The Affair - Danielle Steel Page 0,99
dull, and Nicolas was too old for her. At least he was taking his paternal responsibilities seriously. He had Pascale’s permission for the baby to visit Paris every other week with her mother. She thought it was fine. It was a year since they had gotten involved with each other on the set of his movie, and it amazed him how such passionate feelings had dissipated so quickly. He thought it was a huge mistake to have had a baby when they had such flimsy knowledge of each other, but the baby was here now, and he wanted to make the best of it for himself and the boy.
Pascale didn’t find it unusual or unfortunate that she had a child now by a man she was no longer involved with and would probably rarely see in the future. She was perfectly satisfied to have him deal with her mother. Isabelle Solon had done the same thing when Pascale was born and left her with her own mother when she was sixteen. But now, as a grandmother, she was more attentive to Benoit than she had been to Pascale, and Nicolas was satisfied that he was in good hands. He was happy to spend two nights a month with the baby and Pascale’s mother, and in time two nights a week. Eventually, Benoit would be able to come and visit him alone, or with a nanny. Isabelle already had a nanny for him now, a few hours a week, so she could get some things done. Nicolas had been paying for it since Benoit was born.
* * *
—
Venetia called Nadia to see how the notaire meeting had gone, and she said it was fine, and very anticlimactic. A few questions, their financial statements, the visitation schedule, the notaire stamping what they had agreed to, and it was over.
“What happens now?” The divorce seemed so sad to her, especially if Nadia still loved him. She admitted she did, but not enough to go back to him, or forgive him.
“Sometime in the next two months, we get the papers in the mail, and we’re divorced. The way we did it, there’s no drama.”
“That’s something at least.”
Greg called to check on her too, and invited her to dinner, but she said she was too busy. She had a new client and had to get started with the preliminaries, but she promised to see him soon. On the heels of going to the notaire to end her marriage, she didn’t feel ready to throw her arms open to Greg, and something about him always stopped her. She didn’t know what it was. He was too unemotional, or too businesslike. She kept shying away from starting anything with him, although she knew she was interested in him, but not enough. And in an odd way, she still felt married to Nicolas, and as though she’d be cheating on him. She wondered how long it would take for that to go away, and to feel like a fully free woman. Maybe when she got the papers. But just as paperwork didn’t make the essence of a marriage—as Athena and Joe had amply demonstrated—papers alone didn’t end a marriage either, as Nadia was discovering.
* * *
—
She was working late on her first big proposal for her new client, who had bought a beautiful house in the seventh arrondissement and was a friend of another client, when her cellphone rang. She picked it up without looking. She was staring at a drawing on her desk of the kitchen she envisioned for them with a glass sun roof that could be opened on warm days over the garden. It made it feel like a country home, not just a city house. She was startled to hear Nicolas’s voice.
“Are you awake?” He sounded serious.
“I’m working. Is something wrong?”
“Yes…no…I don’t know. I guess the answer to that has been yes for the past year. I’m downstairs. Can I come up?”
“I’ve got a presentation tomorrow, so you can’t stay long. We can’t talk on the phone?” She would have preferred it. They were almost divorced now.
“No,” he said firmly.
“The girls are asleep. Don’t ring the bell, I’ll buzz you in.” She sighed and put her pen down. The drawing still didn’t look right to her. There was something cumbersome about it.
She buzzed him in a minute later, and he came upstairs fresh from a cold rainy night. He left his coat in the hall, came to sit across from her