Miracle (56 page)

Crying softly, the housekeeper fled to the doors. “He will not desert his poor, cursed family. Forgive me for upsetting you with my sorrows. Please don’t tell the doctor.”

“Sssh. I understand. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Amy stood in the center of the magnificent room, a hollow spot growing inside her. Sebastien hated returning to a world that haunted him, but he had too much honor to desert his sister. She shivered. He would put his family
first. She would be second. Ten years ago he had chosen his career and his pride over her. Now she might lose him to his family.

She took a shower and changed into red-silk pajamas, then sat among the cushions of a recessed seat before the room’s enormous widow, staring blankly into a night mist that shrouded the villa’s formal garden. The light from the window caught splashes of color from a kaleidoscope of flowers. Spring in Paris was as moody and as beautiful as she’d always heard.

Her nerves jumped as footsteps halted outside the suite’s doors. Sebastien knocked once, loudly, then stepped inside. His black suit looked as if it had had a long day, but it had not lost its handsomeness. He tossed his trench coat at a chair and crossed the room to her as she stood, holding out her hands, her throat too tight for words.
I won’t put up with being second choice anymore
.

Inside his desperate embrace she absorbed his anger, his sense of futility, his grief. When he looked down at her, caressing her cheek with the backs of his fingers as he did, his eyes were dark and tired. “Forgive me for not meeting you at the airport.”

“It’s all right.”

“No. I can tell from your face, it’s not.”

“Forget about the airport. Tell me what’s going on with your family.”

She drew him to the window seat, and they sat down. He pulled her against him so that her back rested on his chest; wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face against her hair, he cursed wearily.

“There are problems among my father’s executives—there have been for some time, I learned tonight—power struggles, charges of mismanagement, perhaps even embezzlement.”

“Did your father know?”

“No, I’m sure he didn’t. He would never have tolerated it. I’ve always thought of him as young and commanding. Tonight I realized just how old and careless he had become.”

“Did your sister know?”

“Probably. She has never discussed the businesses with me—a point of pride and jealousy to her. I imagine that she has been struggling to control matters from the weak position my father gave her.” He hesitated, and for a moment Amy heard only the harsh sound of his breath, the anger and defeat flowing in and out of him like a tide. “When he dies, my sister gets nothing, even though he has known for years that I will only turn the businesses over to her. He mocks me with his demands, even now.”

Amy gripped his hands. “What are you going to do?”

“Save what I can, for Annette’s sake.” He bent his head against her shoulder; they both knew what his words implied. Amy could feel the anger in his body; his arms tightened around her fiercely.

“You have to stay,” she whispered, her voice strained.

“Yes. Until my sister is capable of taking over.”

“Months.”

“Yes.”

The word sank into her with chilling finality. She turned inside his arms, pulled her knees under her, and scrutinized his eyes, finding so much apology and unhappiness there that she made a guttural sound of pain, in response. “I’m trying real hard to understand,” she told him.

“My God, do you think I’m choosing sides here? Do you think I’m forgetting about you?”

“I’m not jealous of your family. I’m just afraid that you’ll decide that you belong here, In France. That you’ll forget why you wanted to change your life when you came to California.”

“And you’re telling me that you can’t live here, if I ask you to?”

She nodded woodenly. “I can’t give up everything I’ve worked for. I wouldn’t fit in here. That’s the real issue, and we both know it.”

“There’s a part of you that will never accept your own worth. Nothing I can say will make any difference. I can’t conquer your insecurities right now. I can only say that I love you, that I will always love you and be proud to have you with me.”

“In the States. Not here.” She bent her head to his chest.
The fight left her. “I’m pretty good at waitin’ around for you to come back—I had ten years of practice. But I’m not so good at enjoying it. After I get through with the movie—”

“The movie?”

“Lord, I didn’t even tell you that I’d gotten the part. I guess I have jet lag. It seems like it happened in another century.” She glanced around the room. “And a different world.”

He cupped her face in his hands and looked at her with tears in his eyes. “I’m so very proud of you.”

“It’s a little piss-ant part, but—”

“You’ll be a star someday, and I’ll be unbearably pompous about telling people that I always expected it.”

Her defense broke apart, and she scrambled into his arms, tangling her legs between his. He lifted her onto his lap and held her tightly. “I spent a long time tryin’ to figure out what I ought to have, and what I
deserve
to have,” she told him. “I won’t let go of that. I won’t let go of you or my career. When I finish with the movie I’m goin’ on the road with my act.”

“You mean you’ll tour the clubs across the country?”

“Yes.” She drew back and looked at him sadly. “I’ll be working or traveling every day of the week.”

He regarded her with a resigned expression no happier than her own. “It will be difficult for us to see each other.”

“It’ll be just about impossible.”

“I want you to marry me before you leave to go back. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow.”

“No.”

There was a long stretch of silence. Finally he said, “Is this some form of punishment?”

“No more for you than for me. I can’t believe I’m turning you down. But I
am
, until everything is settled here and you come back to California. I’m not gonna start our marriage with a separation. There’s been too much of that in our lives already.”

“These are not the same kind of circumstances! What are you trying to do—prove to yourself that I
will
come back?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Goddamn.” He looked at her as if she were a stranger, then stood and jerked her to her knees, dragging her against his torso. “You know how to push me … you know what I respond to best.”

“Do you think it’s easy for me to leave you? To think about waking up in the night reaching for you, and you not being there? To know I’ll only be able to hear your voice over a telephone? To know I won’t be able to look into your eyes, or see you smile? It makes a physical pain inside me. I’ll miss you every second.”

