Cognac & Couture (The Passport Series Book 2) (24 page)

AFTER I HAD
made certain my
office door was closed and that a mountain of papers was strategically stacked
around my desk—I was terrified Messieurs Detriche and Huse would appear in my
office unannounced—I tried to compose an intelligent response to Aksel’s email.

“Here’s hoping the Google translator isn’t crap!” I said
aloud as I began typing a response to Aksel’s email.

To:
AkselPedersen@
FlytningVærktøj.com

From:
[email protected]

Subj: Re: Availability

Godmorgen,

Thank you for
your email. I have reviewed the offer from Flytning Værktøj and must admit to
being intrigued by the unique and compelling services your company wishes to provide.

Having said
that, I wish to disclose that another position within L’Oréal may become
available in early January. This position is where my immediate interest lies.
As I mentioned in our meeting, I had not contemplated leaving the company or
Paris before receiving your offer. I hope my response is not unexpected.

I wish you
success in your venture and hope to hear great things. Best of luck filling the
position.

Regards,

Kathleen
Ehlers

There! It was done. I had turned the job down and all
reasons—well, most of them—for feeling guilty were gone, finished,
fini
.
I felt enormous relief, having the weight off my shoulders. I quickly sent it
off. It was really Monsieur Detriche’s job I wanted, so… “That’s that.”

BUT IT WASN’T
over, done,
finished. I was weighed down by many conflicting emotions.

Sébastien and I exchanged email
and texts. I tried to match his banter, but he noticed a dip in my mood, which
I passed off as not having slept very well, because it was true. I hadn’t.

I thought about who I had once been and who I now was. The
combination of meeting Sébastien, sharing my love and grief for Mikkel, experiencing
the creative process of the fashion show and the interest of those at Flytning
Værktøj had changed me. I had been set free from the past, from loneliness,
from the activities I had used to distract myself. Now, parts of me from the
past, which had lurked beneath my secrets—the painter, the girl who didn’t have
to do the safe thing—wanted to be set free.

Sometimes it was easier to lose myself in fantasies, and at
other times I threw myself into the familiar and slogged my way through the
Urban Decay acquisition. I was lost in the world of mergers when my computer
pinged, letting me know an email had arrived.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subj: Arriving
Late Tonight

Good morning,

Just a quick
email to let you know I had to change my flight. I will be arriving quite late
tonight. I hope you are available tomorrow. I cannot wait to see you. I’ve
missed you.

Sébastien

I felt guilty at my relief at the short reprieve I had been
given. But I did feel it. I would see him tomorrow and tell him about Aksel’s
job offer.

SÉBASTIEN HAD CALLED
this
morning and invited me to lunch at his apartment. Perhaps it was cowardice, but
I decided to enjoy some time with him before telling him about Aksel’s job
offer and the disclosures he’d made. I gave myself permission to enjoy lunch.
Then we’d talk.

I stood outside his front door,
flapping my coat, trying to air out the beads of sweat that had accumulated on
my walk over. I was nervous. Fortunately, when he opened the door, my hormones
took over. Overwhelmed by how gorgeous he was, how good he smelled, all my
sensitive parts signaled me to jump on him. Instead, I whisked a bouquet of
flowers from behind my back, which earned me a very sensual kiss. I was
momentarily satisfied.

“Beautiful! Merci, chérie.” He
kissed my cheek.

I followed him to the kitchen, caught
my heel on the carpet, and tripped. Flustered, I gulped down the wine he’d
handed me and clunked the glass down on the counter with so much force, we both
winced, waiting for it to shatter. Miraculously, it didn’t. His eyebrows
slashed downwards with confusion.

“Is everything all right?”

I made an evasive sound and
smiled.

He refilled my glass and clinked
it with his. “
Santé, mon amour.
But be careful. I have plans for you.” He
glanced at the pot bubbling on the stove. “Let me check on this.”

I was stuck on “mon amour.”
Strictly translated, it meant “my love.”
Was it a slip of the tongue or just
a casual endearment?
If not, he might regret his timing.

When I said nothing, he asked, “Chérie,
are you all right? If you do not mind me saying, you seem a little bit… not
yourself.”

I shook my head, clearing my
thoughts before apologizing. “Sorry. It’s been a long week.”

“So, my saying ‘mon amour’ didn’t make
you uncomfortable?”

Trying to be nonchalant, I waved
off his question. “Of course not! People say that all the time—it’s just a
phrase, an endearment.” I tried to sound light, unaffected, even worldly.

“Then, if I were to agree that it
was just a phrase, that I meant nothing by it and it was simply a translation
issue, you wouldn’t be disappointed?” He leaned back against the kitchen
counter and held my nervous gaze.

My heart bounced around my chest.
Time
to be a grown-up,
which wasn’t always easy. In fact, it was often quite
hard. Today, it seemed positively overwhelming. “I would, but just a bit. I
haven’t been exactly shy about expressing my feelings for you.”

His casual stance disintegrated.
He pulled me to him and embraced me tightly. “Bon. We both know that it isn’t
just a phrase. It is true, chérie, you are my love.”

My arms wound tightly around him.
“And you are mine.” My voice cracked from the wonder of it all. And from worry.

His lips trailed kisses across my
cheek and then sought my mouth. There was something different about his kiss. There
was a passion, a depth, and a tenderness to it that felt like something had
been sealed, some promise was being made.

When he released my mouth, I
leaned into him, struggling to breathe. I kept my arms around him, needing him
close. “You see, we survived,” he whispered against my hair.

