Chapter 22

Elena was so happy to be flying to see Lucien she almost couldn’t stand it. Truly almost couldn’t. It scared the hell out of her.

But happiness just kept expanding through her, all golden, anyway.

He met her at the airport in uniform, what she guessed was a working uniform. (“Utilities,” he told her later.) Camouflage, sleeves rolled up precisely to above the elbow, three yellow bars on his rank insignia. He was searching the crowd of passengers coming out, his expression remote, but his eyes lit as soon as he saw her. He came straight toward her, taking her bag from her and pulling her in to kiss her in one motion, and passengers parted around them with smiles.

It was the first time she had been close to him when he was in uniform. It made him even bigger, more imposing. Worryingly, it made her seem smaller, less important. Ghosts of her younger self rose up in her, reminding her of what it was like to be so small and unimportant that you had no control of your life. The only control you could have was to make yourself even smaller so that you never needed anything or got in anyone’s way. Or, as she got inexorably bigger and more developed despite her best efforts to hunch her shoulders and let her hair frizz over her eyes and pick at her face so people would leave her alone, always struggling not to be so unattractive no one wanted her around and yet not to attract the wrong people. It wasn’t until she was eighteen that her waitress friend had taught her that hunching her shoulders and making herself smaller only made it more likely that creeps would focus on her. She had to act invulnerable.

She lifted her chin and told the ghosts to go back to sleep. She wasn’t that person anymore. She was strong and independent and needed no one to look after her. She knew to carry her shoulders back and down and her head up and let her hips swing just as much as they wanted. And Lucien didn’t treat her as if she was unimportant. In fact, he always acted as if he enjoyed focusing on her more than on just about anything else.

An enjoyment of you that has lasted for three whole weeks, she reminded herself. People don’t even turn puppies back in to the shelter that fast. Get real.

“Have a good flight?” Lucien started them walking, one arm still around her shoulders.

She nodded.

He smiled down at her, and then swung her back into his body and kissed her again. “It’s good to see you,” he said, heartfelt, and she felt happiness blossom up until she was like a flower he could pick and keep whenever he wanted.

It’s good to see you, too.

Don’t throw me away once my petals start to wilt.

Elena. Stop it. You’re not some helpless flower. Not anymore.

He had a military jeep parked outside and put her suitcase in the back, kissing her again as he lifted her up into the seat. The remote expression was entirely gone from his face, tanned and happy, his hand moving from the gear shift to rest on her thigh whenever it could. The mountains of Corsica rose in the near background, green lower slopes shading into blue gray as they slanted up sharply. On the highest peaks, white still clung in patches. They passed the town of Calvi and reached the broad curved brick gates of Camp Raffalli, with the golden lettering on the wall behind them: Honneur, fidélité. Guards in white uniform shirts and red and green epaulettes and sand-colored pants saluted him and did not seem to look her over at all, so maybe it was her imagination that they were intrigued by her presence. Maybe they’d seen a lot of women in the passenger seat of Captain Fontaine’s jeep.

Right. He was Capitaine Fontaine here, not Lucien Rosier.

“Would it be so bad, to change your name back to Lucien Rosier here?” she said abruptly.

He shrugged. “Happens all the time. That someone decides to go back to his birth name. You get used to it.”

“I like Lucien better.”

A little smile on his lips. He glanced at her. “What about Rosier? Which do you think is a better last name to have? Fontaine or Rosier?”

There was something about the way that he asked that question that she couldn’t quite figure out. “Fontaine’s fine. But Rosier is who you are. Isn’t it?”

Lucien said nothing. Around them spread the straight lines and symmetric buildings of a military base, in some ways not so dissimilar from a modern French suburb, with the sand-colored walls and the red tiled roofs. But the signs of the Foreign Legion and, above all, the 2e REP, the regiment of elite paratroopers whose base this was, were everywhere. A water tower loomed above the base, with the regimental insignia and black letters stating 2e REP. The French flag flew prominently. Ornamental fixtures at the entrance to a building walkway were in the form of fleurs de lys. Everyone was in uniform. Everyone was male. Literally everyone, until they reached the housing area, where there were some children playing on a playground and some women talking in a group watching them. The blue sea spread out enticingly beyond them, only a stone’s throw away.

Lucien’s house was larger than some, officer’s housing, but simple both inside and out. Like her, he only had a few books visible, but there was a tablet on the table by his bed. There were so many fewer shampoos and soaps in his bathroom it was almost funny—unlike all her half-full bottles of hair products, he had clearly settled on one shampoo, one soap, and one shaving cream years ago and had exactly three masculine looking bottles, a razor, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. No flowers on his bottles. No hair product. His hair was so short, he didn’t even need a comb.

