Chapter 15

“You are really very obstinate,” Elena said severely. “Just so you know.”

A smile teased around the corners of Lucien’s mouth. “No. You think?” He pulled out her chair and took the one not across from her but catty-cornered, so they could both gaze at the pebble beach and the sea and the mix of tourists and beautifully dressed Niçois passing by on the promenade.

“Oh, so now you’re proud of it?” Elena said indignantly.

Lucien took her hand and kissed it, still with that little smile. “Am I having a drink with the beautiful woman I wanted to have a drink with?”

“You’re supposed to be dealing with your family.” Beautiful. It was funny, but even though beauty had not always been her friend, from him it was really nice to hear. Maybe from him, it felt like a gift, not a danger.

“I can’t do that non-stop, Elena. This, right here, is really nice.”

And that felt good, too. To be his space of…what had he called it? Ease.

Damn it, Elena, you idiot. Now you’re glad to be easy? She tried to thunk herself in the forehead, but Lucien’s fingers were linked with hers.

“Maybe I should learn to be more obstinate,” she muttered.

“You mean say no?”

She met his eyes, caught out.

He lifted his free hand. “That wasn’t a challenge. Please don’t say it, unless you really mean it.”

A slow wave of heat climbed up her cheeks.

Lucien smiled that slight, warm smile of his and watched a sailboat in the distance with considerable satisfaction. His fingers squeezed hers gently.

“You’re kind of lethal, aren’t you?” she muttered.

A slanted glance, his expression closing carefully.

Oh. She’d meant in his ability to seduce, and he must have thought of…his literal lethalness. “Lady killer.” She cleared her throat. “You know what I mean.”

He laughed, deep in his chest. “Yeah, you’re just toppling right at my feet, aren’t you?”

Was he kidding her? She’d pretty much begged him to come up to her place the night before. “I almost did. That very first night.”

Again, that slanted, ironic glance. “No, you didn’t. You had your finger on the pin of that hand grenade all evening, ready to pull it the second you needed to save yourself from getting in over your head.”

Had she? Unconsciously? If so, her subconscious had been a lot smarter than her conscious that evening. “You’re mixing your metaphors. You can’t save yourself from drowning with a hand grenade.”

“You can if you’re so scared of drowning that you’d choose almost any other way to go.”

Elena frowned and realized she was biting the tip of her thumb. She dropped it to her lap immediately.

“So you like to parse language, bella?” Those faint creases in his cheeks. He watched people pass. “What’s an academic like you find attractive about a military man?”

Elena’s gaze drifted involuntarily to the hard curve of his biceps so near hers. She coughed and looked away.

The creases deepened in his cheeks. “How shallow, museum curator.”

She controlled a strong desire to stick out her tongue at him.

From the amusement in his eyes, he guessed it. “Please don’t tell me you’re interested in me just for sex.”

“Oh, shut up,” Elena groaned.

“Or sexual oblivion, to be precise,” Lucien said thoughtfully. “What are your thoughts on me providing you sexual oblivion?”

Elena looked above his head at the amused eyes of the waiter that a Legionnaire commando had to have noticed approaching from the side and kicked Lucien in the ankle.

The waiter provided them the menus and a description of the plat du jour, winked at her, and escaped.

“And how oblivious do you want to go?” Lucien said. “Is it okay if I make you forget your own name?”

Elena flushed to the roots of her hair and glowered at him. “You lost that chance.”

Lucien’s cheeks creased. He picked up her hand and kissed it.

“You’re having a lot of fun here, aren’t you?” Elena accused.

“I am, actually.” Lucien laid his arm over the back of her chair, turning into her. So that it was just her and him, in a little bubble in that public space, his blue eyes warm and intrigued. He drew a strand of her hair through his fingers and smoothed it back in place. “I’m having a lot of fun,” he said softly.

Elena gazed up at him, feeling utterly caught. This was terrible.

“So,” he said carefully, watching her the whole time, “I’ve got to catch the ferry back tonight.”

Elena blinked. “Oh.”

Oh.

A great, slow sinking of an oh.

