27. Isabel
Meeting Roman in the bookshop suddenly seemed like ages ago. As if everything leading up to now had required more time and more patience to unfold. In the delirious haze of all that happened, the part of my brain that put a hold on thoughts I didn’t want to deal with, failed miserably.
There were so many emotions and sensations tangled up and squeezed together into this short period, and at times it was difficult to figure out what needed the most attention.
One thing I knew for sure was that being in love with Roman would have its own challenges. All that money and charm didn’t make him immune to the perils of being human. This was a man who, until not so long ago, was surprised by his own capacity to feel more than just a sexual attraction toward someone.
What if those feelings became too tiresome to cope with and he reverted back to what he’d always felt comfortable dealing with…hassle-free sex with ‘vetted’ women? No emotional entanglements. No complications.
There was no doubt that, thanks to his father, Roman had accepted that the only way to succeed in the business was to ignore his emotional needs, and that feelings came in second to everything else regarding the Belmont empire.
Now more than ever, it had become very important for Henry to wake up and set things straight with his son. Surely after having a stroke and being in a coma, anyone’s perspective on the importance of life—as opposed to business—would change. Right?
I pressed the edible flowers onto one sheet of pasta, making sure that each piece of ravioli would have a flower on both sides. And then I very carefully put another layer of pasta over that one, pressing the sheets together before feeding it through the machine again.
“You’re so lucky to have Emily in your life,” I said. “She really cares for you. I remember the day I was here for my interview. Nelson came into the office and told Emily that it was too quiet in the south wing and she might want to check it out. I can’t forget how worried she looked. All I knew was that the person in the south wing, whoever it was, meant a great deal to her.”
Roman smiled. “Emily is the reason I didn’t turn into a clone of my father. Whatever human compassion you see in me is all thanks to her.” He brushed a very casual look over me. “And whatever change there is in me now is all thanks to you.”
Goosebumps prickled every inch of my skin as Roman ambled closer, the bottle of champagne in his hand. “The way we’re going I’ll have to open a new bottle soon,” he murmured. “Let me top you up, my sweet.”
Like before, Roman leaned in from behind me, tipping the bottle of champagne just above the rim of my glass.
I stopped feeding the pasta sheet with the flowers through the machine. At this point, the sheet was delicate enough that one wrong move could poke a hole through it. And the way my pulse was thrumming, my fingers might not be as steady as they needed to be.
Roman’s hand was anchored in the small of my back as he poured, his breath sliding across the shell of my ear. And then he gently inhaled my scent, like a wine connoisseur smelling a rare vintage. And my mind suddenly dissolved into a blurry mess and all I had to do was back up a little bit to feel him against me.
His lips skimmed my ear as he whispered. “Your breathing is a little shallow, my sweet. Anything I can do to help?”
I didn’t dare turn around, even if it took everything in me not to. “Roman?”
He bent his head closer to mine. “Yes, Isabel?”
“Do you see this beautiful pasta sheet?” I asked, trying for a commanding tone.
“I do see it, and let me just say it’s very pretty,” he said. “In fact, it’s a work of art. And since I have an original masterpiece in my office, I don’t say that lightly.”
“So, here’s the thing,” I continued. “If you drive me any more insane, I’m going to leave this pasta. And if I leave this pasta now it will be ruined forever. It’s totally up to you. Let your conscience be the guide.”
As he stepped away, his wonderful laugh filled the kitchen. I immediately missed his body heat and his scent. He casually strolled to his place against the wall and sipped his champagne. “Well, I guess it’s your turn to answer some questions then,” he said.
I was finally able to lay the fragile pasta sheet down on the counter. I started heaping the fillings on half the sheet, in neat little rows. “Fine, what do you want to know that you don’t already know about me.”
“Everything. Somehow I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of what makes you Isabel Le Roche.”
“But what if I revealed to you that I was in fact a serial killer.”
“Then my sweet, it will be my primary task in life to make sure the bodies stay buried and any evidence that can possibly lead to your alleged guilt forever disappears.”
“Good answer,” I swooned. “You’re without a doubt a female serial killer’s dream guy.”
He laughed. “But seriously now, what made you decide to become a pastry chef?”
“After I broke my ankle, professional dancing wasn’t in the cards anymore and I had to decide what to do with my life. Pastry chef was a logical decision, since my mom was a master baker. As a child I spent a lot of time in the kitchen at the small hotel where she worked. I was surrounded by chefs, so I learned to cook fine cuisine too. Of course I thought I was way ahead of the game in the pastry business, and it was a bit of a blow to my ego when it turned out I didn’t know all there was to know. The learning curve took a bit longer than expected and if it weren’t for my mom, I would have given up. She was the one drying the tears when I couldn’t pull off the Gateau St. Honoré, hard as I tried. It’s considered the most difficult French pastry to make. After every try, she’d tell me to do it again. It took me all of nine times before I got it perfect. And then she said to me, Maintenant tu peux tout faire, mon chéri… Now you can do anything. I knew then I could be the pastry chef I wanted to be, because my mom believed I could.”