Everything was scrupulously clean, not a speck of dirt in sight, the bed made with perfect corners, not a wrinkle on the spread. The kitchen had a bouquet of flowers in it.

Her heart brightened, the flowers relieving her feeling of total alienation. “For me?”

“No, I just automatically pick myself up a bouquet of flowers every time I walk through Calvi.” He kissed her again. “Of course they are for you. The place looked kind of bare.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone, that callused, tender touch. “I thought you might like them.”

She did like them. She loved them, and what they meant—that he had wanted to make his bare, masculine lodgings a little more feminine so that she would feel welcome in them. “And some lemons.” She touched the bowl of them beside the flowers, yellow and full of promise.

“I told you I liked the memory.”

She smiled up at him and this time was the one who moved to kiss him, going up on tiptoe.

His eyes were brilliant blue. “I guess I should show you around base before I get distracted.”

Again, as they walked around, Elena had the sense of being dumped in a totally alien world. There was the French flag, so she knew it was still her country. But everyone was in some kind of uniform, from the men in camouflage pants and a military green undershirt, digging in the beds of flowers that framed some buildings, to the white-shirted men with green and red epaulettes who stood at formal guard, to variants of camouflage uniforms pretty much everywhere. An oppressive consciousness grew in her of being the only woman, anywhere, on the working part of the base. And she was only there because a man was holding her hand.

The diversity was kind of fascinating. There were men from everywhere, men of all kinds of sizes and shapes and colors. Fit shapes, yes, but it was amazing how different fitness could look, depending on a man’s body type. Everyone spoke French, although many had very heavy accents. “Swearing includes every language, but other than that, no language but French is allowed,” Lucien said. “Punishment for non-French was swift and terrible at La Ferme.”

So as far as the Legion was concerned, all that diversity was to be broken down and turned into a mosaic of one whole image, a weapon and a shield, Elena thought. And that was Lucien’s responsibility, wasn’t it? To form his diverse company into one solid whole, to make so many headstrong personalities formed in so many different cultures work together.

Everywhere they went, men saluted. Lucien had to hold her hand with his left one so he could salute back. In fact, groups of men over on the other side of a square would, when they spotted him, cross over to his side of the street, just to salute him. Wow, some of those men were young. Teenagers, even if they looked as tough and lean as nylon rope.

Yet another group drifted apart as they neared him, until they were walking in a line, so that Lucien had to salute four times in a row. She glanced back at the men after they passed. Every single one of those neutral expressions had disappeared as all of them pivoted to look at her.

She looked at Lucien. His lips were straight, but there were creases in his cheeks, and his eyes had that depth of warmth to them, as if he found something hilarious. “What?” she said.

“They’re just messing with me. Also, trying to check you out. Gossip is going to fill the mess halls, let’s just say that.”

Elena’s face crinkled. “Gossip about me?”

He glanced at her. “Pretty sure they wouldn’t want to risk me overhearing the kind of gossip you’re imagining. More like, ‘Who was that woman with the captain? Do you think he…?’”

“Do you think he what?”

Lucien smiled and squeezed her hand. And had to return another salute.

They passed a huge green marble wall engraved with columns of names. Légionnaires du 2e REP morts pour la France.

The names of the men in this regiment who had been killed in action. It was, after all, one of the most elite assault troops in the world. And he had been a paratrooper commando, elite of the elite of the elite. She stood still in front of the wall, all the hairs on her body lifting as she followed the long list of names to the most recent deaths. Not so many as there had been at some periods of the past. But it still happened. The most recent date was just last year.

“Did you know him?” she asked Lucien softly.

“Yes. He was in my company,” he said very briefly, his expression emptying.

She reached out and took his hand. He squeezed hers in thanks, but his expression stayed remote for a long time.

It was slowly seeping into her consciousness that this—this military base, this world made entirely of men, these elite troops who looked up to him and “messed with him” and counted on his leadership—this was who Lucien was.

She could call him Lucien Rosier all she wanted. But he was Captain Fontaine. That meant something. It meant more than that he looked sexy and exciting, jumping out of a plane. It meant more than that he looked and sounded powerful and dramatic, leading his men on a march for Camerone Day. It meant more than that he was incredibly fit and could handle pretty much anything.

It meant all the lives in his company were his. He controlled them, he led them. He held them in his hands. She was pretty sure he held them in his heart. They were him. He was them.

L’esprit du corps.

