Chapter Thirteen
Even though my heart is palpitating and my stomach is roiling with sour orange juice at the thought of walking down the Majestic’s jetty in my department store bikini, I think of Emma Lee’s audacity and confidence and keep my head held high as Xavier and I walk from the lobby to the beach.
During the Festival, photo-calls were held on the jetty. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Russell Crowe. Ryan Gosling. Emily Blunt. Charlize Theron. They’ve all attended photo-calls on the Majestic’s famous jetty. Beautiful, glamorous people smiling, pouting, sulking for the camera.
Today, I don’t see Ryan or Charlize, only long-legged blondes in Balmain monokinis eyeing my romper cover-up behind their oversized Jackie O–inspired Chanel sunglasses.
Xavier booked us the front row, which means we will have an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean and the Lérins Islands in the distance. It also means we have to walk past a dozen scantily clad beauties lounging beneath pristine white parasols.
I don’t need a hand mirror to know that a prickly hot rash is spreading down my neck and over my chest. I frequently break out in a rash when I am anxious.
I want to feel glamorous, like Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity, a movie with the most erotic beach love scene ever filmed, but I am more like Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. Jack was in drag, frolicking on the beach in a large one-piece and wig, when Marilyn Monroe declared him flat-chested.
I feel like a flat-chested man in drag. The black-and-white bathing suit I thought was so Rita Hayworth pinup, with the sweetheart neckline and boy-shorts bottoms, isn’t doing me any favors either. Why, why didn’t I remember Rita was a C-cup?
“Here we are,” Xavier says, when we arrive at the two lounge chairs positioned at the end of the jetty. “Would you care for something to drink?”
“Bottled water would be lovely, thank you.”
Xavier leaves me and walks back down the jetty to the bar. I remove my cover-up and perch on the edge of one lounger. I am squirting sunscreen onto my hand when Xavier returns with the bottled water. He looks at my chest and pulls off his sunglasses.
“Manderley?” he says, sitting down on the lounger opposite me. “Are you unwell?”
A Balmain blonde in the row across from ours glances over her shoulder, a bland, bored expression on her face, until she notices Xavier’s broad shoulders and muscular back. Her lips quirk.
“I’m fine,” I whisper.
“You are not fine,” he argues. “You have a rash, ma bichette, all over your neck and chest. It looks like an allergic reaction, to something you ate, perhaps?”
The Balmain blonde rolls her eyes dramatically. Heat flushes my cheeks. I look down at my toenails and notice a tiny piece of toilet paper stuck to the Breakfast at Tiffany’s lacquer on my big toe. My humiliation is complete.
“Ah, I see.”
Xavier stands and walks back down the jetty, leaving me alone, a rash-covered embarrassment of a woman with toilet paper stuck to her blue nail polish. I want to dive in the turquoise water and swim and swim until I reach the Lérins Islands. Instead, I stick my arms in my cover-up and clutch my beach bag to my chest. Xavier speaks to a hotel employee and returns.
“Come, ma bichette,” Xavier says, reaching for my hand. “We are leaving.”
I take his hand and we walk back down the jetty, hand in hand past the Balmain blondes. I have to resist the urge to scratch my neck when one of them winks at Xavier.
“We don’t have to leave the beach.”
“We’re not,” he says, leading me down a set of steps and across the beach to a daybed for two, with white canvas drapes. “We are just moving somewhere a little less conspicuous.”
We drop our bags on the sand and take our places on the daybed. Xavier pulls the drapes on his side just enough to shield us from the Balmain blondes. I do the same.
“Merci beaucoup, Xavier. That was kind of you.”
He looks over his bare, tanned shoulder at me and smiles softly, and the rash on my chest feels a little less prickly. “You’re welcome, ma bichette.”
“How did you know?”
“My sister, Amice, suffers from anxiety, though her rash usually starts on her arms and creeps up her neck, and it rarely looks as painful as yours.” He leans his head back and looks out at the sea. “Have you always had anxiety?”
I shrug out of my cover-up, lean my head back, and cross my ankles.
“I’ve never been diagnosed with anxiety, but the nervous rash started in eighth grade English class, when Bobby Brumbacher heckled me for mispronouncing mellifluously.”
