The Affair Page 19

  “How are your kids doing?”

  “We’re getting through it. It’s an adjustment. And they’re not too happy about the baby. It’s a boy, which will be a big deal for my husband, since he’s French.”

  “It sounds like you’ve been through the wringer,” he said gently, and touched her hand. When he did, it surprised her and she looked across the table at him, and smiled.

  “Thank you. It’s been hard, and the whole thing was a shock. I couldn’t have gotten through it without my sisters. They wanted him burned at the stake. I still have to deal with him. He’s my children’s father.”

  “That’s another reason not to have kids. It ties you to the bad spouses forever. I’d rather cut my losses and run. All I lost in the divorce, other than money, was a dog. I miss him, but he’s happy with her. I can always get another dog. I might get one here.” He didn’t seem emotionally tied to anyone or anything.

  He was so different from the men she knew, so unattached and unencumbered, and he seemed to like his life that way. She wondered if he got lonely but didn’t know him well enough to ask, and he was a client after all.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked, wanting to know more about him too.

  “No, I’m an only child.”

  “So is my husband, and one of my nephews. It’s very different. My nephew is very adult for his age, he’s never around kids except in school.”

  “That’s how it was for me too. I liked it. I thought other kids were silly. In retrospect, I think I never really had a childhood. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. It gave me a head start as an adult. I didn’t waste a lot of time on beer bongs and frat parties. I was already an adult when I got to college.” He certainly was one now. She realized that that was what was different about him. He wasn’t playful, and there wasn’t a boyish side of him, despite his good looks. He was an adult through and through. In a way, she felt sorry for him and wondered what he did for fun. He was so disciplined and focused on his work. Every meeting had a purpose, even their lunch. It was so he could get to know her better, because she was his decorator. She served a purpose in his life. If she weren’t his designer, she was sure he would never have taken her to lunch. She was certain he was smart in business, but she wondered how intelligent he was about life. The difference between French men and American men was that the French liked to play and have fun. They loved talking to other people. When she had guests over, they stayed late into the night to talk philosophy or politics, or about life. It wasn’t just about eating at night, working by day, set on a straight path like a robot. Gregory was almost like a very handsome bionic man. There wasn’t much fantasy there. If he had spare time he probably went to the gym and worked out. He didn’t call a friend and meet for coffee. American men were different. French men were warmer and more appealing to her.

  She loved the way she and Nicolas could talk into the wee hours, chasing an idea, or arguing over an abstract concept. Nicolas was a philosopher, an observer of the human condition, until he went mad over Pascale. Gregory was all about money, how to make it, how to keep it, how to invest it and make it grow. It was a different mindset. On the other hand, he was probably more disciplined and reliable than any of the men she’d known. As he said, he was an adult, and had been all his life.

  They lingered over lunch, then he paid the check, they left the hotel, and walked to the Place Vendôme, where he headed to the hotel and she hailed a cab.

  “Thank you for a lovely lunch and time with you, Gregory,” she said warmly.

  “Call me Greg. I loved it. We’re going to do a great house together, Nadia.”

  “I think so too.” She smiled at him.

  She slid into the cab, and he waved as the taxi pulled away, to take her back to the Left Bank. The girls weren’t home yet, and she walked into her office and sat down at the desk. Greg was fascinatingly American. He had none of the tousled, casual, slightly off look of French men. He was so clean-cut and straight as an arrow. Nadia couldn’t imagine him doing something silly or childish or making a fool of himself. There was something sexy but stiff about him. And whatever he was, he seemed like a nice man. She couldn’t imagine herself dating him, even once she got free of Nicolas. She was nowhere near that yet. She couldn’t envision herself dating anyone, and certainly not a client. But for now, no matter what she told herself about him, or how unworthy he was, she still felt married to Nicolas, and wondered how long that would last. Her ties to him still held her fast. But in time those ties would dissolve. That was her mission now, to sever all the ties she had to Nicolas. She had already started the process.

  Chapter 11

  Nicolas didn’t come to see the girls in the first two weeks of October. He was in Brittany with Pascale, waiting for the baby to come. They had given up the house in Ramatuelle, and had had a good summer there, despite the superficial people she gathered around her. It was part of her life as a star. But now, in her mother’s tiny crowded home, she was getting down to the business of having a baby, and Nicolas had promised to stay with her until it came. He found the tiny town her mother lived in painfully boring. He and Pascale sat around playing cards every night or watching TV with her mother. He missed Sylvie and Laure and called them often, but he knew he had to be there with Pascale no matter what happened later, and he wanted to be at his son’s birth. He knew it was a magical moment, no matter what the circumstances. He had had no contact with Nadia since he left Paris, and felt he owed Pascale this time. Talking to Nadia would have been too awkward. They both knew why he was there.

