Chapter 27 New York City, 1928—Bastien
When Bastien woke, nothing made sense. Where was he? What day of the week was it? What was his schedule for the day? Whose bed was he in?
Blank. Blank. Blank. So much for firing on all cylinders.
He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Nothing changed. The answers he sought were absent, replaced by two brutal truths. He hadn’t had sex before falling asleep, and he was still missing part of his leg.
The past several hours slammed back with the speed of an express train, and he recalled all that had transpired in a nanosecond.
The most beautiful woman he’d ever met had fallen asleep in his arms—a definite win.
But the evening didn’t end the way he wanted.
The mission had failed. Yet it ended honorably—with a chaste good-night kiss. That was his real victory.
He threw back the covers, his hand instinctively reaching for the cool metal of his prosthesis.
How much time did the microprocessor hydraulic ankle have left?
He did a mental calculation. He’d been here long enough to drain the battery completely.
Stability, not speed, became his sole focus.
He shuffled, every muscle tight. The fear of a fall was a tight coil of dread in his belly.
A broken bone, a head wound—disaster waited in every misstep.
He stood, balanced himself, then took a step, then another.
His hydraulic ankle, once seamless, now delivered a halting, unstable gait.
He struggled with his balance. If not for the chest of drawers, he would have face-planted.
The crash would surely alert Kaitlyn. He watched the door with bated breath, but she didn’t come running into the room.
With the help of his cane, he made it down the hallway to the kitchen, where he found keys and a note, which included Tony’s telephone number.
Dear Bastien,
I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.
When you didn’t wake, I couldn’t bring myself to disturb you.
I have a court appearance this morning, two appointments this afternoon, plus a meeting with Connie.
The key to the car is on the kitchen table, so you can return the Chevrolet to Papa. I’ll call the saloon later.
Would you like to have dinner at Ed Small’s Paradise at midnight? It would give you time to play again, to charm Papa’s customers the way you do. I’m glad you don’t have to lie to him—though I wish, just a little, that you had a reason to.
With love, Kaitlyn
He rubbed the back of his neck. His skin was tight with frustration, even as a quiet certainty settled in his gut that he’d taken the right path.
The primal urge to chase Kaitlyn battled with his resolve, a low thrum beneath his ribs.
The real danger was that he wasn’t sure he could summon the same strength a second time.
He and Kaitlyn shared an immediate attraction, a current that pulled them together.
He burned with something deeper than simple lust. It was a sense of knowing, like recognizing a familiar song after a lifetime of only hearing the melody in dreams. He understood the world’s cynicism about love at first sight—that it was often infatuation, a cheap imitation—but this felt solid, rooted, undeniable.
Soulmate stuff—an idea he didn’t trust and didn’t dare say out loud.
The word felt clumsy, too vast, too impossibly optimistic for a man like him.
He’d never allowed himself to believe in such things, never thought it possible to find the missing half of a map he didn’t even know he was holding.
The heavy brass pendulum of the grandfather clock thumped against the silence, a metallic heartbeat that grated on his nerves. Noon. The word did little to quiet the frantic hammering in his chest, a pathetic attempt to impose order on a world rapidly spinning out of control.
Relieved that he didn’t have to feel guilty, he called the saloon. When Tony answered, Bastien said, “Morning, Tony. This is Bastien.”
“I thought you were coming here.”
“I just woke up. Kaitlyn left me a note. Looks like she went to work a while ago.”
“Did you have any luck finding your sister?”
“No, but we left a message for her if she shows up.”
“Are you bringing the car back?”
“As soon as I get dressed, I’ll head to the saloon and spend the day there. My prosthesis quit working, and I barely survived my first steps. I’ll hang out with you instead of searching for Marcelle.”
“If your foot doesn’t work, how can you drive?”
A shudder ran down Bastien’s spine. How could he forget that? “I can’t. Your car has a clutch, and the driver needs both feet to operate the pedals. That means I’ll stay here until Kaitlyn comes back this afternoon.”
“Does she have any food in the house? She doesn’t cook for herself.”
