Miracle (50 page)

His eyes gleamed. They studied her with careful attention to detail before meeting her gaze again. “You remember me.”

She almost choked at the irony. “Of course.”

“But I can’t tell if I’ve done the right thing by coming here today.”

“Yes!” The emphatic word silenced them both again. He looked pleased, but she was alarmed. Control yourself, she thought desperately. This time, control yourself.

So she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. Which, she reasoned, was a perfectly acceptable thing to
do when greeting someone who had changed your life ten years ago.

Especially when he made a gruff sound of amazement and lifted her off the floor in an embrace that conveyed much more than a hello among old acquaintances. She cried out and pressed her face into the crook of his neck. After ten years he had remembered, and she had never forgotten.

“It is so good to hold you,” he whispered. “So good.”

His voice was an elixir that made her drunk. Self-preservation was a must. She stiffened and let go of him—not angry, just attempting to be dignified. He felt the change and set her down. His arms relaxed a little but still remained around her, his hands resting possessively on her back. The welcome in his expression made her weak.

“I don’t believe this,” she admitted. “Why are you here?”

“That, my dear Miracle, is a long story.”

My dear Miracle
. She clung to his shoulders. “You’re visiting the States on business?”

“No. I bought a home north of San Francisco. An old vineyard, with a large stone cottage. I’m living there.”

There is a Santa Claus
. She tried to be nonchalant. The trance of excitement between them made it a ridiculous effort. She struggled for a diplomatic way to slap reality into the situation. “Where’s Mrs. Doctor?”

He tilted his head and looked at her shrewdly. “How did you know that I had married?”

“Oh, somebody told me, years ago.”

“I’m divorced.”

“Oh?” Her voice squeaked.

“And you?”

“Just an old maid. Not a
maid
, but you know what I mean.”

“Wonderful.”

“I don’t think I believe this,” she said, swaying inside his arms. “I don’t. What are you doing here—”

“Whatever it takes to explain the past ten years to you. More simply, I came here to see if you would be interested in hearing my explanation. Or in just having dinner with me … someone who wants to know everything that’s
happened to you, how you’ve fared in the world, how you’re doing now.”

“That could be a
long
dinner.”

“I hope so.”

The breath shuddered from her lungs. She was adrift in a fantasy come true, and right now she felt helpless, giddy, wild. If this was real then she was ripe for it. If it wasn’t real, then she was going to throw herself into the jaws of the Venus-flytrap in the corner. Calming down, she cleared her throat and said, “I’d be glad to have dinner with you. I could meet you at a restaurant one night. How long will you be in L.A.?”

Her coolness brought a slight frown to his face. “Indefinitely.”

“When did you get here?”

“I just drove down this morning.”

“You drove all the way from somewhere above San Francisco and got here by this hour? You must have left in the middle of the night.”

“Yes.”

“A medical emergency? Do you have patients here?”

“No. Last night I saw your name on the credits for a television show. I made some phone calls to locate the show’s offices. Then I packed a bag and left. I arrived in Los Angeles an hour ago, checked into a hotel, then changed into presentable clothes and came here.”

She wondered what the maximum heart rate was for a woman her age. She thought she’d reached it. “When would you like to meet for dinner?”

“Right now, but I’ll settle for tonight.”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“No.”

“Let’s go, then.”

His harsh features softened in a beautiful smile. “
Mon dieu
. Certainly. I’d love to.”

She hesitated. “Doc, what’s the deal here? Aren’t you busy? What about your work? Haven’t you set up a surgery practice?”

“No, I’m taking a sabbatical. I’ll try to make sense of it to you. I’ve only just begun to make sense of it, myself.”

“When anything makes sense, I plan to celebrate.”

“It will. As long as you’re glad to see me after ten years, anything is possible.”

Anything
? She wouldn’t even think about it. In fact, she’d short-circuit it. “How long do you plan to stay in the United States?”

“Let’s put it this way—I have no plans to leave.”

“That’s a diplomat’s answer.”

“Then here’s a more specific one. My life is here now. I want to make California my permanent home.”

She was dizzy from the verbal ricochets. There was so much to learn about the stranger who continued to hold her—and so much for him to learn about her. They weren’t the same people as ten years ago. Yet they were falling together with reckless abandon as if nothing else mattered and no time had passed. He hadn’t loved her before; he hadn’t ever tried to contact her since; why would he care about her now?

“When did you move here from France?”

“In December.”

“Why, you’re still a newcomer.”

“I could use a tour guide.”

“At your service. We could start with breakfast, although I think that if I try to eat anything my stomach will just go, ‘Honeychile, you couldn’t get me interested in food even if it was grits.’ ”

“Your voice—your incredible voice. Thank God it hasn’t changed.”

“Lots of other things about me
have
changed, though.”

He nodded. “I’m very different, too. For the better, in some ways. For the worse, in others.” His arms tightened and he searched her expression in provocative detail. “But we still communicate very well with each other, don’t you think?”

They were too close to avoid the touch of breath on parted lips, the scent of male and female, the maelstrom of unresolved questions and emotions and now, rising quickly to the surface, desire.

