“Oh, shit.” I looked around, then hurried past the kitchen to the employee lounge.
I flopped onto the chair where Lucas once bandaged my fingers, and I opened the message.
My hands trembled as I scanned the form letter explaining how to read the results. Then I clicked a link that promised my personal details. Belatedly, I recalled my vow not to read the findings without Alicia, and I opened my video chat app.
She still hadn’t forgiven me for sending the sample to the lab without her, and that wasn’t interesting at all.
The call rang through without an answer. No surprise.
School was in session, and Alicia was thirty teens deep into second period by now. Our schedules wouldn’t line up until late this afternoon, and I was physically incapable of waiting that long for information I should’ve had forty-six years ago.
I flipped back to my results page and devoured every word. My mood plummeted at the sight of one particular sentence.
No direct matches.
My shoulders sank as I stared in disappointment. I hadn’t allowed myself to consider this possibility, choosing instead to hold on to hope. I didn’t want this test to be as fruitless as every other attempt I’d made at finding my father.
Maybe I was meant to be alone.
“Sophie?” Lucas’s voice came from the doorway. “Everything okay?”
I nodded, eyes stinging from the absolute letdown.
“I went to see how you were doing in the kitchen, and I saw you running this way.”
I turned my phone screen to face Lucas as he entered the room.
He met me at the table and steadied my trembling hand with his. He read the screen, then met my eyes. “Ancestry test results?”
I sniffled. “Yeah.”
He looked at the screen again, a bit longer this time. “You’re French,” he said brightly. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
I laughed at his enthusiasm despite my mood. “I have no idea.”
“It’s because I believe all the most beautiful women are French.”
I stared. Everything I’d felt about the test results whooshed from my mind. Did he just—?
Lucas winked, then strode confidently back to the door. “Let me know when you go back to the kitchen,” he said. “Meanwhile, take your time.”
I stared at the empty doorway for a long beat after he’d gone, then dragged my attention back to the ancestry charts.
A region in the South of France was highlighted on the map. Three of the small towns I’d found with a restaurant on the corner of a street named Rue Pasteur fell inside the shaded area. A thrill coursed through me. I’d been right!Or very close.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time or money to trek across France, knocking on doors, in search of Sébastien Allard. But I loved this confirmation.
“I’m French,” I whispered, allowing the notion to fully register. Before seeing the map with my DNA results, the fact that my biological father was French hadn’t fully sunk in.
Holy shit! I am French!
I made immediate plans to spend my evening between bakes researching the Var area of France. I’d already learned that Var was part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. The area was a provincial paradise that included the mountains, the sea, and the freaking French Riviera.
Excitement popped and fizzed in my stomach. I wanted to race home and look up everything about the small towns where my parents might’ve met. But for now, I had to get back to work.
Lucas stood at my station in the kitchen, mixing and prepping desserts in my absence. He smiled at my return. “All good?”
“Very good,” I said, heating slightly at the memory of him casually calling me beautiful.
