Revealing Us
Page 9
Chris ends his call. “Let’s go get a shower, order food, eat, and then sleep.”
“I’m all for all of those things in that order,” I agree, walking with him up the stairs.
“That was the security guy at the door who looks after our place and a few others around here. Rey is his name. He stopped by to give me a stack of messages.” He runs a hand over his jaw. “One was from Katie and John, who’d heard about what happened on the news and kept getting fast busy signals when they called me.”
I stop at the mention of his godparents. “Oh, no. We were supposed to be at the château today.”
“Yeah,” he conirms. We start walking again. “I feel like crap for not calling them.”
“How did she know to call here?”
“Jacob told her we were here.” His phone rings and he glances down and back up. “Speaking of Katie.” He answers the call. “Hi, Katie. Yes, I’m okay. We’re both okay. You’re right.
I should have called. I just wanted to get Sara out of there.” We walk into the bedroom and Chris glances at me with a question in his eyes. “You want to talk to Sara?”
I nod and accept the phone from him. “Hi, Katie.”
“Sara, honey, are you okay?”
I sink down on the bed and my heart twists. I don’t know her well, but she has this motherly quality that stirs the emotions I’ve tried to bury deep down inside about the mother I lost, and who I’m not sure I ever really understood, and the loneliness that had followed.
“Sara, honey, are you okay?” Katie repeats.
I clear my throat and watch Chris slide open a long closet that covers most of the wall and matches the white inish. “I’m ine,” I assure her. “I’m sorry we made you worry.”
“I wish Chris had brought you here, not taken you to Paris.
You’re a ish out of water. How long will you be there?”
“Indeinitely,” I tell her, and I’m surprised that I’m glad I’m here and not there. Katie and John are a part of Chris’s past and present, but Paris is where Chris feels he needs to be to truly open up to me.
“Oh dear,” Katie frets. “That’s what I feared. Did you plan for this, or take of because of the problems here?”
“We’d started talking about it, but hadn’t had time to plan.”
“I can see why that felt important, but you’re in for quite the culture shock. Some people do well, while others really struggle. Do you know how to speak French?”
“No, I—”
“That’s what I feared. Okay. That’s a big part of enjoying your time there. Don’t fret; we’ll remedy this. I have a friend who has a niece who’s in school there to be a language instruc-tor. Give me a few minutes and I’ll see if she can tutor you, then I’ll call you back. What’s your direct number?” I give it to her and she adds, “Everything is going to be wonderful. We’ll take care of you.” She ends the call and I sit there stunned. This woman barely knows me, and she’s already swept me into her family circle. I haven’t had that since my mother died. Truth-fully, not ever.
“Everything okay?” Chris asks from the closet, where he’s hanging a shirt from his suitcase.
“Yes, ine. Good, actually. Katie is wonderful. She’s trying to ind me a tutor and then calling me back.”
He scrubs his jaw, an amused look on his face. “And you thought I was a control freak?” He saunters toward me. “She’s in another country, trying to line up your French lessons.”
I smirk as he stops in front of me. “You are a control freak.”
“So are you,” he says, ofering me his hand, then pulls me to my feet and wraps me in his embrace. “Which makes your giving it to me all the more meaningful.”
The mix of hot ire and tender warmth in his eyes has my ingers lexing on the hard wall of his chest and my body relaxing into his. “Just remember, control is like a fortune cookie saying.”
“A fortune cookie saying,” he repeats, looking amused.
“Right. It’s meaningful only when you add ‘in bed’ to the end.”
He laughs, and it’s such a sexy laugh for all kinds of reasons.
Yes, it’s deep and masculine and warm and wonderful, but more than anything, it’s relaxed. It’s comfortable. It’s a part of who we’re becoming together.
“Let’s go take a shower,” he says. “I’ll show you your closet.
It’s in the back of the bathroom and in desperate need of a whole lot of illing, because that little suitcase you brought isn’t going to manage.”
He’s right. I packed fast and horribly. “I’m all for seeing the closet, but Katie’s going to call back. I can’t get into the shower until she calls.”
His phone rings and Chris looks at the screen and sighs.
“Thanks to one of our nosy neighbors, word has spread I’m back in the city. This is a major donor for my charity, who sits on one of the board of directors for one of the local museums.”
“Take it,” I encourage him. “I need to ind my phone for when Katie calls back, anyway.” I kiss him and head into the bathroom, loving the normalcy of the moment. We’re just a couple sharing a bedroom and a bathroom, getting ready to shower, eat, and go to bed. Well . . . we also were almost killed by a madwoman who’s accusing me of murder, not to mention that I confronted the manipulative, gorgeous ex named Amber.