She flowed into his kiss and heard herself make small, frantic sounds at the overwhelming tenderness of it. There
was no point in trying to analyze this situation. She wanted him more now than she had ten years ago, and if she weren’t dreaming, he wanted her, too.

It might take days for her to comprehend his presence and sort out her feelings. Right now she was caught in a tornado, and all she could do was hang on to anything that appeared solid.

She wasn’t hanging on very well, either, because at the end of lunch when he said abruptly, “Would you like to see my new home?” she nodded without the slightest hesitation.

“Let’s go right now,” he said next, as if it weren’t a nine-hour trip to the wine country.

And she replied, “I thought you’d
never
ask.”

They left L.A. without even stopping at his hotel to get his suitcase or pick up any fresh clothes for her. They had only the clothes they wore—windblown and rumbled. Oh, she had her purse and the box with the things from her office, including a bola bouncer, which counted for something, she supposed.

Now she and Sebastien were more than halfway to their destination, a fact that both worried and excited her.

The sun was a piece of silver melting toward the Pacific. The Ferrari he had purchased recently—another Ferrari!—clung to the winding, cliffside road with the precision of a magnet on steel. Once again he was taking her someplace unknown at a speed she couldn’t resist. She settled deeper in the seat. The wind washed away the need to talk. They had talked all morning, but these past few hours in the car they had been quiet by mutual agreement.

It was good to let the silence absorb the shock. Dancing on the edge of memories was tricky business; they had discussed a hundred things—mostly about her and her work, at his insistence—but avoided the real issues. Each time the unanswered questions overwhelmed her she felt as if she were trying to scoop the water from a deep well with nothing but her hands.

What had gone wrong with his marriage? Why were there
no children? Why had he searched for her after ten years? What did he want from her?

And more important, what was she going to give him?

It seemed no more strange to spend the entire afternoon in the car with him than it had seemed strange to spend the entire morning at a cheap diner, where they had ordered and mostly ignored breakfast, and then lunch. Each time she had switched the conversation from her life to his, all he would talk about were the vineyards and the stone cottage he was restoring. The dark intensity still seethed in him, in the private expression that came over his face at times, in the commanding posture and impatient hand gestures. But there was a lightness, too, that she knew hadn’t been there before. It showed when he talked about his new home, and each time he stopped talking to look admiringly at her.

“Do you know this area of the state very well?” he asked, shifting gears as the road twisted above a panorama of sandy inlets and granite jutting into the ocean among white breakers.

“We’re not far from Monterey.”

“A fishing village?”

“Only for fishermen who have lots of clams. It’s beautiful and expensive. Why?”

“Would you like to spend the night there? We could finish the trip tomorrow in only a few hours.”

The thought made her dizzy. She was ready to walk off the edge of the world if he asked, and it disturbed her. She had no idea what to expect from him. He could vanish tomorrow. Hadn’t she learned anything in the past ten years about self-defense?

She lifted her chin and stared straight ahead. “That’d be fine. There are some terrific inns … old Victorian mansions. Would something like that suit you?”

“Certainly. Would it suit you?”

“Sure.” She slumped under the weight of deciphering the situation and asked bluntly, “Is this an indecent proposal? If it isn’t, I’m really embarrassed, but if it
is
, I’m not ready for it.”

“I didn’t think so. I was going to suggest separate rooms.”

Pleased, she laughed and patted his shoulder, loving the excuse to touch him. “I’m glad we got that settled. Miss Manners would be proud of me.”

He took her hand and kissed it. “No need to be embarrassed. My indecent proposal will be waiting whenever you’d like it.”

The storybook inn overlooking Monterey Bay was a romantic place, which taunted her anxieties and made her angry that they were necessary. The strain of being with Sebastien reduced the breathless exhilaration of the early hours to a brooding confusion that made her head hurt.

She didn’t regret being with him, whether it was foolish or not. But she was exhausted from the emotional shock, and when she looked into his weary face she knew that he felt the same way. They didn’t talk much at dinner. The beautiful but formal Victorian dining room didn’t encourage intimate conversation. A wall of windows framed an ocean burnished with the sunset, which she examined to avoid looking at Sebastien.

At twilight they took a walk along the narrow strip of rocky beach below the inn, still silent, side by side but not touching. She knew, though, that he was vividly aware of her, as she was of him, and when they returned to the inn she couldn’t help but take his face between her hands and kiss him lightly. “Good night.” It was absurdly inadequate, but she was too full of emotion to say more.

He pulled her to him and held her for a long time, one hand stroking her hair. “I never forgot you, Miracle. Please believe that.”

She stepped back from him, her head up, dignity building a wall between them. “I’m glad you’re here and we’re together. I’ve never regretted what happened between us ten years ago. It changed my whole life, and it was wonderful, and I never met any other man who made me feel the way you did. But I’m not going to let you hurt me again, if I can help it. Hell, I probably
can’t
help it, but I’ll try.”

He lifted a hand to her face, touched her with his fingertips, dissolved her dignity. “Go and rest, now. I’m just happy that I found you. I can take care of your problems, in time.”