Chapter 23

It was pitch black still when she heard him stirring in the room. His clock glowed 4:00 a.m. by the bed. He bent to kiss her forehead, then shifted to her lips when she reached out a hand to touch his arm and showed she was awake.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I tried to be quiet. I’ve got to go. One of my corporals is out with a broken wrist, so he’ll escort you to the walls when you’re ready, if you still want to watch. I left a note with how to get in touch with him.”

She nodded and fell back asleep, but not as soundly, stirring in the emptiness, uneasy. She ended up getting up at six, excited and a little nervous to see more of what he did. She showered and took a lot more time than he did in the bathroom because, yes, it really mattered to her to look pretty to him. She couldn’t help it. But by seven, she was on the citadel walls.

The corporal offered a crisp salute to the uniformed men already present and introduced her. “Mademoiselle Lyon. Capitaine Fontaine asked me to bring her here.”

Captain Fontaine seemed to be her password to these walls. But the corporal forgot to introduce the uniformed men to her in return. Maybe that meant she wasn’t supposed to bother them, which seemed highly likely. She was the only woman on the walls. In this world with no room for women.

She leaned against the wall in a spot that seemed well out of the way, watching the boats approach the beach. She had no idea of the terms for the boats or what they were doing, but it all looked very exciting, if you liked deadly intensity. Some of the forces were taking the beach, some of them were resisting the invasion. If Lucien was among them, she had no idea from this distance who he was. He would be giving commands somewhere, but probably not physically leading these smaller units, right? Not anymore? This was more what he used to do, when he led a commando paratrooper unit.

She realized a tall, stern uniformed man was standing straight-shouldered beside her while she slouched on her elbows looking over the wall. She glanced up at him in a friendly way, and he returned the glance with one of faint amusement or faint bemusement, she wasn’t sure which.

She straightened into ballet posture all at once, as a thought occurred to her.

This man had five yellow bars on his sleeve rank patch. Lucien had three yellow bars.

Part of Elena’s process of tracking down Lucien had included combing through every available media photo—and Facebook post, because of course the elusive, legendary Foreign Legion posted every minute of their days on Facebook now—to see if she could spot a face that was recognizable as an adult, weathered version of the photos the Rosiers had of Lucien as a teenager. And once she had found him, she had had to look up what the insignia on his uniform meant. So she knew what the regimental insignia meant—and this man’s was the same as Lucien’s. She knew that Lucien’s three yellow bars meant he was a captain.

Five yellow bars meant two ranks above him, then. In the same regiment.

Oh, good God, she might be offending the commander of his base.

She had no idea how to act inoffensive, no clue what the etiquette here might be for her, and refused to reduce herself to too much submissiveness to be safe. So she just stood as straight as all the men around her, although more ballet-inspired, graceful rather than stern, her hands clasped behind her back, more or less imitating the corporal over there but with some female ownership of the pose.

“Mademoiselle Lyon, c’est ça?” the gray-haired officer said. “La femme du Capitaine Fontaine?”

French had a linguistic quirk that meant that “Captain Fontaine’s wife” or “Captain Fontaine’s woman” were exactly the same expression. It didn’t mean the officer assumed they were married, a wedding he would presumably have been invited to. But it did mean he assumed their relationship was long-term and not casual.

Maybe Lucien wouldn’t have asked a corporal to escort a casual affair up onto the walls to observe these exercises.

“Oui”—Elena’s glance flicked over those five yellow bars again—“colonel.” If she’d erred a rank too high, he could correct her. But she sure as hell didn’t want to err a rank too low.

He didn’t correct her. Oh, crap. That meant he really was the colonel. “Do you see where he is?”

“Non, colonel.”

He handed her binoculars in a tanned, scarred hand that was starting to show age but still tough and pointed to a rocky cliff across the bay.

It took her a minute or so to pick out Lucien, but finally she did. Camouflage-painted and in the thick of things, speaking orders and moving at the same time. He looked in his element. Well, he was, right?

Actually, all the men she could see looked as if they were having a hell of a good time. An intensely demanding exercise where no one was likely to be hit by an actual bullet or step on a mine and die. For guys who liked to challenge themselves, this must be the ultimate game of paintball. As she watched, Lucien’s painted face parted in a fierce grin.

She handed the binoculars back politely and stood quietly, quite paralyzed by the fear that she could do the wrong thing and put some kind of black mark on Lucien’s career. One of her default modes when she was unsure was to deploy an ironic, confident sexiness, but the possible sabotage to Lucien’s career and social relations of accidentally attracting one of his superior officers chilled that instinct down to a frozen little ice cube, and she mostly intensely wished she could snap her fingers and re-appear in the lovely streets of Sainte-Mère, maybe packing up a picnic to go hiking with her friends. The only etiquette you needed to master in Sainte-Mère was to be respectful to your elders and always say bonjour, madame and merci, monsieur.

