The Paris Secrets trilogy: includes: Window, Screen, and Skin (36 page)

I leaned over and opened the laptop cover.  Skype automatically opened when I signed on, and it pinged, indicating he was online.  Waiting.  Completely unaware of what I now knew.  Last time we'd chatted I'd confessed my underwear theft and we'd had a rousing cyber-sex session that had left us both panting.

My God, I'd sent him the All Saints Day party invitation.  Damn it.

"Be cool," I cautioned.  "He's playing reluctant anyway."

Was his reluctance due to the fact that he was married?  Of course!  Why else would the guy not want to meet me?  Ugg.  I so had not seen this coming.

I signed on and the video stream displayed the side of his face.  Glasses on, he was reading, which he did when I hadn't made it to the computer before or at the same time as him.  He held a newspaper, and I could make out the headline but couldn't interpret the German.  Did he speak German?  I think he had mentioned as much.  He must if he were teaching in Berlin.  Talented man. 

There was so much about him to admire.

"Hey," I said, sitting on the couch and leaning forward, elbows on my knees.  "Did you have a good supper?"

"
Bonsoir, mon abeille
.  I did indeed eat well.  McDonalds' big cheeseburger and fries."

That startled me.  He was pretty health conscious.  I mean, a guy who fenced regularly and sported washboard abs probably didn't touch the greasy stuff.

"Seriously?"

"Yes.  I don't normally eat the fast food, but I walk by McDonalds every day on the way from work to the hotel and—I don't know—the smell lured me in.  It was good.  Though I may regret it soon enough."

"I guess a greasy, carb-loaded meal should be considered a necessary treat every so often."

"I had the chocolate milkshake, too.  I haven't had one of those since I was a kid."

"Really?  My favorite as a kid was a rootbeer float."

"I've never tasted rootbeer."

"Never?  That's absolutely scandalous.  I'm going to have to find you some rootbeer and STAT."

"Is it better than a chocolate milkshake?"

"By leaps and bounds.  I promise you, after you've had vanilla ice cream mushed up in a glass of rootbeer you will have dreams about it."

"I dream about you."

I caught my chin in palm and smiled at his handsome and sincere visage.  "I dream about you, too."

"About me fucking you?"

"All the time.  All day.  Every night."

"Did you run over to my place to get your purse?"

"Yes.  Oh."  I sat upright.  My heart dropped to my gut. 
Ker-splash
.

I'd forgotten.  Seriously forgotten.  I'd fallen into his sky-gray eyes and the surprise of his fastfood foray, and the utter shock of the man never having tasted rootbeer, and—had completely forgotten.

I clenched my fingers before me and looked at them.  The knuckles turned white.  I suddenly felt defensive.  For no reason.  He should be the one on the defense.

"I got the invitation," he said.  "A costume party?"

I stared at the screen, hearing, but not processing his words.

"Two days following when I return?  I suppose we can manage that, eh?"

He could
manage
that?  What was that supposed to mean?  Did he even care?  Or would he have to schedule it around his wife?

  "So what is it tonight,
mon abeille
?  Shall we fuck together or can I watch you do a strip tease?"

"Are you married?" I blurted out. 

I caught my fingers against my lips.  My heart jittered as if it had just been poked with a cattle prod.  I exhaled through my nose. 

"Wh-what?"  He leaned forward, catching a palm against his temple. 

"You heard me.  I asked you a question.  You need to answer it truthfully.  I need to know."

"
Mon abeille
—"

"Please!  A man spoke to me after I left your flat.  The building owner.  He needed you to sign some insurance papers."

"Ah, yes.  His email did not mention meeting you—"

"He called me Madame.  Thought I was your wife.  The wife you'd told him travels a lot and who isn't around much.  What.  The.  Hell?"  I gripped the computer screen as if it was his face and I needed to hold him there.  To make him feel my consternation and pain.  "Are you married?"

He bowed his head, rubbed his lips with his fingers.  Looked aside, then directly at me.  I couldn't read his expression.  He conveyed no expression.  His eyes were flat and his mouth straight. 

Yet when he winced, I knew the answer before he plainly said, "Yes."

"Oh, fuck no."  I stood and paced toward the wall.

"You need to listen to me.  Let me explain."

"Explain?"  I rushed back to bend before the screen.  "What explaining is there to do?  You're married!  I've been having an affair with a married man.  I can't believe this.  I trusted you!"

"
Mon abielle
, you cannot do this.  Do not rage as you are doing.  Be calm and listen to me."

"Fuck calm."  He was telling me what to do when he should be apologizing?  "How can you do this to your wife?"

"Sit down."

"No.  I'm not going to do anything you ask me to do.  This is insane."

"You have to be calm."

"I will not!"

"Really?  So you are going to stomp your pretty little shoes and pull out the dramatics?"  He made that innately French
phawing
sound of disgust.  "I thought you were different."

"What?"  Heartbeats thundered now.  And my fists were clenched so tightly I wouldn't have been surprised to feel blood drip from my palms.

"You heard me.  Different," he reiterated sharply.  "Not like other women who rant and toss out dramatics when they are upset."

"Oh, I'll give you dramatics, buddy."

  "Why do I have to do this with you acting the child?"

"Child?  How dare you accuse me, when you are the one who is in the doghouse, mister?"

"I do not know what that means."

"Oh, yes you do.  You're just playing the French card to piss me off."

He waggled an accusatory finger at me.  "You are annoying when you are like this.  I will not listen to you until you are calm.  And then we can talk."

"If we don't talk now, it's never going to happen.  You explain yourself."

"Will you listen calmly?"

