We’ll Always Have Paris by Barbara Bretton
After twenty-eight years of marriage, Kate and Ryan Donovan called it quits. Two years later at their daughter’s wedding, they’re seeing each other in a whole new light—the City of Light, where romance beckons around every corner….
A Wedding in Paris
BARBARA BRETTON
“One of today’s best women’s fiction authors.”
—The Romance Reader
“A master storyteller…”
—Booklist
BARBARA BRETTON
Barbara Bretton wanted to be a writer from the moment she was old enough to hold a pencil. What could be better than spending all day with your imaginary friends and getting paid for it? She sold her first book (longer ago than she cares to admit) to Harlequin American Romance and was delighted when Love Changes went on to be a launch title. Even though she has written and published over forty novels since then, she remains deeply grateful (and a bit surprised) to find herself living her childhood dream.
We’ll Always Have Paris
Barbara Bretton
To Tina and Marsha with thanks
CONTENTS
The Engagement Party
Long Island—winter
LAUGHTER SPILLED out of the big yellow house at the end of Meadow Run Road. Curls of smoke rose from the chimney and spun upward toward the moon, which hung full and glowing in the ink-black sky. The promise of more snow was in the air, but that hadn’t kept anyone away. Cars filled the driveway, part of the front lawn, the street.
“Shh!” she whispered as they slipped deeper into the shadowy backyard where their girls had played as children. “They’ll hear us.”
He pulled her close and she melted into his embrace. “I don’t plan on doing a lot of talking, do you?”
She shivered and this time it wasn’t from the winter chill that blanketed the northeast. “No talking,” she agreed. Even though not talking was what had gotten them into trouble.
But who needed words when the moon was full and the champagne tasted like starlight? There was nothing like your daughter’s engagement party to remind you that once upon a time you had believed in happy endings, too. Romance was everywhere. The house was filled with music and laughter. The people they loved most in the world were gathered together to celebrate the wonders of love. You couldn’t help believing in forever on a night like this.
He smelled the way she remembered, of spice and heat and mountain lakes. He had laughed the first time she told him that. You’re a Long Island girl, he had reminded her. What do you know from mountain lakes? But she knew wonderful when she saw it and for a long, long time what they had together was very wonderful.
He took her hand and they darted around the weather-beaten shed where the girls had stowed their bicycles another lifetime ago. Hard snow crackled like glass beneath their feet. She slipped on a patch of ice, but his strong arms caught her before she hit the ground. He had never let her fall, not once.
Not even now, at the end.
He didn’t ask why she had stopped having the driveway salted.
She didn’t remind him that they didn’t live there anymore; their youngest daughter and her roommates did.
This was a moment out of time. Nothing before this moment existed. Nothing after it would matter.
There was only the two of them.
He opened the passenger door of his rental car and they scrambled inside.
“A Toyota?” she asked, brow raised.
“They were fresh out of ’74 Cutlasses.”
Her sigh filled the tiny space. “I haven’t thought about your dad’s Cutlass in years.”
“I have.” He unzipped his jacket and drew her inside its warmth. “We should have had it declared a national monument.”
How many hours had they spent in the back seat of that big blue car, young and wildly in love, burning with the kind of fever only the other’s touch could ease.
“They’re so young,” she whispered against his neck. “I hope they know what they’re doing.”
“We had three children when we were their age,” he reminded her.
“It’s a different world today. We were—” She shrugged inside his embrace. How did you describe a sense of inevitability that shook you right through to your marrow?
“Crazy,” he whispered against