Leonie (80 page)

“You know, it’s odd,” he said finally, “but I always thought somehow Sebastião meant to marry you.”

Amélie looked down at the bowl of
fraises des bois
in front of her. Their sugared scarlet juices stained the silver bowl and their fragrance was that of summer. This dark blue-eyed man knew almost too much about her—he even knew about Sebastião. It was an unfair advantage when she knew so little about him. For some reason she didn’t want him to know that Sebastião had asked her to marry him, not now.

“No, it was always Roberto. Sebastião knew that.”

Gérard spooned a berry from the bowl and offered it to her, smiling as she took it in her delicate pink mouth.

“Tell me, Amélie, why did you come to Paris? And alone?”

“But I’m not alone, I have my children with me.”

Gérard wanted to kiss her, she was like a child herself in her guilelessness; she didn’t know how to flirt with him.

“I plan to spend a week here and then I’m going to the south—
to the Côte d’Azur.” The name sounded exotic on her lips, full of the mystery of the glamorous unknown.

“That, too, is not a place to go alone.”

Amélie blushed. What was he getting at? “I’m not alone, I’m going to visit someone … an old friend there.” She couldn’t tell him about Léonie. She barely knew him.

“You know,” said Gérard suddenly, “there’s a puppet theater in the Jardins du Luxembourg and there’s a marvelous toy shop on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and I know just the place your children would love to go for lunch.”

Amélie sat back in her chair; he was full of surprises. “Where? For lunch, I mean?”

“A picnic, right here in the Bois. And then there’s the circus—”

Amélie burst out laughing, he was clever, too! The certain way to her heart was through her children.

“Tomorrow?” His eyebrows were raised in a question.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed, still laughing. “I shall look forward to it.”

It was late afternoon when Gérard returned her to the hotel. “Let me take you out to dinner,” he said as he walked with her through the lobby.

“I can’t do that—the children will be waiting for me.”

“Then I’ll have dinner with you
and
your children.”

Amélie shook her head. “No, really, they’ll be tired and I’d like them to eat early in the suite.”

The elegant little scrolled and gilded elevator stopped and its gates swung open. Gérard put out his hand. “Don’t say no,” he pleaded. “Surely the children must go to bed at some point! If you can’t have dinner, perhaps we can go to the theater, or even for a stroll—Paris by night?”

Amélie succumbed to his persuasive charm with a smile. “Very well, why don’t you come and meet my daughters this evening before they go to bed? And then I’d like to take a walk, I haven’t seen anything of Paris by night.”

“Then I shall be the one to show you,” he exclaimed, pleased with himself.

I shall remember this walk forever, thought Amélie, as she strolled hand in hand with Gérard by the Seine. Paris was overlaid with the blue glaze of a summer-night sky, and yellow lamps
dotted their progress, illuminating couples like themselves enjoying the balmy evening air and each other. Only they are probably lovers, thought Amélie, aware of their intertwined arms and languorous looks, and we are not. We’re just friends. Or were they? Didn’t her hand feel every inch of its contact with his? Wasn’t she aware of the way his fingers laced with hers? And of his height and his powerful shoulders. She glanced at his profile, silhouetted against the sky; it was pleasingly arrogant, in fact there was a strength about him that attracted her. He looked like a man who knew what he wanted.

Gérard led her through his city, seeing it with new eyes himself. It all looks different when you’re falling in love, he thought, and now I know I’ve never been in love before.

The café tables were sprawled across the pavement beneath the trees and they sat like other couples, sipping licorice-tasting little drinks and gazing into each other’s eyes, saying little. This is happening too fast, thought Amélie, it can’t be real, it’s just that I’m alone in Paris and this is the first man I’ve met in a long time—and he is so very attractive.

“I must go back,” she said, picking up her purse. “It’s getting late.”

“Please stay with me.”

His eyes were intense, they seemed to see into her most private thoughts.

“I can’t, the children—”

“Please, Amélie?”

She pushed back her chair determinedly. “No, I must go.”

He sat close beside her in the cab but he didn’t attempt to kiss her. Her hand rested in his as they walked back through the hotel.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said, raising her hand to his lips.