But I banish those events and focus on the here and now. I’ve had too little normalcy in my life, and I think Chris has, too. We need this.
Finding my purse, I dig out my phone. Satisied that it has enough charge, I drain the cold water from the tub, then head toward the closet to check it out. The sound of Chris speaking French lifts in the air, the words rolling sexily of his tongue. I sigh. He alone could make me love this new language.
I lip on the light to ind a completely empty closet the size of a small bedroom, with rows of built-in shelves and shoe hold-ers that make my little suitcase full of stuf a joke. My cell phone rings and it’s Katie. I sit down on a cushion-topped bench.
“Okay, you’re all set,” she says. “Chantal will be there at ten in the morning, and you’ll adore her. She’s actually graduated college and is starting a new job after the holidays, so this is perfect.”
“Ten tomorrow,” I repeat. “That’s fast.”
“I thought you’d need something to keep your mind of what’s going on back here. And you aren’t going to like being in a city where you can’t communicate with people. Sure, there are some who speak English, but very poorly. And I know you’re going to want to be involved in the art community and, before you blink, the various charity events Chris is involved with over the holidays.”
“Oh, yes. I’m excited to be a part of the art community and the charity events.”
“Of course you are. And charities will be a perfect outlet for your energy, since you can’t work there.”
My heart stutters. “What do you mean, I can’t work?”
“You’d need to have gotten a work visa before you left, and it sounds like you didn’t have time for that; and getting a work permit approved is nearly impossible in France. The job market is poor, the art world competitive, and they’re all about keeping the borders restricted. Of course you have Chris as an insider, but all the red tape still takes time.”
How had I not thought of this? Of course I need a work visa, and now I know that is nearly impossible to get.
Katie continues, “It’s going to be inconvenient to have to ly back after ninety days, then turn around and return for the Louvre Christmas event Chris always does, but I’m self-ishly happy about that. We’d like to see the two of you while you’re here.” Her voice softens. “I worry about Chris, Sara, and seeing the two of you together makes me happy. I wasn’t sure he’d ever let himself connect with another person fully again.”
“Again?” I ask.
“He’s had a lot of loss in his life, Sara. It’s not left him unaf-fected.”
I draw in a pained breath. “Yes. I know.”
“Take care of him, honey. Don’t let him convince you he’s so tough he doesn’t need it.”
“I don’t plan to. You have my word.”
The rest of the conversation is a haze, and when I hang up with Katie, I’m not sure what I feel. I’m thankful to be here, but I wish Chris had prepared me for the work situation.
“Hey, baby,” Chris calls out, walking into the bathroom.
“I’m afraid I just got cornered into a meeting tomorrow morning. It’s at a café across the street from the Musée d’Art Mod-erne de la Ville de Paris, so you could go explore and I’ll join 84
you afterward.” He stops in the closet doorway, gives me a quick once-over, and says, “What’s wrong?”
“You said I could get a job and earn a living here, Chris.”
Understanding washes over his face. “You can, baby. You just need an employer to sign of on your work visa.”
“Katie says jobs are hard to ind.”
“You have two options. I can recommend you, and—”
“No.” I shake my head. “I need to do this on my own.”
“Or,” he continues, “you volunteer where you want to work and prove yourself.”
“And to prove myself, I’ll need to speak French.”
“It’ll help.”
“How am I supposed to earn a living?”
“Sara. Baby. You do realize we have plenty of money, right?”
“We don’t have anything, Chris. It’s your money. I have some money from my sales at the gallery, but that won’t last forever. I have to buy a wardrobe here, and I—”
“Sara.” His hands settle on my legs. “I know how hard it is for you to see my money as your money, and that you see this as depending on me. And I know very well that not only have the people you depended on in life let you down, but I also shut you out after Dylan died. That gave you reason to believe I’ll let you down, too, but you can depend on me. And I fully intend to prove that to you.”
Once again, he’s seen what I haven’t in myself. My old demons are back and they’re breathing ire. They tell me that anyone I count on will simply go away at some point. I shove them down into the deep recesses of who I am and don’t want to be anymore, and focus on what’s important. Present. Not past.
“I trust you, Chris, or I wouldn’t be here. You aren’t like anyone else in my life—but that doesn’t change the fact that earning my own living does help me feel that we’re equals.”
“We are equals. Money doesn’t determine worth.”
“It’s about power. You yourself said that.”
