany. What don’t I know?”
Charlotte let that question sit for a second. There was a lot he didn’t know. She opened her mouth to speak, but Bastien spoke first.
“The words. Were they true?” Bastien’s face lit up, but she couldn’t tell if he was happy, anxious, or both. She reflected on his words too and felt what was becoming a familiar rush of warmth rise in her chest when she was near him.
“I believe you said I was the woman you love. We got engaged, and decided to get married next weekend, while eating fish and chips and watching Ivy dance,” Charlotte offered, although she knew Bastien was looking for more. “As for Tiffany … I overheard your mother speaking to someone and insisting the woman with you in the diner wasn’t the same one you were kissing on the beach.” Ivy ran over and jumped into Charlotte’s lap. “Where’s Mee-maw?”
“Your grandmother had a long flight and felt tired. She said to say good night. Eat up. Uncle Bastien and I will take you home.” Charlotte knew the conversation with Bastien about the exchange they’d just had with his mother was too important to conduct in hurried code in front of Ivy while she polished off her grilled cheese and tater tots. Besides, she would never talk about Ivy or her life as if Ivy were not in the room. She took Bastien’s hand in hers and placed a gentle kiss on the fingers he’d wrapped effortlessly around hers, as if to say I know you are concerned, but this will have to wait for a private moment. She could see he understood and agreed.
“Come on, little ladybug. Let’s finish up and get you home.”
“Okay, Uncle Bast.” Ivy popped a tater tot in her mouth. When she swallowed, she asked, “Can Charlotte sleep over?”
Charlotte blushed fifty shades of rose because there was nothing she would have wanted more, and she could see in Bastien’s eyes and feel in his tightening grip of her hand he wanted that too. But Ivy came first for both of them, and Charlotte wasn’t even sure Bastien meant the things he had said. “Not tonight, Ivy, honey, but we can all take a little walk on the beach if it’s alright with Bastien.” He squeezed her hand again in an enthusiastic yes, and after they finished their meal and left enough cash on the table to cover their tab, the trio headed for the door. “Good night,” Cricket called after them with a wink. “Congratulations.” Charlotte could see Cricket was barely containing her joy and what looked like a bit of self-satisfaction.
“Did you win a prize, Uncle Bast? How come Cricket said congratuwations?”
“It’s congratu-la-tions, sweetie. And, yes, I won the best prize in life when I got to have dinner with Charlotte and you. And now I get to walk on the beach with the two most wonderful ladies I know.” Charlotte admired his ability to answer Ivy honestly and avoid having to say too much.
“You’re funny.” Charlotte giggled at Ivy’s assessment of her uncle and was grateful to be off the hook of fully explaining her actions and owning up to the things each had said, for the moment at least.
They left each other on the sidewalk and promised to meet at the water’s edge.
As she drove, she reflected on what she knew: she loved him and was falling deeper and deeper each day. Thoughts that he might love her, and they could marry for real, dangled next to the knowledge that Bastien would do anything for Ivy and could have been putting on a show consistent with their plan—their agreement. She had bared her soul under the cover of Annette’s interrogation. She could use that to dial things back if her declarations had been too much and Bastien didn’t feel the same.
* * *
The sky was clear,and the waves rolled softly onto the shore as she arrived at the beach. Ivy bounded toward the water’s edge and immediately began sifting through the wet sand for treasures. “Look, Charlotte! I found a sand dollar. A whole one.”
