Chapter 14 #3
“I have to rehang the gallery,” she said, avoiding more important subjects.
“I’ll have Hallie send me more work by my L.A.
artists this week too. They’ll be thrilled that everything sold.
” She’d been running her gallery from a distance for the past six months, and she knew she’d have to go back one of these days.
But Hallie was doing fine without her, bringing in new work, meeting new artists, staying in touch with their existing artists, and running their shows.
Sabrina had a life six thousand miles away, but nothing she wanted to go back to, and a house standing empty in Malibu.
She had rented the chateau for a year, and had no idea what to do or where to go after that.
She was happy in Arcangues, but it wasn’t home.
She felt like a ship without an anchor now.
Xavier pulled her gently into his arms then and kissed her again, and when he did, she forgot everything but him for a minute.
Everything in her life there was meant to be temporary, the children, the chateau, Xavier, but more and more it felt like home.
She didn’t know if it was an illusion or real. And what if it didn’t last?
Xavier took the day off and they all went to the beach, built sand castles again, looked for seashells, waded in the ocean, and went out for ice cream afterward.
And on the way back, she said she had a surprise for them, and she had Xavier drive them to the harbor in Ciboure, and she showed them the Sabrina Fair.
They uncovered it, and the children climbed all over it and went below decks to the two cabins.
Xavier was in awe of how beautiful the boat was, and how impeccably maintained.
He could tell how much Malcolm must have loved the boat by the perfect condition it was in.
Sabrina almost sensed Malcolm with them, as they sat on the sailboat he had loved.
She almost felt as though she was presenting him her new life, and Xavier felt it too.
“It sounds self-serving,” he said to her quietly while the children were busy exploring the boat, “but he must have wanted you to be happy afterward. He took as good care of you as he did this boat. You and your children are his legacy. You have to let the wind fill your sails and move forward again.” She could already feel it happening, and she promised to take the children out on the boat soon.
And then they went home to the chateau, and Xavier cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the American barbecue Hallie had sent her.
The children had had a full day and were exhausted by the time they went to bed.
Xavier and Sabrina sat side by side in the lounge chairs on the patio and watched the falling stars that night.
It felt like a perfect life when he kissed her, and she wanted to believe it was forever.
And now that he had dealt with Brigitte, there was nothing to stop them.
She could feel the wind fill their sails and carry them forward.
It was a perfect beginning, and had been a perfect day.
—
After their day at the beach, Sabrina went to the hotel and picked new work for the gallery from the extra pieces Hallie had sent, and local work that had been sent by the French artists they were representing.
They had enough to rehang a creditable show.
The women at the gallery helped her hang it, and they used one of the maintenance men from the hotel staff to help them and adjust the lights.
It looked beautiful when it was up. Xavier came by to see how it looked, and liked it even better than the first show.
He was on his way to a meeting with Pascal.
“You did a fantastic job, again….” he told Sabrina, with a quick kiss and a tender look.
They both remembered the night they had hung the first show together, only weeks ago, and the first time he had kissed her.
Things had moved quickly since then. Neither of them knew what the future would bring, but the present was very sweet.
He bought two of the paintings himself. They were beautiful ocean scenes, one with a sailboat in the distance coming out of the mist. It reminded them both of the Sabrina Fair.
He wanted the paintings for the dower house.
And he chose a third painting he wanted for his bedroom at the chateau that Sabrina had found in the stacks of paintings they hadn’t hung.
“You’re becoming my best customer,” Sabrina teased him.
“When are you going to paint a mural for me at the chateau?” he asked her.
He was still in love with the one she had done of Noah’s ark, with the children’s help.
People were coming to the monastery especially to see it, and a documentary filmmaker wanted to do a film about Sabrina, which she had graciously declined.
She didn’t like the spotlight on her, but she loved discreetly watching people coming to see the mural and discovering all the little subtle details, if they studied it long enough.
The mural appeared simple at first, but it was filled with symbolism and hidden treasures.
“What would you want in a mural at Bonport?” she asked.
“You running through the forest,” he said whimsically, and then had to go to his meeting with Pascal.
Xavier was surprised when he got to Pascal’s office, which had a magnificent ocean view.
Pascal had folders of three hotels for sale, one not far away in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, another in Bordeaux, and one in Corsica.
They were all foreclosures, and being sold for very little money, but none were as beautiful as the Empress Eugénie.
