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.
“Now I don’t want to leave,” he said, and put an arm around her. They had become friends while she worked on it, but he had never gone beyond the line of friendship, and she didn’t want him to. She found him incredibly attractive to look at, but she wasn’t attracted to him. She wasn’t drawn to any man. She found that Nicolas had vaccinated her. She was content with her children and her work. She didn’t miss having a man in her life, knowing now how wrong it could all go, and how devastating it could be. She’d been too badly hurt to want a relationship for now.
“I’m taking you to dinner to celebrate when I get back. Nadia, you made all my dreams come true. You created a real home for me. I can’t wait to get back.” Greg had told her he hadn’t dated anyone since he moved to Paris. He hadn’t had time. Now he had a real home. Even Nadia thought it needed a woman’s touch to soften the masculine strength of it. As they stood in his living room, admiring his Picasso, he turned to her and kissed her. She couldn’t tell him, but she felt nothing. She was still too broken inside to want anyone, and he sensed it immediately.
“Too soon?” he asked her, and she shook her head.