Game On

chapter 28


MAMMOTH RELIEF. LUC CLOSED HIS eyes and let it sink in. He’d been so worried when he’d heard her come in before the game ended. The tears, the sobs, Clara was practically hysterical and he’d never felt so helpless. All manner of worst-case scenarios had gone through his head from assault to brain tumor.

A broken sniffer, he could deal with. Sure, it sucked, but considering where his imagination had taken him, it wasn’t so horrible.

“So all this time you’ve been—”

“Lying,” she said, her voice squeaky and fragile.

“I was going to say ‘winging it.’ ”

“That’s putting it nicely.”

“I’m just…wow. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am telling you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked, put out that she hadn’t trusted him with her story.

“Obvious reasons, I should think.”

“Sacré bleu, I can barely get my head around this,” he said. “So you’ve been critting these restaurants without really tasting the food. How did you manage to pull it off? And what happened when you left the hospital?”

“I pulled it off with the help of Biscuit. The original one. I could barely tolerate the mutt when I got saddled with him. I was preparing for my first assignment abroad, to Lyon of all places, gastronomic capital of the world, when my aunt passed away. I was presented with my inheritance—the keys to Aunt Jude’s house and her dog—just after the memorial service, hours before my train. I had no choice but to take him with me. I quickly found out that Biscuit didn’t eat kibble from a bowl on the floor. My aunt was a chef, and she allowed her substitute child to dine on her kitchen creations.”

“Is she the reason you got into restaurant reviews?”

“Mm-hmm. She was fabulous, worked all over the world in her youth and taught me everything I know about international cuisine.”

“She taught you to cook?”

“No silly. To eat.”

He couldn’t see her clearly, just the outline of her face and contour of one cheek, but unable to help himself, he leaned forward and kissed her impaired little nose. “Back to Biscuit.”

“Right, well, it started out to be a joke, mentioning in my column that my dog liked this or that, but Biscuit had quite well developed tastes. My readers—everybody really, except for Lydia—thought it was a gimmick, that when I wrote about him wagging furiously at the smell of garlic, yipping once for tarragon and twice for curry, I was embellishing. But it was true. So when I lost my nose, I carried on, not smelling a thing, and letting Biscuit and my oft-invited dinner guests do most of the work.”

“But you can still taste some things, right? I imagine it’s like having a head cold?”

“Yes, exactly. Like when your sinuses are stuffed and someone gives you a bowl of chicken soup. You know it’s hot and soothing, you know the texture of the noodles, the mush of the carrots, but you can’t comprehend the subtle flavors, like a sprig of dill. Smell allows us to appreciate the complexity of flavor, so although my tastebuds can detect a sweet, sour, salty, bitter, hot-spicy, like peppers, and a bit of savoury, I’m shut out to the layers, the very fundamentals of gastronomy.”

“I don’t quite know what to say, love. You had me completely fooled. Except now that I know, things are making a bit more sense.” Her passion for breath mints, the way she made him smell his food and describe it in detail, not for his sake but for hers. He felt as if a fog lifted.

“D-do you hate me?” He felt her chest shudder as she inhaled.

“No,” he said, cupping the hand that clung to the ball of soggy tissues. “No, I don’t hate you. Why would I hate you? I think you’re an amazing woman who tried to make the best of her circumstances.”

“An amazing woman who’s a fraud.”

He trailed his fingers through her hair and caressed her soft cheek with the back of his knuckles. “So you can’t smell anything? Nothing at all? Like the fact that I haven’t taken a shower yet tonight?”

“No, and so help me God, if you make one fart joke, I shall throttle you,” she said. It was so good to hear the smile in her voice. She nuzzled his shoulder and sighed. “It’s like watching life in a movie, like I’m not really experiencing it. You don’t appreciate your sense of smell until it’s gone. I wake up every morning, do the whole bathing routine, but still get a niggling feeling I’m forgetting something—like deodorant or perfume. Or what if my breath is still bad?”

“Remember the night we met there were some men sitting on the beach smoking cigars? You said ‘I used to love the smell of cigars’ in past tense, not ‘I love the smell of cigars’ and I recall thinking that you misspoke.”

“And after we…you know, made out in the hallway, you said something about a fishy smell—”

“Merde!” He slapped his forehead. He knew there had been more to it than she’d let on. “You thought I was talking about you?”

Clara pulled the pillow over her face and nodded. Her words were muffled, but he heard every one. “I had to…to take a shower. I was mortified!”

He pulled the pillow away. “You smelled amazing, Clara. God, if I’d only known,” he said. “I was referring to the guy that walked past us. The one who interrupted our… He reeked like day-old fish. From the minute the elevator door opened, I could barely breathe.”

She looked up at him, the light from the other room catching the shine on her pupils.

“Do you want to know what you smell like to me?” Luc whispered.

