Sunset in St. Tropez (17 page)

“I"m not going to invite them,” he said bluntly, feeling defiant, and tired of them. “You deserve a little fun without people picking on you.” “I just don't want to hurt anyone's feelings,” she said cautiously. “Let's think about yours and mine right now. Let's take care of us, and deal with them tomorrow.” She was touched that he was willing to do that, and this time they took the Deux Chevaux, and she drove. They left the house without even telling the others, but the Morrisons and Donnallys could hear them as they left, and they all sat in the living room looking glum and talking about her.

“I like her,” John said plainly, willing to stand up for her to the others. “She's a very nice woman.” He looked accusingly at Pascale.

“What do you expect? She's an actress,” Pascale stared angrily at her husband. He was defecting to the other side, and she didn't like it, although even she was torn. But she still thought it was a disloyalty to Anne to like Gwen too much. She thought she owed it to Anne to at least not give in too soon, no matter what John said.

“You guys should give the poor woman a break, for Robert's sake, if nothing else,” Eric added. It was what he had said that afternoon. And then he turned to his wife. “You"ve got to admit, she's nice to him.”

“She's probably all right, but that doesn't mean she's right for Robert. He needs someone more solid.” But what they were really saying was that they wanted him to be alone and mourning Anne forever. They were determined not to make this easy for her, with the exception now of Eric and John.

“Robert doesn't even know what hit him,” Diana added pensively. There was no denying that Gwen was impressive.

But was she sincere? Diana didn't care if she was, she didn't want to like her. She had dug herself into a hole and refused to budge.

And in town, Robert and Gwen had finally forgotten about them, like naughty children they had left at home. And after a while, they decided to go to one of the open-air cafés in the port, and talk for a while. By then, they were both tired of dancing, although they'd had fun doing it. Robert tried to remember the last time he had gone dancing.

Probably at Mike's wedding. He had liked to dance when he was young, but Anne had never been fond of it.

Robert and Gwen talked for hours, sitting at the Gorilla Bar, and admiring the boats docked in the port. It was after two o"clock when they finally got back to the house, and mercifully, everyone was sleeping, and didn't hear them come in.

“Thank you,” she whispered as they stood outside his door. “I had a lovely evening.”

“So did I,” he whispered back, and then he leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek. Neither of them was ready for more yet, and this was more comfortable for them. “I'll see you tomorrow. Sleep tight,” he said, wishing he could tuck her in, but that seemed a crazy thought. She wasn't a child, she was a woman. He just had no idea what to do now, how to begin, how to start a romance with her, particularly under the same roof with his friends. He wasn't even sure if he was ready to yet, and the fact that he was even wondering told him he wasn't.

Instead he watched her close her bedroom door, and closed his own door softly behind him. And the moment he did, he regretted it. But as he had observed about introducing her to the others, this part wasn't easy either. In fact, the whole thing was something of a challenge, but the greatest challenge of all was coming to terms with his memories of Anne, his sense of loyalty to her, and his own conscience. That was the hardest of all, and for the moment he had no idea how to overcome it, and he suspected Gwen didn't either, but it wasn't her problem. It was his to deal with and he knew it. And as he lay in bed that night, thinking first of Anne, and then of Gwen, he couldn't help wondering if she was sleeping, how she looked when she did, what she wore to bed, if anything. There were a lot of things he wanted to find out about her. His mind was still whirling when he went to sleep, and he found he'd been dreaming of her when he woke up the next morning. And as he showered and shaved and dressed, he realized that he couldn't wait to see Gwen.

When Robert came down for breakfast, he found Gwen already there, drinking café au lait and reading the Herald Tribune, and there was no one else in sight. They were the first to come downstairs, and she made him a cup of coffee and relinquished the paper to him.

“Did you sleep all right?” She looked interested and concerned about him, and he had to admit he liked that. A lot. It was nice having someone care about him again.

“More or less,” he admitted to her. “I dream of Anne sometimes.” But he didn't tell Gwen that he hadn't dreamed of his late wife that night, he had dreamed of her, and it had equally disturbed him. The truth was he wanted her, but didn't think he deserved her. He had no right to desert Anne, physically or emotionally, even if she was not there.