“Just relax, Manderley,” he says, reaching over and grabbing my hand. “I will not judge or heckle you if you mispronounce a word. I promise.”
We hold hands and listen to the waves gently lapping the shore. Two relative strangers surprisingly content to just be, no urgency to fill the slender space between us with unnecessary words. My limbs feel more relaxed, sinking into the cushion, and my neck and chest don’t itch as much as they did when I first sat down.
I close my eyes and let the warmth of relaxation spread throughout my body.
Before coming to Cannes, my view of the French Riviera was formed from watching flickering images projected onto a fifty-foot movie screen or a sixty-inch flat television screen. Winding roads that cling to the sides of precipitous cliffs in To Catch a Thief. Moonlight that bewitches and Catalan port towns that charm in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. A smart set living on moored yachts and swimming in a turquoise sea in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
To these fantastical, flickering images, add colorful postcards of alabaster buildings covered in bougainvillea sent each summer by Aunt Patricia. Short notes scrawled on the back in her shaky hand describing leisurely days spent swimming off the coast, dining on fried salty panisse at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, or taking a speedboat to the island of Saint-Honorat to eat fresh grilled lobster and sip chilled rosé.
The French Riviera became, in my mind, the pleasure grounds of the doyens of fashionable European society, an overindulged, idle set who subsisted on sunshine and champagne. Hedonists in Hermès finding their places in the sun. Just like F. Scott and Zelda before them.
I never imagined, while watching those dazzling flickering images or losing myself in the colorful verbiage of my aunt’s postcards, that I would one day find myself part of the idle set—even if peripherally. Sure, I occasionally dreamt of what it would be like to be the chic sort of woman others whispered admiringly about. That’s the beautiful Manderley Maxwell, you know.
What woman, as a child, didn’t dream of growing up to be a witty world-traveler with exotic stamps in her passport and a mysterious handsome man close on her designer heels?
“You’re awfully quiet.”
“I am sorry.” I open my eyes and blink against the bright sunlight. “I was just thinking about my aunt.”
“I would like to hear about her, if you care to share your thoughts.”
I tell him about my aunt’s fabulous summers spent yachting on the Mediterranean—from Antibes to Positano—and how she sent me glossy postcards from exotic-sounding places like Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Castiglione della Pescaia. I tell him I would hang a map in my room and follow my aunt’s journey, pushing red pins into each place she mentioned. I tell him about the buttery lobster and the cold rosé on Saint-Honorat.
“Those postcards always made me feel transported. It was as if, by reading her words, I could travel across the sea and be with her, swimming off the coast of Mallorca or eating dinner at Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc.”
“Have you been to Hôtel du Cap?”
“No.”
“What about Saint-Honorat?”
“I planned to, but . . .”
“But . . .” He stares out at the sea. “You are afraid retracing your aunt’s footsteps will only remind you that she is further from you than ever before. You worry that you will visit the places she loved only to discover they aren’t as magical as they were in your memory, and then you might wonder why you ever thought them magical in the first place. Is that it?”
He looks back at me, but I have the unsettling feeling he does not see me, that, for a moment, he slipped through some invisible portal in time and traveled to a distant place before I existed in his consciousness. Who, then? Who was he thinking of just now? Who was he speaking to?
He continues to stare at me, unseeing, trapped in that world of wakeful dreaming, and I suddenly have a horrifying thought: What if Xavier is in love with someone else? What if I am merely a seat filler, like the non-celebs the Academy Awards employ to fill empty seats at the Oscars ceremony, ordinary sorts who want to make believe they are one of the beautiful people?
My neck begins to itch again. I resist the urge to scratch.
“It’s getting warm,” I say, uncertain he hears me. “Would you like to go for a swim?”
“Je suis désolé, Manderley,” he says, blinking. “J’ai la tête dans les nuages.”
“You are sorry you harmed your head?”
He laughs and the portal to the past closes. He is with me again, body and spirit, lying on a lounger, laughing in the sunshine.
“I said I was sorry because my head was in the clouds. I became distracted by my own memories and drifted away from you, ma bichette.” He raises my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I won’t let it happen again, je te promets.”
I promise.
