27. Christian

27

CHRISTIAN

In the morning, I find her in the kitchen, wearing a camisole and knickers. She’s putting a plate of breakfast food together. There are no eggs in sight. “It looks great. Even without eggs.”

“Oh, are you an eggs-or-bust person?”

“Eggs are everything.”

She gestures to her purse, perched on her kitchen chair. “There’s a market around the corner. Let me go get you some.”

I step to her, cup her cheeks, and kiss her forehead. “No.”

“But I don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind going without. It’s just eggs.”

“It’s only around the corner.”

And I fall a little deeper because she wants to make me eggs. I’m so fucked. But if I let her get the eggs, I’ll be fucked royally. Yep, I have to chicken scratch a line in the sand. My new border comes from chickens. “Fruit and bread is perfect,” I tell her.

Over blueberries, a baguette, and a steaming cup of coffee, she takes out her iPad, a sheepish grin on her face. She taps on the screen then slides it over to me.

I read, and with each line about tulips, my grin grows. When I finish, I glance at the orange flowers on the table. “Happy?”

She nods, and there’s almost a childlike glee in her smile. I did this for her. I brought this feeling to her. “Very much so.”

After we eat, I help her clean up, then I nod to the door. “I should go.”

I don’t want to go. But I have to.

“Do you have to?”

My heart lurches toward her. I half wish she’d make this easier. The expiration date is so fucking far away, and I’m going to have to lie to her about how I feel for more than two months. “Don’t you need to bury yourself in work today?”

She shakes her head. “No. Do you want to bury yourself in me today instead?”

Like I’m resisting that.

I throw in the towel, toss her over my shoulder, and carry her up the stairs, two steps at a time.

Later that week, I meet her after work at a brasserie. We grab a table on the pavement, under the awning.

“Does this mean we’re on a new schedule? Since it’s not Friday or Saturday night?” I take a drink of my beer as a ragtag group of street violinists on the corner serenades us.

“Hmm. It seems we have graduated to a more multi-tiered arrangement.”

“I knew I could wear you down.”

Laughing, she raises her wineglass, and gives me flirty eyes over the rim. “Was that your plan when you flashed me your parts way back when?”

“Absolutely. I’ve been waging a war of attrition ever since you got the Christian Ellison full monty treatment.”

She takes a drink of her wine. She hums as she sets it down, looking away, seemingly lost in thought. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if I’d found my way to The Jane?”

I take a swallow as I contemplate. “I’ve thought about that scenario many times. And I know the answer.”

She arches a brow. “Do tell.”

“We’d have had spectacular, wall-thumping sex that night, and I would’ve never seen you again.”

“Why?”

I lean forward. “Because you weren’t ready.”

She laughs, but it’s an awkward, uncomfortable sound. “I wasn’t ready?”

I shake my head. “Not for me to unleash my brilliant wit, effervescent charm, or full suite of bedroom services.”

“And how do you know I wasn’t ready for the full Christian?”

“Because I had to wear you down a whole year later. That’s how I know.”

She raises her glass. “Well then, I really ought to drink to your persistence.”

I wiggle an eyebrow and clink my bottle to her glass in a toast.

After a drink, she sets down her wine. “But I still think I might have given in sooner, rather than making you wait.”

I scoff. “Doubtful. You loved every second of making me wait.”

She grins. “Fine, let’s pretend we met, had spectacular sex, and you courted me for a whole year in Paris. And the entire time I was secretly delighted with your pursuits.”

“You were?” I like her story. I like it a lot.

“I was,” she says with a smile, and I catalog this slice of an evening as yet another moment when I want to tell her how she makes me feel. But I don’t. “And that will be our marriage cover story if anyone asks.”

“It’s a good story.”

“So’s the real one,” she says, and she’s making this harder by the second.

When we finish, she says she wants to head to a shopping street not far from where we are in Saint Vincent De Paul.

“Of course you want to shop.”

She taps my shoulder. “I want to get something for your mother. What does she like? What is she passionate about?”

“Besides the prospect of grandchildren?”

She rolls her eyes. “First, a marriage of convenience. Next, she’ll want grandchildren of convenience.”

“If she could get them, she would. But truth be told, she likes egg cups.”

Elise laughs. “That’s where your love of eggs comes from.”

I hold up my hands, shaking my head. “I have no need for egg cups. I just like the food.”

Like she has a radar in her, she zigs and zags through the streets till she finds a store that sells, among other things, quirky little egg cups. She picks one that’s blue with a chicken design, and later that evening back at her house, she wraps it up in sky-blue tissue paper with a silver bow. The finished product looks like something you would see in a department store, and my mother is going to love it.

I wish Elise wasn’t such a perfect temporary wife.

“You’re the perfect wife,” I tease.

“Because I don’t make demands?”

Make demands. Shower me in them. I’ll fulfill them all. “You could make an occasional one. I’d be okay with that,” I say with a wink.

“In that case, can I come see you play soccer?” she asks, using the American term for the sport I play.

“You want to watch me play?”

“I like you sweaty.”

“I’ll check the schedule and let you know when our next game is.” I loop an arm around her waist. “And then you can get sweaty with me after.”

“Obviously.”