  Pascale and Nicolas went for long walks by the sea every day and ate her mother’s country cooking. Pascale felt heavy now, and uncomfortable at night, although she was as beautiful as ever. She couldn’t wait for her pregnancy to be over. She said to him at times that she felt as though aliens had taken over her body. The baby was fighting for space, and finally, three days after her due date, she went into labor. Her mother and Nicolas took her to the hospital. Pascale had insisted she wanted a natural delivery and wasn’t prepared for how painful it was. By the time she couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted drugs, it was too late to have them. She screamed piteously and Nicolas felt sorry for her. They did their best to help her stay calm, and in the end, no matter how she fought it, the baby tore through her and appeared. She lay crying afterwards, and refused to hold him. Nicolas was the first one to hold his son. He was a big, strapping baby with a lusty cry, and he looked just like her. It shocked Nicolas to realize that Pascale’s mother was younger than he was. She had had Pascale at sixteen, and was now a grandmother at thirty-eight.

  The oddest thing was that Nicolas was sad not to be able to share this moment with Nadia. The baby hadn’t brought him closer to Pascale. It didn’t create a bond between them, which surprised him. And he felt sorry for the baby. Pascale had no idea how to be a mother, and no desire to learn. And he was a reluctant father. He’d been roped into it, duped by his lust for Pascale, but with no deep feelings for her.

  Pascale looked at her son as though he belonged to someone else, and it reminded Nicolas that becoming a parent took more than just giving birth. You had to want to be one, and she didn’t. She had wanted a baby, but had no idea what that meant. She felt separate from the baby, and her mother said she had felt that way too when Pascale was born. They weren’t maternal women, and their children weren’t born from their love for the baby’s father, as his children with Nadia were. Pascale wanted to free herself of the baby and take her body back. It hadn’t been the magical experience she thought it would be. It was long and painful and hard. It was too much for her. All she wanted to do afterwards was sleep, and she refused to nurse him. Her mother helped take care of the baby in the hospital, and Nicolas did too. But it was different from what it had been with Sylvie and Laure. He and Nadia had been so excited to share them. His son had come into the world with a mother who was still a child herself, and
a father who felt guilty every time he looked at him. Nicolas had feelings for him, but the baby wasn’t part of Nicolas’s family. He was a separate entity. When Pascale went home to her mother’s house, Nicolas spent a few days with them, feeling like an outsider, and then went back to Paris to his rented apartment. All he wanted to do was get away. He knew he didn’t belong in Brittany with them. He wanted to see his daughters, and to show them photographs of their brother when he saw them. He was sad about the life the baby would live, with Pascale and her mother. Nicolas was going to provide for him and already had, but it took more than money to parent a child, and Nicolas didn’t intend to be a full-time presence in his son’s life. He couldn’t be.

  They had posed for photographs Pascale’s mother took, with Nicolas holding the baby, and within days, they appeared in the tabloids. Nicolas was sure that her mother had sold them to the press. He was wearing doctor’s scrubs, and smiling into the camera, as he held his son. The tabloids announced the baby’s birth, and Nicolas hoped that their interest in the baby’s arrival would end there. It provided a conclusion to their love story, and not a fairy-tale ending. They named the baby Benoit, which was the name Pascale had wanted. Nicolas acknowledged him by allowing him to use his last name, and intended to provide for him generously. He had made all the arrangements, and Pascale supported her mother so Benoit would lead a comfortable life. But somehow the infant didn’t seem as much his child as Sylvie and Laure had, because he didn’t love the boy’s mother in the same way. In the end, Nicolas discovered, it did make a difference. It was a relief to get back to Paris, after two weeks in Brittany. His time there seemed surreal, despite the arrival of his son. The baby wasn’t integrated into his life and never would be.

  When he got back, he took the girls to the château for the weekend. It was beautiful there in the fall, and he filled his lungs with the familiar air of Normandy, thinking about the infant he had left in Brittany who had no place in his Paris life, which seemed sad to him.

  He took the girls to the beach, even though the sea was rough and the weather chilly. The girls suddenly seemed so big and grown up to him. They were filled with tales about school and their friends. He’d seen Nadia when he picked them up and she waved from the distance. She was busy. The girls told him that she was doing a big job for an American.

  He’d had a letter from her lawyer when he returned, asking him to acknowledge their legal separation. And this year, when she had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner she had every year to keep the girls in touch with their American connection, she didn’t invite him. He hadn’t expected her to, but he was disappointed anyway. They had agreed to share the girls during the holidays. She was getting them for Christmas Eve, and the week before. He would pick them up on Christmas Day, and have them until New Year’s Day. He made arrangements to take them skiing in Val d’Isère, where he had many friends. He didn’t know yet what Pascale’s plans were, or when she would return to Paris. They’d spoken on the phone and he had told her he would be with his children over Christmas, and she didn’t seem to mind. She seemed less interested in spending time with him now that the baby was born, and she had plans of her own. She told Nicolas she was going to St. Barth’s with friends to get some sun, and didn’t suggest he come along, which he couldn’t have done anyway.

  She came to Paris when the baby was a month old, and had left him with her mother in Brittany, as she had planned. She didn’t look as though she’d had a baby. She had her figure back, and was starting her next movie in January.

  She had her life back too, her mobility and independence, and Nicolas was less a part of it than he’d been before. He spent a night with her in his new apartment, but everything was different. The magic was gone, and it was clear that their blazing, white-hot romance was over. He was a man she had had a baby with, but he could tell that she wasn’t as in love with him. She had conquered him and was ready to move on. And his feelings for her had dissipated. His heart had remained with Nadia, not Pascale. He had to face the consequences of what he’d done. And he didn’t want his son to pay the price for his foolishness.

