Free Magic by Danielle Steel Page A

specializing in international copyrights and intellectual property. He had gone to see a French writer who lived in Spain and was a longtime client. And Chantal volunteered that she was a screenwriter, and wrote scripts for documentaries, and fictional screenplays for movies.
    “I thought your name rang a bell,” he said as they got to the restaurant and he asked for a table on the terrace. It was next to the one where she and Jean-Philippe usually sat, and the owner recognized her, and then Xavier. “Do you come here often?” he asked her as they sat down, and he slipped his briefcase under the table as she nodded. “So do I. Maybe we’ve seen each other here before.” It was possible, and she wondered if he was right, and their paths were meant to cross. It seemed like a pleasant coincidence to her.
    He asked about her children at dinner, and she told him about them, and then he inquired about her work in detail. He was familiar with her movies and had seen several of them and her two prize-winning documentaries, which had impressed him a great deal. He seemed like a relaxed, interesting person who wasn’t full of himself and enjoyed her company. And she inquired about his work too. He asked if she was married, and she said she had been widowed when her children were small and had never remarried. And he said he had never been married. He volunteered that he had lived with a woman for seven years, and they had split up the year before.
    “Nothing dramatic happened, there’s no tragic story. She didn’t run off with my best friend. We both worked too hard, and had drifted apart. When we started to bore each other, we both agreed that it was time for a change. We’re still on very good terms. The relationship just played itself out.”
    “You were smart to recognize it, a lot of people don’t. They stay together, hating each other for years.”
    “I didn’t want to get to that point,” he said quietly. “This way we stayed friends. It worked out for the best. She’s madly in love right now, with a guy she met six months ago. I think they’re going to get married. She’s thirty-seven and desperate to have kids. That was always a major difference between us. I’m not sure I believe in marriage, and I’m fairly certain I don’t want kids.”
    “You might change your mind about that one day,” she said in a motherly tone, and he smiled.
    “I’m thirty-eight years old, and I figure that if I’ve never wanted them till now, I probably never will. I told her in the beginning. I think she thought she’d change my mind. She never did. And her biological clock was ticking loudly by the time she left, which was another good reason to end it when we did. I didn’t want to blow her chances to have kids, if that’s what she really wanted.” He sounded like a fair person, and a sensible, practical one. “I’ve never wanted to be a father. I’d rather put the time and effort into my relationship with a woman I love. Kids don’t stick around forever anyway. So you put all that love and time into them, and then they fly away. Hopefully, the right woman will stay.”
    “That’s very sensible of you,” Chantal said, smiling. “No one ever explained that to me, and I’ve wound up with children living all over the world. They’re having a great time, but I hardly ever see them, which isn’t a lot of fun for me. They live in Berlin, Hong Kong, and L.A.”
    “You must have done a good job with them for them to have enough confidence to spread their wings like that.” It was an interesting comment for him to make. Jean-Philippe always said the same thing.
    “Or chased them as far away as they could get,” she said, laughing, but he doubted it was that. She seemed like a good person, and he could tell she loved her kids, just from the way she spoke about them. She seemed to accept them for who they were, not who she hoped they would become, which impressed him.
    “My grandfather and father were lawyers,