They pulled down a steep driveway to a small house with purple bougainvillea covering every wall. Michael got out and motioned for Christy to wait. Then he lifted her up and carried her over the threshold, to the delight of a plump, white-haired woman Christy assumed was the housekeeper. Inside was cozy and elegant, with an exquisite antique stained-glass window. The house was perched on the edge of a cliff, and as Christy walked to the back, she could see the clear blue-green of the sea swooshing against the rocks.
Michael put his arms around Christy, as he had so many times. She stiffened involuntarily. He pulled back. Christy turned around. “I’m sorry, Michael, I’m just not there yet.”
“I was such an idiot, Beeg, not to see what Galit was doing. And not to understand what you were going through. All I saw was that you were turning into her. It all seemed to be starting over.”
Suzanna, of course. Christy shuddered.
“Then, when I felt like I could lose everything and you helped me through that, I realized how much I’d failed you. I’m sorry.”
And it could happen again, Christy knew, once he was back on top of the world. Could she really ever again rest in his arms and feel safe? At least she had Renata, who accepted her just as she was.
Christy knew he wanted to kiss her, to make love to her again, so she changed the subject. “Let’s go eat. We don’t have to figure this out tonight.”
They dined at the top of the Old Village, a collection of stone buildings dating back six centuries. On the way, they passed the communal bread oven used in the medieval village and watched the sun set over the Mediterranean from the ancient wall. Then they sat at a table in a small restaurant, with candles and a fifty-year-old bottle of wine, and the French waiter remarked on what a beautiful couple they made.
Later, their driver took them down the hill on winding roads into the town, which at eleven P.M. was just heating up. They stopped at a small club Michael had heard about, Cinq a Cinq. It was filled with tanned couples and sophisticated European beauties with big breasts and tiny miniskirts who were hoping to catch wealthy beaux, just as Christy had done without really trying.
The music beckoned them to the floor. They began with a slow dance. She felt his heat as she moved to the music and then to him. She didn’t want to give in. But her body wanted Michael’s, and she languidly ground into him. She was afraid to put herself back in a position to be hurt again, and yet she was starting to feel swept away. It was as though she was with a stranger, a hot, disheveled, sexy stranger, far from home, and she wanted him until she forgot everything.
She was breathing harder and harder. “Michael, let’s go,” she whispered. He grabbed her hand, and they pushed through the growing crowd. He led Christy around a corner into a narrow dark street, with only a stray dog about, and pushed her up against the warm Provençal stone wall. He kissed her deeply and she met him full-on. Christy was almost dizzy with desire, needing him. He slid her silk dress up her smooth thighs, and lifted her up until she could wrap her legs around him. She savored every sensation, the brush of the hairs on his arm against her leg, the sweat running down his face, his smell. He seemed to have more power over her than ever before, and she welcomed him into her body. “Michael, I love you,” she said afterward. He gently lowered her and then held her like he never wanted to lose her again.
That night she slept twined around his warmth, trying to burrow deeper and closer. She couldn’t believe how much she had missed this.
The next twenty-four hours passed in a blur of sensual gifts. It felt as if they were the only two people in the world. Swimming naked in the cool water, lying on the velvet warmth of the stone, making love over and over. What was this? she wondered—something she hadn’t really felt the first time around with him. Surrender. Knowing she belonged to him, no matter what. Christy realized she could not leave this man. She would just have to learn to live with the fact that he could hurt her again.
And then they were on the tarmac. They slept the whole way over the Atlantic. Christy woke up once and just watched him, his crazy hair and his smile lines, looking like a trusting child in sleep.
Steven met them at Teterboro with the Mercedes, and soon they were driving home in the hour before dawn. Christy lay across the seat as Michael stroked her hair. “I can’t wait to get back to life as it was,” he said.
“Me, too,” Christy said, and she meant it.
“So, you’ll help me raise Ali?” Michael asked.
“I will,” Christy said.
“Good. Do you think your midwestern values can possibly trump the sense of entitlement Suzanna instilled in her?”
“I think so,” Christy said dreamily.
“God, I hope,” Michael said. “I need you for that. I want to do the right thing by Ali, but I’m not sure how.”
Christy smiled. “Will you be a father to Renata?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Just as long as her family vamooses back to Mexico.”
Christy sat up. “No, Michael. They have to stay.”
“Would it be so bad, Christy, you and me and two daughters? Isn’t that enough?”
“Don’t you realize if they go they’ll take Renata with them and turn her into a goatherd? And even if they were somehow willing to let her stay with us, she needs to be around her own family. Can’t you see how fast she’ll lose her Mexican identity living on Fifth Avenue?”
“She can visit them in the summer.”
“Yes, but what about me? I don’t want them to go. Michael, I never had a big