“I hope you don’t get bored this weekend,” Lucien said ruefully, breaking the silence he had fallen into at the reminder of the man he had lost. “I thought I was going to have more time. But apparently the President needs to improve his image as a strong leader,” a very faint irony in his tone suggested that their current president less than impressed this elite Legion paratrooper, “and so he’s decided to attend this weekend’s exercises and have his photo taken. So they’ve extended the exercise so we can impress,” again that note of irony at the concept of impressing someone who had completely failed to impress him, “and there will be a parade and ceremony. So much for the beach.” He looked at her apologetically. “I mean, you can go—not the ones on base, which will be closed off for the amphibious part of the exercise, the public beaches. But…yeah.”

“It’s okay,” Elena said. She had plenty of books on her tablet. Corsica was a beautiful island. She could go hiking. And Calvi was bound to have a Saturday morning market. “Can I watch some of the exercises?”

He smiled at her, as if she had said just the right thing. This is who he is. He’s proud to have me see it. “From the walls, you can see the amphibious company take the beach. And us parachute in later in the afternoon.”

“That sounds exciting,” she said. And, at his expression, Yes. The disciplined captain is like a kid showing off. To me.

It warmed her right down to her toes, helping balance the sense of profound alienation that had hit her without warning once she stepped inside his milieu. This world was not hers. But he did seem excited to have her at least visit it.

Visit.

She looked across to the main coast, a shadowy form in the distance that stopped the gleaming sea. Seven-hour ferry ride. An hour flight, but of course, you had to drive to the airport, go through security, wait for your flight. Three hours, call it.

There were a few museums on Corsica, small, regional, focused mostly on Corsican identity. Nothing remotely related to her knowledge or interests, and anyway, she knew who those jobs went to. If you weren’t Corsican, forget it.

“Nice view?” Lucien said. “You look pensive.”

“All this time, you could see Grasse from here. And you never went home?”

“I was overseas a lot.” His expression closed. “Elena. I had to make my own place.”

Right. She of all people should understand that.

And then, once he had made that place, maybe he had lost the room in his life for anyone else.

“You did bring a dress, right?” he said, clearly sick of the previous subject.

“Just a beach town kind of dress,” she said warily. “Nothing glamorous.”

“That’s fine. There’s a cocktail party tomorrow night.”

Good lord. This was what she got for going out with a man who had spent the past fifteen years entirely surrounded by men, and men whose attire had been decided for them the moment they volunteered for the Legion, too. “I do not have a cocktail dress.”

“It’s fine.” He made a dismissing motion. “The men will be in uniform, and the women just wear something pretty and relaxed. It’s Corsica. Civilians are always relaxed here.”

“The president isn’t going to be there, is he?” Elena said sharply.

Lucien hesitated. “Maybe?”

Elena stared at him, half horrified and half intrigued. It wasn’t that she liked the president either, but she had never in her life imagined she would meet him before.

“I mean, a lot of legionnaires can’t vote, so it depends how much he wants the photo shoots. He’ll probably just be here a couple of hours. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Of course he wouldn’t worry about it. He had one bottle of shampoo and one bottle of soap in his whole bathroom, and all he had to do to look right for any occasion was make sure his uniform was properly pressed. Which she would guarantee some service in the area did for him.

Elena ground her teeth. “That’s not okay,” she said abruptly. A woman had to stand up for herself, after all. If she let something like this slide, God knew where it would all end.

Lucien glanced down, surprised. “A cocktail party? We won’t stay too long, if you don’t want.”

“Not warning me. So I could pick out the right clothes!”

He looked confused. “But you look beautiful in everything you wear.”

She stared at him, flabbergasted. “Oh, my God, you are an idiot.” How could she not have noticed that before? “All-male militaries should be against the law. It kills half of your brain.”

“Keeps you safer, though,” Lucien mentioned, idly.

She shot him a sharp look.

His expression was mild, with maybe just a little glint in those blue eyes.

“I cannot meet the president in a sundress, Lucien! And all your generals, or whoever leads this base.”

“It’s a colonel, actually.” He struggled to control his bemusement. He really did live in a completely different world, didn’t he? And was so entirely immersed in it that her ignorance was surreal to him. “The chef de corps.”

“Whatever.” She dismissed that.

Lucien opened his mouth and closed it. His face was a study.

“And I would far rather have shopped for a new dress in Nice than in Calvi.”

“Is dress shopping better in Nice?” he said blankly.

“For God’s sake, Lucien.” Now he was taking his military oblivion past the extreme of reason.

“Elena. Trust me on this. Every single other man there is going to think the exact same thing that I do. That you look absolutely beautiful, no matter what you wear.”

