Chapter 20: The Heart of Life
One year later - - St. Remy de Provence
The table was set for six and half. A three generational silk tablecloth blew in the breeze of early October, threatening the scattered candles lit against the sunset pink sky. Only the best of china, indigo porcelain painted with winery vines, were strategically placed at each seating, waiting to be covered in the food that came out bowl by bowl, recipe by loving, ancient recipe. There was Endive salad with walnuts and lemon dressing, broiled scallops, roasted duck with olives and garlic potatoes, a cheese soufflé, and per request of a certain sweet-toothed companion, facing north toward Paris, sat a chocolate truffle cake with extra mousse. It was her most profound accomplishment, as far as only she was concerned.
"Izzie--"
The sound of his voice startled her, the way it also appeared to be. She tried to balance her toes on the stool ledge, reaching into the highest cabinet for a bowl that she insisted was just the right one for the baked bread.
"Get down."
"I almost have it."
"Isabelle."
It had changed to a stern determination, the kind she could never ignore. So she reached down for his hand to guide her off the stool, slowly, until her bare feet reached the ancient tiles of the kitchen floor again. He shook his head at her with a sigh and then finished the task himself, handing her the bowl with warning in his eyes.
"I'm not as helpless as I look."
He didn't return a word at first. He only stared at her defiantly as she moved the slices of bread from the baking sheet to his mother's antiquated bowl, watching him from the corner of her eye.
"Don't look at me like that."
A smirk carefully formed at the corner of his mouth as he reached out and pressed his hand to the firm roundness beneath her flowing peasant dress. His fingers calmed the soft kicking that lied inside, and he caressed her navel as his lips hit her neck.
"Let me do th' climbing for th' next month, Love."
"I am perfectly capable of--"
He stopped her mid claim with a turn of her face to his fully, a capture of her lips between his, softly drawing the defiance from her. Nothing she'd made in her kitchen that day, nothing she'd had hit her lips, had tasted as sweet and sound and perfectly simmered as his mouth did, or his tongue stroking hers. Every bit of her was sensitive to his touch, all the time, at all hours of every day. And with an unsuspecting baby between them, the large consequence of their passionate equation, Roux held Isabelle captive against the counter, his feathery lips dancing over one burning pore after the next.
"I need to finish the--"
"No."
"Roux—the oven--"
"It can wait," he mumbled on her earlobe, suckling at it carefully, making her bare toes curl against the tile with his. Without a moment's hesitation, his freed hand moved up her stomach to tease the dire firmness of her left breast, the one that had grown as equally full as the other, readied for the bounds of motherhood. She arched naturally, awkwardly but beautiful towards him from the edge of the counter, a tiny sigh escaping her lips as she heard a door opening and shutting at a distance. Roux refused to slow his ministrations over her body, refused to give in to the way she molded to him, curved and unsuspectingly delicate. Only one thing could quit him now.
"Mystery o' the babe is now solved."
His mouth left the valley of Isabelle's breasts at the front of her dress, and Roux's eyes focused beyond her head, to the kitchen archway, where Danny stood laughing with Meg.
"Is that how ye get th' food t' taste so good, Blondie?"
Isabelle smiled with an embarrassed brow, turning in Roux's protective arms to see her friends. They were early, as usual, merely to appease the privacy of the house at all costs.
"Meg," she gave a teasing smile. "Are you sure you want to marry him?"
"I've had my doubts," she cooed as she patted Danny's cheek.
"All put t' rest on our kitchen counter o' course."
Roux chuckled in Isabelle's ear, holding her tightly for a moment longer, before taking the bottle of wine from the counter, kissing her gently on the top of her forever growing head of curls and following Danny to the veranda setting. It was only a matter of time, as Isabelle finished with the bread and stuffed mushrooms that Connor showed up at the house with his haired attachment. Saline, who Roux and Isabelle had finally learned was Greek, fit in perfectly with the uninhibited crowd of laughers and jokesters and romantics that they seemed to have become. She was happy as she watched them entertaining one another on the patio overlooking the righteous hills of St. Remy, contented to have finally found the sort of family that she'd been after, satisfied just to be for once, instead of trying to be.
Isabelle walked barefoot through the French doors of the kitchen, heading towards the full table with a second, necessary, bottle of wine. And even before she'd made it five steps, Roux sensed her coming and left the table to match her in the middle of the grassy terrace.
"Don't even think about it," she tested him with a clear smile as she hugged the bottle of Chardonnay closer to her chest. "I can handle it."
Roux held the protruding bulge that was her stomach--that was his child--as he gently leaned in towards his untamable, American superstar wife, a teasing wink begging at his eye.
"I know ye can."
And he knew she always would. He knew it four weeks later, when in the middle of a sleepless night, the doctor was called in from town to deliver their auburn haired, hazel eyed daughter in the same room that Roux's mother had given birth to him in. He knew it every day after that, when he would watch Isabelle chase Olivia through the gardens surrounding the cottage of his own youth. He knew it when his Izzie began refusing record deals and concert contracts and film scripts from all over the world, to simply stay at home and sing with him, to be his artistic muse in the afternoons when they sent their daughter off to school. He knew it all over place, anywhere she was and anywhere they sailed from the south of France to the banks of the Irish coast or flew to the rocky tops of Paris, Tennessee. His American sweetheart proved the better of him forever, with just a curl of her rose doused lips and a rustle of her honeyed ringlets.
She was the best—to his best—that either of them would ever need to have.
THE END -- THANK YOU, E.C