“Are you in love with me?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. I do know I don’t want to be convenient for you. I don’t want to be the woman who was in the right place at the right time so you decided, ‘What the hell, as long as we’re doing this, we might as well have a couple of kids.’ ”
Sylvie didn’t know if she was in love with him? He wasn’t sure if he believed in the concept of love. His parents had been good to each other, but there hadn’t been passion between them. They’d liked each other, done right by the other.
What if it could be something more? The idea that Sylvie might love him . . . He didn’t even know what to think about it.
“I don’t want my marriage to be a convenience, either,” he admitted. “I want what your parents had.”
“Not your parents?”
He shook his head. She hadn’t moved away, and he found her closeness comforting. “They cared about each other, but I don’t think there was passion between them. I want passion, and I feel that for you. I’ve felt it for a long time.”
“But you didn’t act on it until you needed me.”
He stepped back. “How do I fix that?”
“You give me time,” she said quietly. “You let me be a real partner to you in this and you don’t treat me like some flimsy thing that needs protecting. I can handle your family. Let me sit at your side next time. If you want a queen, Rene Darois, don’t treat me like an ornament.”
He took a deep breath, looking into those gorgeous brown eyes of hers. He could lose himself in them. He nodded. “All right.”
Her lips curled up. “Good. Now show me to my room and know that if we decide to make a go of this, I might use it as a closet, but I’m not going to sleep apart from my husband.”
Hope lit inside him and he felt lighter than he had a few moments before. Sylvie Martine didn’t know if she loved him. That meant she didn’t not love him.
It meant she might decide to really love him.
He leaned over and put one arm under her knees, the other going around her back and hauling her up. “I will fill that closet with Chanel and Gucci and Prada.”
Her eyes had gone wide, but her arms had gone around his neck and there was a genuine smile on her face. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t have a real wedding night, but I can carry you over the threshold and hope that you’ll let me kiss you before I bid you good night.” He started down the hall.
“I might be persuaded to do that,” she agreed.
The night was looking up.
chapter six
“Namaste.” Joy LeGrande lowered her head and ended the session with all the reverence of a true believer, but then her head came back and all that peace and serenity was replaced with the energy only a businesswoman could achieve. “And don’t y’all forget. I’m having a jewelry party at my place on Friday. Ten percent discount to the first ten women who show up and bring a friend. I’ve got summer jewelry celebrating all our traditions.”
Hallie snorted quietly. “That means she made gator necklaces, but it’s all right because I heard the gators are all wearing crosses and holding the Bible to prove she’s not into satanism.”
Sera’s eyes widened and she leaned in from the other side of Sylvie. “Why would they think gators are satanic?”
Oh, Sylvie knew some folk could take almost anything and make it satanic. “I don’t think it’s the gators. I think it’s the yoga. Joy goes to that church outside town. They have very specific ideas about how one should move one’s body, and yoga does not make the cut. They don’t dance, either, but Joy doesn’t have a problem with that. I’ve heard she’s getting her Zumba certification.”
Hallie gasped. “The one where they dance all the different kinds of dance? That looks like fun. The only cardio class they have right now is taught by Maxine Renaud, and she doesn’t understand that we’ve moved on from the Olivia Newton-John and Jane Fonda age of aerobics. I was the youngest person there by forty years.”
Sylvie had been working with her parks and recreation team to update the parish’s offerings. Until two years ago they hadn’t even offered kids’ programs beyond sports, and all the arts and crafts had been based on whatever the teacher at the time was trying to sell at the local fairs. She’d realized the parish might have been violating child labor laws. Those poor kiddos had made a whole lot of dreamcatchers and Christmas ornaments.
Of course, now she had to deal with the fact that her mother and Delphine wanted to teach fortune telling for youngsters. As her momma had put it, they had the most future to worry about, so kids should start the mystical arts early.
Yeah, that was going to be a fun town hall meeting.
All around her, the ladies of the Wednesday morning yoga class in Harte Park began to roll up their mats and get ready to move on with their days. She’d come to love this class. It had become a touchstone in the middle of the week when she could see her friends and clear her mind.
Except today she couldn’t seem to do that. Today her mind was stuck on one thing and one thing only.
She needed to focus on the meetings she had today, but all she seemed to be able to think about was the look in Rene’s eyes when she’d closed the door between them the night before.
It had been a week since they’d made their deal that he could kiss her good night and they would see where it went. She’d thought of it as a good-sense plan. Rene had taken it as a challenge.
Every kiss threatened to bypass her good sense and go straight to that place where lust ruled. Every night she joined him in the library and they had a drink and talked. She’d managed to make it to Darois House in time for dinner most of the week, but dinner always involved Cricket and often Louis or one or more of Rene’s relatives who showed up to complain or cajole. It was only in the library that they found some privacy. He would pour her a drink and somehow he would end up with her feet on his lap and she would sigh as those strong hands of his worked out the tension that came from wearing heels most of the day. She would start out telling him he didn’t have to do it and then she would sigh and practically purr. At some point she would sit on his lap and he would kiss her and she would eventually have to find the strength to go to her own room.
She was getting sick of going to her own room.
“Sylvie?”
She shook herself out of her thoughts and forced her attention back on the present. “Sorry. I zoned out. What were you saying?”
“I was asking how it was going with Rene.” Hallie turned on her mat, not joining the crowd of women leaving the space. She looked ready for a nice long talk. On Wednesdays, Hallie dropped her baby off with her mom and took the morning for errands, which usually ended with brunch and gossip. “But now I can see it’s not going well. You’ve got that longing look on your face you get when you’re on a diet but you can smell funnel cakes.”