Page 27 of Bordeaux Bombshell
Rough hands dance over the skin of my back before Nate presses a kiss to the side of my head. “Yeah. That was…” He trails off too.
The fact that neither of us knows what to say makes me feel better and infinitely worse at the same time. What happens now?
Before it gets too awkward, his phone starts buzzing from the pile of clothes on the floor. Extricating myself from his lap, I reach down and pull it out of his back jeans pocket, glancing at the screen before handing it over.
Manon.
Immediately, a memory of long legs, dark hair cut into a chic bob, and a melodic laugh assaults me. I scramble off Nate’s lap and toss the phone beside him. “I need a drink.”
I snag a blanket off the couch and wrap it around me, desperately trying to tune out Nate’s confident French as I yank open the fridge in search of the bottle of wine I opened last night. I started making it a point to drink cocktails when I’m out, because fuck Nate, but in the privacy of my home, I allow myself to indulge.
“Salut mon chou. Tu as reçu mon message?”
He’s silent for a long moment while she answers, his eyebrows drawing together. My hand shakes as I pour myself a glass. How dare he? That motherfucker just demanded I ignore everything except for him, and yet the second he got off, he’s answering phone calls. And not just any phone call. AFrenchphone call. AfemaleFrench phone call.
“Oui, ça va. Quand peux-tu venir?”
I’m not sure what’s pissing me off more right now. The fact that he’s sitting naked on my couch, legs spread and one arm thrown over the back like he fucking lives here. Or the fact that hearing him speak French so well is really fucking sexy and makes me horny all over again.
When he followed me through my front door, I secretly hoped I could show him this bottle of wine—a frappato from Sicily—but now I want to finish the whole thing myself.
“La semaine prochaine, ça serait parfait…Je me réjouis…Rester chez moi.”
My delightful post-orgasm glow fades the longer he talks. The girlish part of me that wanted to impress him with an unusual find consumed by anger when I recognize at least the last two words he said.
Chez moi.
At mine.
Truce is off, motherfucker.
Sydney
seven years ago
GettingtoBordeauxwasthe easy part. Telling my family I was following Nate to France after he’d ditched us all in the middle of the night was not an option, so I hadn’t. Concocting a believable story about visiting a college friend in London, with enough detail not to make my parents and Kel suspicious, sitting between a bored businessman and a nervous teen who had to pee every single one of the nine hours it took to fly from Portland to Paris, and stumbling through enough rudimentary French to find the train station had been the hard part.
But I’d planned for those problems. Payton was on standby in case I needed an alibi. My neck pillow was tucked intomy backpack, and I’d carefully written down the translated sentences I needed to find the train.
What I hadn’t planned was how to find him on the large estate. An estate closed to the public.
Vignobles Hermouet.
The train station was near the town square, tempting me to explore for a few minutes while I gathered the courage to go find him. Tall trees curved above the street I walked down, shading me from the hot August sun.
It was exactly as picturesque as I could have hoped, but my stomach was too twisted into knots to appreciate it.
Trudging along the sidewalk, I rehearsed my speech one more time. Every time I recited the words, the conviction that I was doing the right thing stiffened my spine a little more. Or maybe it was the long flight.
Nate, I know you said not to wait. But I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time. Don’t lie and say you don’t love me too. Just because your dad sold the Ridge doesn’t mean we can’t still have our dream. Maybe it will be different, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still have it. But you can’t just run away.
Reciting it to myself on the plane hadn’t been enough—I needed it to be perfect. I couldn’t risk sounding unsure or childish. The inexperienced kid Nate saw me as had been left behind in America. This was the new and improved, grown-up Sydney.
My parents always said that when you know, you know. And I’ve known that we were meant to be together since I was eleven. That night we were at the arcade and found that Zoltar thing. He said I would marry you…
A woman who was capable of choosing where her life went and who she spent it with and how. Just because one door closed didn’t mean that life was over.
It doesn’t matter that he didn’t say your name precisely. He said I would marry someone who would grow with me, my soulmate. How could it be anyone but you? We would literally be growing things together. It’s destiny.