Oh, God, why was her heart sinking this much? Why was this surprising her? Defeating her?

Elena, you knew better. You always knew better. You never, ever once trusted he would be there the next day. Because you’re not that stupid! What the hell is wrong with you now?

“This is all the leave I had asked for, for Italy, Elena,” Lucien was saying. “I can’t just go AWOL or call in sick.”

Right. There was always a good reason. Always explained to her so reasonably, so that she would understand why she couldn’t blame anyone else and she mustn’t get mad.

But deep down, it always felt that it was really something wrong with her. This great, aching pain of something always wrong with her.

“But I think I can come back next weekend.”

Yeah, right. Maybe. Once or twice. Before that got old. It was an hour flight or a seven-hour ferry ride. But he hadn’t gotten in her pants yet, so that might keep him motivated for a while.

“If not, the weekend after that,” Lucien said.

Or the weekend after that, or the weekend after that. Yeah. She knew how this worked.

She knew it by heart.

“Okay,” she said. At least he hadn’t just sent a text.

She’d rather he had just sent a text.

“Can I have your number?” Lucien’s big hand closed over his phone on the table.

She stared at that tanned hand, not sure why it still had to be there. This was the part she hated the worst. That whole little window between when they told her and when they were gone, during which she had to pretend to believe no one was in the wrong here. And all the time, deep down, she knew the person who was wrong was somehow her.

“I’m—not really sure what the purpose of that would be,” she said. Her voice sounded rough. She cleared it. Going for tough.

“So I can call you. To let you know when I’m coming. Rather than sit on your doorstep when I show up Saturday morning, waiting for you to wake up.”

“Okay, whatever.” It probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he was really going to call.

Lucien gave a little sigh as she recited her number mechanically. He put it in his favorites, she couldn’t help noticing. “Somehow, I suspected you were going to react like this.”

She hadn’t. She’d thought she was far too smart and wise in the ways of the world to feel so damn grief-stricken.

“Is that why you put off telling me to the last minute, so you wouldn’t have to deal with my reaction?” she asked coolly. When she was a kid, it had usually been ice cream they took her out for, not drinks. Sometimes they knew months ahead that she would have to go, and they let her keep believing this time she had a family, right up until the last day. The first time it had happened, another kid had tried to warn her, and she hadn’t believed him. She had absolutely refused to believe that her new family didn't love her and want her to stay.

“Elena. You knew I couldn’t just walk out of the Legion on a whim. You knew I had to go back pretty soon.”

Well, he could have had a month’s leave, couldn’t he? That was another trick they had, blaming it on her for having too high expectations.

And she’d thought she had no expectations. That she’d finally learned to have no fucking expectations.

“Of course I did,” she said, worldly and amused, slanting an ironic look over him. “Where’s the charm in flirting with a soldier if he’s going to end up snoring on your pillow seven days a week?”

“Okay.” Lucien sat back and gazed at the sky a moment, as if asking it for patience. “Well. I guess we have to work through this one way or another. You’re never going to believe I’ll come back until I actually go away a few times.”

It was probably when she cried all over him talking about her grandmother. It had taken a little delay for that to catch up with him, but she had known that would be a mood killer. He probably thought she was a basket case.

And she wasn’t. She really wasn’t.

She was completely capable of handling some stupid flirtation with some stupid legionnaire.

Of saying good-bye in a way that let her keep all her class and style.

Lucien was watching her. “Elena.” He threaded his fingertips into the edge of her hairline, grazed his thumb over her cheek. His eyes crinkled just slightly at the corners again, providing her one last jolt of that illusion of affection, one last invitation to believe he really liked her. “That therapist you want to see. You think maybe you should talk about trust issues?”

Oh, yeah, sure, right. Get a therapist to convince her to trust more easily, so she could get hurt even more often. “I’ll let you know if the subjects of my therapy sessions become your business, chéri.” She gave him a faint, ironic smile. “Isn’t that just like a man, to think he should give his opinion even about that?”

“This is even worse than I thought,” Lucien muttered.

Yeah, well, screw you. Everyone always wants me to make it easy for them.

She was so tired of making it easy for them.