Gérard’s deep blue eyes were the last thing she saw as the elevator whisked her away from him, and Amélie stared down at her hand, where his lips had rested so lightly just a moment before. Like a schoolgirl, she didn’t want to wash her hand because she’d wash away his kiss.

Leonore and Lais walked hand in hand with Gérard, looking, in their smocked flower-print dresses, one pink and one blue, like untidy angels. Socks were slipping into their white shoes, and every few steps Leonore skipped a little in an effort to hitch them up. Not Lais; life was too busy for her to worry about socks, and
her head was too full of bareback riders on white prancing ponies and trapeze ladies in spangled suits dangling over their heads. Excitement spilled from her in short bursts of laughter and memories as she danced along clutching Gérard’s hand.

“I hated the clowns, Gérard,” said Leonore, holding his hand tighter. “They were scary.”

“Scary, Leonore? I thought they would have made you laugh?”

“Sometimes, when they were falling down, but not the sad one with the white face and the pointed cap … he was
really
scary.”

“She’s afraid,” said Lais scornfully. “ ’Course they weren’t scary, you ninny!”

Leonore’s lower lip trembled and Gérard squeezed her hand sympathetically. “Sometimes they are,” he assured her. “I think it’s because the Pierrot always looks so sad. But he’s not really, he’s just a person—probably with little girls of his own.”

“Really?” Leonore’s worried face lit with relief. It was good to be with Gérard, he understood things. She began to skip along, jumping over the cracks in the path.

Amélie waved as they appeared around the corner. Judging by their disheveled appearance they must have had a very good time. It had been sweet of Gérard to want to take them to the circus by himself, though she had had her doubts about it. I want to get to know them, he’d told her, just the way I’m getting to know you. With a blush, she remembered his gaze when he’d said that. There was no doubt they were getting to know each other rather well; the few days in Paris had already drifted into almost two weeks. Gérard had spent every afternoon with her and the children, and they adored him already. He was the charming uncle who took them to the puppet show and the pony rides, who rowed them splashily on the lake in the park and provided wonderful picnic baskets of goodies he knew would appeal to children, and he never seemed to mind their sticky fingers on his elegant jackets.

Amélie watched as they hurried toward her, swinging on his hands and laughing at some shared joke. Lais and Leonore had adopted Gérard into the family as casually as if they’d known him all their lives. It was she who was holding back. She who had kept their progressively intimate friendship to just that. She hadn’t even kissed him yet. If I do, thought Amélie as she smiled into his eyes, it might change everything, it might not be what I hoped it would be.

The children’s excited voices clamored for attention with stories of the circus.

“Well, it sounds as though you had a good time.” Amélie smoothed back their hair and kissed them, retying their sashes, and pulling up their socks. “There, that’s better. Now, how about a glass of milk, and this café has the best chocolate cake in the world.”

Their eyes grew round at the sight of the many-tiered cake, oozing chocolate, and Lais’s finger hovered over her slice.

“Don’t you dare, Lais do Santos,” Amélie said with a frown. “Use your fork!”

Gérard laughed at Lais’s disappointed face; the gooeyness was very tempting to little fingers.

“I’m a very lucky man to have fallen in love with a woman with two such delightful children. Like their mother, they are easy to love.”

Amélie caught her breath. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” she murmured as the children’s eyes rose from their cake to her blushing face.

“Does that mean that he loves us all, Mama?” asked Leonore. Her amber eyes were serious above her chocolate-covered mouth.

“It certainly does,” said Gérard emphatically. “Now eat your cake and let me talk to your mother. Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

“Of course.” She had dinner with him every night and he seemed to know every small intimate bistro in Paris that was candlelit and frequented by lovers. They would hold hands and talk and he’d kiss her cheek. She knew the smell of his cologne as if it were her own, she knew the way his serious face could break into a sudden charming smile, the way his firm mouth moved when he spoke. The contact of his hand on hers exhilarated and frightened her, she was aware of each separate bone, even the slight ridges in his fingernails.

Leonore leaned against her sleepily. “We must get back,” said Amélie, scooping up her daughter from the chair.

