SAFEHOUSE

You are really nice guy Julien? Sometimes I wish I knew how to shut up.

We sat there and talked some more, watching as the sun moved across the sky. I couldn’t help thinking there was something he was still hiding. It made me curious and want to know more about him.

I hated to go, but he had some sort of meeting he had was already running late to.

“We should do this again. I haven’t gone on a picnic since . . . ” his voice trailed off as he was obviously lost in thought.

“I’ve never been on a picnic, now that I think about it.”

He raised a brow at me. “Really? Not even as a child?”

I shook my head no, shrugging. “It just wasn’t something that my parents had time to do. They were always working,” I replied, helping him clean up.

Julien’s face softened as he folded up the ragged blanket into a perfectly neat square. He looked as though he were about to say something but didn’t.

I pointed to the blanket he was holding so carefully in his hands. “That means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

He looked down at it, his face unreadable. “You don’t miss much, do you? Yes it does mean a lot to me. My father brought it one evening when we were at the beach. It was just some normal night, but it’s one of the only memories I have of him. He died when I was three.”

Even though I already know knew that, it still sucked to see Julien’s face when he admitted it.

“At least the memory is a good one.”

“It must’ve been so hard to leave your parents behind to come here…”

It was just a small cut, bu

t it still hurt. “You didn’t read that in my file? They were killed by a drunk driver… Along with my…”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

“I’m so sorry. You don’t have to continue. People are senseless, and when they operate vehicles they tend to become even more so.”

We walked back up to the château, not saying much. It had been nine years since it happened, but sometimes it felt like it was just yesterday.

We went our separate ways, and I was left to my work once again. After finishing up in the gardens with Alain, I went into the kitchen and mopped the floors until they were sparkling clean.

Anything to get my mind off of my family.

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Chapter 11

To my surprise, the secret garden picnic was just the first of many little excursions that Julien took me one over the next week. He would take me away from my work for hours on end, showing me a new part of the castle, or just walking around outside and chatting with me. At first I was incredibly suspicious of this. I mean why wouldn’t I be? Didn’t he have better things to do with his time?

Julien explained it to me that he needed constant breaks to keep his mind fresh. He figured it would make me feel more comfortable if we got to know each other better. And he was right…

The more time I spent with him, the better I felt in general. Even though I was always constantly on my guard, it felt like I could loosen up the reins a bit when he was around. Sort of like I felt safe around him. Maybe that was the point.

Maybe we were spending a bit too much time together though… Marie was starting to get frustrated with me, to the point where she would roll her eyes at me if I asked any questions, or she would act as though I was getting some sort of preferential treatment from Julien. Which was nuts, of course. He was just trying to make me feel welcome in his home… at least that’s what I told myself.

But we were always together, even when I wasn’t working. Hour-long breaks turned to hours at a time, then became not just the breaks during the day but also spending time in the evening together. I began to wonder what exactly was going on between the two of us.

Often I would find him looking at me out of the corner of my eye. I could never really determine what was going on inside his head, and he had a pretty good poker face. My imagination was going wild.

Maybe he was actually into me. He could be nice and not spend all this time with me. He could be nice and not even have much interaction with me at all. But this was something different, I could feel it.

I wished I could call up Rosita and ask her for her opinion on this. With no friends aside from maybe Julien or Alain, there was no one to talk to. The thought depressed me, and I realized that outside of this home I really had no life. And this was only a temporary place… What would happen when I struck out on my own?