Clara nodded.

He breathed deeply. “Like towels that have been hanging on the clothesline, warmed by the sun and scented by a fresh breeze. I want to hold my nose to you and inhale the summer day right out of you.”

He rubbed his nose against hers and kissed her mouth.

“Wait,” she said, turning aside. “Do I have onion breath?”

“If I said yes but told you that you taste absolutely delicious, would you let me keep kissing you?”

She gave him a sombre laugh and placed her palm against his chest, over his thrumming heart.

“Thank you. Thank you for saying that.” A heavy sigh told him she wasn’t finished. “I can’t do this anymore, Luc. I’m tired of the lies, keeping up the pretences. I think it’s best if I resign from EuroNow, from BMG.”

He went absolutely rigid. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t.” Luc sat up, feeling as though he’d been doused with ice water. “Not now, not yet.”

“There’s no other choice. I’ve had months to deal with this, months to ignore it—that hasn’t worked, by the way—and I can’t go on lying to everyone. I’ve got to do it before Bartel finds out, before it goes public and I’m shown up for a fraud.”

“Public? Whoa, what makes you think it’ll go public? Who else knows?”

“Lydia, you—”

“Charlie?”

“He does now. That’s why I was recalled. He’s in an absolute dither and I’m only back here with you because he’s terrified of Bartel finding out. He told me to finish the blog tour, that he’d decide what to do with me when I return to England, but the more I’ve stewed over this, I realize there’s only one possible option. Come morning, I’m going to draft up a letter of resignation to BMG. I needn’t give a reason, but it’ll take the pressure off of Charlie.” Clara reached up and skimmed her fingertips along Luc’s stubbled cheek. “And me.”

“But you can’t!” Great. Now he felt hysterical.

“I have to. It’s not just my and little EuroNow’s reputations at stake anymore, it’s BMG. It’s you and Riley and everyone there. If this got out, it could bring lawsuits. Charlie was right. I didn’t think about the implications because I was so caught up in my own little drama, but if this goes public, oh my God, Luc, if this goes public, do you know what a litigious mess there would be? I might end up in jail for fraud. I could single-handedly bring down a media empire.”

She was right. He didn’t know anything about European law, but every American establishment they critiqued, whether the reviews were good or bad, would be holding out their bank bags for BMG settlements.

“But why now, Clara? There’s only a few more weeks left. Why tonight? What does this have to do with you leaving the game early and coming home in tears?”

“That has everything to do with who took your ticket and the fact that she’s using the information against me.”

“She?” he said. But Clara didn’t need to answer. “Valentina.” His fingers curled into fists.

He should have known she had something to do with this, that her sudden appearance was more than a matter of Bartel’s convenience, more than a simple coincidence. Luc’s head felt ready to explode.

“Tell me everything,” he said and stood to pace. He didn’t want Clara touching him when his body throbbed with anger. And as she related the details of the encounter, his blood turned to lava. “I’ll take care of this,” he said, careful to keep his voice from betraying his rage.

“No, it’s fine, Luc.”

“No, it’s not fine. It’s definitely not fine.” Luc wanted to put his fist through the wall, but instead pulled his phone from his pocket, his fingers shaking as he tried to punch in her number. “I could throttle that f*cking bi—”

“Stop!” Clara said, snatching his phone away. “This is not about you, it’s not your problem, and I’ve no intention of letting you interfere.” She tossed the phone onto the bed. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

What? She was nuts if she thought he’d sit by and let Valentina harass her. “I’ll do no such—”

“Promise me! This is my monster. And the only way I know how to slay it is by beheading. If I resign, she can’t use this against me.”

Luc huffed. “Beheading the monster. Nice imagery.”

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“But you can’t leave now. I won’t let you abandon me in the middle of this blasted tour.” Luc grabbed her upper arms, reminded himself to be gentle and not shake her in his blind rage over Val. “I’ll figure something out, okay?”

“No. Just no. I can’t and won’t ask you to do that. I’ve asked too much of everyone already. Lydia’s probably booked her plane ticket by now. This all has to stop.”

Luc dropped her arms and dug his fingers into his hair. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her, God damn it. “Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning? This could have been much easier on both of us.”

“How was I supposed to work that in? Nice to meet you, can’t wait to work together. And by the way, I can’t smell shit. Bloody hell, Luc, we hardly got off to a good start if you recall.”

“Later then, once we’d, y’know, found our stride.”

“Probably for the same reason you weren’t forthcoming about your issue with public venues.”

Touché. He shrugged, which was his own way of conceding that yes, he was an a*shole.

“Besides,” she said in a softer voice, one that quelled his inner beast. “I didn’t want to bother you with my problems when you were dealing with your own.”

Luc framed her face, brushed her lips with his thumb. “But I’m much more interested in yours.”