Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

She couldn’t leave the simmering sugar pot—if she missed the timing by one minute to put in the honey and lemon juice, she’d ruin the whole thing. He’d watched her making and selling the wax to the women of the neighbourhood over the years. A widow, she had thus earned money to add to her social security income so she could bring up her daughters, and him. Ever since he’d gotten his first pay check, he’d helped her financially. Her daughters did the same, making sure Katy lacked for nothing, but she had a faithful clientèle for her wax and didn’t want to let them down.

A sense of emotional release took over when he stepped farther into the council flat, his shoulders automatically growing loose. He roamed his gaze over the many pictures on a side table in the front room. He was in most of the shots, along with three beautiful, dark-haired, and golden-skinned women. His sisters—Aida, Leila, and Nadia.

Every time he came there, he clearly recalled the first day he had set foot into this house.

He’d been ten years old when the Bashirs moved into the building. He lived two floors down with an unemployed father who only cared for beer and football, and with an absentee mother who, half the time, didn’t seem to know she had a husband, let alone a son.

Aida being the same age as he, she was in his class at the local school. Most of the time, he did a runaway act on the classes, not giving a damn about learning. What good would an education be in a place where the most a boy could aspire to amounted to belonging to the most bullying gang in the area?

Aida had found him on the landing of the stairs one evening. His father had been drunk, as usual, and his mother gone. There’d been nothing to eat at home, and he’d grown sick of hearing the rambles of the old man. So he’d come out, to stumble onto the path of the gorgeous, raven-haired girl who had every boy panting after her at school.

“We’re in the same class, aren’t we?” she’d asked.

He’d grunted something in reply.

“You look like you haven’t eaten in ages.”

He’d wanted to tell her to piss off, but he hadn’t been able to, not wanting to hurt her even when his ego had screamed he was old enough to take care of his own business. Aida had left, only to return a few minutes later with a plate of
couscous
and
tagine
. When he’d failed to take the offered plate, she had left it on the steps and quietly returned to her flat.

The minute he grew sure she had left, he’d fallen on the food, downing it all in seconds to stave off his hunger. He couldn’t remember even tasting the meal. Not knowing what to do with the plate, he had carried it back to her doorstep and left it there.

For weeks, Katy and Aida had fed him the same way, until one night, he knew he couldn’t keep on being such an ungrateful bastard. So when he went to leave the plate, he knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer.

The first time he’d met Katy face to face... She’d stared at him for what had seemed an eternity, before she had opened the door fully, welcoming him into her home, her family, and her heart.

Before he knew it, he’d started spending every waking moment at her place. She brought her children up with an iron hand, and he willingly fell under her grip, too. When chores needed to be done, he did his full share. And when the time came to do homework, he sat at the same table as Aida and Leila, toddler Nadia playing on a rug at their feet, and started to pay attention to the nonsense the teacher spouted in school. Slowly but surely, the nonsense began to make sense, and he began earning decent grades.

She’d changed his life, and for that, he owed her everything.

Gerard snapped out of the spell and went into the kitchen, where Katy stood in front of a huge, cast-iron pot. He came up behind her, bent to her diminutive height, and dropped a kiss on her now-grey hair, his arms closing around her as he hugged her to him.

“
Ah, mon fils
,” she said, love resonating in the words. A deeply religious woman, she always said God hadn’t blessed her womb with a son because He knew He had Gerard in store for her later on.

He’d cried the day she’d told him that, on his eleventh birthday; the first time anyone had thought it necessary to celebrate the day he was born.

“How are you?” he asked, still holding her close.

She had no time to reply, since a small rocket had barged into the room, heading straight for his legs.

“
Tonton G!
” the little boy screamed.

Gerard released her and bent to scoop the little man into his arms. “Hey there, big guy.” He dropped a loud kiss on the boy’s cheek. Samir laughed and hugged his neck with his thin arms.

Samir was his youngest sister Nadia’s son. As a single mother, she had a full plate, and Gerard tried his best to be there for the boy as a paternal presence. “What are you doing at home today? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Mommy said since I was sick, I could stay with Gramma.”

He looked at Katy. “Sick?”

“Nothing but some fever.”

“Come on,
Tonton
. You’ve got to come see my new toy trucks.”

“Go on,” Katy said. “He won’t let you go until you do.”

She was right. Samir could be very persuasive when he wanted to. His arsenal usually consisted of over-enthusiastic shrieks and jumping around like a rabbit on too much caffeine.

Before he left the kitchen, he turned to his mother. “Tell me you’ve got
couscous
and lamb
tagine
.”

She chuckled. “That, I have. I take out a plate for you?”

“Could you pack it? I’ve got to get going real quick.”

Try as he wanted, he still couldn’t bring himself to talk about any woman in his life with her. It would feel too much like a Templier meeting Guillaume de Paris, confessor of French King Philippe IV back in the thirteenth century, at the time of the Medieval Inquisition. He’d seen his sisters go through the drill, and he did not want that for himself. So he stuck to the safe option and let her think the food would be only for him—when Katy packed food for one, she usually packed enough to eat over the course of two or three meals. That would cover Amelia’s plate.

He followed Samir into Nadia’s room and spent the next ten minutes listening to the boy brief him on the merits of one monster truck over another. He didn’t recall being so eloquent and knowledgeable about anything when he’d been four. But Samir was a lively and bright kid who, thank goodness, didn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that he came from a one-parent household and the father he’d never known was serving a fifty-year sentence at
La Santé
, one the most notorious prisons in Paris.