Pascal wanted to use the same formula they had in Biarritz, and Xavier thought they shouldn’t rush it, they should learn more from their success and wait to find the right one.
Pascal was so excited, he couldn’t wait to do another hotel, but Xavier was more cautious.
They were a good balance for each other.
And he told Sabrina about it that night when he came by after the children were in bed.
He loved sitting with her and talking at the end of the day.
It was a closeness he had never had with Brigitte and cherished.
“Do you suppose that’s my path now?” he asked her.
“Building luxury hotels. I had fun doing it, but I didn’t expect to make a career of it.
” The Empress Eugénie Hotel was becoming a legendary success.
It was the simple, unexpected gift Sabrina had told him could happen.
The timing and the blending of talents and experience had been just right.
Pascal knew the brick-and-mortar side intimately, and Xavier brought all his publicity and marketing skills to the project with brilliant results.
Sabrina loved seeing him happy. She remembered how down he had been six months before, when she arrived, and so was she.
It was a whole different world now six months later, in record time.
It proved what she believed, that you never knew when good things were going to happen.
Success might be just around the corner, not disaster.
It was a philosophy she lived by, despite what had happened to Malcolm, which had shaken her to her foundation.
She wasn’t fully recovered yet, but she was better, and Xavier and the three children from the monastery were a big part of it.
She was excited about her own children coming in August, and could hardly wait.
She kept making lists of things she wanted to do with them and show them.
She wasn’t sure how to explain Xavier now.
She had been mentioning him all year and said he was a friend, which was true then.
But things were slowly slipping across that line now, and it was obvious that he was in love with her, and she was falling hard for him too.
She didn’t want her children to think she had lied to them, but things had changed, and were moving quickly.
Burgeoning love was hard to hide and she didn’t want to.
Sister Anne was suspecting something too.
She didn’t ask her directly, but she smiled whenever Xavier’s name came up, and Sabrina pretended not to notice.
Sabrina was happy that Xavier had already met Justin, so at least the two men would be comfortable with each other.
And on the last weekend of their stay, Justin and Arabella were getting married.
Her parents and siblings were coming a day or two before.
They were finally making it to the altar, a month before the baby.
They had moved into a new apartment which, as predicted, Arabella’s father had bought for them as a wedding gift, which Sabrina didn’t approve of.
She had bought the furniture for the nursery as a baby gift.
But she still expected her son to support his wife and child, and he was well aware of her feelings on the subject.
He had started his new job, but his starting salary wouldn’t take them far.
And he was still too young to collect his inheritance according to the conditions his father had set.
Malcolm hadn’t expected him to marry and to have a wife and child to support so young and so soon after he wrote his will.
And Coco had fallen in love with a young Italian.
He was a fashion photographer’s assistant, fatally handsome, and she was having her first big romance.
Lizzie was dating one of the lawyers at her firm, which was frowned on but not forbidden, and taking risks of her own.
They were all busy leading their lives, and making their own decisions, for better or worse.
Xavier had reported that Victoire was getting seriously involved with a young Dutch doctor she worked with in Zimbabwe.
Sabrina was philosophical about it. They were all moving forward on the tides of life.
Sabrina had no idea how her daughters would react to Xavier, or even Justin, when he realized that they were in love.
She wasn’t going to hide it from them, but she wasn’t going to announce it either.
She had a right to her own life, just as they did, but she was well aware that they might not see it that way.
They considered her their property, to serve their needs, and they expected her to have Malcolm’s mark on her forever, and to live in his memory, to remain his wife even once he was gone.
She didn’t know if they would give Xavier a hard time, and neither did he.
He was half expecting them to object to him, or even try to force their mother to give him up, which worried him.
Children could be formidable, selfish, and merciless at times.
He just hoped that Sabrina would be strong enough to resist them, if they were opposed to the relationship.
Anything was possible. Sabrina was braced for whatever objections they might present, determined not to let them sway her.
Shortly before they arrived, Hallie called her with a surprise offer.
A family from Dallas wanted to rent her Malibu house for a year, which brought up the question of whether or when she was coming back.
Sabrina had no idea and said she’d have to think about it.
Xavier felt that they were on shifting sands sometimes, with a lot of people and factors with the ability to influence her life more than he could.
All he could do was hope their budding romance would survive.
Sabrina felt that tucked away in tiny Arcangues, they were safe from the storms that would come. Xavier hoped she was right.