CHAPTER EIGHT

SUNDAYMORNING,AFTER being awake most of the night, Dominic got showered and dressed. He and Raoul went out for breakfast and talked. Very soon now his trial date would be set with the judge.

Afterward they went house hunting for Raoul, who had no desire to return to his apartment at the chateau once he was divorced. They found several possibilities. As they drove on, Raoul said, "Let's find one for you too, Dominic."

He frowned. "If I were getting married, I'd do it in a shot."

"Since I know you're head over heels in love with Nathalie Fournier, I don't understand why there's an if. Dom—I've poured out my soul to you. Now it's my turn to listen while you tell me what has you gutted."

"I finally learned the truth. She's in love with a man who told her he worked in our vineyard, but he disappeared on her two and half years ago. They were only together a month. Nathalie came to our vineyard trying to find him. She didn't know his name, but she described him as Provencal." He flashed his cousin a glance. "Because certain pieces of information fit, I thought it might be you."

Raoul let out a strange sound. "So that's why you called me into your office just minutes before she showed up? You thought she was the woman I'd loved?"

"I thought it could be a possibility and she'd used another name with you."

"Well, now that you know I'm not the one, why aren't you with her right now?"

He shook his head. "Until she finds this man and has closure, she refuses to be with me."

"Closure is different from being in love. It's been over two and a half years since she last saw him!"

"Then how do you explain why she quit work at the vineyard?"

"Because she has fallen in love with you, but you've been her employer. She's probably nervous about getting involved. I saw the way she looked at you. After the vibes I got from you two yesterday, I can promise you she couldn't still be in love with that other guy.

"Come on. Take me back to your apartment so you can go after her and break her down. Don't lose the woman who makes your life worth living. She'll most likely be home."

Raoul had been talking to a desperate man. His advice made so much sense, Dominic dropped his cousin off and left for La Gaude under a warm noon sun. Before long he turned the corner onto her street.

The red car he'd seen in front of her house the other day was gone. He saw Nathalie get out of the blue car parked at the side of the house. Her long shapely legs emerged first. She wore navy shorts and a sailor top.

He pulled to a stop, not wanting her to see him yet.

Next, she opened the rear door and reached for a little boy maybe the same age as Etienne's daughter, buckled in a car seat. She kissed his black curls several times before putting him down so he could walk. The child reached for her hand.

That trusting gesture caused Dominic's throat to swell with emotion.

Her son?He was staggered by the fact that Nathalie was a single mother and hadn't been able to admit it to him.

Dominic wondered how she'd been able to handle being away from her little boy during the harvest. She said she lived with her mother, who was also a pharmacist. No doubt Nathalie had hired someone to take care of him while she'd been working at the vineyard.

As for her picking grapes, it explained why she came home every night instead of staying in the mobile home. No wonder she'd come looking for the man who'd made her pregnant. With her stepfather deceased, she and her mother were her son's only support.

All of these thoughts ran through his mind. Yet he wondered why she'd waited until this summer to look for the man who'd changed her life.

Not about to give up, Dominic pulled out his phone and texted her.

Nathalie? I'm out in front of your house. When I came to see you just now, I watched you take a little boy inside with you. Is it his father you're looking for? I would like to talk to you and see what I can do to help. When will you be free?

A minute later she responded.

I'm putting him down now. It may take a half hour.

At least she hadn't said no.

Then I'll grab lunch for both of us and come back.

He drove to a bistro and picked up some food for them. When he returned, she came out of the house having changed into jeans and a blouse. She looked good enough to eat.

"Do you have to stay out in front?" he asked after she'd climbed in the car.

"No. My mother is home today."

Good. "In that case I'll drive us to that overlook we went to before."

He felt her cast him a covert glance. "I can't believe you came." There was a tremor in her voice.

"As you can see, I'm unable to stay away from you." Dominic drove up into the hills and parked the car under the same olive tree. "I bought us some meat pies and coffee." He reached in back for their lunch and they both started to eat.

"Thank you. I don't deserve how good you are to me."

"I'd like to do a lot more for you if you'd let me."

"Dominic—I never planned to be with you again, but now that you've seen Alain, I can't keep the truth from you. Over sixteen months ago my stepsister had a baby."

"Your stepsister..."

He groaned as unmitigated joy streamed through him. Her stepsisterhad been the one in love with this mystery man. Everything was finally starting to make sense.

"Yes. She adored him and named him Alain. But ten days after he was born she died of a staph infection."

"I'm so sorry that happened to her." He studied her profile. "How hard that had to have been for you and your family."

