Page 35 of Enemies to French Kisses
He looks deeply into me, the bruises under his eyes fading just a touch as he smiles into mine. “I feel very stiff.”
“You’d better not move.” I brush the lock of hair from his forehead. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“Madame,” the officer continues. “We are not finished. We have to talk about what happened. How you were angry and ran him over.”
“It’s not like that, officer,” Marc says to him in English. “It’s all just a misunderstanding…”
I’ve never been so grateful to anyone in my life as I am right now to Marc Lemonstre.
“…Laura is my wife.”
CHAPTER13
Laura
“Wife?”The word falls out of my mouth like an accident but Marc has a grin on his face and—I’ll be darned—admiration in his eyes.
“Votre femme?” the female officer looks between the two of us and then points at me. “You his wife?”
The corners of my mouth flinch. “Wife…” Is he doing this on purpose? Is he trying to get me off the hook? His face doesn’t give anything away. “Wife?” I ask him again to be sure he knows what he’s doing.
“Wife,” he says to me and then looks at the officers. “Ma femme.”
A nervous laugh bubbles up and pops out of my mouth, though I don’t recognize it.
The male officer scrawls in his notebook and sighs. Maybe this is the end of it.
But the female officer cocks her head and swaggers a few steps in my direction. “Maybe want to kill husband?”
“Kill? Goodness, no!”
“You can tell me. I am woman. Did he cheat on you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Many women get angry at husband. Maybe he gave you reason?”
I don’t want to lie. But how can I say I was angry with him while not admitting he’s my husband? This feels like a lose-lose.
The male officer knocks the woman’s arm and says something quickly that I take to mean that every woman gets angry with her husband.
She tries one last time, gently putting her arm around me. “Maybe husband has other wife. Women can get mad because men be so jerks.”
“Madame,” Marc speaks up. “S’il vous plait.”
“I promise,” I say to the officers, “this was an accident. His scarf was caught in my handlebars, that’s all. I promise.”
The officers exchange a glance. The man blows air out his lips and the woman shrugs in return.
“Bon rétablissement,” the male officer says to Marc and they finally leave the hospital room.
I drop into the chair beside the bed and bury my face in my hands. Whatever has happened today is so far outside my frame of reference that my head just might explode.
But I’m not the one who just woke up from a quasi-coma.
“Hey,” I say, lifting my head and meeting Marc’s gaze. “How do you feel?”
“Foggy,” he blinks, “and tired.” His lifts his hand, which is banged up with cuts and bruises. I take it in my own. If I can’t comfort the man I accidentally launched down the steps of Sacre Coeur, then I truly have a cold heart.
