Saving Wishes (The Wishes Series) (13 page)

“Don’t make this about me.”

“I didn’t want to complicate things. Gabrielle is your teacher.” His tone implied he was doing me a favour.

“She’s not my girlfriend, she’s yours. It makes no difference to me. You’re the one who would have to put up with the stupid gossip, not me. Don’t pretend you were protecting me. You were protecting her,” I said contemptuously.

Alex spoke too quietly. “I protect you, Charli, always you.”

“Look, she makes you happy. Don’t you think I want you to be happy?” I asked, annoyed that he’d made it about me again. Alex held his palms out. “Am I that horrible?”

“No, of course not.” He replied without hesitating, which reassured me just enough to keep me in the room.

“Why her? You could have any girl in this town.”

“I only want her.”

I believed him.

“Jasmine Tate is in love with you.”

He smiled. “Jasmine Tate frightens me. Both the Beautifuls do.”

“Yeah, well, Gabrielle Décarie frightens me,” I muttered.

Alex sat down. Looking at the plate of eggs in front of him, he grimaced. “Look, how about we do something today? Just you and me.”

“I have school,” I reminded him.

“I know. Sometimes you just need the day. I think we need the day.”

“Are you worried that I’ll go to school and create a scene? Blow your little charade to pieces and embarrass your witch?” I snarled.

“No. I know you would never do that.” He sounded certain, and I suddenly felt guilty for suggesting it.

“I have to go,” I said.

“I’ll drive you if you can wait a few minutes. I just need to –”

“It’s okay. I’m going to take my car. It needs a run.”

“You
are
going to school, aren’t you?” asked Alex, looking at me through narrowed eyes. He knew me better than I knew myself at times.

“Do you want me to lie?” I asked.

He shook his head, grimacing.

“I won’t lie, then.”

In the rear vision mirror I saw Alex watching me as I drove away. I could only imagine what he was thinking at that point. I hoped he trusted me enough to know that I would never be the one to tell the Beautifuls that Alex Blake was off their list of most eligible bachelors. I also knew I’d said nothing to convince him of that.

10. French Attack

School was the last place I felt like going, and Alex’s offer of spending the day with me was practically an invitation to ditch. I considered going to see Adam but talked myself out of it. I’d almost accused him of being Alex and Gabrielle’s accomplice – their aide-de-camp. Even Adam had to have a limit. I was sure I’d pushed him beyond it.

I watched monstrous dark clouds rolling in across the bay. The approaching storm matched my mood perfectly and I decided to make the most of it. I grabbed my camera bag from the passenger seat. I’d found my calling for the day. I slung the bag over my shoulder and ventured up the steep hill.

The top of the paddock was relatively flat, at least level enough to sit comfortably while I steadied my camera on the small tripod. I was still setting up my equipment, trading glances between the viewfinder and the angry sky above when something I wasn’t expecting caught my eye.

“No freaking way,” I mumbled, looking through the viewfinder to be sure it was actually her.

Climbing through the wire fence by the road was Gabrielle – not an easy manoeuvre in a pencil skirt and the most beautiful black heels I’d ever seen.

I considered lying down in the long grass – watching her staggering around in heels while she searched for me did have its appeal – but decided that seeing her stumble her way towards me like a drunk beauty queen was pleasure enough.

She was halfway up before she gave up on preserving her pretty shoes. I giggled as I watched her pull them off one at a time, futilely dusting them off as she stumbled closer to me.

Finally she was close enough to hear me speak. “If you were planning to drag me to school, you might have considered wearing more sensible shoes,” I told her, fighting the urge to snap a picture of her.

“I’m not planning to drag you anywhere,” she replied, still breathless from her trek.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I was passing and saw your car.”

“Your house is that way,” I said, pointing south. “Were you on your way back from my house? Did he let you stay over and sneak you out after I left?”

She overlooked my sarcasm, dropped her shoes on the ground and replied without skipping a beat. “No, he snuck me out the window before dawn.”

I had to hand it to her; she was playing the game to perfection.

“What do you want, Gabrielle?”

She pointed to the grass. “Can I sit?”

“Sure. Pull up a blade.”

Her usually flawless demeanour faltered as she flopped on the grass beside me, tugging at her tight black skirt. Turning my attention back to the viewfinder on my camera, I studied the black clouds rolling in.

“It’s kind of fitting, don’t you think?” she asked.

“What is?”

“The weather. The calm before the storm.”

“Are you expecting a storm, Mademoiselle Décarie?” I asked, feigning disinterest.

“I am expecting nothing less,” she revealed smugly.

“Is that because I am malevolent and full of animosity?” I asked, reciting one of her previous descriptions of me.

“No, it’s because you’re hurt. And when you’re wounded, you do what you need to in order to protect your heart.”

“You don’t know me,” I scoffed, annoyed that she was right.

“I know you adore Alex.”

“So do you, apparently.”

“I’m glad that you know that, Charli. I truly do love him.” There was no mistaking the sincerity in her voice. “I wanted to tell you months ago but Alex was nervous. He knows what you went through last year. He was worried about the gossip flaring up again.”

“Why would it? It’s nothing to do with me. Imagine every girl in town finding out that he was off the market because
you’d
stolen him.”

The bright smile she gave reminded me of Adam. “Alex loves this town but he doesn’t trust it. He tells me that the small-minded gossip has been viral for years. I was always under the impression that that loathsome Jasmine Tate was at the root of it.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I knew everything, Charli. I teach at that school. I
tried
to protect you.”

“What do you mean you tried to protect me?”

