Opposites Attack: A Novel with Recipes Provencal Read Free

surface.
    To his newly arrived houseguests, he said, “An American girl—a student, it turns out, at my sister’s language school—walked into my friend André’s store today. Her French was horrendous. She was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, big ugly sneakers, and hardly any clothes.” He motioned to the top of his thigh. “Tiny shorts and”—he pulled his shirt back as he thrust out his chest—”a tight top.”
    Robbie cut him off. “Did she at least have a good body?”
    He thought about that as he worked his long, prematurely white-gray hair into a rubber band. “It was toned, but there was no mystery. I prefer a woman to dress like a woman.”
    The achingly feminine Spanish beauty, Isabella, tossed her long black hair and smiled seductively. Robbie did not see it. Jean-Luc pretended he didn’t either.
    He continued with his story. When he reached the “But it’s already sold!” punch line, he laughed almost as hard as when it happened. “You should have seen her face when she found out
solde
meant it was on sale!”
    “Who are her hosts?” Robbie inquired.
    “The lucky devils are the Devreauxs, after the farmers Fabien and Fabienne gave her the boot. According to Yves Devreaux, worse than driving a moped through their barn was that she couldn’t distinguish the difference in the pronunciation of their names.”
    Robbie who spoke passable but not fluent French, replied, “It
is
subtle to the untrained ear.”
    “I wonder who will win her,” Jean-Luc mused. “The father or the son? It has become a Marlaison pastime to place bets.”
    Robbie had a good laugh as he watched Jean-Luc chopping the wild garlic he’d pulled out of the ground minutes before.
    “I would say the son, even though the father likes to jog and she looks like she has that dreadful athletic streak in her.”
    Isabella’s sly contribution was, “Maybe she will sleep with both of them.” Seeing Robbie’s reaction, “Why not?”
    He huffed and changed the subject. “That smells marvelous, Jean-Luc. Are you sure we can’t help?”
    “A Brit in my kitchen? That’s almost as bad as an American.”
    “What about me?” The Castilian Isabella put a cigarette to her lips. Robbie immediately had a lighter underneath its tip.
    Her ever-so-slight grimace at his gesture prompted Jean-Luc to say, “
Guests
are not allowed in my kitchen, either.”
    He hoped she would pick up on his true message. As ravishing as she was, she should not leave parental and pudgy Robbie and put down stakes with him. The Brit helped her as an artist, showed her paintings in his galleries, took care of her, gave her excellent advice even if she didn’t want to hear it. Why did so many women want to snatch Jean-Luc’s bachelorhood away?
    “With your guest cottage,” Robbie asked, “Do you ever host students?”
    Jean-Luc’s knife froze in midair. “Are you mad?” He stabbed the last slit into the leg of lamb and stuffed a sliver of garlic into it. The rest went into the skillet. “I need my privacy and I cannot stand to be around people for very long who do not speak French.”
    “I speak it,” Isabella purred.
    Robbie’s antenna finally went up. He glared at Jean-Luc and took a swig of his brown ale.
    The tension between them was interrupted by the phone ringing. He knew the caller would invariably be a creditor, past lover, lover-to-be, Raymond his editor, his sister (also a creditor), or a repugnant reporter.
    He removed the skillet from the burner and answered the Australian journalist’s rehearsed unctuous introduction with silence.
    “I’m sorry. Do you not speak English?” the man asked with embarrassment.
    “I speak it extremely well. I do not do interviews and you interrupted me while cooking dinner for guests. I said nothing because I have nothing to say.” Affecting a perfect Down Under accent, he closed with, “G’day mate.”
    After his guests’ eyes returned to their normal size, Robbie said with a haughty