“I agree we enjoyed a very special night together. Now it’s over, and I have to go.”
“It was much more than that and you know it,” he bit out.
“Paulette and I haven’t been husband and wife for three years, Rachel.”
“As your mother said, a piece of paper ending a marriage doesn’t necessarily make it so. Your devotion to Paulette leaves me in awe.”
She started for the door.
“Rachel—” he ground out.
“Don’t you get it?” Her cheeks flamed. “I wish I hadn’t been the woman you used in a moment of weakness. But that’s my fault for not listening to you when you warned me I might have regrets.
“As I told you during the storm, I could have gone inside at any time. I could have gotten in my car and left your house at any time after that. But I didn’t. All my fault. And now, just as you thought, I have regrets. Besides not saving myself for marriage, I dishonored the woman you married for better for worse, in sickness and in health. Please stand aside.”
He remained in place. “You’re not leaving until I tell you everything I should have told you after I asked you to stay for the weekend.
“I want to explain so you’ll understand what’s been going on inside me.”
“Inside you?” Her head reared back. “You have no conception of what you’ve done to me!”
“You’re wrong,” he whispered in pain.
She shook her head. “Why couldn’t you have told me while we were swimming? Or during dinner at the Petit Vosges?”
Luc groaned to see the anguish on her beautiful face.
“I was tormented, Rachel. I didn’t want you to leave Alsace, but I knew I couldn’t make any promises to you because Paulette is still alive. I’m still committed to being there for her.”
Her eyes were wild with pain. “So you took your pleasure behind everyone’s back!”
Her salvo found its mark. “I wish to God I’d handled things differently.”
“So do I!” He felt her body trembling. “When you first told me you were divorced, what you should have said was, ‘My wife’s lying in a coma.’
“That would have done it for me because it would only have been the truth! I would have placed my order with Giles the next day and been long gone. Now please move away from the door.”
His chest tightened. “Not until you hear me out.”
“This conversation comes a lifetime too late!” Her features looked like chiseled marble.
“Nevertheless I’m not going anywhere. You deserve to hear the truth from me, not my mother’s version.”
Pain and sorrow glinted in her eyes, shaking him to the core before she eventually sank down in the chair in defeat.
“I want you to know everything from the very beginning.
“I was twenty-seven when I married Paulette Brouet. She was twenty-two, the little sister of my best friend Yves.
“We weren’t childhood sweethearts. I had several meaningful relationships with women before I began to notice her in a different light. Somewhere along the way I fell in love and we got married.
“She wanted children right away, but it took three years for her to conceive our son.”
He heard a gasp of shock before Rachel’s head came up.
“You mean my mother didn’t tell you?”
“No,” she whispered.