Lucien touched his phone. Hers made cricket noises and stopped when he touched his phone again. “Now you have my number,” he said. “If I can’t get next weekend, do you think you would like to come to Corsica?”

Elena stared at him.

“I’ll pay for the flight,” he said. “And I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

“I don’t need you to pay for things for me.”

He sighed a little. “It would be my gift to me, Elena.”

“Okay. Well.” Wasn’t that just lovely? Making a gift of herself to some man? She tossed back her drink in one fell swoop and stood. “When’s your ferry? Shall we walk down to the port?”

Lucien glanced at his full drink but just stood and threw money on the table. Elena was strongly tempted to insult him by pulling out her own wallet—just give him her own little slap in the face—but she let it pass.

Her slap wouldn’t be nearly as effective, anyway.

The stroll along the Promenade helped. People, beautiful sea, life going on. If Nice could fill its Promenade with happy people again, she could certainly handle whatever life threw at her. And be happy.

Lucien took her hand, and she didn’t like that, focused as she was on returning to her centered sense of independence. On not needing anyone to hold her hand.

But she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Over and over again, she’d been asked not to make a big deal about good-byes.

She’d known she’d been stupid to feel those moments of trust in him, but she hadn’t realized quite how much she’d gone ahead and trusted him anyway. Well, don’t blame him because you were an idiot. It’s not as if no one warned you.

Herself, for example. Herself had warned her.

They’d taken her car to Nice, which she hadn’t really suspected at the time. He must have turned in his motorcycle rental earlier. In secret. Not warning her. So now they had a lazy forty-minute stroll on the Promenade des Anglais around the point to the ferry docks. White boats lined each side of the port, the water glowing turquoise between them, against a backdrop of graceful old buildings in shades of dusty gold and ochre.

“You’ll sleep on the ferry?” she said randomly, to prove she wasn’t in the least affected by him leaving. She was far too worldly and cynical to have ever expected anything else. She let her hips sway more when she walked, too, met a few pairs of eyes as passing men checked her out. Made Lucien slant glances down at her that were growing a tiny bit pissed.

But in a resigned way that made her feel far more understood than she cared to be by him anymore.

“Probably not. I like to be on the water at night. A nice space to think.”

“Ah, too bad,” she said lightly. “Then I can’t tell you to dream of me.”

“I’m perfectly capable of thinking about you while I’m awake, Elena.”

She’d said dream not think. Thinking sounded more ominous. She had plenty of bullshit he hadn’t yet seen through.

“Will you come back to see your family?”

He nodded. “I told them I would.” His eyes caught and held hers. “The same way I told you I would, Elena.”

She took a moment to try to figure out how she should digest that. It seemed as if she could trust his word to his family, but she couldn’t trust his word to her. Which left her brain kind of confused as it tried to assume what he would actually do.

“Bordel,” Lucien muttered. “It’s like dealing with a two-year-old who’s never seen her mother leave for a conference before.”

No. It was exactly the opposite. “How would you know?” she said irritably. “You’ve spent fifteen years in the Legion. What do you know about two-year-olds?”

“There might not be many single women on base, but there are families. We’ve got all kinds of spaces set up for them, and programs developed to help the families deal with when we’re away on deployment. It’s only the first five years legionnaires can’t get married. I spend time with families. I’m responsible for a company, Elena.” He said that with the faint air of exasperation of a military man trying to get a civilian to understand something so basic it blew his mind she didn’t know it.

She faced him near his ferry, curious despite herself. That sounded really responsible. And she’d seen how his men liked him. The rough way they joked with him, the easy way he took it.

“You feel responsible for their families, too?” she said curiously.

He gazed down at her with that assessing gaze that made her feel so…interesting. As if he really did want to know her better. “I’m the captain.” As if that said it all. “If the families aren’t whole and happy, the men aren’t happy either.”

Oh.

“And the Legion is the family. If an officer has a family, his wife has to be really good at accepting that demand on him.”

Interesting. She had no idea why he was looking at her like that, as if he was testing her comprehension of something, but it was an interesting thing to know about him.

