The Call Boy I Met in Paris – Episode 77
Justin held out his hand, but Sophie did not take it. “You should not be here. Your mother made the condition clear.”
“Her condition saved Susan, and I am grateful for that. It did not end our marriage.”
“She will never accept me.”
“She already has.” Justin’s certainty made Sophie search his face. “I made her understand that controlling my life would not protect me. It would only cost her a son.”
“You threatened to abandon your mother?”
“I told her the truth. If I cannot be with you, I will not be with anyone else.”
The declaration was everything Sophie had wanted during three lonely years, yet fear refused to release her. “Too much has happened.”
“Then we carry it together.” He moved close enough to take the wallet gently from her hands. “I will not let anything separate us again.”
Justin glanced around the café terrace. “Do you remember this place?”
“This is where we met after I mistook you for a call boy.”
“Not the first time.”
Sophie frowned. Justin described a younger American tourist who had been robbed and insulted by a French stranger nearby. A young woman had intervened, offered him money, and disappeared before he learned more than her name.
The memory returned slowly: rain on the pavement, a furious Frenchman, and a handsome foreigner too proud to admit he had nothing left. She had helped and forgotten the moment amid the chaos of her own life.
“It was you,” she whispered.
“It was me.” Justin smiled for the first time since appearing. “Your dearest husband.”
“You recognized me at the hotel?”
“Immediately. You did not remember me, and then you offered me two thousand dollars for a very different service.” His smile widened at her embarrassment. “I decided fate had an odd sense of humor.”
Sophie laughed despite the tears in her eyes. The contract marriage had never begun with strangers after all. It had begun years earlier with one impulsive act of kindness neither of them understood.
Justin offered his hand again. This time, Sophie placed hers in it.