He grimaces. “I hate how your father and that bastard Michael made you feel like their money was a weapon in relationships. It’s not, and it’s going to be part of our life, because I intend to always have plenty of it.” He sighs and shakes his head.
“Look. We have a lot before us. Having money shouldn’t be part of that equation, and your inding a job shouldn’t be, either.
I didn’t talk about the work situation because I knew you’d ind opportunities.
“Since we have money, you have the luxury of volunteering at the museums to work your way up to a full-time job if you decide you want it. Or you can buy and sell highly sought-after art from an oice here in the house. You’d basically be doing what you did for Mark at the gallery, but as a consultant. Hell, you could even sell to Mark. Then we could travel, and you could use the trips to hunt for pieces you want to buy.”
My apprehension quickly turns to excitement. “Would I need some sort of international license for that?”
“We can certainly talk to the attorney about it tomorrow.”
“Yes. Please. I love this idea!”
“I’m glad you do, but remember that it’s only one idea. You can explore your options, and you can’t do that when you’re worried about money. I do what I love, and I want you to do what you love. Believe me, it’s going to take restraint for me to 86
sit back and let you ind your own open doors, when I want to open them for you. But I will.”
Every time I think I can’t fall more in love with Chris, I do.
“Thank you. I do really need to know I have my own success.”
“I know,” he says, and his voice softens. “Sara. I need you to leave the money thing right here in this room tonight. There’s plenty of other monsters in my closet for us to face, and I can’t set those free if I can’t even get past this.”
I lean forward and frame his face with my hands. “You can tell me, or show me, anything.”
His expression turns solemn. “I know, and I’m going to.
And that’s what scares me more than anything.” He walks into the bathroom, leaving me to stare after him.
Eight
Chantal turns out to be a lovely, patient, twenty-three-year-old native Parisian. And considering it’s nearly noon, and I’ve been sitting with my new tutor for two hours and I haven’t learned much, she deserves my high opinion of her.
I lean back against the red leather couch in the amazing library on the same loor of our bedroom and drop the “word chart” Chantal has me using on the cofee table. The famous pieces of art Chris has on the walls are far more interesting than learning French. “You do know it’s actually three or four in the morning for me? The time change has got to be afecting my ability to absorb the lesson. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it for at least a week. Then I’ll come up with something else.”
“I’m all for all of those things in that order,” I agree, walking with him up the stairs.
“That was the security guy at the door who looks after our place and a few others around here. Rey is his name. He stopped by to give me a stack of messages.” He runs a hand over his jaw. “One was from Katie and John, who’d heard about what happened on the news and kept getting fast busy signals when they called me.”
I stop at the mention of his godparents. “Oh, no. We were supposed to be at the château today.”
“Yeah,” he conirms. We start walking again. “I feel like crap for not calling them.”
“How did she know to call here?”
“Jacob told her we were here.” His phone rings and he glances down and back up. “Speaking of Katie.” He answers the call. “Hi, Katie. Yes, I’m okay. We’re both okay. You’re right.
I should have called. I just wanted to get Sara out of there.” We walk into the bedroom and Chris glances at me with a question in his eyes. “You want to talk to Sara?”
I nod and accept the phone from him. “Hi, Katie.”
“Sara, honey, are you okay?”
I sink down on the bed and my heart twists. I don’t know her well, but she has this motherly quality that stirs the emotions I’ve tried to bury deep down inside about the mother I lost, and who I’m not sure I ever really understood, and the loneliness that had followed.
“Sara, honey, are you okay?” Katie repeats.
I clear my throat and watch Chris slide open a long closet that covers most of the wall and matches the white inish. “I’m ine,” I assure her. “I’m sorry we made you worry.”
“I wish Chris had brought you here, not taken you to Paris.
You’re a ish out of water. How long will you be there?”
“Indeinitely,” I tell her, and I’m surprised that I’m glad I’m here and not there. Katie and John are a part of Chris’s past and present, but Paris is where Chris feels he needs to be to truly open up to me.
“Oh dear,” Katie frets. “That’s what I feared. Did you plan for this, or take of because of the problems here?”
“We’d started talking about it, but hadn’t had time to plan.”
“I can see why that felt important, but you’re in for quite the culture shock. Some people do well, while others really struggle. Do you know how to speak French?”