I hope so.

Under my hands, I felt his muscles
tense. He shifted, so I knew he was looking down at me. When I raised my eyes
to his, they darkened, and something akin to a growl briefly hung on the air
before he dove in and delivered hungry kisses upon my lips. Locked in his
embrace, I experienced a deep sense of wonder at the joy of being loved by
someone who could become all things significant. This thought forced my earlier
agenda to the front of my mind.

When the kitchen timer beeped, and
after making sure I was stable on my feet, Sébastien reluctantly pulled away.
“This will take a few minutes. Talk to me.”

“Okay,” I happily acquiesced. When
his back was turned, I pressed my trembling fingers to my lips, which buzzed
and burned; my core was full of torturous warmth. All of me longed for more of
him, from him. I resisted the desire to press myself against him. Instead, I
waved a hand in front of my face to cool down.

While he adeptly handled the
mechanics of cooking, I asked him about his trip. In between giving me the
highlights, chopping herbs, and tasting the sauce he’d made, I grew more
relaxed. “This is good,” he pronounced. “Voila.”

***

On the
table was a loaf of thick, crusty bread. He set the large, dark-brown enamel
pot beside my bouquet of orange, red, and yellow dahlias. While he served me,
he told me about the first time he’d made
potée champenoise
.

“I was a poor college student, but
I really wanted something rich and healthy. It was a miserable day. I remember
being drenched from the rain, and my feet were soaked, since I had holes in
both shoes. I scrambled around and found enough money for the basics and then
brought them back to an awful apartment I shared with two friends, Paul and
Lucien. We combined all our resources and cooked a huge pot of food. It
simmered for a while, and then we tasted it. It was disgusting.” He chuckled and
shook his head as he sat down. “I called my mother on the phone and told her
what I had put in the pot and asked her how to fix it. She was quiet for quite
some time, and then she finally said, ‘Throw it away and start over.’ Well, of
course, this wasn’t an option. So, my friends and I, we put a colander in the
sink, dumped the soup in, and rinsed all the food off. Then we put it back in
the pot with water, a few spices, and said a prayer that it would be edible.” He
faded away, lost in memories.

I paused my nibbling on bread
crust. “Was it?”

“I cannot say it was superb, but
it was certainly better and definitely edible. However, I must admit, by the
time the stew was ready, we had drunk quite a lot of wine.” A wet, bedraggled,
impoverished
Sébastien pulled at my heartstrings.
I had never thought of him that way.

He changed the subject and asked
how Hillary’s broken heart was mending. “I spoke to her a few days ago.” I
dabbed the corners of my mouth. “Getting through the baptism was good for her.
No impending reasons to see Michael. She sounded happier.”

“It seems, at least to me, that
when something wonderful is happening to one person you know, something less
pleasant is happening to another.”

As I looked at the man across the
table from me, his head bowed over his bowl, all my secrets and guilt washed
over me. The word, “True,” quietly slid off my lips.

I blew out
a deep breath and got to the point. “Sébastien, I need to tell you something.”

The hand that had been stroking my
hair stilled. “You sound so serious. What is it, Kathleen?” I noticed the lack
of endearments. Perhaps that was better.

“Back in October, way back, the
day after Fashion Week was over, while you were in Rome for business, I met
with Aksel Pedersen.”

He twisted sideways to look at me
better. His face changed from relaxed to concerned and confused. He said
nothing. The silence was overwhelming, so I pressed on. “He offered me a job at
his new company,
Flytning Værktøj
. I turned it
down.”

He sounded reserved when he
finally spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I had never heard this tone of voice.

I shoved my hair back from my face
and nervously tugged at my shirtsleeves. I told him about the girls observing
his behavior at the fashion show when he saw me talking to Aksel and my
confusion about his hiding something. I confessed, “I asked Aksel what was
between the two of you.”

He stood up, walked to the window,
and stared out at the street below long enough to stretch my nerves as thin as
they could possibly go.

“Say something,” I begged.

“What did he tell you?”

I immediately repeated the short
answer Aksel had given me.
“He told me you were in business, there was a
breach of contract, that you both signed a non-disclosure agreement, and
nothing else.”

He gave a satisfied nod. “Why did
you turn the job down?”

Surprise rushed through me; this
was not the question I had expected. “Do you want the long answer or the short
one?”

“The long one.”

So I told him. I told him how
unveiling my past had caused a lot of confusion within me, causing me to rethink
my future options; how finding him had made me feel excited about living life
and experiencing the world. I explained having chosen the sensible life versus
the one where painting would have left my daily existence too precarious.

While I spoke, he stood,
unyielding. His folded arms, his stiff posture, his blank face—they broke my
heart. Was this him being angry? Or worse?

When he finally spoke, he told me,
“I think you should consider the opportunity at
Flytning Værktøj.
”

I sat in shock. “Sébastien, I had
never planned on leaving
L’Oréal
or Paris.”

“You should go.”

I sat on the couch, confused. I
realized, after a few moments, he wasn’t just saying I should meet with Aksel.
He was asking to be alone.

I gathered my things and then
slowly approached him where he sat, staring into the fire. “I’m a lot, not a
little, confused. I don’t know what you’re saying. Are we… over?”

He cast sad eyes upon me. “I think
we both need to think about what we want out of the future.” He kissed the back
of my hand and then squeezed it.

“Okay.” I blew out a deep breath.
I felt just as confused but decided to give him room to think about his future.

I roamed the streets of
Enclos-St-Laurent, lost in thought, wondering what to do.