“Lucien.” She put a hand to her forehead. “I know I should think that’s sweet, but you’re really lucky I’m opposed to violence.”

“You are?” He looked around at the base. It was possible he hadn’t met anyone in fifteen years who was opposed to violence.

“Domestic violence. Punching you for being an idiot.”

He smiled down at her with so much damn affection. As if everything about her made him happy. “You’re sweet,” he said, and kissed her fingers. Right there in full view of his men and everything.

The men’s expressions were extremely neutral as they passed, saluting, but their eyes gleamed.

“You’ll have time to do some shopping tomorrow,” Lucien said. “I can pay for—”

She held up a fast hand.

He stopped. “That is—maybe you’d enjoy exploring the shops a little anyway. Since I’m going to be busy most of the day.”

That was what the wives did here, wasn’t it? Took care of the kids, cooked the meals, went shopping. Maybe some of them managed to get a job in a shop or an office in town, if the owner hadn’t found any Corsicans to fill it.

She grimaced and glanced back at the mainland. “Just don’t do it again.”

“All right,” Lucien said, quite seriously, as if he was making a mental note. For such a hard-willed and confident man, he wasn’t too set in his ways, was he? Willing to listen to her and make adjustments.

That’s a nothing-adjustment. Warning you that you need a dress? Come on. Something about this base was like a big male fist. Only it wasn’t a warm, protective fist, like Lucien’s when he held her hand. It was cold, and unbreakable, and it was tightening around her heart. It had the kind of merciless grip that couldn’t adjust to let her heart beat inside it at all.

Ignore it. This was always about the moment anyway. You’re too smart these days to believe in more, remember? Enjoy the weekend.

“Maybe I could take you into Calvi for dinner?” Lucien said. “I know a good restaurant with a beautiful view of Nice and Cannes at night.”

***

It was beautiful. Almost achingly beautiful. A whole spread of sparkles across the water, a yacht bobbing here and there, stars overhead. Lucien seemed profoundly contented, as if, sitting on that restaurant terrace above the water with her, everything about his life was perfect.

It got to her, his happiness to have her there. Warmed and tickled and confounded her. She found herself reaching for his hand all the time, as if the touch of it could anchor her here and make all this possible and forever.

She liked this so much. Sharing time and thoughts. Sometimes not even talking, but, at the end of the meal, sipping their wine, their chairs shifted side by side, enjoying the view.

It was, maybe, too, a neutral space. Civilian. A beautiful town by the edge of the sea. Very similar to where they had met. A civilian space might not be a neutral space to him. It might be him stepping into your alien world, all this time.

“Not too sad?” Lucien murmured once. “The night water?”

She shook her head and linked her fingers with his. Thank you for making night water hold more bright reflections than darkness.

His fingers flexed on hers, his thumb running along the side of her hand. His expression grew the closest she’d seen it to brooding, as he gazed at the far shore. “Raoul wants me to come back. Permanently, I mean.”

Yeah, the Rosiers were so sweet that way. They believed in people. They had hopes. It was so endearing. She did her best to protect them, so they would never lose their illusions.

“Do you think I could?” Lucien said suddenly. “Give up all this? Go back to being a civilian?”

Oh, that was cruel. To make her face up to her own illusions and admit the truth. “No.”

He turned his head, his eyebrows flexing together. What, had he wanted her to lie? “Well,” she corrected herself scrupulously. “I think you could do anything you want to. But you don’t want to. You want the life you have here.”

“I’m proud of who I am,” he admitted. He glanced around, as if to make sure no one would overhear him, and added, with a little wry quirk to his lips, “I love my men.”

Elena nodded. Tried very hard not to think. Tried very hard not to say, Your family probably keeps hoping you’ll love them more.

The Rosiers were so lovable, though. They weren’t like her at all. How could anyone not love them more?

“I’m glad you understand,” Lucien said, caressing her hand and lifting it to his mouth to kiss it.

Well, yes. She was very good at understanding that other people had priorities which didn’t have room for her.

Just don’t think. She stared across the water, while his thumb rubbed against her hand, reassuring and wonderful. Just don’t think at all.

His house was alien again, so masculine and spare and perfectly clean, as if it had no room for her. But there were the flowers on the kitchen counter—his thought of her, his effort to change his space for her.

He turned her against the door, leaning over her, a shadow in his unlit space. He didn’t worry about coming home in the dark, did he? Not like her. “Merde, it’s so good to have you here,” he murmured, his breath warm on her forehead, his forearms warm against her upper arms, his body big and closing her in, no threat, all security.

She spread her fingers over his shoulders, the shape of him more felt than seen in the darkness.