Bastien opened a cabinet and found a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. “I can make a peanut butter sandwich.” He opened the refrigerator. “And there’s milk. I’ll survive.”
“Barely.” Tony hung up the phone, chuckling.
At least he wasn’t yelling at Bastien—whether for sleeping with his daughter or not.
With a sandwich, a glass of milk, and an apple, Bastien sat at the kitchen table and read every word of The New York Times, including the ads.
When he finished, he washed his dishes before stumbling into the living room to find copies of Time Magazine and Life Magazine.
Though he intended to read, the overstuffed sofa swallowed him whole, its warmth a sudden comfort.
His focus fractured almost immediately. The room’s quiet and the soft cushions conspired against him.
Weariness washed over him and his thoughts dissolved like sugar in warm tea, until he finally succumbed to the dark pull of sleep.
A couple of hours later, motivation finally struck. He couldn’t risk looking like a lazy slug when Kaitlyn arrived. He finished his shower, the steam clinging to his skin, and cinched a fresh towel low on his hips, stepping into the hallway just as the front door clicked shut.
Kaitlyn froze. Her gaze dropped, then slowly, deliberately, climbed the length of his body to lock on the raw intensity he knew burned in his eyes. The air felt thick with an unspoken question. His chest tightened, pulling in a deep, ragged breath that he expelled in a gust of intense desire.
Her coat, hat, and shopping bag slumped to the floor, forgotten. She lunged across the room, the distance vanishing in three fierce strides. “I brought something to eat.”
“I know,” he growled. “It’s standing right in front of me.”
She gave him a teasing gasp. “Are you the big, bad wolf?”
In his best bad wolf voice, he said, “I’ll be whatever fairy tale character you want me to be.”
“I don’t want you to be anyone other than who you are.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “The sexiest, most gracious, talented man I’ve ever known, and I won’t accept no from you this time.”
“You won’t?”
“You can’t say no to me. I don’t care if you’re here for six more hours or six more days. I want you, Bastien LeBlanc.”
One swift motion.
He pivoted, pinning her against the unforgiving wall with one hand caging both her arms above her head.
Then he claimed her mouth. The kiss was deep, bold, and reckless.
He injected every raw emotion she provoked into that moment—the fury of his frustration, the depth of his yearning, the hot intensity of his lust.
It wasn’t just a kiss. It was an impact.
A lightning strike that shorted out Bastien’s brain, leaving a searing buzz in its wake.
A moan tore from his throat as he plundered Kaitlyn’s lips with an insatiable hunger.
He was a man drowning, and she was the last breath.
She was everything—his absolution, his destiny.
His tongue charted unfamiliar territory, tasting the salt and silk of her skin. Sensation flashed over his arms, surging across his chest and down his spine, settling into a deep, electric hum in his groin.
Her lips parted in a quick intake of breath, a silent invitation.
His hunger needed no second prompting. He consumed the space between them with a fierce, possessive pressure.
He buried his fingers in the soft weight of her hair, tilting her head back to open her face to his gaze.
Separated only by a thin, damp linen towel, his body pressed against hers.
A low moan tore from her throat as she urgently wiggled, wrenching her hands from his grip and immediately sinking her fingers into his damp waves, pulling him impossibly closer.
The air crackled with a silent understanding.
This desperate embrace could only culminate in one inevitable ending.
The phone rang.
He lifted his mouth. “God knows I want this.”
The phone rang again.
“Let it ring,” she whispered against his lips.
“We can’t. It’s Tony.” Bastien slowly let her go, stepped back and lost his balance, terrifying him.
She reached to steady him, and he clung to her. “Has your battery stopped working?”
“Answer the phone.” He staggered toward the guest room white knuckling the wall for balance, a crushing weight of unworthiness and inadequacy settling on him.
He hadn’t felt that profound despair since he had first clawed his way back from the trauma of losing his leg.
All those initial feelings of never walking again came roaring back with visceral force.
He despised them and desperately tried to bury the suffocating reminders.
When he entered the bedroom, he sat heavily on the bed and picked up his saxophone. He needed to reclaim his identity as the man he had become, not the man imprisoned in his mind’s dark places.