She’d seen joining the Legion as a rejection of family, as a lone wolf thing to do. And maybe the act had started out that way. But if he’d climbed to officer then, evidently, according to what he was saying, he was the exact opposite of a lone wolf. He was intensely focused on family and responsibility.

She found her own tension easing before her fascination. It was just…really a shame she couldn’t get to know him better. He seemed so damn perfect.

Also…maybe a man with that much responsibility on his shoulders really did know how to fulfill any commitments he made? Wouldn’t that be something.

That faint, warm smile of his showed. He hooked a finger under the chain of her necklace and followed it down until he held the pendant in his hand. His eyes searched hers.

That instinct to trust him swelled up in her again, and she hated it. She knew better.

He toyed with her lionheart, rubbing his thumb over its chips, and her stomach clenched in her desire to grab it back. But the graze of his fingertips against her breastbone felt so good.

“Let’s try this again,” he said quietly. “Can I come back and see you next weekend?”

She had always liked that. The directness but also the courtesy with which he had always laid out his attraction to her. This is what I want. I’m not afraid to tell you. What do you want, Elena?

But she didn’t like that promise of a future. He kept acting as if she should believe whatever words just came out of his mouth, and everyone knew how ridiculous that was. Every single time a kid got pulled from her mother’s care to a foster family, or vice versa, her mom or her foster family promised to check in on her again, to keep in touch. Sometimes they even did it a few times, before they moved on to other people, or in her mom’s case, found drugs more compelling. Which was not her mom’s fault.

“There’s no point trying to build something out of nothing,” she said uneasily.

His eyebrows went up a little, that look that always suggested he was trying to see through her bullshit. “And I think that building something where there was nothing is the definition of building a relationship.”

He took a step back from her and lifted his phone before she realized what he was doing. He looked down at his screen afterward and smiled with a possessiveness that made her feel curiously...secure. “You really are beautiful,” he said. “I’m sorry that means you’ve had to fight off so many assholes.”

She peeked at the screen. The ocean breeze had lifted her hair in an auburn curve beside her face and blown a strand from the other side across her chin. She had that slanted smile she’d practiced so hard as a teenager, but it didn’t look knowing and tough, the way she thought. Her eyes over it were too wistful, questioning.

She withdrew from it, wishing she could erase it.

“Take one of me,” Lucien suggested. Well, suggested. He did have a firm way of suggesting things, as if mostly people jumped to obey his suggestions with a snappy salute.

She shook her head. Hell, no. She was not playing that game ever again. Acting as if she could keep people. He was there or he wasn’t. A lot of babies grew past that stage of crying every time their mom left the room—they learned that their mom would come back. Well, Elena hadn’t learned that. And it was too late now.

Lucien studied her thoughtfully and with maybe the faintest exasperation, and then looped his arm around her, pulled her in close to his side, held up his phone, and took a picture of them both together.

He gazed down at the resulting photo with rueful resignation. “You’re a tough sell, aren’t you, Elena Lyon?”

The ferry horn sounded. He leaned in and kissed her swiftly and firmly, another stamp of possession that worked its traitorous way all through her. She was going to kick him if he kept acting as if there was something solid and reliable going on here, she swore she would.

"I'll be back next weekend," he promised, and turned to run up the plank.

Oh, yeah, sure he would. She scowled up at him as he came to the rail to look down at her, pissed off that he could end things with such a cheap lie. She'd thought he was at least a tiny bit better than everyone else she'd ever known. Call her delusional, but she really had.

The ferry pulled out of the dock. Lucien shifted along the railing as it turned, to keep looking back at her. Like a total idiot, she stood watching him as if she believed in him, even as he shrank in the distance.

Her phone burped. The selfie of the two of them together. Lucien was smiling into the camera, and she had her eyebrows beetled together.

Another burp. Don't erase that.

She frowned down at them together on her screen. Then quickly snapped several other random photos of the sea and the dock, so at least the photo of them wasn't the first thing that popped up whenever she opened her photo roll.

She looked back at the ferry. Far away, growing smaller and smaller, Lucien lifted his hand and waved, a shadow against the sun.