“Miss me a little this week?” he breathed, nuzzling his jaw against her temple.

She couldn’t admit that. It made her heart tighten in panic, the idea of missing him. She had missed so many people in her life, huddled around a floppy stuffed puppy who never managed to fill the empty spots those people had left in her. “It was only a few days.”

“I missed you.” He brushed the backs of his curled fingers up her jaw, across her cheek, a sensation that made her want to arch into him like a kitten and beg for more petting. “Thought about you all the time.”

“I’m sure you”—her breath caught as his fingers opened and spread in tender roughness across her face and into her hair—“were mostly focused on work.”

“I printed up that picture of you to put on my desk. At night, when I hung up the phone, damn but I wished you were here.”

“I would have liked you there,” she admitted. In my world. With me.

For someone who had had to adjust her life over and over to a new setting, had she developed some kind of phobia to it? Was that why she found his environment so alien? Her own stubborn refusal to let it become familiar? No, it really is alien. All male. All military. All-consuming.

The actual, literal only place for a woman is in the kitchen, in the bedroom, and taking the kids to school, to the pool, to the playground.

“Mmm,” he said, a deep sound of pleasure and longing, and kissed her.

Her fingers slid over his shoulders, one hand gripping over the smooth, faintly raised skin of his rose tattoo. She traced it like a sign. A map in the dark.

To where? Why had she not thought of this from the very first? Because she hadn’t been able to let herself imagine a relationship? Or because she wouldn’t have been able to conceive of this place anyway? This all-male military universe was genuinely inconceivable from her relaxed civilian world where sexism might not be over but no woman had to form her identity around a man. It kind of made her want to go join some women’s marches to realize it still existed in her country today.

But there were no flags to wave right now. It was dark. His big body nuzzled hers against the door, as if he would like nothing so much as to keep her. The unadorned scent of him was working its way through her, undefinable but so increasingly familiar. Warm, human, faintly salty. Sea and pine.

It was too dark to see the warmth in those blue eyes, that had grown so much for her. But she knew it was there. His hands were stronger and more urgent on her than the first time they had made love, as if he’d missed her through all his body, as if he knew his hands would be welcome. But there was still that care, that tenderness, that refusal to take her over if she didn’t signal she wanted to be taken over.

The alien base faded, back beyond the borders of him and her.

What had he said he wanted the other day? This. This space with you.

Yes.

I mean, it’s probably what all the men here want from their wives, this space away from the rest of the world, and it may never even occur to them that they are asking another human being to devote her entire existence to being someone else’s space, but…shh.

Stop.

Don’t think about it.

Don’t think, said the brush of his knuckles along her jaw.

Don’t think, said his hand shaping over her shoulder, kneading gently down her arm.

Don’t think, said the graze of his jaw against her temple and her hair.

Why would you start thinking now? His fingers kneading over her back, pressing her closer and closer into his body. The rub of their bodies together, the way he lifted and shifted her against him, the way she went up on tiptoes and slid back down.

The hard strength against her. The way her hands could close around lean hips and then stroke up ribs and broad chest.

He pulled away from her to unbutton his uniform jacket, laying it over the back of the couch. The only suggestion of disorder in the entire house.

He came back to her, in his green T-shirt. She pushed that up immediately, savoring the smoothness of his skin pulled taut over muscle, the ridges of his ribs, ah, yes, it still tickled him. She slid her hands around to his back, still pushing the T-shirt up.

He pulled it over his head and threw it toward the couch. Then just swung her up in his arms and carried her through the house to his bedroom. She felt almost guilty to mess up the precisely made bed with her body. He, on the other hand, clearly didn’t mind at all.

Settling down over her with a deep sound of pleasure, everything so warm and dark. She kissed his jaw by accident and kissed across it until she found his mouth. Tangled in kisses, he had said.

Oh, yes. What a lovely tangle to be in.

Tangled in kisses and his voice, deep and hot and telling her so many sexy things, like her name, and incoherent sounds, and you are so damn beautiful. Tangled in his body and his hands, rubbing over her, rough and warm and gentle, urgent and curious and familiar. As if she was coming home.

Tangled in that great erotic sense of trust that she always felt around him, as if he would take care with every part of her and never break her.

She loved making love to Lucien Rosier. She’d never in her life before him had sex that felt like love was being made.

But it did with him.

Despite everything—despite the ominous base outside that pressed down around the house with its proof she could not fit here—she found it easy to hold onto him, easy to kiss him, easy to come, easy to curl up afterward into one of his pillows, with his hand resting on the small of her back, thumb stroking idly against her spine, as they fell asleep.

Easy, just for that night, to believe.