Page 68 of Love on the Vine
“Well, then I guess we’ll have to find some other way for me to repay you for earlier,” I teased, trailing a path down his sternum.
A door slammed downstairs. “Chantal,” I gasped, bolting into the bathroom to hide.
“I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure she already knows,” Jake teased outside the door.
“Just go distract her please while I get ready.” I turned the shower on. “And don’t let her up here!”
* * *
Freshly showered and dressed, I snuck down to the kitchen, hoping that Chantal had left. No such luck.
She peeked up at me from the corner of her eye and continued wiping down the coffee machine. She had a very efficient air about her today in her starched navy blue dress and her gray hair in a bun. I was afraid she might admonish me for having abandoned our cooking lessons.
“I didn’t have much to clean in the cottage this morning,” she said finally. I understood her much better now that she spoke slowly and threw in the odd English word. Plus, my French was also improving; I’d had a fun anatomy lesson in French just last night.
I blushed at the memory, and Chantal squinted at me, her mouth turning up in a satisfied smile. “I also washed the lingerie I found in the bedroom upstairs. You should hand-wash your bras. Too delicate for the machine.”
I sighed and met her eyes. I couldn’t help smiling myself.
“Merci, Chantal. Mais. . .” I mimed zipping my lips and hoped she’d understand.
“C’estun secret.” She winked and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
At least someone approved. I only wished Jake would tell me that he was happy too. Oh, I knew he was having fun. He’d lost that permanent scowl he’d been wearing every day when I first got here. And he could be surprisingly affectionate. Even when we were just hanging out, reading near the pool, or cooking dinner together, he was always touching me, planting little kisses here and there.
When it came to emotional intimacy, though, he still held back. He listened to stories about my childhood and my fraught relationship with my mom, but he never shared anything about his own childhood. He’d shrug and say he didn’t remember, and he didn’t like to talk about the past. But I couldn’t help but feel that his problems with tasting, his apathy about his business, were connected to his family.
His unwillingness to share frightened me because I was falling deeply, deeply in love with him. Any time I tried to broach the subject of what was going on between us—Would things just end when I left? Was he fine with that?—he’d change the subject or distract me with sex. I couldn’t tell him how I felt, of course. He was like a skittish animal, and I was afraid that if I made the wrong move, I might scare him off for good.
Once Chantal had left, the house was quiet, and I went looking for Jake. As I headed down the hallway, I heard him speaking agitatedly in Dutch inside the mysterious downstairs guest room. From the half-open door, I could just make out the shape of him silhouetted by the window. He tossed his phone on the chair and hung his head, so lost in thought that he didn’t turn when I came in.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, walking toward him gingerly. He didn’t appear to be in the greatest of moods, and I was ready to give him his privacy if he needed it, but I also wanted to comfort him.
He turned around, dragging his hand through his hair, a sure tell when he was stressed or annoyed. “Yeah, just an unpleasant conversation with my mother. Nothing new.”
“I know something about those.” I nodded in sympathy. My mom had been sober for the past few years, but there was always that fear inside me that the next time we spoke she’d be high again.
“Right, sorry.” His eyebrows drew together, and he slid his hands around my waist. “Do you still keep in touch with your mother?”
“Yes, of course. But we don’t talk that often—maybe once a month.”
“Really? After all she put you through?” Astonishment laced his voice.
“She’s not perfect. No parent is. I went through periods where I didn’t want to talk to her, but then I just reminded myself that she was just a kid from a fucked-up family when she had me,” I explained. “At the age I am now, she had a five-year-old. People always go on about making the right choices, but hers were very limited at the time, and it’s not like addiction is a choice.”
“That’s a very mature way of seeing things. How’d you get so wise?”
“Years of expensive therapy.”
He wandered back over to the chair and pocketed his phone. “My mother wants me to invite her over. She’s never been to the house, and she’s making me feel guilty about it.”
“She’s never been here?”
He cringed. “Is that horrible?”
“It’s not a judgment. I was just surprised.”
“I guess I’ve been keeping this part of my life separate from my family. It’s an old habit.” I followed his gaze around the room. There was a large bed with white linens and an antique rug on the terra-cotta flagstones. The walls were as immaculately white as the bed coverings.
