She smiled wanly. ‘I know you won’t.’
‘How did you cope when you worked at the auction house? You had to deal with new people on a daily basis.’
‘That was different. It was work and so I could put my professional head on.’
‘Maybe you should try that tonight,’ he mused. ‘If you see all the rich guests as potential clients for when you go back to work—if you go back to work—you might find it easier to cope.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ she agreed non-committally.
Shifting gear, he drove into a street that was officially the beginning of Montmartre. Knowing how much Cara loved to hear about the arrondissement, he began pointing out places of interest, making a mental note to actually take her to them and not just drive past.
She looked so beautiful this evening. But then, she always looked beautiful. Tonight, she’d left her hair down, the red locks spread out over her shoulders like a fan. She was wearing a simple, high-necked, long-sleeved black dress with a wide red belt hanging loosely around the middle, resting on the base of her swollen belly. In the week he’d been away, her bump had grown. For the first time she actually looked pregnant. In his eyes she’d never looked more beautiful.
‘Who’s the artist exhibiting tonight?’ she asked when he turned into the small car park at the back of the exhibition room.
‘Sabine Collard. Have you heard of her?’
She shook her head. ‘Sabine Collard,’ she repeated. He loved the way she tried to pronounce her Rs the French way. It sounded so adorable coming from her Irish lilt.
The gallery was already packed.
Keeping a firm hold on Cara’s hand, he guided her through the throng and towards the star of the evening.
When Sabine, a young, angry-looking young lady, spotted Pepe, she embraced him and planted kisses on his cheek.
‘Let’s stick to English,’ Pepe said when Sabine began jabbering in French. He didn’t want Cara unable to join in with the conversation.
Sabine gave a Gallic shrug. ‘D’accord. It is very good to see you. I have missed you at the studio.’
Had it been very long? With a jolt, he realised he hadn’t visited the studio since Cara had moved in.
‘Sabine shares a studio with a few other artists,’ Pepe explained to Cara, whose grip on his hand had become vice-like. Casually he rubbed his thumb over her wrist in a wordless show of support.
‘So modest!’ Sabine exclaimed before addressing Cara directly. ‘Your lover owns the studio. It is a huge building that was once a hotel. And it is not a “few” artists working and living there—we number fifteen! All living and working rent-free because your lover is one of the few patrons of the art who truly is a patron in all senses of the word.’
‘It’s not completely selfless,’ Pepe hastily explained when Cara’s eyes widened. ‘I allow them to live and work there rent-free in exchange for a cut of any money they make when they sell their pieces.’
‘Five per cent,’ Sabine snorted. ‘Hardly a big cut, especially when the most of us don’t sell anything.’
‘I can always raise it,’ he warned with a grin.
A beatific expression came over her face. ‘Oh, look, there is Sebastien LeGarde. I must socialise.’
Cara watched the chic Frenchwoman sashay away in the direction of a rotund man with the shiniest bald spot she’d ever seen.
Even if she’d been born French she would never have that certain élan Sabine carried off so effortlessly.
‘No.’
She looked back at Pepe. ‘No what?’
‘No, I haven’t slept with her.’
‘I didn’t say you had,’ she pointed out primly.
‘You were thinking it.’ He reached out and gently stroked her cheek. ‘There is a chance a couple of my exes will be here though.’
‘There’s always a chance we’ll bump into your exes whenever we step out of the front door,’ she said, more tartly than she would have liked.
She had no right to feel jealous. Ever since they’d agreed to make a go of some sort of semblance of a relationship, Pepe had treated her with nothing but respect. Whenever they went out he stuck to her side, his unspoken support worth more than all the money in the world.
He really was nothing like her father and she knew with as deep a certainty as she’d ever known anything that he would never cheat on her.
All the same, she couldn’t help the cloying sickness that unfurled inside her whenever she met his ex-lovers or even made the mistake of thinking about them.
There was a reason jealousy was oft referred to as the green-eyed monster. Thinking of Pepe with anyone else made her go green inside and made the monster within her want to scratch eyes out.