Gérard picked up Lais. “Come on, then,” he said gently to the little girl, “it’s time for a bath.”

The formidable lady at the cash register in the center of the bistro watched them with an indulgent eye. They had been here three nights in a row and they were such an attractive couple and
so very much in love. They hung on to each other’s every word, tucked away in the booth in the corner, their hands only unclasping for the mundane task of eating the food placed before them. With a sigh of envy she accepted the money held out to her by a departing diner. It must be good to be young and carefree and in love like that.

“I really must leave Paris soon,” said Amélie, pushing aside her plate. She felt too breathless to eat, too tense.

“Don’t go. Please.” Gérard’s dark eyes were pleading. “Stay here with me.”

“I must go, it’s the reason I’m here.”

“Are your friends expecting you so soon? Can’t you tell them you’ll go later? Please, Amélie, I don’t want to lose you now … we’ve scarcely begun.”

She didn’t ask him what he meant by that, she knew what the answer would be and she wasn’t sure she was ready for it. She’d only known him two weeks; was it possible to be in love in just two weeks? With Roberto it had been a lifetime. Yes, but this was different—wasn’t it?

“But I must go soon.”

Her voice was reluctant and Gérard breathed a sigh of relief. It was a small victory, but at least she wouldn’t disappear tomorrow.

“Let’s go,” he said, collecting her up. “I want to take you somewhere where I can dance with you.” At least that way he could hold her in his arms.

The cashier sighed again as she accepted his payment, her eyes following them out into the warm summer night. Yes, life was good when you loved like that.

Gérard kissed her in the place de la Concorde at three o’clock in the morning as they strolled home together after dancing, bodies close and arms wrapped around each other, for hours. Passion rose in her like the sap in a spring tree as she clung to his warm mouth. At last Gérard released her and they gazed into each other’s eyes, looking for the answers to the secret questions lovers ask.

“I want to make love to you,” he murmured in her ear. “I want to hold you and stroke you and kiss you. I don’t ever want to leave you, Amélie. I want you by my side when I wake up in the morning. Stay with me, please stay with me.”

Amélie’s knees felt shaky; if it weren’t for his arms around her,
she felt she might fall. Her children were asleep in the hotel, she should be there, what was she doing kissing Gérard in the middle of the place de la Concorde? And worse, what was she doing feeling like this? She barely knew him.

“I must go home.” Even to herself the words sounded foolish, what she really wanted to say was that she loved him, that she wanted him, too.

Gérard’s arm circled her waist as they walked, and the soft undulations of her hips sent pulses through his head.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered, “I want to take you somewhere special.”

“Yes,” she breathed. Anywhere, she would go anywhere with him—tomorrow.

Gérard kissed her on the tip of her nose as he left her at the hotel. “Tea,” he said, “with my mother. I want her to meet the girl I’m going to marry.”

Amélie watched his retreating back bemusedly. What had he said? Could she have heard right? She whirled into the elevator, leaning against its padded moiré walls. A smile lit her face and as the elevator stopped, she leapt out and danced down the corridor, laughter bubbling from her. Life was wonderful,
wonderful!
She had known a man for only two weeks, she was madly in love, and he had
almost
asked her to marry him. What more did any girl need to make her happy?

The house was
very
grand and Amélie stared at the soaring frescoed ceiling as the butler led her across the marble hall to the small salon where the Duchesse de Courmont awaited them.

“I didn’t know your family was quite as grand as this,” she whispered to Gérard, hearing her footsteps echoing on the tiles.

“It’s not,” he whispered back. “We all hate this house, but it’s convenient when we’re in Paris.”

Marie-France de Courmont was small and smiling and pretty, and if her smile seemed a little hesitant, Amélie was unaware of it as Gérard introduced her to his mother.

It was with a sense of déjà vu that Marie-France took Amélie’s hand in hers. The girl standing in front of her could have been Léonie twenty years ago. Perhaps she was a shade taller, a little more slender, the chin a fraction less wide, but she was Léonie. She glanced at her son; could he not have noticed? But then, he
had never known Léonie—as far as she knew he had never even met her, though he had seen her on stage.