By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      ‘YOU’RE very quiet.’ They were crossing the Seine en route to chez Laraine. ‘Was it all too much? Are you feeling well?’

      ‘Sure. I’m feeling great. Just—thinking, is all.’

      Thinking about what an idiot she was. Why had she done it? She’d set up a trap and walked straight into herself. She didn’t want that ghastly test unless the doctor specifically recommended it.

      It only served her right for angling for reassurance. And how useless that had been. If a man wasn’t in love, he wasn’t, and nothing would ever make it happen.

      At least he wasn’t lying to her. She supposed she should respect his implacable resistance to swearing undying love he didn’t mean.

      With a sick feeling she realised that if she didn’t take the test, Luc would assume she was scared of the outcome.

      ‘This may not be the best time for you to go to lunch when you have had such a strenuous morning,’ he said apologetically, ‘but on any normal day I’ll be at work. I’m not sure you’re ready to visit Maman on your own. What do you think?’

      Shari glanced quickly at him. Her? Visit Maman on her own? Had he been eating the wrong mushrooms?

      ‘You may be right,’ was all she said. But her mental cogs were whirring like crazy. Was this to be her lot from now on? Regular visits into the jaws of hell? Not that they were unkind to her there. It was just that her status with them was so uncertain. She wasn’t quite a cousin, nor yet a fiancée. Perhaps she was a girlfriend, although surely Frenchmen loved their girlfriends.

      ‘What am I?’ she said.

      He looked sharply at her. ‘Comment?’

      ‘How do I explain myself to your family? I mean … it’s hard to know where I stand there. Am I a friend of the family?’

      ‘Of course you are a friend. You are—my …’ Seemed he too had trouble finding the word. ‘It will be easier for you when you learn more French,’ he said suavely. ‘Everything will be easier.’

      After twice making an exhibition of herself before his entire family, she seriously doubted that. It would take some magnificent achievement, like saving France from invasion, or reconstituting Napoleon, to correct the impression she’d made.

      ‘Exactly how much does your mother know?’ she said lightly as he backed the Merc into an impossibly tight space in the vicinity of the building.

      ‘She knows nothing. Or …’ He lifted his hands from the wheel. ‘She is Maman. She could know everything.’ He flashed her a grin.

      Great.

      ‘Think of it this way,’ he said smoothly, urging her up his mother’s garden path. ‘Now you are staying in Paris you will need to know some people. When I am at my office all day, you might need a friend to talk to. Here are some people who are willing to know you.’

      Shari broke into a laugh. Her heart warmed with love for the sweet man. At least he was thoughtful about her loneliness. And his excitement about the baby was a fantastic relief.

      Fortunately, this visit was less nerve-wracking than the first. She’d done everything humanly possibly here to dispel the notion she was Rémy’s woman on her first visit, and today it paid off. No urns were on display, and the assembly around the lunch table treated her with kid gloves.

      She guessed that those who hadn’t been present the first time she visited had been apprised of her dive into the twilight zone.

      Strolling in with Luc, she tried to look reassuringly normal and joyous. Certainly, after the visit to the doctor, some joy must have still been hanging about her because it kept trilling through her spirit. Nothing too terrible could touch her with Luc’s enthusiasm for their shared secret wrapped around her heart like a shield.

      ‘Alors, Shari, how are you today?’ people said after the exchange of kissing. ‘Are you well, ma chérie? Are you eating your food?’

      Laraine herself, dressed in a lovely linen suit, was very attentive to Shari’s comfort. Shari wondered if it was an accident the decanter of mineral water had been positioned near her place setting. How was a woman able to be so charming, so intelligent, so pleasant and discreet all at the same time, and still be so formidable?

      At least Shari felt more confident about her clothes. She was wearing her floral dress, heels, and had wound her hair into a chignon to show off some aquamarine earrings СКАЧАТЬ