He was playing for time.  I knew it!  He was an asshole of the finest water.  He'd confessed.  Straight out said yes.  The man was married. 

I paced again, furious.

"Don't be stupid about this," he said.  "You have a tendency to blow things out of proportion.  You and your thinking too much.  You know that!"

So I did just that.  It wasn't his place to point that out.  Especially now.  I suddenly wished we could go back to how we'd started.  With no sound, just gestures and movement.  I had a hand gesture for him.

"Asshole!"  I couldn't control my anger.  I had to say it.

"You think I'd invest my time with you just to have it end because of this small detail?" he countered. 

Small detail?  The man was delusional.

"No," he continued.  "I have spent the past month getting to know you.  Learning you.  Enjoying you.  Hell, I don't even know your name, and yet I count the minutes when I can next see and talk to you.  Is it fair to fall in love with someone and not even know their name?"

"Love?"  I sat before the laptop, my body so tense my fingers hurt.  "You have no right to use that word about us.  You can't love a woman when you are married to someone else."

"Is that so?  Who are you to tell me how to think and feel?  How to love?  Who to love?  When to love?  This is what I feel about you,
mon abielle
, and I mean it."

"You do not.  You are tossing out that word to try and win my sympathy."

"I cannot do that.  I have always been honest with you."

"Honest?  Really?  Seems like you forgot to be honest about something very important in your life.  Would you have ever told me you had a wife?"

He exhaled.  Ran his fingers roughly through his hair.  Normally I would have creamed my panties at the gesture.  Now, I wanted to punch the laptop screen.

"Honesty?" he finally said.  "Being married is not a fact a man leads with when he's in a new relationship."

"I can't believe you."

"
Je t'aime, mon abeille
."

I scoffed loudly.  Wasn't knowing you are in love a very specific point in a relationship when a man should reveal the wife?  Aggh!

  "Ah, but maybe you do not know the meaning of the word," he insisted.  "Is it that you are one of those women who string a man along for a few weeks, perhaps a month, and then you dump him and on to the next lover?"

I breathed out.  The exhale hurt at the back of my throat.  Had he heard conversations I'd shared with Melanie as we extolled the virtues of the quickie relationship as opposed to investing more than a month's time in any particular man?  We were right at that one-month expiration date. 

And right now, this thing we had felt oh, so beyond the use-by date.

"I won't listen to you put me down to defend your betrayals."

I slammed the laptop shut and slammed my back to the chaise.  A wave of tears spilled down my cheeks and I rushed to the bathroom.  Turning on the shower and undressing, I stepped under the water so my neighbors wouldn't hear me bawling.

Chapter Twelve

I stared at the closed laptop for five minutes.  Maybe it was ten?  Could have been longer.  Right now I wanted to talk to him as much as I wanted to physically hurt him.  Much as I hated him, I had invested in him.  The man had become a part of me in ways I couldn't define.  He was Monsieur Sexy. 
My
Monsieur Sexy.  The man knew things about me I rarely shared with anyone.

Love?  I wasn't sure.  But I felt strong
like
for him most certainly.

Did he really believe he loved me?  Some hearts worked that way.  It wasn't my place to judge if the velocity with which he ransomed his heart was true or false.  But if true, the idea of him loving me also sickened me.  What would Madame think? 

Madame. 

Kill.  Me.  Now.

I had every right to rage and slam the laptop shut.  Every right.  But had it been the grown up thing to do?  Definitely not.  And hadn't I decided before signing on to Skype tonight that I was going to listen calmly?  If I thought that I could think myself into all sorts of crazy scenarios, real life had a way of trumping that tenfold.

I touched the brushed aluminum laptop surface.  I'd seen hurt in his eyes.  And anger.  Anger at me for the way I had reacted.  He had no right to claim anger. 

Maybe a little bit.  I had acted like a child.  Tossing out the dramatics, as he had said.  But his comment about me dumping a man after a month had hit too close to home.  I'd needed some distance.  I'd cried all the tears I could manage in the shower.  Afterward, I'd sat on the edge of the tub sobbing quietly into the towel.

Now, a half hour later, I'd settled.  I was calm.  I was ready to listen if he was willing to talk.  Because I couldn't let it end this way.  Despite his lacking scruples, I would not let him remember me as the crazy one.

Opening the laptop, I signed onto Skype.  He was still there.  In fact, his video feed showed the top of his head.  He'd put his head down on the table before the computer.  I felt instantly guilty. 

Wait!  No, I didn't.  Monsieur Sexy was a big boy.  He could take a few angry words from a woman.

Right?

I tapped the alert tone.  He looked up.  No smile, just a resigned moue as he rested his temple against a palm and waited for me to speak.  His eyes showed traces of red.

"I'm sorry," I said.  "For reacting the way I did.  I'm not sorry for my anger, though.  I can't be."

"I understand.  I said some harsh things that were used as defense not in an understanding means.  And for that I apologize. 
Desolé
."

"Thank you."

"You…rubbed against an open wound."

Seriously?  He had opened a wide, gaping wound in my heart.  What was he going to do about that?

Sighing, I nodded and shoved my hands under each of my thighs.  Calm, remember?  Hear him out and then walk away from this mistake.

"I'm ready to listen," I offered.  "I need to hear everything you want me to know.  You should probably tell me the stuff you'd not intended me to know as well."

"
Merci, mon abeille
.  I will say it all."  Sitting up, he placed his folded hands on the keyboard, and began.  "I haven't been married, in my heart, for a year.  We've been separated that long."

Separated?  That was a good thing.  Well, from my point of view.  Maybe.  He could merely be referring to her lengthy business trips away from home.