He wondered what Anne would have thought about it, and if she would have approved. He liked to think she would.

“It was hard for me going out with anyone else, after I divorced my husband,” she said simply, as though she understood and didn't want to push him. He liked that about her as well. There was so much about her he did like, more than he had ever expected. “It's hard moving from one life to another. I was only married for nine years, you were married for thirty-eight. How can you possibly expect to move from one life to the next without some stress and introspection and adjustment? It takes time.”

“I don't think I"ve ever thought about it. I never expected to have to do it.” Or to love someone else. He didn't dare say that to her.

“Neither did I,” she said simply, “but sometimes fate forces us to face the situations we least expect, and most dread.” He had never asked her what had happened to end her marriage, but he did now, and she hesitated for an instant. “He had an affair. A very serious affair, with one of our best friends, and I found out about it.”

“So you left him?” Robert looked impressed and sorry for her. “Yes. In about five seconds. I didn't even think about it. I just reacted, and moved out.”

“And what did he do?”

“He asked me to come back, he begged me to in fact, and I never spoke to him or discussed it with him. I hated him for a long time, though I don't anymore. But I never forgave him. She was my closest friend, and I blamed both of them. I was pretty rigid in those days.” “Did you ever regret it? Leaving him, I mean.”

“Yes. After I did it, I was kicking myself for it, but I never let him know that. I was too proud to. That seemed more important. My ego was bruised, as much as my heart, which was stupid, I guess. Outwardly, I never wavered. I didn't want him to know I still loved him.”

“How are you about it now?”

“I"m okay with it. But for a long time I wasn't. I was bitter and angry and destructive at first, and devastated.”

“What do you think you should have done? Taken him back?”

She surprised him with her answer. “Probably. Because I don't think we"re human, or worthwhile, or worth knowing, if we can't forgive each other. It took me a long time to forgive him. And when I did, it was too late.

When it happened, all I wanted was to punish him. So I did. I divorced him. And I realized later I could probably have forgiven him, and lived with it and stayed married. But it was too late then. The same thing could have happened to me, it just didn't. I was in love with him for a long time after we split up. But I couldn't bring myself to forgive him even then. It's something I'll always regret, and it took me a long time to make my peace with it.” She looked sad as she said it.

“It must be difficult to have choices about those things,” Robert said quietly, “about how far to go, where to draw the line. In some ways, it was easier for me. I didn't have a choice in losing Anne. I just had to live with it. You had choices, and if you allow yourself to, you can blame yourself for a long time for the choice you made. I"m sure you made the right decision in the end.”

“I suppose I did. For a long time I wasn't sure. I regretted leaving him terribly afterward, but I was too proud to back down. It cost us both too much in the end. I learned a very painful lesson from it.”

“What happened to him?” Something Robert saw in Gwen's eyes made him ask the question.

“After he begged me for several months to come back, and I refused to, eventually, he married the woman he'd been having the affair with. Maybe he would have anyway, but I"m not sure he was in love with her.” Her voice grew taut as she said the rest of the words, and it was obvious that she felt a tremendous burden over it. “And then he killed himself six months later. So instead of one life ruined, I destroyed three, hers, mine, and his. I know I'll feel guilty about it forever.” She was being honest with him, no matter how painful for her.

“You can't do that to yourself,” he said gently. She had never told him the story, but she had now, and he realized how traumatic the divorce and her ex-husband"s death had been for her. “You can't know what else was happening in his life, his head, at the moment. It could have been his own guilt, or about something else.”

“I was determined to be tough with him, and not give in,” she said sadly. “I was angry that he had cheated on me.

But if I had handled it differently, and discussed it with him, maybe not filed for divorce as soon as I did, or at all, we probably would still have been married, and he'd be alive.”

“Maybe that wasn't your destiny or his. You can't control what someone else does. Maybe you had finished your life with him.”