“Then you’ll know what kind of hell you’re putting
me
through as well.” He stepped back and pulled her off balance then bent and scooped an arm under her legs. Lifting her, he walked to the bed that had been designed for his father and laid her down on the darkly patterned cover. His hands were rough on the pajamas, tearing buttons, ripping the material, but when they touched her skin they turned from violent to persuasive. She watched him with hypnotized silence, her hands on either side of her head, digging into the pillows.

He held her gaze with unfaltering challenge while his other hand tore at the fastenings on his own clothes. “You’re mine, and you will always be mine, and you will wait
forever
if I tell you.”

“On my terms, but … yes.” She admitted it with anger rather than surrender, and pulled him to her.

“Tell me where we’re going,” she said between gritted teeth. “I mean it.”

The hilly countryside flashed by, green-on-green with spring’s flowers splashed among the emerald. They passed a village and an abbey, and the road continued to rise toward the jagged, snow-capped Alps in the distance.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sebastien asked, hands knotted on the steering wheel of yet another Ferrari. “We’re going to the mountains. I thought you liked to be whisked away like this. It’s become an intriguing game with us, don’t you think?”

She hugged her arms over her coat and studied his face
in profile. Roman gladiators must have had faces such as his—noble but scarred, and too harsh for prettiness. And the battle-ready tension in it … they must have had
that
, too. He should be dressed in armor, not a sweater and slacks.

“This is not like the other times,” she said. “You weren’t angry at me then.”

“I’m not angry at you now. Keep quiet, Miracle. You’ll understand sooner than you’d like.”

Her apprehension increased. This had started at dawn, when the strained emotions from the night before had broken through their light sleep. Waking with the fresh pain of separation filling the unguarded moment, they had made love again in a savage, heartbroken way that hurt more than it helped. Afterward he had cursed bitterly at the world in general then told her to get dressed, that he had something to show her.

So now, hours later, they were here, without having eaten much of anything or said much to each other since leaving his sister’s home in Paris. She was furious with him for being mysterious and afraid that something terrible waited at their destination.

The mountains towered over them with a grandeur that threatened her; she stared resolutely at the road and continued to worry. The road burst into a wide, flat valley that cupped a dark blue lake at its center. The valley overflowed with houses, shops, and hotels that seemed to be of relatively modern vintage, through they were country French in a deliberately quaint manner.

“Garonne,” Sebastien said with obvious disgust. “A resort town. Thirty years ago it was charming. Now it is merely profitable.”

“Thirty years ago?”

“I came here often as a child. With the family.” His mouth flattened into a harsh line, and she knew that he had said all that he intended to say, at the moment.

She traced the paths of ski lifts up the green mountain side. The lifts were in use even now, filled with people who just wanted to enjoy the scenery, she assumed. Apparently the town was popular even in the warmer months.

Sebastien left it behind and sought a narrow road that began snaking up the mountain side. Her eardrums throbbed and popped; she clung to the sides of her seat and flinched as the Ferrari’s wheels squealed around sharp curves. She looked out at a dizzying panorama of the valley that was falling away beneath them. “Please slow down.”

“You don’t trust me? Believe me, I know where this road is dangerous, and we haven’t reached that point, yet.”

She stared at him in fear and bewilderment. She had never seen him like this before. Something ancient and ugly seemed to be at war inside him, maybe the thing that he had always fought. It was coming to the surface. It threatened everything between them.

In a low, careful voice, she said, “If you’re going to kill us both, at least tell me why.”

Abruptly he slid the Ferrari into the road’s inner shoulder. It halted inches from the sheer rock face of the mountain. The color had drained from his face. His hands shook. “Forgive me. I was tormenting myself, and I didn’t realize how it must look to you.”

This caring man was someone she knew. She shuddered with relief and bent her head to his shoulder. “For God’s sake, tell me what we’re doing here.”

“Wait. It’s just a little farther. I swear.”

He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them, then guided the car back onto the pavement and drove at a reasonable speed. Amy vaguely noticed the road bending around another hairpin curve. Then she saw a jutting lip of mountain spread into a grassy apron beside the road, a small sweep of green between the road and the plunging mountainside dotted with clumps of trees. At the edge of the grassy area was a thick barricade of steel posts and rails.

Sebastien turned the Ferrari onto the grass and stopped well back from the barrier. He cut the engine and sat in silence, looking at the gray steel wall, his breathing noticeably shallow, his eyes slitted with thought.

Suddenly she understood, at least in part. “Is this where your mother had the accident?”

He inclined his head in an almost indiscernible nod. His attention never left the steel wall. “It was made of timbers, then. Not nearly so strong as now. Now, no matter how much one tried to break through, the barricade would probably hold.”

No matter how much one tried
. Trembling, she got out of the car and went to the driver’s side. Opening his door before he could reach for the handle, she knelt on the door ledge and put her arms around him.

His control faltered inside her embrace. Bending his forehead against hers, he sighed raggedly. “You need to understand why I feel so pulled apart by my family. How I came by this ridiculous mixture of loathing and dedication. Perhaps you’ll see why I can’t leave them when they need me—”

“Sebastien, I didn’t say that I
want
you to desert them—”

“You’ll see why I can’t leave them,” he repeated. “But also why I never want to share—why I can’t share—in any true sense of family with them. Come. Let’s walk over to the railing.”