Free The Queen Gene by Jennifer Coburn Page B

asides in French. I hated when people did that.
    Before I could fret about our relationship dynamic, Jack offered to show our guests to their house. “You have a beautiful home,” Jacquie said. “Rustic and yet modern.” I knew I liked her. Those were the exact words I told the decorator when he asked about the look we wanted for our home.
    Fifteen minutes later, I had poured four glasses of wine and started a fire. Funny how Jacquie saying that we’d achieved a modern rustic ambiance made me want to create more of it. Suddenly I was setting logs in the fireplace and breaking out the Frank Lloyd Wright coasters.
    Jacquie settled into Maxime’s arms as they sat on the couch. “We made it, cheri ,” he said, brushing his wife’s long hair with his fingers. She had let it down while the two got settled in the guest house.
    “Rough trip?” Jack asked.
    “You can say that again,” affirmed Jacquie.
    “The past five years has been a rough trip,” Maxime said. No one followed up, lest Jack and I seem like nosy Americans. By midnight they filled us in on how they met seven years ago when Jacquie went to see her then-boyfriend playing soccer one weekend. “I saw her standing on the sidelines and I thought to myself, ‘Who is this beautiful girl cheering for the wrong team?’” Jacquie giggled.
    “Maxime was amazing,” she recalled. “You couldn’t help notice him on the field. I was stunned when he came over at the end of the game and asked me if I understood how it pained him to see his future wife rooting against him,” she said. “I thought he was just being, well, French. He told me that all his life he had a vision of the woman he would marry and I was her. I laughed, but he said that I should at least give him a chance, and insisted that I come to watch his match the next week. He said, ‘You weel zee, cheri, next week, you weel come and watch for me and I weel score zees time. You weel zee.’ I thought the man was crazy, but charming.”
    “Correct and correct,” Maxime said. “Tell them what happened the next week.”
    Jacquie smiled. “I came to the match.”
    “And?” Maxime became animated.
    “And he was brilliant.”
    “Three goals,” he said. “I have never played so hard in my life. She was my good luck charm.”
    Somehow, I expected them to have met in front of the Mona Lisa or at Monet’s gardens. I suppose it was a cliché fantasy, but I liked it.
    Maxime continued. “Then the next week, I went to her apartment to pick her up for dinner, but I was early so I stopped into an art shop, and I see this man putting tiny pin pricks of ink onto paper. I had been painting all my life, but never even considered ink drawings before — and never with the pin pricks. I brought her back to the shop with me, and she told me to give it a try. I said no, but the next week after we went to see a film, she gave me a bottle of black ink and a needle pen. I figured, what have I got to lose? I can invite this beautiful girl to my studio and convince her to take off her clothes perhaps?”
    Jacquie burst into laughter and swatted him with our couch pillow. “You were trying to seduce me?! You are such a rat!”
    “Trying, nothing. I think if you will recall —” he started.
    “Maxime!” she scolded.
    He bowed his head in playful deference to his wife. “So you see my wife has brought me nothing but good luck since the day I met her.”
    “It’s been a hard few years, though,” Jacquie told us with a serious tone.
    “It has, but it was Jacquie who found this beautiful guest house for us to live,” Maxime said buoyantly. “Life will give us troubles, but as long as I have you, I know it will turn out for the better.”
    I glanced at Jack, whose eyes had beaten me to the gaze. We contained our smiles. It was always comforting to be with other couples who’ve been through hard times, but were still optimistic about their future together.
    In bed that night I told him I thought we made the