“Don’t you remember spending every afternoon for two weeks in detention?”

Of course I remembered. That was the fortnight I’d decided that she was a witch. I couldn’t understand why she’d been so hard on me.

“I just wanted to give you a break from them, Charli. But I ran out of excuses to keep you there after a while so – ”

“So you started keeping Jasmine back after school.”

Gabrielle pulled a disgusted face. “For three weeks. I was so glad when that wretch finally graduated.”

Looking back, spending afternoons hiding out in detention had been my salvation. At the time, dealing with the wrath of Mademoiselle Décarie was so much easier than dealing with the rest of the world.

“She very nearly broke me.” It was an admission I never intended to make to her.

“I know,” she said gently. “Alex knew that too. We started seeing each other around that time. He was terrified of making things worse for you. By the time it all blew over, too much time had passed. It had turned from a secret to a lie.”

“It’s not an excuse.”

“No, it’s an explanation.”

“Don’t you think I have I right to be mad at him?” I asked. “He lied to me, for a really long time.”

“You lie to him all the time,” she accused.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Adam confided in Gabrielle. He saw no reason to keep anything from her.

“Do you report back to Alex?” I quizzed suspiciously.

“Absolutely not.” She answered with complete certainty.

“Why?”

“We’re not that different, you and I. I think that’s why you despise me so much.”

I frowned. “I don’t despise you. And we’re very different.”

“You’re not as bad as you think you are. You should never believe your own press,” she said, grinning wryly.

“Do you believe my press?”

“How tragic it would be if I did.” Gabrielle spoke more formally than Adam at times.

“Very nasty things were said about me. They thought I was trash.”

“You’re not the first girl to make an error in judgement, Charli. Don’t let it be for nothing. And I find it bizarre that certain girls in this town could consider you to be trash. I assumed that wearing sequins in the afternoon would make one trashy.”

She made a valid point. Jasmine, Lisa and Lily’s fondness for short, sparkly clothing was questionable to say the least.

“It sounds like you find this place just as suffocating as I do.”

“Yes. That is true.”

“So why don’t you leave?”

Gabrielle absently picked at blades of grass. Her face seemed strained.

“I can’t just yet. I have been fortunate enough to find the man who loves me.”

I frowned uneasily. It was strange to hear her speak of Alex that way. The longest relationship I could remember him having was over and done with after just a few weeks. Thinking hard, I couldn’t even remember her name, and then wondered if he could.

“Despite what you might think, I want him to be happy. You make him happy.”

Gabrielle gave a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

I started packing away my equipment. “The rain is coming,” I said.

We looked to the sky. The black clouds had taken on an angry purple tinge. Faint rumbles of thunder could be heard in the distance and I could see she was starting to feel anxious.

“Your pretty shoes are going to get wet.”

“I don’t care. I fear that if we don’t have this conversation now, it might never happen.”

Gabrielle was definitely a girly girl. Imagining her voluntarily sitting in a field in the middle of a storm was a stretch. I, on the other hand, lived for days like this.

“When you leave Pipers Cove, where will you go?” I asked.

“I want to go home to Marseille. I left when I was eighteen and it’s been a long journey, nearly nine years.” Her voice was thoughtful, as if she was digging deep for the right words. “I’m ready to go home…conditionally.”

Instantly, I knew what the condition was. “You want Alex you go with you?”

It wasn’t a question that needed answering. “Isn’t love a dreadful thing?” she asked, as if she was enjoying a private joke. “It makes you do all sorts of unreasonable things.”

“Alex will go with you. He won’t have reason to stay much longer. He knows I have plans to travel,” I told her.

It had always irked me that I’d kept him tied down for so long. Knowing I was partly to blame for Gabrielle staying much longer than she had planned made me feel even worse.

“Are you planning to follow Adam back to New York?” she asked, shocking me to the core.

The look I flashed her was so fierce that she should have burst into flames. “What? No! We’ve never even talked about that! Why would you ask?”

My distress seemed to amuse her. “As I said, love makes you do all sorts of unreasonable things.”

I allowed myself to dream for a second. I had honestly never considered going to New York. Perhaps I should have congratulated myself for being sensible for the first time ever.

Gabrielle had asked me the question so casually that it sounded like a realistic prospect, except we both knew it wasn’t. Alex would lose the plot completely, probably locking me in the house for years, which in turn would put a huge dampener on Gabrielle’s romantic trysts with him. I lay back in the grass, staring at the sky, laughing at the absurdity of the idea.

Gabrielle laughed too but in a much more demure way. “Don’t you think Alex would approve?” she asked between giggles. “New York is the perfect place to start an adventure. That’s where I started mine.”

“Alex would hit the roof.”

“He would, but I’m trying to get him to keep an open mind...just in case.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “I have an advantage because I can vouch for Adam. He’s the most decent person I know, and I’ve been telling Alex that every chance I get.”

That explained a lot. Alex had been very lenient when it came to Adam – too lenient. Of course he wasn’t mellowing. It was all down to the Parisienne witch, who was shaping up to be more of an unlikely ally than my archenemy. It was becoming impossible to hate her.

Finally, the sky gave out and we were pelted with rain. Surprisingly, she seemed unaffected by it. I shielded my camera bag as best I could but Gabrielle didn’t move an inch. Her ivory shirt clung to her skin as if was painted on. The clip holding her hair failed under the weight of the rain and hung loosely at the base of her neck. Wiping streaks of black mascara off her previously perfect face was the only hint of vanity she showed. I couldn’t help smiling at her.