Free La Vie en Bleu by Jody Klaire Page B

crisp, yet every place I’d been abroad smelled
like . . . well . . . adventure.
    “Rebecca is asking if you would like to have bacon in your
omelette?”
    Rebecca knew full well that I always had bacon in my
omelette and was checking on me. So much for decor. I couldn’t give a crap
where I was as anywhere Berne happened to be in was perfect. “You were set on
the gendarmerie. Why did you really come back?”
    Berne smiled. “ Mon papa , he had a stroke. My brother was
already doing so well in the force that it seemed only right that I come back
to help.”
    I stared at her with the news. I couldn’t imagine how much she’d
been through. She adored her father, as had I.
    “It is okay,” she said with her trademark effortless shrug. “He is
a little slower, a little bossier, mais . . . he has good health.”
    What must he think of me? I was sure that he must have known Berne
and I were much more than friends. “Does he recognise me, I mean today?”
    “ Oui . You are hard to forget.”
    I made the mistake of meeting her eyes. Love or lust or whatever
went on between us was meant to fade over time, was meant to be smothered by my
abandonment. Instead the space between us seemed to me as though it may shimmer
and pulse with the force of my own feeling. Oh, I was in trouble, real trouble.
Leaving was supposed to stop this, was supposed to drive these feelings away.
    “Ladies.” Rebecca cleared her throat, frowning at me once more.
“You ready to eat or what?”
    “Yes.” I snapped my eyes away from Berne. “Yes . . . starving.”
    The soft chuckle from Berne as I walked by told me that she
understood exactly how I felt. Earlier, I wondered how we’d get through the
project together without me losing myself but right now, I would be happy just
to get through dinner.

 
    Chapter Six
     
    I WAS ARTFUL in avoiding any interrogation from Rebecca by
feigning tiredness that night. I awoke to the sound of a cockerel crowing and
fumbled around searching for my alarm and smacking it for snooze. Berne had
been ever present in my dreams throughout the night leaving me wanting nothing
more than to escape into my head a little longer.
    We’d met when I had been sent by my father to study with her in
Marseille. She was working on a major renovation in the city and I could learn
from her, get great experience, and get first-hand knowledge of France and its
language.
    Well, they did say that the best way to learn French was to fall
in love with a French person.
    How lost I had felt in those first few days of talks and
greetings. My father’s friend had taken me around and showed me little places
he knew of. There had been no sign of this mysterious Berne Chamonix who I was
meant to work alongside. Then came a hand-written note in her swirling letters,
simply her address and she signed it “B” at the bottom—
    Cock-er-doodle-doo!
    I blinked open one eye, that wasn’t five minutes. No fair. I hit
the button again. Berne swam before my eyes. She played the piano in the heat
of the summer storms, the windows wide open, her slow, taunting melodies lured
me in. That’s how I’d discovered her, running from the rain, from the
lightning—
    Cock-er-doodle-doo!
    What? No, no, that wasn’t enough time. I slammed the button on the
clock once more. That sound, an aching call. So smooth and haunting, calling me
closer, closer . . . her skin glistened with the rain, her hair wild, she
turned—
    Cock-er-doodle-doo!
    I was going to hurl the stupid thing across the room. I groaned
and opened my eyes. The scent of fresh bread, warm summer smells filled my
nostrils.
    And, ow, ow, ow, did my nose feel like a foreign object. The
cockerel alarm continued to taunt me with its cheery cries. Who was that happy
about morning anyhow?
    I glared at my clock. The alarm wasn’t even on. It was eight
o’clock.
    “I don’t work anymore,” I told it. “I’m a bum.”
    The cry sounded again and I rubbed my eyes, wincing as the skin
pulled