Chapter 15 #3
Arabella’s parents were as aristocratic as Sabrina had guessed they would be.
They were fun and eccentric as only the English did so well.
They had a good sense of humor, knew when to disappear, were charming and polite to everyone, and were experienced houseguests with perfect manners.
And Arabella’s siblings were charming and funny.
Justin knew them all well. Arabella’s brother flirted with Coco all weekend, and she enjoyed it.
And her two pregnant sisters were funny, irreverent, and looked like twins, equally pregnant, though not as far along as their sister.
And their husbands were pleasant and polite.
The wedding went off without a hitch. Everyone looked beautiful and behaved well.
Xavier had provided four live musicians so they could have dancing.
The children performed admirably and the grown-ups tried.
The young people drank a lot, but got along.
Xavier had also provided a photographer, an incredibly beautiful wedding cake, wonderful wines from his cellar, little touches Sabrina hadn’t thought of.
By the time the weekend was over, they all loved Xavier and said what a great guy he was, and Arabella’s parents insisted that they all come to England sometime for a weekend, including the children.
Sabrina had called her own children to order, and they had heard her.
And they all went out on Malcolm’s boat several times, in shifts because there were too many of them.
It touched her heart to see the Sabrina Fair sailing on the ocean in Biarritz.
It felt almost like Malcolm were there, and she had the feeling that he would have liked Xavier too.
Justin and Arabella were well married at the end of it, with Arabella’s due date only three weeks away.
Sabrina was relieved, and she thought Malcolm would have been too.
On Monday after the wedding, Hallie called her.
The people who wanted to rent her house in Malibu had made an offer to buy it, and Sabrina had a big decision to make.
Did she want to keep the house in Malibu, and was she going back at the end of the year or not?
It depended on a lot of answers she didn’t know yet.
She felt torn any way she turned. It was another big decision she wasn’t ready to make yet.
She needed more time to figure it out, but they wanted an answer, or they were going to buy another house.
They were offering exactly twice what Malcolm had paid for it, which was an obscene amount of money that was hard to turn down.
She didn’t ask Xavier for his advice. It was her decision to make, and an emotional one only she could make.
That weekend, a week after the wedding, she left the children at the monastery, and she and Xavier spent a quiet weekend at the chateau alone, like grown-ups who were in love, while she was trying to decide what to do about the future.
They had waited a long time for it, because of Malcolm, Brigitte, her children.
They had known each other for seven months and it was perfect.
They made love in what was normally his bedroom, and had been hers for the past seven months.
She could feel how strong his ties to the house were.
Once he was there, there was no question who it belonged to.
It was his, and they had a conversation at the end of the weekend that shocked her.
They had just made love for the second time, and she turned to him with a sensual smile.
She wasn’t sure what to do about the house in Malibu, but she did know what she wanted to do about the chateau.
She didn’t want to give it up in January at the end of her lease.
She wanted to renew the lease and stay in Arcangues, especially now, falling more and more in love with Xavier.
She wasn’t ready to move back to the States, whether she kept Malibu or not.
“This is an official notice,” she said, snuggling up to him. “I want to renew at the end of my lease.” He looked at her quietly, and stroked her hair and kissed her, and stunned her when he shook his head in answer to what she said. She thought he was teasing her, but he wasn’t.
“Why not?” she asked him with wide eyes.
“For one thing, I don’t need the money. I’ll be getting money from the hotel by the end of the year.
I was desperate in January. But it’s not about the money.
It’s really that I want to come home. I want to be in my own house.
You’re not my tenant, you’re the woman I love.
I won’t rent it again. I want to be the master of my own home.
” Sabrina looked crushed. “I would like to invite you to live with me here, rent-free, as the woman I love, in whatever form you wish,” he said with a slow smile, and kissed her hand, then her fingers, one by one.
“Is that acceptable to you?” he asked her.
“Is that a proposal?” she asked him. She wasn’t ready for that yet if so. But she knew she loved him and wanted to stay in Arcangues with him.
“It’s a proposal if you want it to be,” he answered.
“It’s up to you. I’m flexible about things like that.
Married or not, I love you, Sabrina. I want to live here with you until the end of my days, that’s all I need to know.
The rest is up to you.” She loved what he had said to her.
It gave her all the room she needed to be with him, and grow with him, but she still didn’t know what to do about Malibu, whether to sell or not.
“I think that’s a question you need to ask your children, about how great an attachment they have to the house.
Only they can tell you that, and what it means to them,” he said when she asked his advice.
She thought she could guess their answer, but she wasn’t sure.
Justin was making his life in London, with his career and his wife’s family there.
Lizzie was in love with New York, and Coco would go wherever fashion took her, probably Paris, Milan, or New York, not L.A.
There was no high fashion industry in California.
—
Sabrina was happy living in Arcangues with Xavier.
He moved in while she was still trying to decide about the house in Malibu.
And he stopped her from paying him rent immediately, with him in residence with her.
They got along well. It felt as though they’d always been together.
She wanted to visit her gallery in L.A. from time to time and she could run it from a distance, as she had all year.
She loved helping him with his gallery at the hotel.
She couldn’t imagine living in L.A. again.
It was part of another life she had shared with Malcolm.
The house in Malibu had been about them.
That life was gone now. She had cherished that life and been happy, but it disappeared with Malcolm.
Her life was with Xavier now. It was completely unexpected, but she was sure of it.
What she didn’t know about was the future, and how things would turn out.
In the end, it was easier to let the house in Malibu go than she expected.
She told the children, and they agreed. The house was their history, briefly, but not their future or even their present.
Their family home had been the house in Bel Air, which she and Malcolm had sold.
They moved to their weekend love nest in Malibu, which had never been meant for their children.
It had been her getaway with Malcolm more than theirs.
Sabrina didn’t need it anymore. It no longer made sense without Malcolm.
She called the realtor and accepted the offer.
She told Xavier. It meant that she had no other home now, except the one she shared with him.
The chateau belonged to him, but he made her feel at home there.
Their lives had changed completely overnight.
The house in Malibu faded gently from her life with no regret.
Day by day, she felt more at home at the chateau. And the one thing she was certain of was that Xavier was the man she loved. Their relationship and their love for each other, which neither of them could have predicted or even guessed, was the unexpected miracle that had happened when they met.