Promises to Keep Read Free Page B

several years earlier had left him afraid of loving deeply and losing that love again. He told Kat, “You are the first, since Geneviève died, and you make me feel willing to take the risk. I just have to believe we will love each other forever.”
    Kat struggled to control her tears, but eventually managed to say, “Grief is so powerful. I can only imagine how painful your loss was. Geneviève will always live in your heart, and that’s the way it should be.”
    “ Oui ” —he stumbled over the first few words—“there . . . there are things I must tell you, but not today. Most important is that I now know that I can love again. I thought that was impossible.”
    They leaned into each other and kissed. The softness of his lips stirred her to her core. “ Je t’aime , Katherine. I love you, and I love hearing myself say it.”
    Kat’s eyes glistened as she ran her finger lightly down his cheek and across his mouth. “ Je t’aime aussi .”
    She wondered briefly what was troubling him that he couldn’t tell her and made a note to bring it up soon. Not today.
    “But you have been touched by grief too,” Philippe said. “That’s part of what makes us strong together.”
    “ D’accord ,” she whispered. “True.”
    As much as she didn’t want to say it out loud, she found herself admitting that she was worried about their age difference—at forty-six, he was ten years younger than she—and that, at some point, he would be attracted to someone younger.
    Philippe laid two fingers on her lips. “Shhh. Don’t ever think about that again. There comes a point when age is just a number, and we are both past that. You are strong and beautiful to me, inside and out. That’s what counts.”
    Philippe took her hands and pulled her up from the couch. “Enough talk! Let’s go and see what today’s catch is at Le Vauban and have a glass of champagne to toast our future.”
    As they went out the door, he tapped her shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, everyone thinks I am older than you. You know how the town loves to gossip.”

    Kat found that adjusting to Philippe’s elegant, spacious apartment was a process. It had a completely different feel than either the rustic farmhouse in the Luberon or the cozy fisherman’s cottage in the old town, the places she had called home during her exchange visits.
    It also did not have one truly comfortable place to sit, except at the kitchen table. Even the couch was hard.
    When Kat asked Philippe which was his favorite armchair, he raised an eyebrow. “ Aucun ,” he said. “Not one of them. These are all very old, mostly from my grandparents’ house, but we never spent much time sitting around. When we were home, there were things to be done, usually in the kitchen, and so we gathered there. Otherwise our social life was outdoors.”
    She nodded, reminded that she had not missed television for the three months of her exchange and that they rarely turned it on now.
    Philippe encouraged her to make the space hers as well, but Kat was all too aware that he had a history in this apartment, and it did not include her. It made her nervous to change much, but she tried.
    “I like it when you move the furniture around and make a new look for us. We are beginning our story together.” He grinned. “And we will buy some new armchairs, comfortable ones.”
    Kat eventually pinned her problem down to the fact that nothing in the apartment was hers. Nothing was familiar or gave her the pleasure that comes from carefully chosen pieces of furniture, works of art, or even a simple decoration.
    They talked about her sending a shipment from her house, and there was no question the first item to go in the container would be her mother’s treasured carpet. There wasn’t a great deal else she wanted to ship, but the few other pieces on her list also carried a wealth of meaning for her. It would be good to have them in her new home.
    The crammed bookshelves in both the living