A woman arrived with two young kids in tow and greeted the men there politely. Elena eyed her hopefully for some sign of how she herself was to behave, but the woman took the kids to an out of the way section of the wall, and the three of them began to use their own binoculars, presumably to pick out Daddy. The other woman did glance at Elena curiously but didn’t approach her or encourage approach. No other women showed up that morning.

Elena found the exercise itself fascinating, but she still escaped with the corporal long before it was over. From Senegal, the corporal was tall and muscled and scrupulously neutral and respectful. He had clearly received orders to escort her all day, waiting politely by his jeep while she went shopping in Calvi, where she utterly failed to find a dress that satisfied her. She ground her teeth at Lucien. Then the town filled with the Legion band, and—oh, there was the president, Lucien only a few men away from him, wow.

Like most of her countrymen, she had grown up pretty leery of armed men in uniforms, but when you trusted the man wearing it, it was impressive as hell.

Then, later that afternoon, there was the giddy, glorious excitement of seeing him lead his men out of a plane, their parachutes opening one after the other like aerial dominoes, a whole company in the sky at a time. It was incredible. She clapped and cheered and wanted to learn how to skydive.

Bet Lucien could teach me.

He finally could meet up with her at his lodgings again at six p.m., rolling his shoulders and neck as if his muscles were starting to ache after his non-stop, intensely physical day. “Still got that cocktail party,” he told her ruefully, as he stripped efficiently and stepped under the shower. “Your day go okay?” he asked her from the shower, scrubbing himself with the matter-of-factness of a man who had quite frequently stood naked under a shower while surrounded by other men.

She leaned in the doorway and raised her eyebrow at him.

He slowed down and cocked his head. Then his cheeks creased, and his eyes gleamed, and he flexed into a bodybuilder pose that showed off every muscle from his shoulders to his calves.

“How much time before we have to be at the party?” she said.

He laughed. “Bella, we probably always have enough time for me, but I suspect it wouldn’t be enough time for you.”

“Can we be late?”

“Fuck, I wish,” he said regretfully. He was getting aroused just at her attention.

She gave a long look down his body to linger on his erection, which finished straightening right up under her gaze. He groaned and pulled the shower door closed between them. “Go away. Lock the door behind you.”

“Now that’s just rude!” she called, laughing.

“You’re evil!” he retorted through the glass. But he stayed disciplined.

Well, she had liked his self-discipline from the start. She had no desire to damage his career by tempting him into a choice that would look bad. It was just another proof of something she had never really thought about before, over on the other side of the water, where he was on vacation—how dominant the role his career held in his life. More important than sex, even, she thought wryly.

She went back into his bedroom and put on the very unsatisfying dress she had found in Calvi, a plain sheath in a teal that was not her favorite color, but it was at least better than her casual beach dress. The shoe selection had also been pretty pitiful, and the shoes she had found hurt her feet, but again…better than sandals.

The president was at the party, briefly. She actually got introduced to him, and he seemed to take to her quite well, the womanizer. Lucien took possession of her hand and tucked it into his arm, engaging with the man with a military neutrality. Well, at least she knew the guy was going to be voted out long before Lucien’s rank was so high he had to pay too much attention to what the president thought of him. The man was deeply awkward and fake around so much military and, after finding Lucien expressionlessly unreceptive to leaving Elena alone in his company, gave a brief speech of farewell and flew back to Paris.

Then the cocktail party got really tricky. Oh, Lucien was perfectly happy in it. He was surrounded by colleagues who, for the most part, clearly thought highly of him. They were relaxed.

Elena, on the other hand, had to speak to wives. And that was another shock to her system. Of the eight captains on base, five were married. Then there were lieutenants’ wives, and two majors’ wives, and the colonel’s wife. There were the NCO wives, but there were some hierarchy things going on there. It became very, very quickly clear that there was a whole negotiation of status in this tight little society that was entirely dependent on the husband’s role and had nothing whatsoever to do with the women’s careers. Although a couple of them did mention early in the conversation how much they volunteered with the schools.

So it did matter to them what they accomplished, they were just stuck in a situation where their possibilities for accomplishment were very limited by being on a base on a very insular island with few job opportunities. And so they focused on the behavior of their kids, how well they kept their houses, the schools. What their husbands were accomplishing.

Oh, boy.

