Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel (4 page)

Jean-Paul smiles gently. “I don’t know. Is there?”

“Chloe, where are you?” Sera’s recorded voice screeches. “Pick up your phone! I thought you were right behind me after I left the shop. When I got to the bus you were just
gone
. I told Robert and Madame Sauvant we’d made one last stop at
La Patisserie
, but the bus ended up at the wrong shop. Did you know that there are, like, dozens of
La Patisserie
shops in the city—and then I got confused and mixed up the street names and the turns. You are so much better at French than I am!”

Sera’s voice lowers. “Robert has been screaming at everyone. I think he needs to go to Anger Management classes, but whatever. Chloe, we’re headed to the Loire Valley right now because we have to meet up with some tour guide and our passes are only for today. If we miss the meet-up time, everybody will have to pay extra or we won’t see the castle at all. When there are this many people, well, you get what I’m saying. Robert’s making calls to the Educational Tour Office right now to sweep the city. That’s actually what he said. He’s even putting out a missing person’s report. I had to give the cops your
description and everything.
” Then Sera’s voice breaks, and she adds in a small, weepy whisper, “I’m just praying you’re okay, Chloe. Please be okay.”

The message suddenly stops and I hear my phone begin the shut down process. I stare at the screen, which has gone totally blank and shake it. The battery is dead. I must have forgotten to plug it in last night.

Three faces are gazing at me as I drop the phone into my lap. Tears fill my eyes. My French class left without me! Sera might be an organizer guru with her day planner iPad apps, but she’s terrible at directions. Why couldn’t she write down the address? She even gets lost at the mall. Then again, we never thought she’d need to know the address or write down the directions since we were leaving Paris to go to the castle, and only coming back to a hotel near the airport tomorrow night.

I’m stuck in a foreign country, without anybody I know. Alone. I hope Madame Sauvant hasn’t called my mother yet. She will go absolutely ballistic.

Breathe
, I order myself. There has to be a solution. My dad used to tell me that whenever something bad happened I needed to look for the silver lining—the good thing that comes out of an awful situation—because there’s usually something unexpectedly nice. Like the time I didn’t get the lead in
Annie
during Summer Little Theatre even though I dyed my hair red and gave myself a home permanent. Nobody at the auditions was impressed by my sacrifice. Silver lining: a few weeks later, my dad got a bonus and we flew to Disney World instead.

The bakery lady starts makes soothing noises and Jean-Paul has a strange grimace on his face. Then I realize I’ve been squeezing his upper bicep as I listened to the messages. “Oh,
je suis désolé
,” I apologize, dropping my grip. My head is clearing. I can tell because my French is coming back to me.

Okay, the silver lining for right now is that I’m safe. I’m being taken care of. I’ll just find a taxi to the Loire Valley. Or maybe missing the tour of Château de Chenonceau—a scrumptious never-to-be-seen-again castle—isn’t the end of the world.

I think I’ll have to work on that one because with my luck I’ll never get to France again in my life.

I dig into my purse again and open up my wallet. I have an ATM card, my school ID, lipstick, hairbrush, and if somebody has a bottle of glue, I’ll even have shoes back on my feet. My eyes are still watering way too much and I really don’t want to start blubbering in front of these people. I should be able to handle this. I’m eighteen, not eight.

I think of Sera’s voicemail again and picture a team of Educational Tour sleuths hot on my trail with Robert look-alikes barking orders into walkie-talkies, their hands clutching a map with every single
La Patisserie
shop in Paris circled in red.

Except, I won’t be at any of the pastry shops. I’m headed to the hospital for x-rays. Doctor LaCroix’s orders.

Seven Months Earlier

I stared down at the ugly, vomit-colored carpet in the apartment hallway and put my head in my hands. I was in the middle of a soap opera—a soap opera called my life. I plugged my ears
so I couldn’t hear the fight between my mom and Jerry on the other side of the plasterboard. Mom had thought they’d get married, and it was true that I thought Jerry was pretty nice, too. He was funny, brought gifts, paid for everything—he just didn’t want to get married. Or inherit an instant teenage stepdaughter.

Jerry was nice as far as men go. Nobody could ever replace my dad, of course, but I was learning that my mom was the kind of person who needed someone. Losing my dad was the worst thing that could have happened to her. Plus, our finances weren’t exactly a rock of stability and I think she was getting more worried all the time.

“It’s a sign, Mom,” I whispered. “Don’t beg him.”

I looked up at the ceiling as though I’d spot God up there handing out advice and granting wishes. “Don’t let me ever get that desperate over a guy,” I added, feeling mortified for my mother.

I had always assumed that after high school was over and I was in college, all the jealousy between other rival girls and the angst over boys and relationships would disappear. I had this dream of being confident and sophisticated, living on my own, having standing tickets to the ballet on weekends with tall handsome men who paid for everything and opened taxi doors.

I mean, I could see how bad the guys are that my mother dates, and how they screw around with her heart and her trust. It’s so obvious, so why can’t she see it? Either I’m totally wrong or the adults around me need serious therapy.

Someone touched my hand and I gasped as I looked up. It was Mathew. I’d forgotten he was coming over.

