He took a seat along the other wall to her right. “Please call me Paul.”
“Thank you. My name’s Lucille—Lucie.”
Paul rested one elbow on the table, revealing a gold wristwatch. “With an Americanyor a Frenchie?”
She smoothed her skirt. “Yfor the first nine years,ieever since.”
He chuckled, a tone as round and manly as his first name.
The maître d’ handed Lucie a menu. It listed actual meats and cream sauces and cheeses, and her stomach gurgled. Not only was rationing strict and food pricey, but running the store made it difficult to track down scarce items and stand in long lines. Véronique and Marie-Claude did what they could between practices, but she hadn’t had a full belly in months.
At the other table in the room, two well-dressed Frenchwomen dined with German officers—to get a good meal, maybe more. Lucie would rather starve.
After they both ordered the chateaubriand, Paul gave her a stiff smile.
She knew little about him, but she’d sensed something deeply good in him. Behind the pain and loneliness and good humor, she’d sensed strength and integrity, and she wanted to put him at ease. “I hoped you’d bring Josie. She’s darling.”
“I don’t think she’s ready for this place,” he said with a grin. “How about you? Did you bring Monsieur Meow?”
Lucie heaved a dramatic sigh. “He is definitely not ready for this place. He acts shy, but he’s a troublemaker.”
“So I’ve seen.”
Then silence pressed between them, pushing them apart.
“Where do you—” Their words collided, and they laughed.
“Ladies first.” Candlelight reflected in Paul’s dark eyes. “Where do you come from, Lucie? What brought you to Paris?”
“I’m from New York. We came here in 1923 for my father’s work—he’s an architect. The rest of the family went back when I was thirteen, but I stayed.”
His eyebrows rose. “At thirteen?”
“It isn’t as scandalous as it sounds.” She gave him a teasing look. “I stayed with the Greenblatts, the bookstore owners.”
“All right. That makes sense for a girl who wants to run a bookstore.”
Lucie had to laugh. He wasn’t telling her story correctly. “I wanted to dance. I was studying at the Paris Opéra Ballet School. I’d worked hard to be accepted, and there isn’t a school anything like it in America.”
“Ballet.” Paul gave a knowing kind of nod. “Yes. I see it.”
She lifted one shoulder. Ballet training never left one’s muscles. “Thanks to the Greenblatts, I was able to stay here. After I finished school, I danced with the corps for several years.”
“At the Opéra Ballet? We sawGisellethere,Coppélia, Oriane et la prince d’amour.”
“Then you saw me perform. I played villagers inGiselleandCoppélia. I was good at standing and watching the principal dancers.” She struck her watching pose, one finger to her chin.
“I’m sure you were charming. And what an honor to dance for such a prestigious ballet.”
“It was.”
Paul leaned a bit closer. “Then the bookstore? How did that come to be?”
“The Greenblatts left last May.” She glanced at the gray uniforms at the other table and lowered her voice. “They’re Jewish. I quit the ballet and bought the store so they could sail to New York.”
Paul regarded her with a soft look. “What an admirable thing to do.”
She shrugged and inclined her head toward the boches. “If the tourists ever go home, I want the store to be waiting for my friends.”