My heart skips a beat. Calm down, Manderley. He isn’t promising to take your hand in marriage or to pull the drapes closed and make mad, violent, noisy love to you.
I’ll bet he would close the drapes and make love to me if I asked him to. I’ll bet he would peel my boy shorts from my body with the skill of a French lover, wrap my legs around his lithe waist, and . . .
“Manderley!”
“What?”
“Now who has her head in the clouds?” He laughs. “Come on, then. Let’s go for a swim. It might be just what we need to keep our heads where they belong.”
He pulls his T-shirt over his head and an electric jolt of desire travels through my body from my boy shorts down my legs, so I feel I have to move. I want to kick my legs, curl my toes. It’s compulsive, irresistible, this need to move, to disperse the powerful desire flowing through my body like charged particles.
I jump up and toss my sunglasses onto the lounger. The next second, I am moving toward the water’s edge, running, eager to feel the Mediterranean on my overheated skin. Xavier follows me and we stand waist-deep in the clear water.
“Race you to that buoy,” I say, pointing to a round buoy bobbing on the sea. “What do you say?”
“That buoy?” he asks, pointing to the yellow float. “All the way out there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? That has to be at least three hundred meters.”
“I could swim three hundred meters with my eyes closed.”
“You might not want to do that, ma bichette. A little off course to the west and you will end up in the marina.”
“Stop stalling,” I say, eager to move my body. “Whoever wins buys dessert tonight. Deal?”
“Deal.” He laughs. “But only if you take a head start. After all, I am nearly a foot taller than you, and . . .”
“And?”
“I am a man.”
I want to argue with him, but what’s the point? He is a six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound man with a chiseled, muscular body, and I am a five-foot-four, one-hundred-and-eleven-pound woman with a slightly toned body. He definitely has an advantage over me. Besides, the point isn’t to defeat him in a swimming race; the point is to get moving, expel the powerful sexual energy that began building up inside me the moment I lay down beside him, close enough to smell the coconut sunscreen on his heated skin.
“Fine.”
“One . . . two . . . three . . . go!”
I dive into the water, pushing off the sandy bottom, and start swimming, kicking my legs and moving my arms. Soon, I am in the swimmer’s zone, that place where everything slows down, where your movements and breathing develop a steady, solid rhythm. Kick, pull, breathe. Kick, pull, breathe. I do this for several more minutes.
The buoy is closer now.
I keep my rhythm going, kicking my legs, pulling my body through the water, and raising my head to take a breath. I listen for Xavier splashing behind me, but hear only my pulse in my ears and my steady exhalations. Kick, pull, breath. I tap the yellow float, dive under the water, flip around, and surface in time to see Xavier passing me on his lap back to shore.
Sweet Jesus! Where did he come from?
I change from breaststroke to freestyle, fluttering my legs and attacking the water with my palms flat and fingers extended, rolling back and forth. Kick, kick, pull, pull. Kick, kick, pull, pull. I keep at it until I am even with Xavier.
I look over my shoulder. Xavier smiles and winks. Winks! I am freestyling my boy shorts off and barely keeping up. I kick harder, flutter my legs faster, but instead of shooting through the water past Xavier, I fall behind.
Xavier is standing in waist-deep water, hands on hips, breathing as easily as if he had remained on the lounger, flipping through the pages of Man of the World magazine when I finally catch up to him. I stand up, my legs wobbly from exertion, my breaths quick and sharp.
To his credit, he doesn’t gloat or grin.
“You didn’t tell me you were such a good swimmer, ma bichette. I never would have guessed.”
“Thank you,” I say, gasping. “That’s kind of you.”
“I am not being kind. You’re an excellent swimmer, un poisson. I like being challenged, particularly when I least expect it.”
“A Fish? Challenged?” I snort.
“I am serious.”
“Well, thank you.” My breathing is even now. “It was fun, and now we have dessert to look forward to.”
“I don’t want dessert.”
“A deal is a deal.”
“I would rather have this—”
He grabs me around the waist and pulls me to him, pressing his lips to my wet, bare shoulder. He laps up the tiny beads of seawater with his warm, rough tongue, and my knees, already wobbly from the long swim, go weak. I wrap my arms around his waist and hold on so I don’t slip under the water and float out to sea.