That familiar, grievous sinking of doom in her stomach, the one she had known so many times as a child. When her mother stopped remembering to feed her, and she ran out of money to go down to the épicerie herself, and the social worker was coming, so she knew that once again, something was going to end. When the family fostering her grew tenser and tenser, the parents fighting, everything coming apart, and she finally realized that when they split, they were only keeping their real children. When the older real brother started acting creepy around her as a teenager and she tried to minimize herself as much as she could, but he kept on, and she knew that soon, she would have to find another home.

Yeah. She knew, none better, when something she wanted so badly just wasn’t going to work out.

Because there was no place for her.

But like these military wives, with their polished, diplomatic smiles, their negotiated welcomes of her, their subtexts—are you staying? where will you fit in our pre-established hierarchy? will you be someone we want to have in our little circle?—just like them, Elena kept her expression smiling, but not too smiling, friendly but not gushing, diplomatic. Restrained. Staying in her place as Lucien’s companion.

“You did great,” Lucien said afterward. “They’re going to love you.”

I don’t want to have to play someone else’s games to be loved, she thought. She had done far too much of that as a child. Trying to learn better table manners at eight, for example, because from the stairs at night, she could hear her foster parents complaining in scathing terms about hers. Maybe they would love her if she got it right? Wanting and afraid to be pretty, at thirteen, because if she was pretty, maybe someone would love her, and yet it seemed to be the more she developed, the more dangerous it got to be her. She didn’t want to be her mother or her grandmother, getting pregnant with a stranger to try to fill a void, but oh how she had wanted to be loved.

But she was different now. She had grown bigger. In her life in Grasse and Sainte-Mère, she didn’t really play anyone’s games anymore. She did a good job, and she was herself, and the friendships she had were all ones developed naturally with people who liked her just the way she was. It was one of the glorious parts of being an adult and on her own.

“Thanks,” she said, keeping it simple. “You were pretty awesome today.”

And he looked pleased.

She’d gotten so much better at that since she was eight, pleasing.

Fuck, Elena.

She turned and went to his window. He had a beautiful view of the sea.

He came behind her and pulled her back against his chest. She closed her eyes and rested her weight against him.

This is going to be so hard.

One more night, okay?

Nothing wrong with pretending for one more night. She’d done it so many times.

She pretended for a night, and she pretended for a morning at the beach, Lucien relaxed and happy, content to stretch out with her on the sand after yesterday’s intense day. Happy to play with her in the waves. Happy to kiss her. I love you. Little, wistful wavelets of it, like the water against the sand, and she’d always known there would be an undertow in the end, she’d always known that loving someone else wasn’t a secure, warm, happy thing like this Mediterranean island, it was a riptide disaster that left you alone on a bit of debris in the middle of the Atlantic.

She’d known it, somewhere, and yet…he had seemed so easy.

It was only when her flight was called that the tears that had been building up in secret all weekend threatened to escape. They pressed tight in her throat and in her eyes until she thought he almost saw them.

“I’m going to miss you so damn bad,” she whispered. “How could I have been so stupid?”

What did you think it meant, to get involved with a captain in one of the most elite airborne assault regiments in the world?

The truth was, she had had no idea. She was a civilian. She’d just thought he seemed so strong and sure and sexy.

But that’s not enough. I can’t give up all my strength and sureness, so I can have his.

“I’ll be there Friday.” Lucien kissed her. “I’ll miss you, too.” But he looked rather pleased that she had admitted she would miss him.

Don’t cry. A lot of the people passing through this airport might be his men. Don’t embarrass him.

Yeah, that would be a constant part of life here on this base, too, wouldn’t it? Not embarrassing him.

And she couldn’t even talk to him about it, because who the hell had suggested she would have a life on this base in the first place?

Stay in the moment, Elena.

But she looked up at him with her eyes stinging. “Never drink limoncello in Italy.”

He laughed and kissed her again. He looked so happy, confident, strong. He was in his element probably anywhere in the world, but here…here he clearly was at the peak of his power. Unshakable.

“I’m such an idiot,” she said.

He grinned. “Promise me you won’t go see that therapist to learn how to make smarter choices.”

She definitely needed to see that therapist. Clearly she wasn’t making as much progress as she had hoped, getting past her childhood on her own.

She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight for one long, last hug. Maybe something about that hug penetrated his self-confidence. Because he searched her eyes when she stepped back, at the boarding call. It was a tiny airport, but she still had to get through security.

“Call me when you get in,” Lucien said. There was suddenly a hint of urgency in his voice.

She waved and jumped into the security line.

Lucien came up to the edge of the space, as far as he was allowed. “Have a good flight,” he called. And when she looked back, he held his hand to his face as if he was holding a phone and mouthed, Call me.

She waved again and focused on showing her passport, then dumping her bag in the plastic bin. When she glanced back after she passed through, Lucien was still standing there watching her. She waved and ran for her gate.

Good-bye.