Barbara Bretton - We'll Always Have Paris

Kate rapped her knuckles against the mahogany table. “Knock wood. Slow but safe.”

“And you are settled into the apartment?”

“It’s beautiful,” Kate enthused. “I can’t thank you enough.”

Celeste made one of those Gallic sounds that could mean just about anything. “And what are your plans for the day?”

Good question. Everyone said traveling west to east was easy, but she felt as if she had spent the flight strapped to the wheel well. “I guess I’ll order up some room service and take a nap. Try to get myself adjusted to the time change.”

“Mais non!”

“Mais oui,” she countered, laughing. “I’m not as young as you, Aunt Celeste. I need a nap before I go sightseeing.”

“A nap!” Celeste’s outrage was formidable. “I forbid you to nap. You’re in Paris, chérie. You can nap in New York. Comb your hair. Put on fresh lipstick. That’s all you need.”

Maybe that was all Celeste needed, but Kate’s list was growing longer by the second with caffeine in the top position.

They chatted a few minutes about the wedding. Neither one mentioned Ryan, which was fine with Kate although he was clearly the blue suede elephant in the room. Alexis and Gabe had talked to Celeste last winter and the family matriarch had bestowed her seal of approval on the match.

That didn’t surprise Kate at all. Gabe Fellini was everything Kate could have asked for in a son-in-law. With Aunt Celeste’s help, he and Alexis had arranged the entire wedding festivities with flawless precision and so far there hadn’t been a ripple of discontent from anyone involved.

The extended Fellini and Donovan families were crazy about one another. Alexis’s sisters Shannon and Taylor had happily granted the middle child her day in the sun. And the only thing required of the mother of the bride was that she show up a few days before the Big Day with her dress and the family portrait she had promised them on the night of their engagement party.

Which was otherwise known as the night she lost her mind.

There was no other way to explain what had happened. Not even to herself. It was as if her body had been taken over by an alien being whose sole purpose was to leap into that Toyota and have her way with Ryan.

When the girls told her, so very gently, that their father had said he was bringing someone with him to the party, Kate had steeled herself for the sight of another woman at her husband’s side. He was a gorgeous man. Sooner or later he was going to realize there was a world of women out there and he could have his pick.

She was braced for a twenty-year-old bimbo with fake breasts, porcelain veneers, and thighs the likes of which Kate could only dream about.

But it didn’t happen that way. Long Island’s snowstorm had moved north and flights between Boston, where Ryan hosted a successful sports radio show, and New York had been cancelled.

Kate was ashamed of the quick surge of relief she experienced when she realized she would be spared the sight of him with another woman.

“We can’t have this party without Daddy here,” Alexis had said, but Kate had been firm in her resolve.

“He told you to go ahead without him and he meant it, honey. Your father wouldn’t want you to cancel your engagement party because he couldn’t get a flight down.”

In a world of change, the one constant was Ryan’s love for his daughters. He wanted the best for them and would do anything to make sure they got it.

About an hour into the party, Kate was carrying a tray of shrimp appetizers into the living room when she heard familiar laughter ringing out in the front hallway.

Ryan had rented a car at Logan Airport and driven down to Long Island through the storm to be there to celebrate his daughter’s engagement. Kate thought her heart would burst through her chest from longing when she first caught sight of him in the foyer. Snowflakes glittered in his hair beneath the overhead light. He laughed as he brushed them off and handed his scarf and jacket to a beaming bride-to-be.

“Mom, look!” Alexis said as Kate stepped into the room. “Daddy drove all the way down through the blizzard to be here with us.”

“I thought you were bringing someone,” Kate said.

Ryan frowned. “Where’d you get that idea?”

They both turned to look at their middle child, who looked back with an innocent smile on her face. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

“I hope you rented a four-wheel drive,” Kate said to Ryan. What had happened to Hello or It’s good to see you? Why did she have to go straight to the negative.

“I’m crazy, but I don’t have a death wish,” he shot back. “I rented an all-wheel drive at the airport.”

“There’s a blizzard out there,” she pointed out.

“That’s not a blizzard,” he said. “You need higher winds to qualify as a blizzard.”

“That’s still an awful lot of snow.” Shut up, Kate. Where is this going? What’s the point?

“It was clear sailing from Hartford on. The worst is on its way to Maine.”

Kate opened her mouth to pursue this meteorological debate, but the look on their daughter’s face stopped her.

Alexis was looking from Kate to Ryan, her blue eyes wide with puzzlement. This was her day. Kate and Ryan could save their bickering for some other time.

That look of puzzlement quickly turned into something very different when Gabe Fellini walked into the room.

There was something both sad and beautiful about new love. Alexis and Gabe were so innocent, so trusting in their love for each other. They hadn’t a clue about the curveballs life would throw their way. Right now they believed that they were special, that the gods had decided to rain down all the blessings of the universe on their heads and protect them always from harm.

She and Ryan had been that way, too, and for a second Kate thought she was looking at their younger selves.

And Ryan saw it, too. Their gazes locked above their daughter’s head and everything else fell away. The years. The problems. The fact that they were a half step away from finalizing their divorce.

They exchanged a smile in the foyer. They squeezed past each other in the back hallway. She smiled when she caught him watching her as she popped more crab puffs into the oven. She blushed furiously when he caught her peeking at him through the back window when he stepped outside to bring in some more firewood.

By the time they found themselves alone on the back porch, the attraction between them was so powerful that they were in each other’s arms in the space of a heartbeat.

He told her what he wanted to do to her.

She told him if he didn’t do it in the next thirty seconds she would do it to him.

In a flash they were in the backseat of the Toyota with the windows fogging up all around them. Hot. Sweet. Intense.

Too intense. She was losing control and if she didn’t get out of there right that second she would say something she would regret. Something like I still love you or Maybe we should give it another try, and she would have to endure the look of pity in his eyes.

Kate scrambled into her clothes as if the car were on fire and she had ten seconds to save her own life.

Which, come to think of it, may not have been that far from the truth.

She had made a big fat mistake. One of those mistakes that happened to other, dumber women who ended up crying their eyes out on some relationship expert’s shoulder on national television.

She hadn’t planned to sleep with her own husband. It was winter, for crying out loud. She hadn’t even shaved her legs.

For three weeks afterward she held her breath, praying to God and all the saints that their stupidity hadn’t resulted in a middle-aged pregnancy. She had the feeling Ryan heard her sigh of relief all the way up there in Boston.