He crouched down next to me, eye level—and started to sing. “Love me tender . . . Love me true . . . All my dreams fulfilled.”

I wiped my wet face and smiled back at him. Damn, he looked good. His collar brushed his square chin, and his eyes were dark green in the dusky hallway because the super hadn’t replaced the burned-out light bulb yet.

“For my darling, I
love
you,” he paused, giving me a silly grin which sort of spoiled the romantic words, but I tried not to let it bother me. “And I always will.” His singing voice could make a girl totally swoon. One night when I’d been invited to his house for dinner, Mathew and I listened to a bunch of old records from his parent’s collection while his parents watched
Wheel of Fortune
. Music of the 40s and 50s became background music for our make-out sessions in his bedroom.

Mathew leaned over and kissed me softly on the lips. My stomach turned to liquid.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” I said.

Just then something huge slammed into the wall behind me, shaking the two-by-fours. I hoped it was just a book.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mathew said, lifting me to my feet.

“I’m not sure I should just take off and desert my post,” I told him. “My mom is going to want hot tea and a good cry in about ten minutes.”

“Women,” Mathew said with a sigh, bringing me in close.

Call me blonde, even though I’m a brunette with highlights, but after awhile I find myself wanting to shake these adorable French citizens and cry,
Please speak English, I can’t flip through my dictionary fast enough!
Actually, I stopped trying to look up every word hours ago. The dictionary is now resting comfortably at the bottom of my handbag.

The only English that makes it out of anybody’s mouth is the French boy with the hot fudge sundae eyes—
pardonnez-moi
, I mean Jean-Paul Dupré.

I think my emotions need to get slapped with a restraining order. What’s that condition called where someone gets a crush on a person who saves them from disaster or death? Like when a patient falls in love with their nurse? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in love with Jean-Paul Dupré, but I can certainly understand some other girl falling in love with Jean-Paul if she’d been saved from a pastry shop floor after being assaulted by chocolate éclairs.

This morning was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. I think it even tops the time I fell backward on stage during my second grade play and my dress flew up over my head.

Not to mention that the whipped cream from the tarts, which had splattered all over my face, had turned my okay hair day into a truly horrific one. But Jean-Paul didn’t laugh like other guys might, and he didn’t get irritated that I’d thrown pastries all over the shop and driven away customers. Jean-Paul was sweet and an absolute gentleman. The guys at my school in New York would never let a girl forget that her dress slid up her thigh and she spent the day with dollops of filling on her eyebrows.

Jean-Paul took me to the hospital himself and stayed by my side through the x-rays and the doctor’s exam. He even hunted down a warm blanket from the nurses when he noticed me shivering.

Jean-Paul knows English so well, there are moments I cling to him like life-support. It takes forever to say something in English to the doctors or nurses, have Jean-Paul translate it into French, and then get the answer translated from French back into English for me.

If he weren’t here I’d have a brain melt-down.

A nice grandmotherly nurse with white hair and crinkled sugar-cookie eyes bandages me up with thick support gauze. My ankle isn’t broken, not even sprained really.

“Just a—what do you say? Muscle strain. Maybe a little bruised,” Jean Paul explains. “The doctor says you’ll be walking around normally soon. Maybe even in a day or two—if you’re careful.” He wags a stern finger at me, mimicking the doctor before he left with his flip chart and thermometer.

I give a salute. “Yes, sir! Must be all that track I run—and the milk I’ve doused on countless bowls of Cocoa Puffs every morning since pre-school.”

Jean-Paul looks confused, probably wondering if Cocoa Puffs are some kind of American space shuttle food.

“It’s just chocolate,” I tell him, shrugging my shoulders. “Crunchy chocolate balls doused in sugar and milk? Sort of like what everyone serves here for breakfast.”

The nurse finishes wrapping my ankle and lets out a slew of French.

Jean-Paul pats my hand reassuringly while I wait for the translation, and when he touches me my heart goes into sprint mode like I’ve just run the 800. “She says you need to put lots of ice around your ankle. And raise your foot up. You’ll be good as new.”

I nod and force my eyes away from his face. I can’t look at him any longer. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anybody as gorgeous as Jean-Paul Dupré. And here I thought Mathew was the best looking guy on the planet. The knowledge is disturbing. Maybe I’ve just got a case of homesickness due to all the trauma. Or I’m emotional because I don’t know where my group is, and they don’t know where I am. I
did
hit my head on the floor, after all. There are explanations for these things.

The sooner I get my cell phone charged and call Mathew the better. That’ll put everything back into perspective. Jean-Paul is just a regular boy, nothing special. I mean, he isn’t a movie star or anything! Do the French even have movie stars like Johnny Depp or Jude Law? He’s just a guy in high school who has to do homework the same as everybody else and work in his family’s pastry shop. I mean, how exciting is baking trays full of croissants every morning?

For some reason that sounds very sexy to me right now . . .

Jean-Paul is staring at me with a full-on smile.

Oh, Lord. I close my eyes and pray that I did
not
just speak my thoughts out loud. I need to get out of here before I start babbling. Again.

I lean back against the hospital pillows and try to look casual. His smile means nothing! Everybody smiles—it’s just being friendly.