“I believe that you already are,” Roman said softly. “I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”
We locked gazes for a second, and I was looking at a man who meant every word he said. A flush crawled up from my chest to my cheeks. It was time to lay the other half of the pastry sheet over the part with the fillings. The flowers on the top had to line up perfectly with the ones on the bottom, no easy task.
“You haven’t mentioned your father…” Roman said.
My throat tightened. How much was I willing to reveal about myself? Wasn’t this kind of information best left for later discussions, when you knew each other better? Roman immediately picked up on my hesitation.
“It’s okay if it”s not something you want to talk about.”
“Well, you ordered champagne for a year so I might as well get it out of the way,” I said, using my ravioli cutter wheel to shape the ravioli. “The thing is I don’t know my father; I don’t even know who he is. My mom never talked about him. All she told me was that I was made with a whole lot of love, and that was the end of that.”
If I thought that would shock Roman, I was so very wrong. He took it in stride, as if this was a common problem, and one he knew how to fix.
“You know these days it’s not that difficult to find someone,” he said. “If you want to locate him, chances are he might be in a DNA database somewhere. I could help you, whatever needs to be done.”
“There was a time I considered doing that,” I told him. “But if my father knows about me and hasn’t tried to contact me, then it’s pretty obvious he has no interest. I also don’t want to upset someone’s life by knocking on their door and declaring myself to be his daughter after twenty-five years. For all I know he put the whole thing out of his mind. Besides, he might not even know I exist. And at the time he probably didn’t think there was anywhere to go, being in a relationship with a nun, so there’s that.”
I carefully placed the perfect, pretty ravioli pieces in a dish, ready to be cooked. Only the brown butter sauce remained.
Silence crept into the room like fog on a cold winter morning.
One glance at Roman told me he was trying to grasp the full meaning of what I’d just told him. He gently placed his glass of champagne on the counter and stared at me, as if confronting something incredibly alien.
“Isabel, I’m sorry, but did you just say your mom was a nun?”
I sliced the butter into a pan. For a second I wondered why I’d said anything. It wasn’t a secret I shared with just anyone, and here I’d done it without thinking twice.
I nodded, now hyper-focused on making the brown butter sauce. “Yes, she lived at Abbey Chatoise in a tiny village in France. She was twenty-six when she became pregnant. She knew she wouldn’t be able to remain at the abbey, and her father disowned her years before, even though she and my grandmother kept in contact. She was the only child, and there wasn’t any other family to help her out. Her best friend Sister Clara at the abbey, knew a man who owned a small hotel in Newport, and he needed a baker. So she came here, and this is where I was born and where I’ve lived my entire life.”
Roman’s gaze held a thousand questions, but he didn’t seem to be able to articulate a single one of them. “Jesus Christ.”
I had to admit his bewilderment triggered a little smile. “Jesus Christ is right,” I said. “I didn’t know about any of this until after my mom’s death. When Sister Clara came to see my mom in the hospital, I had no idea why my mom requested a nun all the way from France to perform last rites over her. Sister Clara actually had to get special permission from the archbishop, since normally only priests could perform last rights.”
Roman’s blue eyes burned into me, quietly urging me to continue.
“After my mom’s death I realized how little I actually knew about her. I was so devastated and lost without her, and I thought the only way to get closer to her, to know more about her life, was to visit the abbey. It turned out Sister Clara had become the Reverend Mother at Abbey Chatoise and she was wonderful about me staying there. A week turned into a month and then into six months.
When my mom lived at the abbey, she baked bread for the convent, the monastery and the villagers every day. So that’s what I did too. It was an amazing life. I felt like I had a purpose there. Eventually I had to make a choice; take my vows or come back home. It would have been extremely hypocritical of me to take my vows just because I was at peace staying in the convent. So I decided to come back home. Even if Mother Clara ran a very relaxed abbey, I realized my mom would have been disappointed if I chose a life that took me away from everything I knew and loved.”
This information marinated in the silence as I took the brown butter sauce off the stove. It gave Roman a chance to process everything, but one glance at him confirmed he wasn’t doing well on that front.
For a brief moment I regretted telling Roman any of this. Why did I think that was a good idea?A faint feeling of despair buzzed through me. Suddenly I wanted to brush it all away like stray crumbs from a tablecloth.
I remembered the first time I told Sergei my mom had been a nun. The look on his face was like he’d desecrated the Virgin Mary by sleeping with me. He wouldn’t touch me for the longest time after that. Not that it made any sense.
And now I feared that by some remote chance Roman might have the same reaction. I looked up at him, desperate to resuscitate the pleasant mood.