his child too. Pascale called him at that exact moment, as though she was psychic and had picked up his vibes. He didn’t want to talk to her but took the call anyway. He felt torn in half.
“How’s it going?” she asked, sounding relaxed.
“Okay, most of the time. It’s a little tense,” he said with a sigh. He didn’t want to explain it to her. She thought he should just walk away from Nadia and not look back. The way she would have.
“You should have come to Ramatuelle with me. The house is full, the weather is gorgeous, and the fireworks will be fabulous tonight.” There were plenty of fireworks between him and Nadia at the moment. He understood why she was upset, and he felt pulled between the two of them. “I miss you,” Pascale said, sounding instantly sexual and he forced himself not to think about it. Not here. “The two of you fighting all the time is why I never want to get married. It doesn’t seem like fun to me.” She laughed when she said it, but Nicolas was in a serious mood, after being with his family all weekend and seeing Nadia’s suffering at close range. And he could see her fury too.
“This is incredibly difficult for her,” he said sympathetically, well aware of what he was putting her through and deeply sorry about it. Pascale had no empathy for her, or even for him and the guilt he felt because of her.
“Don’t forget we have the interview with Mode next week,” she reminded him, and changed the subject back to herself. “I just bought a new dress for it, see-through white lace, I can wear it over a bathing suit. I look like a madonna in it.” She was conscious of her striking, sensual beauty and used it to her advantage whenever possible. It was her secret weapon and so far always worked on him. But not tonight. He was upset about Nadia, and what he was doing to her.
“You’re too sexy to be a madonna.” He was surprised they were including him in the interview, with his mother-in-law as editor-in-chief, but he was a big name. They were assigning one of their most important photographers and had begged Nicolas to participate. They wanted to do it at the rented house in Ramatuelle, and Pascale had agreed without consulting him. They wanted photographs of them together. “I’ll come down on Monday, the day before the interview. I’ll give them a few minutes, but I won’t do the whole interview with you.” He couldn’t do that to Nadia, and he didn’t want to. “I need to do some work this week,” he said, sounding stressed. He had hardly written a word in the last two months. His new novel was half finished, sitting on a shelf. He couldn’t concentrate on anything these days except Pascale and Nadia. “Nadia and the girls are leaving for L.A. in a few days, so I can stay down South with you for the next few weeks.” He felt like a bouncing ball.
She reminded him that she was going to the wedding at the Hotel du Cap the next day, hoping to make him jealous, but he wasn’t.
They hung up and he went back into the house then, feeling depressed about the situation. They had bought sausages, fruit, and salad for a simple country dinner. Nadia and the girls were in their rooms when he walked in. He was staying in a small study off the main bedroom, but the girls had no idea he wasn’t sleeping in the master bedroom. He wondered if Nadia was right, and it wasn’t fair to keep things hidden from them. He kept hoping there would be some kind of resolution, but there wasn’t. It unnerved him that Nadia had seen an attorney. This was the first he had heard of it. He had gone to a lawyer to make sure he didn’t make any glaring legal mistakes that would deal a final death blow to their marriage. Nadia had gone to see a lawyer to find out what those mistakes were and what grounds she had to end the marriage. Their goals were no longer the same. They were in direct conflict, like everything about their life.
Nadia and Nicolas were quiet at dinner, and the girls chattered on. Laure wanted to decorate a shoebox with the seashells she’d collected, to make it a jewelry box for her mother. And Sylvie