Page 36 of To Hold and Protect

“So I hear.”

“What’s that smile for?”

“The first day when Everly came over, she told me that you were a fireman and an artist. I figured it was a hobby and that you probably sold some art to family and friends, and maybe at local arts and crafts festivals. I was way off base, I think.”

That had him smiling, too. “A bit.” Tristan had interrupted them on her studio tour, and they’d left before she had a chance to see the piece on his easel. She would have realized from even that half-finished piece that art wasn’t just his hobby.

“Sorry for interrupting. Go on with your story.”

He let his mind drift to the day that would change his life forever. “I met Simone Marchand in an art class in Paris. The next day when I arrived, she’d moved her easel next to mine.”

“Was she any good?”

“Extremely so, but she was lazy. There were things I learned about her much later that I wished I’d known then, but my impression at the time was that she had talent but lacked ambition. That for her, art was just a hobby.”

“Did that bother you?”

“It seemed a shame that she was wasting her talent, but it didn’t bother me at all. Art is a personal thing, and if it’s a hobby someone enjoys and that’s all they want from it, that’s great. Anyway, she let me know that she was interested in me, and we started seeing each other. A month after we met, we moved in together.”

“Did you love her?”

He stared down at the toes she still had in Ember’s fur. “I loved who I thought she was. You know what they say about hindsight. Simone is a narcissist and selfish to the extreme, something she was an expert at hiding. Once my eyes were opened and I could see her for what she was, I realized the signs had been there, but I hadn’t wanted to see them. She’s very good at pretending to be what she thinks you want.”

“What happened?”

“She found out she was pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but we were happy. Well, I was, and I thought she was. I wanted to get married, but she kept making excuses, then weird things started happening. One of my paintings disappeared, then another. It had to be her taking them, right? When I asked her about them, she accused me of not trusting her.

“I thought her crying and mood swings were a pregnant woman hormonal thing, so I tried even harder to make her happy. She was carrying my baby, you know. Around the time she was five months, personal stuff went missing. A shirt she’d given me for Christmas, several sketchbooks of my drawings, a silver bracelet I’d bought after selling my first piece, even a chair we’d bought together.” He shrugged. “It reached a point I couldn’t keep ignoring things disappearing, and we had an epic battle over it.”

“What was her explanation?”

He set his empty beer bottle on the floor. “She refused to explain anything. She would disappear for hours at a time, and then one night, she didn’t even bother to come home. When she returned the next day, we had a fight that lasted for days.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“Not then. Some more of my art went missing.” He glanced at her. “I was losing it, Willow. I didn’t know what to do. If she hadn’t been pregnant, I would have walked away, but I just couldn’t do that. I’d felt my baby kick, had the sonogram, and knew we were having a little girl.” Although they hadn’t planned for Simone to get pregnant, the minute he knew they were having a baby, he was all in. He’d held that sonogram in his hand, stared at it, and fallen instantly in love.

“Of course you couldn’t walk away from your child. What happened then?”

“I decided I needed to find out what was going on, so I followed her one night.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I don’t blame you. In your place, I would have done the same thing.”

Her hand was warm and calming, and when she took it away, he wanted to snatch it back. “Long story short, she was seeing another man. I followed her to an apartment, and he was standing outside, waiting for her. They kissed, then disappeared inside. I knocked on the door, and when the guy opened it, I barged in. Guess what I saw?”

“Your chair and your art?”

“And you didn’t even need three guesses. My art was stacked against the living room wall. What followed wasn’t pretty. Some really nasty things were said by all of us. Then she said...” This part still made his heart beat against his chest in rage. “She said she was putting the baby up for adoption. Turned out the man, Julian, was her first love, and she’d never gotten over him. They didn’t want the baby because it wasn’t his.”

“Don’t get angry for me asking this, but was it—”

“My baby? I asked the same thing, and she swore it was, that she’d gotten back with Julian after she found out she was pregnant. After a lot of heated words, we agreed to make a trade. She’d have the baby and give it to me if she could have all my art and I didn’t call the police.”

“Dear God. I can’t wrap my mind around that.”

“Tell me about it.” He pushed his feet against the floor, making them swing. “There were things I learned later when I went to my teacher, who became a good friend and mentor, and explained why I didn’t have any art for the show he’d scheduled for his students. Benoit knew Simone’s background and told me he’d been concerned when I started seeing her but hadn’t said anything because it wasn’t his place to put his nose in someone else’s business.

“Simone Marchand had been a child prodigy and spoiled by her parents because they’d basked in her notoriety. Then when she was a teenager, she was all about partying and had gotten into drugs. She eventually cleaned up and was trying to paint again, but Benoit said her heart wasn’t in it.”

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