Page 8 of The Hideaway

“Etienne,” Ruby says, allowing the French woman to kiss her lightly on both cheeks. “I’m sure you’ve met Henry Banks, my Secret Service agent, and this is Dexter North, the author I mentioned to you.”

Etienne shakes each of the men’s hands but does not kiss them on their cheeks. Banks feels that she’s uncertain about whether or not it’s appropriate to greet Ruby’s security detail with that level of warmth, and from the way her eyes graze Dexter appraisingly, she’s clearly trying to gauge whether he’s friend or foe and is as yet undecided.

“Come in, please,” Etienne offers. She holds out a hand and gestures at the front door.

Banks casts one last look at Ruby to see how she’s holding up now that they’re standing in front of Jack’s former mistress, but the only thing he can see is resolve and the firm set of her jaw. With a sharp intake of breath, Ruby walks through the front door.

Banks and Dexter follow her in.

Chapter4

Etienne

She’d known Jack Hudson since she was a child. Her older brother, Yannik, had gone to boarding school with Jack, and they’d been the best of friends. For Etienne, it’s hard to remember a time when Jack wasn’t in her life, and now that he is truly gone, it’s difficult to imagine that he’ll never walk through her door again. Never wrap her in his strong arms. Never sit at the kitchen table with their son, talking about school or discussing life in French as Etienne moves around the farmhouse kitchen with a smile on her face.

Yannik had forbidden the relationship, of course. Once he’d discovered that Jack had been coming to France to see his sister, who was sixteen years their junior, he’d thundered around, bellowing about the impropriety of it. The fact that Yannik—himself married with children—had been carrying on with a mistress for the previous decade did nothing to bolster his case for the wrongness of his sister being in love with a married man, but he’d tried nonetheless. Still, nothing could keep Etienne from Jack. Nothing.

Before long she’d fallen pregnant with Julien, and without any sort of fanfare, Jack had started to come more frequently, folding his visits into official travel and sneaking away from his family at every turn. Had Etienne felt wrong about it? She likes to believe now that she felt a pang in her heart for Ruby each time she realized that she was stealing time from another woman’s marriage, but she can’t honestly say that it’s true. With a toddler running around underfoot, waiting for the next time his father would arrive, Etienne had stayed busy. Harried. Distracted. She’d been able to forget that another woman waited for her husband to return to America, to be there fortheiryoung daughters, to participate intheirlives.

Etienne blinks now in her sitting room as her guests move about upstairs, getting settled in their rooms. She is still frequently stunned by her aloneness.

“Hi,” Dexter North says, poking his head around the wall that divides the stairs from the sitting room. “Hello.” He clears his throat and attempts a badly broken sentence in French as he descends the stairs completely.

“English is fine.” Etienne offers him a smile to let him know that she appreciates the attempt at her language, but that it’s not necessary. “Thank you for joining us. Please, sit.”

Dexter lopes across the room on long legs and sinks into the beige couch across from Etienne’s chair. The front room, like the whole house, is decorated in chic but well-worn furnishings, giving the place a sense of casual opulence. Expensive coffee table books are stacked on a table that looks as if it had once been used in the sitting room of a palace. Mismatched throw pillows dot the couch, and on the wall are pieces of real art that Etienne has purchased over the years on her travels, hung wherever it pleases her eye to see them.

The floors are made of an uneven polished stone, and the walls are made of stucco painted over with a peachy-vanilla color that warms up the room even when the expensive lamps are turned off. A fireplace with a cold grate sits at one side of the room, a piece of salvaged wood sanded and fashioned into a mantel. On it are half-burned candles, framed photos, and a collection of rocks that Julien has found throughout the countryside over the years. A fragile blue robin’s egg rests at the center of the mantel, and its color is reflected in the painting that hangs above the fireplace—a village scene with a stone dwelling and a pitched roof, its door painted the same blue as the egg.

“So,” Etienne says. She crosses her legs and watches Dexter carefully. “You and Ruby are working on a book about Jack. How much of it involves me?” No need to pull punches; being cagey is too American for Etienne. She needs to know immediately where she stands with Dexter, and there’s no better way to find out than to just ask.

Dexter folds his hands together as he sits on the couch, though he doesn't look terribly relaxed. He smiles at her. "Undecided," he says with a nod. "I've been working with Ruby for the better part of a year, but I spent some time away from the project around the holidays, so we're getting back to it."

"I see." Etienne tugs the fabric of her dress and pulls it lower on her thighs so that it nearly covers her knees. She tosses her head, but her dark hair is short and cropped in a style that looks like it's growing out from a pixie cut. It makes her eyes look bright and blue. "While you're here, are you looking for material to include in the book? I mean, obviously you are." She waves a hand through the air casually.

"I am," Dexter admits. "But I'm not digging. My intention as I work with Ruby is not to uncover salacious tidbits. I'm observing. I'm asking questions. The angle of the book is to see Jack Hudson through the eyes of his wife." He glances away as this lands with Etienne, who is no stranger to the fact that her relationship with Jack lacked the legitimacy of his marriage to Ruby.

"That sounds very compelling, Mr. North." Etienne gives him a closed mouth smile. "I imagine Ruby will have the right to refuse anything that you might put in the book which she would find upsetting."

"We agreed on that up front. I won't include anything that she feels is out of bounds. But Ruby has been very forthcoming with me, and she knows that avoiding the big topics are, in a way, the same as acknowledging that they exist. So she'd rather just cover it all."

Etienne stares at him with a long, piercing look. "I see," she says again. “And that obviously includes me and my son, so I’d like to set some ground rules about that.”

Dexter says nothing, but he listens.

“Julien is fourteen years old. That’s an important age for a boy. He knows about his father—who he was, how he lived, and how he died—but I would prefer not to have things out there that might upset my child. Furthermore, I’m not entirely thrilled about a book detailing the life of my son, no matter how widely known his existence already is.”

“Understood,” Dexter says noncommittally.

“Julien has done nothing to bring this life upon himself, and therefore I don’t believe he should be punished for the sins of his parents.”

“And do you see your actions as sins?” Dexter is watching her but his face remains unchanged.

“Ah,” Etienne says, standing and pacing the sitting room. She holds one finger in the air. “You are already digging, Mr. North, and I won’t give you all my secrets.” She turns to him with flashing eyes. “After all, I am not your subject. Ruby Hudson can do as she wishes, but that doesn’t mean that I have to.”

“And yet you welcomed me into your home,” Dexter says.

Etienne gives a resolute nod. “I did. Because I needed to see Ruby. It’s time for us to make our peace—if not for our sakes, then for our children’s.”

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