  Nadia congratulated him when she saw him a few weeks after the baby was born, but she was cool and distant with him, and he thanked her politely. The girls weren’t asking to meet their half brother. After seeing the first photographs of the baby, they didn’t mention him again. They could tell that they hadn’t lost their father to him, which was all that concerned them, and it was obvious that he loved them as much as ever. He didn’t talk about the baby either. He didn’t want to upset them.

  At Nicolas’s request, he and Pascale were going to arrange some kind of visitation schedule when Benoit was older, and he was paying her enough in support to amply cover all his expenses, including a nanny to help her mother. He expected to pay for Benoit’s education. And according to French law, since Nicolas had acknowledged him legally, Benoit would inherit equally with his half sisters from Nicolas’s estate one day. It was all about details now. But physically, the child wasn’t really part of his life, or Pascale’s either, which worried Nicolas, but didn’t bother Pascale at all. Nicolas didn’t go to Brittany, and the baby was too young to visit him in Paris.

  Shortly after Pascale got back to Paris in November, he wasn’t surprised to see her in the tabloids with a new man, the male lead in the movie she would start in January. He was a hot young French actor, twenty-four years old. Nicolas didn’t call her after that, and she didn’t call him either. Their relationship was over, but their bond through their son had only just begun.

  “Are you still with her, Papa?” Sylvie asked him about Pascale one day when they were at the château. He thought about it and shook his head. He wasn’t, and hadn’t talked about it until then with anyone. The whole episode was embarrassing, especially with them.

  “No, I’m not,” he said quietly. Their affair had lasted less than a year, just long enough to have the baby, who would grow up with his grandmother now, with occasional visits from his father, and a mother who was a movie star. Nicolas intended to visit him, but living apart he would probably never be as close to Benoit as he was to Sylvie and Laure, and he was sad about it. It wasn’t the fate he would have wanted for his son, but it was what had happened, given the circumstances. He would provide him a good life, and comforts he wouldn’t have had otherwise, but his father wouldn’t be close at hand as he grew up. He was the product of their passion and their indulgence. Nicolas regretted it, whenever he thought about it, and wanted to do as much as he could for Benoit to make up for it.

  A letter from Nadia’s lawyer in December told him that the divorce was going forward. Nadia wanted support for the girls, and none for herself. She wanted their apartment put in the girls’ names, and the use of it herself, as long as she wished to live there, which was customary in French law. She was taking nothing for herself from the marriage. The château was his and would belong to the girls one day too, with a third equal share for Benoit now. Nadia’s requests in the divorce were very restrained and seemed very cut-and-dried to Nicolas. There was nothing greedy about her, she wanted no revenge for the pain he’d caused her. She was an entirely honorable woman. All she wanted was to end the marriage as quietly and fairly as possible, which was typical of her, and made Nicolas feel even worse about his own behavior toward her. He had to live with that now. She barely spoke to him anymore except when she had to about their daughters.

  It was a dark winter for him, and he wrote all the time, whenever he wasn’t with the girls. He was writing a book about a passion that had burned everything and everyone in its path, and had destroyed a marriage. He learned a lot about himself, and how selfish he had been, as he wrote it. He missed Nadia every day, but didn’t feel he had the right to intrude on her. He had hurt her enough.

  * * *

  —

  A week before Christmas, Nadia accomplished what she had worked so hard for. The final installation of
Greg Holland’s house was complete. She didn’t let him visit for the final days, and placed everything where they’d agreed it should go. It looked spectacular. She made him close his eyes when they walked in, and then told him to open them. He almost cried it was so beautiful, and so exactly what he wanted. She was smiling broadly as she watched him.

  “Do you like it?” She’d been so busy she had hardly seen him for weeks.

  “Oh my God, it’s incredible. How did you get it done so quickly?”

  “Magic.” She laughed, and he went upstairs to see his bedroom, and then the floor with the gray flannel guest room, and his study with the dark green leather chairs, his desk, and a fireplace. She could imagine him working there late at night. Every inch of the house was exactly as he had envisioned it.

  “I’m going to give a housewarming after the holidays, Nadia. You have to be here.” He had spent a fortune on the house, and she had earned a handsome fee, but it was worth it, and his Picasso in the living room was stunning. She had designed the whole living room around it, the lighting, the comfortable couches, the textures, the colors. She had even found the perfect rug for the room, and the huge central hall had the white couches and rug that he had wanted. It looked like a magazine cover, and it would be one day, with Nadia credited for the design.

  He was going home to Texas for the holidays, and she was going to New York to visit Venetia, her mother, and Olivia between Christmas and New Year’s, when the girls would be skiing with their father. Venetia’s wish for a fourth child had come true, and she had gotten pregnant at the château in August. She was four months pregnant now. They knew it was another girl, which was exactly what she’d wanted, so she would have two girls and two boys.

  Greg was leaving the next day. The house had been finished just in time, and had required endless hours of work on Nadia’s part to achieve it.