“Alexandre. Alex. Yeah. She married him, and she looks deliriously happy. She’s pregnant, actually.”
“And William?” Toni’s face took on a mischievous look. “Tell me he got old, bald, and has a gut on him.”
Naisha scoffed. “Hardly. He’s taller, if that’s even possible, more tanned, more masculine. His haircut is perfect, his teeth are perfect, his clothes are form fitting. He looks like he just stepped off the cover of G freaking Q.”
“Oh, so you didn’t get a good look at him, then,” Toni said dryly.
“Shut. Up.Andhe has a daughter. A real beauty. She’s like, ten, maybe eleven. Looks just like him. The wife died, only I didn’t get a grasp on how or when.”
“You mean the woman who stole her from you?”
“A man doesn’t let himself be stolen unless he wants to be,” Naisha reminded her. “So I’m not putting too much blame on her shoulders.He’sthe bastard that I blame.He’sthe one that hurt me.”
“Well,” Toni said with a sigh, “at least now that you’ve seen him you can get him off your mind for good.” Her voice softened. “You need to heal, darling. Carrying around that wound isn’t good for you. You never have to see him again.”
Naisha didn’t say anything for a moment, then explained quietly. “Yeah. I guess. It’s just that he was looking for a governess for his daughter, someone to take back to France to see to her education. I’d actually sent in an application before I knew it was him.”
“You’re really leaving the biz, huh?”
She shrugged. “It gets old fast. All the rushing around, the tight schedules.”
“The limelight, the adoration, the money, the attention of men.”
“That was nice,” Naisha admitted. “But it doesn’t last. Plus, this whole thing with Abe—”
Toni straightened up in bed. “Has that skunk called you again?”
She didn’t want to tell her sister that a couple of times over the past few weeks she could have sworn she caught a glimpse of him hovering on the peripheries of media conferences, or strolling down the street outside her apartment. So she tried to sound casual. “He’s called a few times. Sends a few texts now and then. But don’t worry. I can handle it—”
“I told you, I can always send Yannick over to have a word with him.”
Yannick was Toni’s fiancé, an MMA expert who ran a dojo on the other side of town. He was ex-military, weighed in at 260-something, and chewed chicken bones “to keep his strength up”. He was not a man to mess with.
“It’s fine,” Naisha said hastily, as the image of Abe’s blood spattered across the wall came to her mind. “I just figured it would have been nice to take a break and go to France while all this mess with him cools down, that’s all.” Then she added cheerfully. “But that’s not gonna happen. Not with William being around. Maybe something better will come up for me.”
“Pretty sure it will,” Toni said comfortingly, although neither woman was willing to admit that the opportunity to live and work in a vast château in the beautiful French countryside probably didn’t come along very often.
After chatting for a few more minutes about their parents, who lived about an hour away from Toni, Naisha ended the call by blowing kisses, and her sister blew a few back.
Then she stripped and stepped into the shower, washing away the grunge of the day. She tilted her face upward and absorbed the relaxing sensation of the powerful jets.
And as she squeezed her eyes shut, she began to remember.
She was 17 going on 18, and, as usual, she and Antonia were spending their summer in Aix-en-Provence, where their Guadeloupian grandmother, Adelphine, worked for a wealthy family that owned hundreds of acres of farmland. For four generations the family had grown fruits like apricots, figs, plums and melons.
She had always loved going there, especially when she and her sister were old enough to travel without their parents. They’d felt so grown up, getting on the plane and flying east overnight, to land at the Marseille Provence airport, and then take the train to Aix.
She and Toni would spend their mornings helping Grandmère Adelphine with the cleaning and cooking, which took a bit of effort, considering the stately manor where she worked had 14 bedrooms, ten of which had their own bathroom, a formal dining room, an informal dining room, two sitting rooms, and a balcony the size of a tennis court.
But she never minded hard work. On afternoons, the owners of the estate allowed her and her sister to ride their horses around their lands or wander around on foot, picking as many fruits as they wanted, with one caveat: what you pick, you eat.
One afternoon, she’d been off rambling alone, as Toni had gone into town with their grandmother. She’d wandered farther than she’d intended and began to suspect she was trespassing on someone else’s land.
It was beautiful, with wild grasses growing everywhere, and gently rolling slopes dotted with wildflowers. She could hear the tinkling of moving water and instinctively worked her way towards it.
She came upon a small lake, with hardly the width of two football fields from shore to shore. It was surrounded by brilliant green aquatic plants, and on the surface bobbed pink and white water lilies—nenuphars, they were called. Her favorite word in French. The flowers were so graceful, so imposing, that Naisha often expected them to house some supernatural beings: water nymphs, maybe. Or even Tinker Bell.
And then, from the midst of the lake, a god arose. The water was disturbed with a soft splash as a head broke the surface, and a face tilted upward, mouth open, drawing in air. Then the swimmer dipped under once more, doing some kind of forward roll that revealed his lower half as he dived.