“I’ve wanted to do that since you removed your cover-up, to taste your skin again, to feel you in my arms.”
My breasts are pressed against him and I can feel the vibration of his chest as he speaks. It’s somehow more intimate than having his mouth on my shoulder, a reminder that we are standing as lovers stand, skin against skin, heartbeat against heartbeat.
I tip my head back and look up at him, the stubble covering his chiseled jaw, the smooth, tanned skin of his cheeks, the two, deep worry lines between his eyebrows, the thick lashes framing blue eyes shot with silver, and my heart aches with a fierce yearning. I want him to make good on his threat.
“I want you to . . .”
“To what, ma bichette?” He stares into my eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
I want you to make violent love to me, Xavier, until my legs tremble from exertion and I have to cling to you so I don’t fall down.
“. . . kiss me.”
“Gladly.”
He presses his lips to mine. I close my eyes and let the waves of desire washing over me take me far away, far from Reed Harrington and her band of wannabes, far from the Balmain blondes and their carnivorous looks, far from the annoying little voice warning me about the risks of getting romantically involved with a stranger who lives a world away.
He tastes of salt and cinnamon mouthwash. A strangely addictive combination. Xavier, salt, cinnamon. Mmm. I open my lips and he pushes his tongue into my mouth, lapping at my tongue the same way he lapped at my skin moments before. The kiss ends sooner than I would like, though on the correct side of propriety since we are within view of nearly everyone on the beach.
“That, ma bichette, was far sweeter than dessert.”
“Yes, it was,” I say, flushing, my hands still pressed against his solid chest.
“Come on,” he says, taking my hand. “Let’s go back to the daybed and I’ll order you a citronnade. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Xavier.”
I enjoy allowing him to take charge because it means I can relax, let go, stop trying to keep dozens of juggling balls up in the air all at once. I am beginning to think being responsible is highly overrated.
We walk up the beach. Xavier orders my citronnade from a handsome waiter in white shorts and black-and-white striped shirt, and we take our places on the daybed.
Stretching my arms over my head and pointing my toes, I take a deep breath, hold it for several seconds, and exhale slowly.
“Happy?” Xavier asks.
“Very.”
“I am glad. I do not want you to be anxious when you are with me, only happy and relaxed.”
The waiter arrives with my citronnade. He attaches a metal shelf to my side of the daybed and places the slender glass upon it. “Would Madame de Maloret care for anything else?”
“Oh, I am not Mad—”
“Perhaps the red tuna tataki? I was told madame enjoyed the Asian salad during her previous stays with us.”
I look at Xavier. He is staring at the waiter through narrowed eyes, the two lines between his brows now deep wrinkles marring his handsome face.
“That will be all,” he says, his tone cold.
The waiter nods and hurriedly backs away.
“It’s okay, Xavier.”
“What?
“It’s okay if you have brought another woman to this beach.” I am trying not to wince at the pain stabbing my heart because I imagine a screen ingénue would mask her jealousy. “I don’t mind, really.”
“You don’t?”
He looks at me and the intensity in his gaze startles me. His eyes, usually as bright and blue as the sea on a sunny day, are a portentous leaden gray, as if a tremendous interstellar cloud moved in front of the sun, plunging the world in darkness, and causing the seas to freeze.
“You are here with me now. What does it matter if you have been here before with a dozen other women? You are handsome and worldly, I expected you to have had other lovers.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Besides,” I say, carrying on as if he hadn’t spoken, “we only just met. I make no claims on you. We are two adults enjoying a holiday romance. Perhaps we will meet here again next year, or perhaps you will be with someone else and you will remember our time today fondly, but as a distant memory.”
I look away, focusing my gaze on the tiny speck of toilet paper still stuck to the nail polish on my big toenail. I am trying to remove the toilet paper by discreetly rubbing my toenail against the lounger cushion when he grabs my chin and turns my head so I must look at him.
“Is that what you think? I am a playboy?”
“Aren’t you?” I attempt a coy Lauren Bacall smile, a desperate attempt to keep up the teasing, carefree charade. “You appear to be a wealthy man spending his time enjoying himself. Zipping around the South of France in a sports car, staying in a luxury suite, seducing women with your charm and generous gifts.”