"You have no idea."

"I'm sure I don't." He leaned closer. "You've been such a good listener I want to hear whatever you're willing to tell me."

Nathalie smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. "She was an elementary school teacher. One evening she and some other teachers from her school went to the Guinguet, a place I'd never heard of. I was working in Nice at the time and learned all this from her best friend, Claire, who lived across the street from us."

At the mention of the Guinguet, Dominic's heart began pounding like a jackhammer.

"Apparently it was love at first sight for her, but she kept him a complete secret from our family. According to Claire, her affair lasted a month, then he suddenly stopped meeting her. Two months later she went to the doctor and found out she was pregnant. I remember that she was in a terrible depression throughout her pregnancy and refused to talk about the man she'd loved."

"Incroyable," Dominic murmured.

"She refused to give our family any information about the man and insisted we never talk about him again. She begged us to leave the whole subject of Alain alone."

"But you couldn't do that." How he loved this woman!

Nathalie looked at him with tear-filled eyes. "I honored her wishes until the beginning of this summer after I broke it off with Guy. When I told him I was going to adopt Alain, it changed our relationship. He didn't want to bring her son into our marriage. For that and other reasons, I said goodbye to him."

Grace à Dieu.

"Oh, Dominic, Alain is so adorable and it seemed so terrible he didn't have a mother or a father, I couldn't bear it. So I thought that before I started adoption proceedings, I'd at least try to find my stepsister's lover, as he has a right to his child.

"That's when I called Claire to gather any information she could give me. All she said was that he was a Provencal, had worked on your family's vineyard and Antoinette met him at Le Guinguet. At that point I started wondering about the man she'd loved. Knowing her, he had to have been someone exceptional. Maybe something serious had happened to him and he couldn't let her know why he'd stopped seeing her. He left before she learned she was pregnant so he never knew he was a father."

All the time she was talking, Dominic was fitting two and two together so fast, his thoughts were running away with him.

"I'm pretty sure she'd met a married man who'd wanted an affair and forced her to keep quiet about it. Since none of us knew the truth and never would, she asked our family to put the questions away and simply love Alain. I know now it was wise advice. I'm through looking."

"Nathalie—" He was trying to control his emotions. "Now that I know the truth, then there's no reason we can't go on seeing each other."

She averted her eyes. "I couldn't. Please don't ask. If you wouldn't mind driving me back home now, I promised my mother I wouldn't be long."

Beyond frustrated, he started the car and they left for her house. "Is it because of the man you'd planned to marry, your feelings for him prevent you from wanting to be with me?"

"You know I don't have feelings for him any longer or I wouldn't be this involved with you, but I'd rather not talk about it." He could feel her separating herself emotionally from him.

In a minute he turned the corner and pulled up in front. "What will it take for you to agree for us to be together? I didn't make up what happened when you melted in my arms on the sand. I need an answer I can understand."

"I'm...frightened to tell you."

What?

"Am I some kind of monster to you?"

"Of course not!" she cried.

"Nathalie—" He'd reached his limit.

She turned a pained face to him. "How would you feel if I told you I thought my stepsister had either had an affair with you, or Etienne."

"Say that again?" Surely he hadn't heard her correctly.

"My nephew looks so much like all of you, it's uncanny."

"Do you have a picture of him?"

She nodded and pulled one out of her wallet. His heart almost failed him when he examined the black-haired cherub up close. She'd spoken the truth. "I can't believe it," he murmured. "Alain is a double for some of the baby pictures of me and Etienne. Talk about look-alikes." He handed it back to her. "It's remarkable."

"I couldn't believe I'd met two men in one family who could possibly be his father. Then came another shock when I met your cousin in your office. He shares the same looks with you and your brother. I never saw anything like it. After you told me his marital history, I—I've wondered if Raoul could be the one," she stammered.

This was unbelievable! "You're right. Your stepsister's son has a remarkably strong resemblance to all three of us."

Her eyes beseeched him for answers. "Who would have thought?"

He swallowed hard, trying to digest everything. "I only saw Alain from a distance earlier."

"He has that same lustrous black Fontesquieu hair. You should see his piercing dark eyes in person. All three of you could claim him. When I first met you, you fit the description my stepsister had given Claire. You worked on the vineyard and I couldn't help but think you could have been with her."

Dominic was dumbfounded. "All this time we've been together you've thought I could have been her lover...?"

