“Shhh,” he mouths, “it’s my mother!”
I nearly choke on my croissant but when he stifles a laugh, I know he’s only teasing me.
I watch him as I eat my breakfast and imagine what we’ll do next. Spying several large white paper bags filled with boxes over near the door, I squint to read them.Rouje. Miaou. Chloé.
When did he possibly have time to buy me clothes?
I’d get dressed in clothes that fit me perfectly but were comfortable…
Finally, he hangs up the phone and sighs.
“Who muz if?”
“That’s neither French nor English. Maybe swallow that bite first.”
“I always swallow,” I say, and stick my tongue out.
“Looking for another spanking so soon?”
“Fabien.” He does know how to make me blush. “I asked who was it on the phone? Am I allowed to ask that, or is that like highly secured information or something?”
“Just Thayer. He knows I have to head back to Corsica, so he’s trying to squeeze in as much work here in Paris as he can before we go back.”
“Ah. Well, I can’t blame him. Thanks for plugging my phone in.”
He bends and kisses my cheek. “Of course.”
Other girls would say that Fabien is… well, maybe perfect. I wonder if it’s my upbringing in poverty that makes me suspect he’s up to something, that I can’t trust him. But right now, not only do I feel like I could trust him, I also feel like a girl who could get used to being treated this way. I know I would never take it for granted, though, no.
“What’s on your mind?” he asks. I can’t tell him. He’ll think I’m crazy or trying to manipulate him.
When I don’t respond right away, he steeples his fingers over his knee. “Something wrong?”
I decide to go for broke. If the man can tell me he’s the head of a damnmob,I can tell him what’s on my mind.
“I was just thinking that any woman who was treated this way might… well, be the luckiest woman alive.” He sits completely still, which makes me start second-guessing myself, but I don’t stop talking. “I just… well, men don’t do things like this. Like… breakfast in bed. Remembering the details of a perfect day then making it happen. And are those clothes for me in those bags?”
“Of course.”
“I just—well, you’re paying me two million dollars. You could walk out of here and not come back until you needed me again, but you haven’t done that. You’re… massaging my back and buying me nice presents and doing sweet things like kissing my forehead.”
He leans forward with a half-smile and kisses my forehead.
“So?”
“So… I was just thinking it would be nice if this wasn’t just a weekend.” When a frown creases his forehead, I continue in a rush of words. “Don’t think for a minute that I’m not grateful and that I’m trying to change a thing, I’m not, I promise.”
“I know you aren’t. You’re not that kind of woman.”
“I just… was thinking that if a woman was treated this nicely, she just might be convinced that treating her man as well as he treated her was something she was very much interested in.”
“I see.”
I take a bite of scrambled eggs and follow it with another sip of coffee.
“Well, glad we got that out of the way.”
He smiles, but this time it’s almost sad. I feel as if I’ve only unearthed the very surface of who he is. That we need more time to understand each other better. I wonder if there’s anything he could tell me that would make me want to walk away.
