Даниэла Стил - Turning Point

No one commented on how attentive he’d been to her as they walked upstairs. They didn’t know her well enough to say anything, but they had noticed. And once in her apartment, she thought about him. There was something so incredibly attractive about him. She tried not to think about it and called her boys as soon as she took off her coat. They were with the housekeeper, who had picked them up at school. She said Andy was out. He had an appointment that afternoon, which he hadn’t told her about the night before. She wondered where he was.

When she hung up after talking to the boys, she thought of Gabriel again, even though she didn’t want to. No matter what his arrangement was, he was a married man, and she was a married woman. She reminded herself of it again as she fell asleep, and thoughts of him filled her mind. She remembered the feel of his lips on her fingertips. She tried to make herself think of Andy, but she couldn’t and didn’t want to. All she could think of was Gabriel, and all she wanted was to see him again. The morning couldn’t come soon enough.

Chapter Seven

For the rest of the week, they toured the hospitals with the best emergency services. They met other doctors and government officials, went to lectures and meetings, visited the different facilities and offices, and met with police and the SAMU, which were teams of doctors who treated victims on the street, right where they were injured. As a rule, SAMU didn’t move patients until they were stable. The doctors saw videos of recent attacks and how the SWAT teams handled them, pointing out where mistakes were made and where the operation had gone smoothly.

There was a constant flood of information, which the American team tried to absorb attentively and discuss with their French counterparts to better understand how the systems worked in France. They worked well together as they got to know each other, and their respective strengths provided similarities and contrasts and posed some interesting questions they sought answers for. The mesh of the group was perfect, and by the end of the week all eight of them had bonded and were a cohesive group.

They had the weekend off, which everyone needed. They were exhausted from all the facts and details and new material they had studied.

Tom invited Valérie for dinner, and she flirted with him as she declined, which tantalized him unbearably. She was seeing patients on Saturday, and driving to Normandy on Sunday to see her mother. She didn’t tell him what she was doing in the evening, but said she was busy. She did it so charmingly that it drove him insane. He wanted her so badly he could taste it, and he stared at her during most of their meetings.

Gabriel always seated himself next to Stephanie and spoke to her in whispers, but she didn’t mind it. She loved being near him, and couldn’t pull herself away from him. She had agreed to have dinner with him on Friday night. And Valérie had whispered a warning to her, as they left one of the hospitals they visited.

“Don’t forget he’s a married man, and he’s French,” she said softly, which startled Stephanie. She knew that about him, but was telling herself they could be friends. But he didn’t act like that was all he wanted, and their mutual attraction was a powerful magnetic force.

She and Wendy were going to the Louvre together on Saturday, and planning to have lunch afterward, and they wanted to go to the Galeries Lafayette to do some shopping. They were going to have a girls’ day, and they both wanted to catch up on their reading on Sunday. Stephanie liked having a woman friend in the group, and Wendy enjoyed it too. She had stopped seeing everyone for the last few years, and lost touch with her women friends, so she’d be available anytime Jeff wanted to drop by. And suddenly she was free, and had someone to do things with again. Marie-Laure had invited them both over for tea on Sunday to meet her children. The two youngest were close in age to Aden and Ryan, also boys, and her oldest son was eleven. They were very young, and they rarely saw their father. It was all on Marie-Laure’s shoulders, as she had explained to them one day over lunch. Her husband had left her when her youngest was born, five years before. She managed on her own, with babysitters, which Stephanie thought was heroic. When her husband left her, she’d had an infant, and a three- and a six-year-old.

Bill was catching the Eurostar at six o’clock on Friday night to see his daughters in London. He had booked two connecting rooms at Claridge’s, and he was picking them up that night. He was beside himself at the prospect when he left by cab for the train station. He ran into Wendy as he was leaving the building, and she wished him a good weekend and a great time with his girls. She was on her way to the little food store nearby, so she could have dinner in her apartment. She said she was exhausted after their busy week. So was Bill, but he was revitalized at the idea of seeing his daughters.

And Tom had convinced Paul Martin, the young French doctor from the COZ, to go barhopping with him to meet women. They had a plan and Paul was picking Tom up at nine. Tom had a list of bars he’d been given and wanted to try, and Paul was young and game for anything. He thought Tom was a lot of fun.

Gabriel picked Stephanie up at eight-thirty in his car, and drove her to a small, cozy restaurant in her neighborhood where they could talk quietly. Gabriel lived in Neuilly, a residential neighborhood full of families and some very pretty houses, and he looked very pleased to be having dinner with her. She told herself it wasn’t a date, and they were just colleagues getting to know each other and becoming friends, but he was warm and supportive, and enthusiastic about everything she said, which was exciting for her.

They shared a passion for medicine, and he understood everything about her work. It was impossible not to be drawn to him, and he seemed so much more mature than Andy, who was always complaining about something, pouting, ignoring her, trying to make her feel guilty, angry at her, or acting hurt. It was so tedious to listen to. She always had to be justifying herself, and it made all their exchanges so unsexy. It was just one long battle. Being with Gabriel was so much easier, and the attraction between them was undeniable. She was trying to resist it, but it was hard. She had an enormous crush on him, was physically attracted to him, and he looked as though he was totally swept off his feet by her. She had never felt like this about any man since she had married Andy.

She hadn’t come to Paris to have an affair. What’s more, however he described it, Gabriel was a married man. But by the end of dinner, as they sat across the table from each other, they were holding hands. They’d both been drinking wine, but not enough to account for how she was feeling, or how attracted they were to each other. He told her he had never felt this way about any other woman. He readily admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife, and didn’t view it that way given the lack of emotion between them. But he said the other women had never meant anything to him, and he thought Stephanie the most enchanting woman he had ever met. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, or his hands, and when they left the restaurant, he kissed her, and for an instant she melted into his arms. Her own willingness to do so shocked her, and they had just met.

There were tears in her eyes when she pulled away from him. “Gabriel…we can’t…I’m married. A lot more so than you are. I have a husband and two children waiting for me at home.”

“And you’re unhappy with him. You’ve said it in a thousand ways. He doesn’t understand you. He’s jealous of your work. He makes you feel guilty. You constantly feel torn between him and your career. You can’t live like that forever. He’s holding you back.” What Gabriel was saying was true, but they were married and had two little boys, and in some ways, she knew Andy was right, she didn’t spend enough time with their sons. And she had left them to come to Paris for a month, and she felt guilty about that too. It was the age-old battle between family and career. She wanted both, and the career path was an easier one for her. Now she was kissing a man she barely knew and felt fatally attracted to.