I laugh, and I can feel Daphne looking at me as I do. It’s nearly 11:00 p.m., and we’ve been sitting in a little ice cream shop for more than an hour, two empty dishes in front of us. It’s been a great night, and I don’t want it to end.
“How did that work out?” I ask.
“It took less than two weeks, and the rules got changed. And when one of the men was bragging about his wife cooking him dinner and screwing his brains out when the boycott was on, my grandma blackballed her. No bridge club. No chairing committees. She was persona non grata forever more.”
“Scorched earth, huh?”
Daphne nods, mining the bottom of her tall sundae glass with her long spoon for a melted bite of ice cream. “She’s a force to be reckoned with, wrapped in a well-groomed but irreverent package.”
“I think it was Mark Twain who said irreverence is the champion of liberty.”
A smile tugs at Daphne’s lips, her eyes alight. She puts her elbow on the table and rests her chin on her palm. “I’m surprised you know Twain. Didn’t you go to school in France?”
“Through high school. But then I went to Oxford on a scholarship and I got my MBA at Harvard. It was a lit class at Harvard where I learned about Twain.”
“A scholarship? So you weren’t born into money?”
With a single note of laughter, I say, “No. I actually grew up in a pretty poor family. My mother was an actress before they had me, but she never hit it big. And then she stayed home to raise me and my dad drove a truck for a local dairy farm.”
“So you didn’t grow up in Paris?”
“No, we lived in a little town called Sousceyrac.”
Daphne’s cheeks turn pink and she looks down at the table.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head, looking at something behind me, seemingly unable to meet my eyes.
“Your accent. When you pronounced the town name, I just…”
Her cheeks darken further, and I laugh.
“Is that all I need to do? Just speak a little French to you? Tu es très belle ma chérie.”
“Don’t try to make me weak-kneed with your romantic French talk,” she says, trying for a firm tone but unable to keep from smiling. “It won’t work.”
“No? Not even a little?”
She tries to cover her smile with her hand, and I laugh.
“You really do have all the things most single women are looking for,” she says softly. “You’re wealthy, handsome, kind and of course, you speak French.”
I give her a skeptical look. “What about smart? Chivalrous? A hell of a poet? You forgot all that.”
“And modest,” she says, smirking. “Can’t forget that.”
“That, too.”
We lock eyes, and the pull between us is so strong it’s almost physical. I’ve been feeling it all night. Daphne may say she doesn’t want anything but “hanging out”—whatever that means, but she’s lying. She wants me, too. My instincts have never steered me wrong. This whole night has built up sexual tension and longing that will drive me out of my mind in the days to come.
“Sir?” a teenage kid’s voice says from beside our table.
I look over, the spell between me and Daphne broken.
“We’re closing, sir,” the kid says, pointing at the sign on the door with the shop’s hours.
Daphne and I both glance around and see that the chairs are turned upside down on every table but the one we’re sitting at. We’re the only people left in the place except the three employees giving us bored, get the hell out of here looks.
“Sorry,” Daphne says. “We lost track of time.”
“Yeah, no problem,” the kid says. “You guys can leave your dishes; we’ll take care of them.”
Glancing at my watch, I see that it’s 11:20 p.m., and the sign on the shop’s door says it closed at 11:00 p.m. I take out my wallet and peel off three fifties—the smallest bills I have in cash—and pass them to the kid.
“Thanks for letting us stay late,” I say.
His eyes widen. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, sir. This happens all the time.”
Since he won’t take the bills, I set them on the table. “The ice cream was great. Thanks.”
“Thank you,” he says, grinning. “That’s really nice of you.”
Daphne slides her coat on, and I pick up my wool trench coat from the empty chair at our table.
“Have a good night,” Daphne says to the kid, waving as we leave the shop.
“You too,” he calls, waving back as he picks up the cash.
Daphne gives me a sidelong glance as we walk to my SUV. “That was nice of you.”
I shrug. “No big deal. That was some amazing pistachio ice cream.”
“Mine was really good, too.”
Ben is waiting by Daphne’s open car door. She asked him if he wanted ice cream, too, but he passed. As soon as she’s in the car and he closes her door, Ben gives me an encouraging smile. I can practically hear his unspoken words.
This is a great woman, Olivier. Don’t let her get away.
I can tell Daphne is softening, but I don’t want to move too fast and spook her. It’s a complicated dance we’re doing, and I don’t want to get a single step wrong.
When Daphne yawns on the drive home, I suddenly wish she was coming back to my place. For a few hours of sweaty sex, of course, but also because I want to see her makeup free, in whatever she likes to wear to bed, and have a soft, sleepy, end-of-the-night conversation with her.
I’ve never looked at any woman and wished for that, but Daphne is different from other women in every respect. It’s maddeningly good to want her this much.
“What was it like growing up in your little French town?” she asks, resting her head on her headrest as she turns to face me.
“Not as idyllic as a lot of people think,” I admit. “I didn’t get to venture out of Sousceyrac until I was a teenager, because we couldn’t afford it. My dad lost his job when I was ten and that was hard. For all of us. My mom and I did what we could to keep the family afloat—she did ironing and sewing and I did chores for a couple local farmers, but…” I shake my head as I remember those days. “It was hard for my dad. He was angry and bitter and I see now that it came from a place of shame that he couldn’t care for his family, but to a kid it just felt like he was mad at the world.”
“That sounds hard.” Daphne’s brow is furrowed with concern.
“I promised myself when I was a teenager that I’d be financially secure. So I could take care of my parents when they needed it, and so I never turned into my father. He never really got over feeling like a failure over losing his job.”
“Are your parents still around?”
“My dad passed away about ten years ago. He and my mom lived in a small Italian villa I bought with my first really big payday. I asked them to take care of it for me. She still lives there today.”
Ben brings the car to a stop in front of Daphne’s building. She touches my hand in silent acknowledgment of what I told her about my parents, and then Ben opens her door.
I get out on my side of the car and meet her on the sidewalk, then walk her up the stairs to the front entrance of her building. The place is old and neglected, and I gather from looking at it that Daphne is living exclusively on her Safe Harbor salary rather than her family’s money. I admire her for that.