First Sight (29 page)

“You work very hard, Timmie,” he commented, and she didn’t deny it. She couldn’t. He already knew her too well, and had seen it for himself. She wouldn’t have denied it to him anyway. She wanted him to know who she truly was, and she wanted to know more about him. What his life had been like growing up, where he went to school, what his family had been like, did he have brothers and sisters, what were his children like, what were his dreams, his secret terrors, and what did he want from her? She wanted to know it all. He already knew her deepest secrets, and the most important things about her.

“What are we going to do?” Timmie asked him as she lay on her bed in the hotel. It was five o’clock in the afternoon for her, eleven o’clock at night for him. They were three thousand miles apart, and soon they would be twice as far. And she knew that if she had any sense at all, she would listen to Jade, and wait till he got out of his marriage, or at least moved out of his apartment, before getting too involved with him. But something was happening to both of them, and she was losing her head over him. She was so overwhelmed by her feelings for him that it had dulled the terrible ache of losing Blake.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he answered her honestly. “We need to take some time to find out,” he said carefully. “This is all very new for me. I’ve never felt like this before.” He was fifty-seven years old, and she was nine years younger, and she couldn’t remember feeling like this before either. Not even with Derek when she fell in love with him. And surely not with anyone since. This was a unique experience in her life, and apparently his as well. “I’d like to spend some time with you. When are you coming back from Taiwan?”

“I’ll only be there for a few days, I hope. I’m going on Wednesday, and I should be back on the weekend.”

“Maybe I can come out to California after that,” he said quietly, as a shiver of excitement ran down her spine. This was all happening so fast. She had no idea what to make of it, or how to defend herself against it, or if she even needed to. She needed time to figure it out, and so did he. He had already told her he wasn’t moving out until June. That was four months away. And what if he changed his mind and didn’t, as Jade’s friend had done? What if he just stayed there forever, dangling her, once she was attached to him? But she could already hear herself throwing caution to the winds as she talked to him. She wanted him to come to California to see her as soon as he could. They both needed to find out what this was. “My marriage has been dead for years,” he explained to her, as he had before. But she had understood that in October, perhaps even more than he had. His heart had been unfettered for a long time, he had just forgotten where it was and how to use it. And now it was coming alive like Rip Van Winkle, and everything in Timmie was turning to mush in response. This was no little crush, she felt sure of that. It was something huge happening, like a tidal wave that was pulling them both loose from their moorings, and they were both being swept away, while clinging to each other for dear life. And worse yet, neither of them had life jackets on, and they knew it. She was well aware of it as they talked.

They talked for an hour, until just after midnight his time, and then she lay on her bed in the hotel and thought about him for a long time. She thought about him later, when she knew he was sleeping, and at three o’clock in the morning in Paris, when she thought he was asleep, she heard an e-mail come in. She had just finished dinner with David and Jade, and they had gone back to their own rooms. She was alone when his e-mail came in.

“Dearest Timmie, I am thinking of you, and can’t sleep. I am thinking of all that has happened to us in the past two days. I have no idea what it is either, but whatever it is, it is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. I already know that with my entire being. You are the most exceptional woman, and I have no idea why I have suddenly been so lucky. Sleep well. You will be in my dreams.
Je t’embrasse fort
. J-C.” Now he was kissing her “hard.” She knew that was what
fort
meant. And the rest turned her topsy-turvy. She felt more dazed than ever as she read his e-mail again and again. She had never read anything more romantic in her life. They were like two children sending each other lovesick notes in class. She answered him immediately again.