“No, I—”
“That’s what I feared. Okay. That’s a big part of enjoying your time there. Don’t fret; we’ll remedy this. I have a friend who has a niece who’s in school there to be a language instruc-tor. Give me a few minutes and I’ll see if she can tutor you, then I’ll call you back. What’s your direct number?” I give it to her and she adds, “Everything is going to be wonderful. We’ll take care of you.” She ends the call and I sit there stunned. This woman barely knows me, and she’s already swept me into her family circle. I haven’t had that since my mother died. Truth-fully, not ever.
“Everything okay?” Chris asks from the closet, where he’s hanging a shirt from his suitcase.
“Yes, ine. Good, actually. Katie is wonderful. She’s trying to ind me a tutor and then calling me back.”
He scrubs his jaw, an amused look on his face. “And you thought I was a control freak?” He saunters toward me. “She’s in another country, trying to line up your French lessons.”
I smirk as he stops in front of me. “You are a control freak.”
“So are you,” he says, ofering me his hand, then pulls me to my feet and wraps me in his embrace. “Which makes your giving it to me all the more meaningful.”
The mix of hot ire and tender warmth in his eyes has my ingers lexing on the hard wall of his chest and my body relaxing into his. “Just remember, control is like a fortune cookie saying.”
“A fortune cookie saying,” he repeats, looking amused.
“Right. It’s meaningful only when you add ‘in bed’ to the end.”
He laughs, and it’s such a sexy laugh for all kinds of reasons.
Yes, it’s deep and masculine and warm and wonderful, but more than anything, it’s relaxed. It’s comfortable. It’s a part of who we’re becoming together.
“Let’s go take a shower,” he says. “I’ll show you your closet.
It’s in the back of the bathroom and in desperate need of a whole lot of illing, because that little suitcase you brought isn’t going to manage.”
He’s right. I packed fast and horribly. “I’m all for seeing the closet, but Katie’s going to call back. I can’t get into the shower until she calls.”
His phone rings and Chris looks at the screen and sighs.
“Thanks to one of our nosy neighbors, word has spread I’m back in the city. This is a major donor for my charity, who sits on one of the board of directors for one of the local museums.”
“Take it,” I encourage him. “I need to ind my phone for when Katie calls back, anyway.” I kiss him and head into the bathroom, loving the normalcy of the moment. We’re just a couple sharing a bedroom and a bathroom, getting ready to shower, eat, and go to bed. Well . . . we also were almost killed by a madwoman who’s accusing me of murder, not to mention that I confronted the manipulative, gorgeous ex named Amber.
But I banish those events and focus on the here and now. I’ve had too little normalcy in my life, and I think Chris has, too. We need this.
Finding my purse, I dig out my phone. Satisied that it has enough charge, I drain the cold water from the tub, then head toward the closet to check it out. The sound of Chris speaking French lifts in the air, the words rolling sexily of his tongue. I sigh. He alone could make me love this new language.
I lip on the light to ind a completely empty closet the size of a small bedroom, with rows of built-in shelves and shoe hold-ers that make my little suitcase full of stuf a joke. My cell phone rings and it’s Katie. I sit down on a cushion-topped bench.
“Okay, you’re all set,” she says. “Chantal will be there at ten in the morning, and you’ll adore her. She’s actually graduated college and is starting a new job after the holidays, so this is perfect.”
“Ten tomorrow,” I repeat. “That’s fast.”
“I thought you’d need something to keep your mind of what’s going on back here. And you aren’t going to like being in a city where you can’t communicate with people. Sure, there are some who speak English, but very poorly. And I know you’re going to want to be involved in the art community and, before you blink, the various charity events Chris is involved with over the holidays.”
“Oh, yes. I’m excited to be a part of the art community and the charity events.”
“Of course you are. And charities will be a perfect outlet for your energy, since you can’t work there.”
My heart stutters. “What do you mean, I can’t work?”
“You’d need to have gotten a work visa before you left, and it sounds like you didn’t have time for that; and getting a work permit approved is nearly impossible in France. The job market is poor, the art world competitive, and they’re all about keeping the borders restricted. Of course you have Chris as an insider, but all the red tape still takes time.”
How had I not thought of this? Of course I need a work visa, and now I know that is nearly impossible to get.
Katie continues, “It’s going to be inconvenient to have to ly back after ninety days, then turn around and return for the Louvre Christmas event Chris always does, but I’m self-ishly happy about that. We’d like to see the two of you while you’re here.” Her voice softens. “I worry about Chris, Sara, and seeing the two of you together makes me happy. I wasn’t sure he’d ever let himself connect with another person fully again.”
“Again?” I ask.
“He’s had a lot of loss in his life, Sara. It’s not left him unaf-fected.”