"At first it seemed more than plausible, but I never expected to become involved with you. That first day you took my application, I could see you written all over Alain. He has a birthmark on his leg. I saw the same one on the underside of your forearm and thought you could be the one. It's the only reason I returned on Monday to see if I'd been hired."

"You noticed that?"

"Yes. But then on the cruiser you told me about the women in your life you enjoyed, but didn't marry. I deduced you probably hadn't been with her. But you can't imagine my guilt over being attracted to you when I thought she could have been with you and had your baby."

"I'm still trying to take this in." He was incredulous.

Nathalie stirred restlessly. "You did admit you'd been to the Guinguet several times."

"So you thought that's where it all started with me."

She nodded. "I lived in hopes of getting closer to you and learning all I could first. But then my world was turned upside down because your brother, Etienne, stopped by the mobile home. You have no idea what meeting him did to me. After you told me your brother had loved another woman before his marriage, but the family thought she wasn't good enough for him, I thought... Well, you know what I thought. Couple that with my meeting your cousin, and I couldn't go on with my plan."

A man could take only so much. "Do you have a picture of her?"

"Yes."

"May I see it?"

She hesitated before opening her purse. After pulling out her wallet, she handed him a photo.

He took a look at it. "She's very attractive, but I've never seen this woman in my life."

A hand went to her throat. "This whole situation is hopeless."

Dominic's heart almost failed him. Exasperated, he said, "Nathalie? Why didn't you just come out and ask me the first time we were alone?"

She shook her head. "How could I have dared do that when you were a perfect stranger? After Paul told me that you and Etienne were both members of the Fontesquieu family, not mere employees, that made my fear worse. Then I met Raoul. In my own way I did infiltrate, and you knew something was off."

"True, but you could have handed me this picture. I could have asked them if they'd seen her or knew her without telling them my reasons."

"You're right. But to tell you the whole truth would have seemed like an accusation, especially if you and the others were innocent of being with her. You could have lied to protect yourselves. I wouldn't have blamed you."

Her reasoning made a bizarre kind of sense.

"I thought... Oh, what does it matter? All this time I've been functioning under a premise that's way off. I'm so sorry."

"Nathalie—" he said, but she interrupted him because she was beyond listening.

"My mother wanted me to leave everything alone, but I was so certain I was right. You must think I'm a fool." She opened the car door.

"Wait—"

"It's no good. We still don't have answers and I'm not going to ask Etienne or Raoul anything. That's why I stopped picking grapes. This has to be goodbye, Dominic."

Before he could credit it, she slid out while he was still holding the photo, and ran toward the house. Dominic didn't try to stop her. Tonight it was more important he get answers. Whatever the outcome, his whole life and hers were going to change.

He left for Vence and drove straight to his office. Theo had already gone home. Dominic phoned Etienne.

"We need to talk. Can you come to the office now?" Dominic had decided to question his brother first.

"Give me a half hour."

"You've got it."

They clicked off. If by any chance Etienne had been with the woman in this picture, then his brother needed to know. Dominic had been in Paris and wouldn't have known if his brother had gotten involved with Nathalie's stepsister.

While he waited, he took care of some business Theo had left for him. Before long Etienne walked in. "What's going on? You sounded ultraserious."

"That's because it could be. I have something to show you. Maybe you should sit down."

"That bad?" Etienne remained standing with his hands on his hips.

"Have you ever seen or known this woman?" Dominic handed him the two-by-three colored photo.

Etienne's dark brows furrowed before he studied it, then shook his head. "She's a beauty, but I never saw her in my life. Who is she?" He handed the photo back to him.

For his brother's sake and his own, relief swamped Dominic. "You're not going to believe what I have to tell you." For the next little while he related everything Nathalie had said, right down to the birthmarks.

His brother whistled. "MademoiselleFournier believes her stepsister got pregnant by a Fontesquieu?"

Dominic nodded. "She swears the boy could belong to any one of the three of us."

"You've seen him?"

"She showed me a picture. It could have been one of us when we were that age."

They stared at each other. "Well, it isn't you, and isn't me. When was this supposed to have happened?"

"According to Nathalie, their affair took place two and a half years ago."

Etienne's eyes narrowed. "That's when Raoul got married. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? People have often said they think we're all brothers."

"I know," Dominic murmured. "As late as yesterday evening I thought it was possible Nathalie had been involved with Raoul because I didn't know about her stepsister. Naturally, when I introduced them, they didn't know each other. There's only one thing to do. Show Raoul this photo."

"Agreed."

"If this is the woman Raoul fell in love with, then his life is going to get a thousand times more complicated."

"When are you going to talk to him?"