Having gotten his fill of truck information, and needing to get going, he hugged the little boy goodbye and went back to the kitchen, where he found Katy putting enough food for a regiment into enormous plastic containers. Sitting down at the table where he’d learned his lessons and eaten all his meals between the ages of ten and eighteen, he voiced his concerns. “He’s warm. Have you taken him to see a doctor?”

She laughed softly. “Gerard, it’s just a little temperature. If he’s incubating a virus, Nadia didn’t want him to be a risk for the other kids at the day care.”

“Still,” he said. “His skin is hot, and he’s sweating.”

“There you go,” she replied. “It’s a sign the fever’s coming down.
Chéri
, I brought up four children. Credit me with some sound judgment, will you?”

Reluctant to admit it, he had to bite the bullet. She was right. “Well, okay, but if he doesn’t get better, take him to a doctor. Call me if you need a driver. Anytime.”

She gave him one of those glances from under her lashes, the one clearly asking,
who’s the parent here?

Putain
, he hated that.

She laughed. “So,” she asked. “What’s her name?”

“Who?”
Merde
. She’d caught him. But how?

“The woman you’re taking the food to.”

“What makes you think it’s not for me, like I told you? I need to rush back to the
commissariat
—”

“Gerard.”

One word from her and he clearly understood what she meant to say—
stop bullshitting me
.

“I know it’s got to be a woman because if it were just you, you’d wolf down the plate right here while still standing. And if it was for Rashid, there’d be no need for me to pack up anything because that boy would’ve been on your heels when you came in.”

Gerard sighed. She should’ve been a cop. Her powers of deduction proved phenomenal.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

What did he tell her?
She thinks her name is Amelia, but she isn’t sure, and I think it’s Mirka, but I’m not sure
?

“Dear Lord, what is it with you young people today? Don’t tell me you don’t even know her name!”

At her outrage, he laughed; he could hardly be ascribed to the ‘young people’ crowd, being closer to forty than thirty. But to her, he’d always be a scruffy teen who didn’t know any better. He stood, went to her, and dropped a kiss on her weathered cheek. “I know her name. It’s just—” he paused, “—complicated.”

“When is it not with you lot? I swear you will all kill me before my time.”

He chuckled. “You’ll outlive us all, you’ll see.”

“God forbid,” she replied.

He nodded towards the now-full and closed containers. “May I?”

She gave an audible sigh. “Go ahead.”

He picked up the boxes and placed them in the plastic bag she held open. After a hug and kiss, he turned to leave, but she stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.

“Whoever she is, I hope she makes you happy.”

I hope so, too.
But at the moment, happiness didn’t seem possible. The woman in question represented too much of a mystery to provide anything more than problems and complications.

“I would want you to meet her,” he found himself saying, not knowing where the words came from. “I think you’d like her.”

“I’m sure I will,” Katy replied. “She’s won you over, hasn’t she? She’s got to be a good woman, then.”

Of that, he couldn’t be sure. Good, bad—she could be both, he supposed. As long as they didn’t have the answers regarding her past, neither of them would know where they stood.

***

Marseille.
Quartier de Saint Giniez
in the
8ème arrondissement

Tuesday, December 18. 2:24 p.m.

Gerard found her vegging out in front of the television when he got home. Not good. Her spirit seemed to have deserted her. He grabbed the remote to turn the screen off.

“No, wait! I need to know if she’ll be able to seduce him.”

He blinked. “Who?”

She sat up straighter and pointed at the TV. “The woman in the story. She’s set out to go lure her ex-boyfriend who’s now her best friend’s husband and see if he still has feelings for her, as he’s claimed on a drunken binge earlier.”

He threw a look at the clock. Close to two-thirty. No way would the show continue beyond the half-hour. “You won’t find out today.”

She gasped. “But she’s so close to the goal.”

He sighed. Could she really be so clueless? “That’s exactly why they won’t show you what happens today. You need to wait for tomorrow’s episode.” One glance at the screen and he sighed. “For your information, she’s been chasing this guy on and off for the past twenty years. She’s not gonna get him today.”

“How would you know this?” Surprise rang heavy in her voice.

A curse escaped him. He’d said too much. No way out of the full confession now. “Because my mother is a rabid fan, and I spent so much time with that soap playing at home, I was better acquainted with this lot than with my own—”
parents
, he’d been about to say, but he stopped short; some things were better left unsaid.

The image on the television faded and the credits started rolling, the mind-numbing music screeching into the room. Watching her face scrunch in a frown, he wanted to laugh. “You don’t watch a lot of TV, do you? What planet you from again?”

She turned fiery eyes on him. “That’s not funny.”

Her tone sounded serious, and surprisingly, hurt. He shouldn’t have teased her. “I’m sorry. Come on.” He nodded towards the kitchenette.

“Gerard, we have to talk.”

“We will. We can hold a very good conversation over lunch.”

She followed him to the table, where he emptied the bag of food. Scents—a hint of lemon and the sweetness of cooked, dried fruits; the distinctive, heady fragrance of spicy lamb from the
tagine
—rose up in a delicate cloud around them as he pried the plastic boxes open. After dishing out two servings, he placed a plate of
couscous
covered with
tagine
before her and then sat down in front of his own plate.

“Go on. Eat,” he told her when she appeared to hesitate.