I draw in a pained breath. “Yes. I know.”
“Take care of him, honey. Don’t let him convince you he’s so tough he doesn’t need it.”
“I don’t plan to. You have my word.”
The rest of the conversation is a haze, and when I hang up with Katie, I’m not sure what I feel. I’m thankful to be here, but I wish Chris had prepared me for the work situation.
“Hey, baby,” Chris calls out, walking into the bathroom.
“I’m afraid I just got cornered into a meeting tomorrow morning. It’s at a café across the street from the Musée d’Art Mod-erne de la Ville de Paris, so you could go explore and I’ll join 84
you afterward.” He stops in the closet doorway, gives me a quick once-over, and says, “What’s wrong?”
“You said I could get a job and earn a living here, Chris.”
Understanding washes over his face. “You can, baby. You just need an employer to sign of on your work visa.”
“Katie says jobs are hard to ind.”
“You have two options. I can recommend you, and—”
“No.” I shake my head. “I need to do this on my own.”
“Or,” he continues, “you volunteer where you want to work and prove yourself.”
“And to prove myself, I’ll need to speak French.”
“It’ll help.”
“How am I supposed to earn a living?”
“Sara. Baby. You do realize we have plenty of money, right?”
“We don’t have anything, Chris. It’s your money. I have some money from my sales at the gallery, but that won’t last forever. I have to buy a wardrobe here, and I—”
“Sara.” His hands settle on my legs. “I know how hard it is for you to see my money as your money, and that you see this as depending on me. And I know very well that not only have the people you depended on in life let you down, but I also shut you out after Dylan died. That gave you reason to believe I’ll let you down, too, but you can depend on me. And I fully intend to prove that to you.”
Once again, he’s seen what I haven’t in myself. My old demons are back and they’re breathing ire. They tell me that anyone I count on will simply go away at some point. I shove them down into the deep recesses of who I am and don’t want to be anymore, and focus on what’s important. Present. Not past.
“I trust you, Chris, or I wouldn’t be here. You aren’t like anyone else in my life—but that doesn’t change the fact that earning my own living does help me feel that we’re equals.”
“We are equals. Money doesn’t determine worth.”
“It’s about power. You yourself said that.”
He grimaces. “I hate how your father and that bastard Michael made you feel like their money was a weapon in relationships. It’s not, and it’s going to be part of our life, because I intend to always have plenty of it.” He sighs and shakes his head.
“Look. We have a lot before us. Having money shouldn’t be part of that equation, and your inding a job shouldn’t be, either.
I didn’t talk about the work situation because I knew you’d ind opportunities.
“Since we have money, you have the luxury of volunteering at the museums to work your way up to a full-time job if you decide you want it. Or you can buy and sell highly sought-after art from an oice here in the house. You’d basically be doing what you did for Mark at the gallery, but as a consultant. Hell, you could even sell to Mark. Then we could travel, and you could use the trips to hunt for pieces you want to buy.”
My apprehension quickly turns to excitement. “Would I need some sort of international license for that?”
“We can certainly talk to the attorney about it tomorrow.”
“Yes. Please. I love this idea!”
“I’m glad you do, but remember that it’s only one idea. You can explore your options, and you can’t do that when you’re worried about money. I do what I love, and I want you to do what you love. Believe me, it’s going to take restraint for me to 86
sit back and let you ind your own open doors, when I want to open them for you. But I will.”
Every time I think I can’t fall more in love with Chris, I do.
“Thank you. I do really need to know I have my own success.”
“I know,” he says, and his voice softens. “Sara. I need you to leave the money thing right here in this room tonight. There’s plenty of other monsters in my closet for us to face, and I can’t set those free if I can’t even get past this.”
I lean forward and frame his face with my hands. “You can tell me, or show me, anything.”
His expression turns solemn. “I know, and I’m going to.
And that’s what scares me more than anything.” He walks into the bathroom, leaving me to stare after him.
Eight
Chantal turns out to be a lovely, patient, twenty-three-year-old native Parisian. And considering it’s nearly noon, and I’ve been sitting with my new tutor for two hours and I haven’t learned much, she deserves my high opinion of her.
I lean back against the red leather couch in the amazing library on the same loor of our bedroom and drop the “word chart” Chantal has me using on the cofee table. The famous pieces of art Chris has on the walls are far more interesting than learning French. “You do know it’s actually three or four in the morning for me? The time change has got to be afecting my ability to absorb the lesson. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it for at least a week. Then I’ll come up with something else.”