“Dearest J-C, I miss you. How is it possible to miss someone you barely know? But I do. I have been thinking of you constantly again tonight. Come to California soon, whenever you can. Much to talk about, I think.
Je t’embrasse fort
too. T.” She couldn’t help asking herself as she sent the e-mail if she would sleep with him when he came to California, if he did. She didn’t think she should. Maybe not until he left his house in June. That seemed the sensible thing to do. Because with a man as exciting as he was, she could easily be swept away. And once she slept with him, he would own her, in her heart and spirit. She felt sure of it as she went to bed that night. And no matter how smitten with him she was, she was determined to keep this chaste. She was going to tell him that before he came out. In the end, she said it to him in another exchange of e-mails later that night. By then it was morning for him, and he said he had watched the sun come up and thought of her. This was getting more serious and more passionate by the minute. But in spite of that, he agreed that they shouldn’t sleep with each other when he came out to see her. He was treating her with great respect. And listening to how she felt. No one had done that for her before either. He truly was a remarkable man. She couldn’t understand how his wife would let him go, nor how she had allowed herself to lose him, or why she had wanted to go separate ways for all those years before. Timmie couldn’t help thinking that if she had been married to a man like him, she would never let him go. Not in a million years. He made men like Zack look embarrassingly inadequate, and her brief relationships with him and men like him seemed even more absurd to her now.

She was tired when she woke up in the morning, but still went to their factory in New Jersey anyway. She met with the plant manager, and they discussed all the problems they had there. She had a lot on her plate these days.

For the entire time she was in New York, Jean-Charles called and e-mailed her, and she felt as though she was returning to L.A. with a rare treasure. She had gone to Paris on business, and had fallen in love with a remarkable man.

She discussed it with Jade again on the way home. Jade was still leery of him, based on her own past experience, and admitted it. She didn’t want Timmie to get hurt as she had, and she pointed out to her again that she could.

“Just try to stay sane,” Jade admonished her, as though speaking to a kid sister instead of a woman who was ten years older, and wise in the ways of the world, although she had never gone out with a married man, and had to remind herself constantly to go slow.
Slow
was definitely not the operative word. They were anything but. And by the time she left for California four days later, he was even more enamored with her than before.

Timmie slept all the way back on the flight to California, and when she walked into the house in Bel Air, she felt as though everything had changed. A lightning bolt had struck her life in Paris in the form of Jean-Charles Vernier. He was on the phone to her now constantly, calling at all hours, speaking tenderly about his feelings for her. Neither of them could figure out what had happened, or why, but whatever it was, it was lighting up their world, like a beacon shining brightly in the dark. They were talking, laughing, sharing confidences, explaining about things they did, people they cared about, their lives as they grew up. He was the oldest of five children, took care of his parents, felt responsible for his brothers and sisters, saw them as often as possible, and seemed to feel a mantle of responsibility for everyone in his world. He was very French in his points of view, somewhat old-fashioned, extremely proper, and was suffering considerably from guilt and embarrassment that his would be the first divorce in their family, previously unthinkable, and finally inevitable. Even more so now with Timmie suddenly the object of his affections. By the time she left for Taiwan on Wednesday, they were talking several times a day, and admitting to each other that they were falling in love, based on the conversations they were having, their constant e-mails to each other, their confessions and admissions, and what they were discovering about each other. Timmie felt dazed.

“These things don’t happen,” she said to him, trying to hold on to the last wisp of sanity, the night before she left for Taipei.

“Apparently they do,” Jean-Charles said calmly. Most of the time he was as disoriented as she was now. He said he had nearly asked a female patient the day before how her prostate was, as he carefully perused the wrong file. He had been planning to refer her to an ophthalmologist for cataract surgery. And neither of them had slept or eaten properly in days. She had no interest whatsoever in their factory disasters in Taipei. She was completely distracted, and whenever Jade or David talked to her, she looked happy and vague.

“I think I’m losing my mind,” she said to Jean-Charles on the phone, sounding concerned. In fact, they had both lost their minds at the Plaza Athénée in Paris on Valentine’s Day. “I always thought people who did this kind of thing were nuts. Whenever someone told me they had fallen in love at first sight, I thought they belonged in a straitjacket. And now it’s happening to me.” They were both grateful that he had been the doctor her friend referred for emergencies in Paris.