“No, he did,” she said sadly. “In more ways than one. What he did was pretty decisive. He shot himself. His new wife claimed that it was all my fault, that he had never gotten over my divorcing him. She managed to blame me for all of it. And I guess I believed her at the time. I know I have to move on and let go of it, and he's been gone for a while. But I still hesitate about starting anything. I always remind myself of what happened, what could happen again, and my responsibility for it. You can't just walk away from that.”

“I think you have to lay that burden down, Gwen,” Robert said gently, holding a hand out to her, and taking hers in his own. “You owe it to yourself. You can't punish yourself forever. What he did to you was wrong too. He has a responsibility for this too, more so than you.”

She nodded in answer. He had said a lot of good things to her, and she was touched by it. “And what about you? Are you torturing yourself over Anne? Are you feeling that you owe her your life and you shouldn't be happy again?

Because if you are, it's a tough spot to be in. You'll need to let yourself off the hook one day too, Robert.”

“I will, if I can. She was a powerful force in my life, and a powerful person. I can't imagine her letting me go easily. I think she expected me to be there with her forever. And now she's gone, and I"m here, and I don't know how to move on to the next phase.”

“You will. Give it time. You can't rush it.” He wasn't. And neither was she, and he was grateful for that too.

“You"re an extraordinarily nice person, Gwen,” Robert said admiringly.

“Tell your friends that,” she teased, and he rolled his eyes just as Eric walked into the kitchen, and interrupted their conversation.

“Have either of you seen Diana?” he inquired, but neither of them had. She hadn't made it to the kitchen yet. But Eric didn't look too worried about it, as he helped himself to a cup of coffee. They had had another fight that morning, about his affair, and she had told him she would never get over it, and would have to divorce him, and he had once again begged her forgiveness, and then eventually lost his temper over her inability to rise above it and forgive him. And once he lost his temper, she stormed out of their bedroom. At that exact moment, she was outside swimming, trying to cope with her feelings of grief and frustration.

It hurt all the more because the woman he'd been involved with was so much younger than she was. And as a result, Diana felt finished and unloved and old. For the moment she couldn't regain her feeling of self-worth, nor her love for Eric, who suddenly seemed like a stranger to her.

Eric sat down quietly with Robert and Gwen, and chatted with them. Gwen offered to make them some eggs, but all they wanted were croissants. And when John and Pascale came into the kitchen, she heated the croissants for them, and poured them coffee too.

Diana came in, in a beach towel after that, and ignored Gwen. She acted as though she weren't there. The women were intransigent about her. And even to Robert, it seemed hopeless. If he and Gwen ever developed a serious relationship, he now knew that his best friends could neither sanction it, nor be part of it. It seemed desperately unfair to him, but he couldn't see how to change it, unless they were willing to. He wondered, if she were someone else, if it would be any different. He doubted it, and he was angry at them for their position, or at least Diana and Pascale. He was upset not only for his sake, but for Gwen's. They had never given her a fair chance. He was almost sorry he had let her organize the day for them on the Talitha G. If they were going to treat her this way, he thought they didn't deserve it. He was strangely quiet as they finished breakfast, and he suggested to Gwen that they go sailing right after.

“You"re upset, aren't you?” she asked him once they were in the sailboat. “Is it what I said this morning about moving on to a new relationship?” She wondered if she had offended him.

“No, it's the way my friends are behaving. The women at least. They"re behaving like children, and I"m getting tired of it.”

“We have to be patient,” she said with more consideration and tolerance than he felt or wanted to give them.

“I"m almost sorry I brought you here,” he said sadly. “You don't deserve this.” But in a way, it suddenly made the transition easier for him. He wanted to protect her, and he felt loyal to her now as well, not just to Anne. He owed Gwen something too. She had made herself vulnerable to him, and been honest with him. And as they sat in the sailboat side by side, he suddenly pulled her close to him and kissed her hard. It was a feeling of exhilaration and excitement like nothing he had felt in years. And he did it again without coming up for air, and then smiled at her. It had seemed like the only outlet for his anger, and it had definitely been a positive one. His friends" perfidy had only served to bring them closer together in the end.