Chapter 14 #3
It had resembled her mother’s admonishments so much that Celine’s head had whipped in that direction, her heart hammering anxiously in her chest. And then Bastien had walked in, eyes rimmed with kohl and rolling at the remonstrations.
Celine couldn’t stop thinking about that encounter whenever she met him afterwards. But this grudge between him and Jacques had made it impossible for them to so much as talk without tossing jibes at each other.
“Well…we could be,” he said once he was back in his own clothes.
“You want us to be friends?” The sheer incredulity of the idea caused her to look up and feed the pieces she was stitching together into the machine.
It resulted in a wrinkly stitch that bunched up the fabric.
Celine cursed under her breath, carefully lifting the needle to clean up the mess. “Look what you did.”
“It is not a crazy notion,” Bastien pressed, coming up to her desk.
Planting his hands on each side of the sewing machine, he hovered over her.
“You’re actually fun when you’re not play-acting the obedient good girl.
I will confess, I have been praying for those magazines to be right about your rebellious alter ego.
Who knew it only required a little poking to come out. ”
He was wrong about that. She was obedient, and on top of that, she was a miserable people-pleaser.
She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t handle the look of disappointment.
She would rather flatten herself on the ground for people to walk all over her if that was what they wanted than be met with a look of pure displeasure.
No manner of poking could make her break out of that. Celine knew—she had tried.
He was, however, right about something. “It’s not an alter ego.”
“Even better.”
The whirring of the machine stopped again.
Celine didn’t buy it. Bastien was playing at something, she could not guess what yet. He had never shown a sliver of interest in her, save for using whatever information he had ferreted about her against Jacques.
Not today apparently. Today, he wanted to be friends.
She looked at him, really looked, scouring for any hidden intentions behind his words. When she came up empty, she returned to her sewing.
“You’re fun, too,” she admitted, hoping the words would get lost amidst the whirring of the machine. “That is, when you’re not salivating over everything that breathes.”
Bastien’s grey eyes flashed. “You know, you should get more credit for that sharp tongue. A pity I hadn’t noticed before.”
A snort slipped Celine’s lips.
“What now?”
“I will try and believe your sudden desire to be friends,” she replied. “But do not act as though you are interested in me now. I know why you’re helping me—your other reason, not the money.”
This seemed to intrigue him.
“And what would that be?” Bastien asked, leaning cheekily on the sewing machine until he was a hairbreadths away from her face.
Celine took off her glasses and peered up at him. “Try as you might, you won’t ruin my relationship with Jacques.”
A slow grin pulled at his lips, making her skin prickle with anxiety. “Maybe if you were really in love with him I would have a harder time. As it happens, you’re making things quite easy, Celine.”
“I am in love with him,” she protested. Immediately, her fingers came up to her wrist with the urge to scratch it. “And I’ve already told him about the contest.” Another lie. Her nails dug in. “And you.” And another. “And he is fine with it.”
She stopped herself before she could scratch her skin raw.
“Is he now?”
“Yes.”
Bastien studied her face for a long second. Then glanced at her wrist. “You are such a beautiful liar, Celine LeBeau.”
Celine failed to look casual as she strained to hide the marks. “Why do you care?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your issue is with Jacques,” she pressed. “Why do you care whether I love him or not?”
Bastien withdrew his hand and rolled his shoulders back as if to remove a kink. “I don’t,” he said, a little too defensively.
“Very convincing.”
“I do not.”
“Then stop asking me about it, if you want us to be friends.”
Miffed, he moved away from her work table and settled on the divan, stretching his long legs over the arm rest. “Looks like we’ll be here a while.
” He picked a book from the stack on the floor and opened it with flourish.
It was from his own collection (Bastien had claimed her grandmother’s attic library was severely lacking in scandalous affairs). “Should I read to you?”
Celine was used to his mercurial moods by now.
One moment flirting, the next second serious, and the next apathetic.
So she waved for him to proceed. As long as she got a few hours of peace to finish the gown before having to return home, she would welcome and weather any capricious tidal wave coming from Bastien.
He managed to make it through one chapter from The Age of Innocence—adding in the occasional innuendo he assumed the dialogue needed—before the book slipped from his sleepy fingers and even breathing replaced his voice.