“Only happening?” Jean-Charles asked, sounding disappointed. “Falling in love with you has already happened to me. I thought it had to you too.”

“You know it has,” she said softly. A week before they had both been sane people, with careers that mattered to them and that they conducted efficiently. They were masters of their own worlds. Now he chafed at the burden of seeing patients, and she didn’t give a damn about the next year’s summer or winter lines. Fashion had become instantly unimportant to her, or at least far less interesting to her than Jean-Charles. And he had to force himself to pay attention to his patients, his appointments, house calls, and hospital visits. The only patient he wanted to talk to was Timmie, and she was no longer a patient, or at least not for the moment. He told his best friend in Paris, a radiologist who found his discomfort vastly amusing, that he was beginning to think Timmie was the love of his life. He had no idea how he had lived without her until that moment, nor could she imagine what her life had been before the constant phone calls and e-mails that told her how taken he was with her, how important she was to him, and how wonderful she was. It was an avalanche of emotions for both of them that bathed all in beauty and wonder and gave them both what they had lost years before, the gift of hope. Suddenly life was new and different. She couldn’t even imagine how they would work out the distance between them, if they could ever blend two demanding careers. He had three children he loved in Paris. They had responsibilities and duties, he had a large family he was deeply attached to, and he wasn’t even divorced. There was no question in either of their minds, it was utterly insane, or challenging at best.

But Timmie recognized that it was the sweetest insanity she had ever indulged in. When she married Derek, they had worked together for two years on the men’s line, and their love was a slow evolution of their friendship and a shared interest in the business. This was a sharp clap of thunder in a summer sky, a lightning bolt that had electrified both of them to their very cores. Everything they’d ever known as solid reference points in their lives had suddenly shifted and changed. He had even begun to have bouts of panic about her safety and well-being, and was concerned about her traveling so far away. She had gone to Taipei with David, while Jade stayed in the office to field problems there. And as she had in New York and Los Angeles, she spoke to Jean-Charles several times a day from Taipei.

She flew back to Los Angeles on Saturday, and David brought up the subject on the long flight back. The trip had gone well, and they had managed to solve most of their problems, salvage the integrity of the factory, and replace two key employees, who they were convinced were stealing from them. But all of that seemed to pale in her mind in comparison to her conversations with Jean-Charles.

“Seems like you have a very serious case for the French doctor,” David teased her over dinner on the flight. They both knew how Jade felt about it, that Timmie shouldn’t even think about him until after his divorce was final. But David was well aware that sometimes real life didn’t work that way. Timing was not in one’s own hands, but in the control of the gods, no matter how reasonable one intended to be. It hadn’t gone unnoticed on the trip that her cell phone rang constantly. And now, instead of looking irritated when she answered it, annoyed by the interruption, she beamed from ear to ear, and walked away to talk privately, even when in meetings, or in earnest discussions about some crucial issue. The woman of iron who ran the empire of Timmie O looked like a schoolgirl and giggled when she was on the phone. She seemed to have blossomed like a flower in the days since their trip to Paris, and her encounter with Jean-Charles at the Plaza Athénée on Valentine’s Day. Their feelings for each other were growing exponentially day by day.

David liked everything he was seeing, and the softness it gave her. This was exactly the kind of companion he had hoped she would find one day. Kind, intelligent, trustworthy, responsible, a man of substance and morals, respected in his own world, and hopefully able to deal with hers, without petty jealousy or ulterior motives, like all the unworthy men who had come before him, and with whom Timmie had sought refuge in order to avoid loneliness and solitude.

The only fly in the ointment David could see so far was the wife he had not yet divorced, but said he was planning to. And David felt in his gut that if this man said he was going to free himself of the bonds of his marriage, he was certain that he would. Not so for Jade, who trusted no one still legally married, and was absolutely certain he would jerk Timmie around without mercy, break her heart, and dump her on her head.