“Woman.” He places his hands on either side of my face, his fingers sliding into my hairline. “I am seducing only one woman, ma bichette. Only one. I do not have the inclination nor the immorality to behave as an inconstant playboy. Do you believe me?”
“Yes, Xavier.”
His fingertips press against my scalp, as if he is imploring me to believe his words. Believe. Believe, he seems to be saying. He kisses me, an urgent, bruising kiss that thrills and terrifies me all at once. If kisses were fictional characters, the kiss we shared in the sea would be the repressed, amiable Dr. Jekyll, and this kiss would be the dark, earthy Mr. Hyde. The duality is shocking. Who is this man? The aloof, aristocratic man who rescued me from humiliation that morning at breakfast, or this passionate, powerful lover?
He thrusts his tongue between my lips and I move closer, closer, until I am lying on top of him, melting over his chest. He has this effect on me, this throw caution to the wind, forget my proper Southern upbringing effect.
When I tentatively slide my hands up his chest, resting my palms on his pecs, he growls deep in his throat and tightens his grasp on my face.
“You drive me insane,” he says against my lips, his voice so gravelly as to be almost unrecognizable. “Je suis fou de toi.”
I don’t know what he said because my mind is too clouded by the fog of lust to translate the words. When he kisses me like that, I have no situational awareness. I am a hopelessly lost soul, fumbling around with my hands in front of my face, trying to find my way through the miasma of desire to the clear light of rationality.
He removes his hands from my face and puts them on my shoulders, gently pushing me away from him.
“Move back to your side of the daybed and say something sobering.”
I blink. “Wh . . . what?”
“Please, ma chérie, unless you want me to make love to you right here, right now, you need to stop touching me.”
“Oh!” I quickly roll off of him, self-consciously crossing my arms over my chest. “I am sorry.”
“Never apologize for arousing and being aroused. You apologize for lying, cheating, stealing, but never for loving, ma bichette.”
My cheeks flush with heat.
“You are marvelous, Manderley Maxwell,” he says, laughing. “You kiss me like a woman and blush like a girl.”
To my mortification, my cheeks flush with a more intense heat. “Merci.”
“De rien.” He frowns. “Now, talk to me about something boring, something sobering.”
“Sobering?”
“Something that will take my mind off the way your lips taste like Boules de Miel.”
“Boules de Miel?”
“Honey drops.”
My heart feels as if it is filled with helium and someone just let go of the string tethering it to my body. Xavier thinks my lips taste like Boules de Miel. Just repeating the words, Boules de Miel, makes me want to cry with happiness, soar like a helium balloon spiraling up, up, up to the heavens.
“You have never told me what it is you do for a living.”
“You’ve never asked.” He leans over and pulls a slender book and his sunglasses from his duffel bag. He rests the book on his lap and slides the sunglasses on his face. “What do you think I do?”
“Well, I know you’re not an actor.”
He chuckles.
“The way you maneuver through traffic and around those hair-raising mountainous roads, are you a race-car driver?”
He laughs. “No.”
I study his profile out of the corner of my eye, the proud nose, square jaw, and the tiny hook-shaped scar beneath his right ear, a faint curved white mark just visible through his dark stubble. He looks rakish, like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood, and I find myself wondering again if he might be a member of an organized crime ring.
“My family has been making ships for over a century. I am the chief operating officer of Théophilus, the oldest luxury yacht manufacturer in Europe. We are, incidentally, also one of the largest luxury yacht manufacturers in the world.”
Is God, or one of his more mischievous angels, playing a cruel trick? First, my father and aunt die in a shipwreck. Then, my aunt leaves me her sailboat. Now, I have fallen in love with a man who makes yachts? Xavier mentioned he had to leave the French navy after his father died, to help run the family business. I just never imagined the business was boat building.
“Théophile?”
“Théophile was my great-great-great grandfather’s first name. He was the founder.”
“Do you like to sail?”
“I would spend my life at sea, if I could. What about you? Do you like the sea?”
“I respect the sea.”
It’s true. I do respect the sea, but like all deadly beasts, it should be respected from afar. Watching moonlight dance upon her waves is fine. Swimming close to the shore is also fine. But I don’t ever want to go sailing again. Not ever.