I could get to capture another man—and sashayed as elegantly as I could to the front door.
I tightened the robe around my bulges to ensure nothing was showing that wasn’t supposed to, planted a welcoming smile on my face and opened the door. But instead of Yves’s debonair leanness, Eric’s burly height stood before me, which shouldn’t have surprised me, since Sergei stood beside me wagging his tail and not barking as he would have with Yves, a stranger.
“I see you are expecting me.” He chuckled and started to step inside.
“You can’t come in,” I said, narrowing the door opening until only my face peered out. I checked to make sure Yves’s Mercedes wasn’t pulling up beside Eric’s muddy Jeep.
As if he hadn’t heard, Eric continued, “I’ve come to take up your offer of dinner. In fact, I’ve brought it with me.” He held up a plastic bag. “Venison steaks, new potatoes and baby carrots.”
“The offer of dinner was rescinded four nights ago. Now if you don’t mind, I’m busy.” I tried to close the door, but Eric stopped it with his boot.
His rugged face projected hurt confusion. “Hey, what’s eating you?”
“You have to ask me?”
“Is it because of the other night? Is that why you’re mad at me?”
With that insipid female voice still loud in my ear, I repeated the forensic cop’s mantra, “You tell me.”
“But I thought you understood that I had this previous engagement.”
His pretend innocence made me see red. I thrust the door against his foot. It barely made a dent in his thick-soled Sorels.
“Is this man disturbing you, Meg?” came a quiet voice from behind Eric, who wheeled around to confront Yves’s concerned face. His hand held a single long-stem red rose.
I felt the heat of a blush creep over my face. “No, he was just going,” I said, opening the door wider, causing the dog to rush out in a barking frenzy. “Glad to see you, Yves. As you can see, I’m not quite ready, but please come in while I make myself beautiful.”
Too embarrassed to look Eric directly in the eye, I made some hasty introductions, then, with a murmured goodbye, I escaped inside, but not before seeing Eric, ever the gentleman, shake Yves’s hand. Then his heavy tread retreated down the verandah stairs. Served him right. Now he knew he wasn’t the only game around here.
Sergei continued barking. I looked back to see Yves standing rigid at the doorstep, his face fixed in fear.
“Sorry, I forgot you’re not keen on dogs.” I grabbed the dog’s collar and pulled him inside.
Yves smiled limply, hesitated for a second, then, bracing his shoulders, he followed me inside. I continued on with the dog down the long hall to the kitchen, where I bribed him with a cookie to keep him quiet and returned to my date.
“Merci,” he said and offered me the rose. “Please accept this small token of summer that pales in comparison to your own sunny beauty.”
I felt my face redden even more. Although the compliment was outrageous, I could get used to this kind of treatment. Only once before had a man complimented me with roses and that, as I later learned, was only because my ex-husband had suffered an unusual bout of the guilts over one of his many love affairs. As for Eric, food was the only thing he ever brought. Mind you, he invariably made some delicious concoction from the ingredients.
“This man, Eric, is a good friend, non?” Yves asked with a bemused smile on his lips.
“No,” I replied, while wondering why I felt compelled to lie. Perhaps there was something in Yves’s focussed gaze that told me he wouldn’t like a positive answer.
Suggesting he make himself comfortable in the living room, I rushed back upstairs to get dressed.
* * *
Although the Auberge du Somerset didn’t come close to meeting Montreal’s fine dining standards, it was the best to be found within the forests of this forgotten corner of the Outaouais. Mind you, since the competition was predominantly cassecroûtes—Quebec’s version of a hamburger joint—poutine stands and chip wagons, it didn’t take much to be the best. Still, the food was generally tasty and sometimes daring enough to go beyond the traditional French cuisine.
Like many businesses situated in rural areas, the restaurant was located in an old house. In this case, a particularly fine example of an Edwardian brick house that had probably belonged to a lumber baron. Although it had been run as a boarding house for a number of years, the present owners had managed to restore the elaborate wood moldings back to their natural elegance. Paint and floral wallpaper hid the damage that couldn’t be repaired.
The restaurant hummed with the kind of energy and chatter to be expected on a Saturday night. Yves and I were shown to a reserved table tucked into a quiet alcove off the main dining area.
I tried to make my bottom fit more comfortably into the narrow wooden chair but knew it was useless. It wasn’t that the wicker seat was too small. It was that my bottom was too large and likely to remain so. My eyes had a tendency to focus only on those items on the menu guaranteed to be loaded with calories.
“I will order for you, non?” Yves said more as a statement than a question. He proceeded to select those foods my eyes had passed over; a Mediterranean vegetable terrine instead of the buttery escargot I’d been eyeing and Atlantic salmon with a mango salsa instead of the filet mignon smothered in bernaise sauce.
Even if Yves was making a comment on the fullness of my figure, I wasn’t bothered. A few months of his company would probably slim me down to the trimness of my late thirties, about the age Yves must be, which made me wonder what an elegant catch like him saw in a fortyish frump like me.
The soft candle light captured the sparkle in Yves’s eyes. And as if reading my thoughts, he said, “I am hoping you can consider me as something more than the brother of Yvette.”
“And here I was worrying that you thought of me only as an older sister.”
His brown eyes smiled. “I only have one older sister, and she is much older than you.”
While his fine features and almond-shaped eyes bore a resemblance to this older sister, his expression was relaxed and friendly, a sharp contrast to Sister Yvonne’s stern and shrouded countenance.
“How much older is your twin than you?” I asked. “Five minutes.” I held his gaze and smiled back. I rather liked this kind of flattery. “To what the future may bring.” I toasted him with a glass of the superb 2001 Chassagne Montrachet he’d ordered.
Yves did like fine wine. If I hung around him long enough, I might reacquire my taste for the kind of refined living my exhusband had introduced me to. It could be a welcome change to the backwoods lifestyle I’d been living for the past three years. That is, as long as it didn’t lead to the excessive drinking from which Eric had weaned me. Still, a glass of good wine now and again could be viewed as a fitting reward for my stellar abstinence.
“I am very sorry I was not able to visit with you when you came to my father’s house the other day,” Yves said.
“Me
