Page 49 of Forgiving Paris
There, for almost an hour, he begged God to protect Ashley Baxter.
He had no idea what she was going through or why she had so completely severed ties with him and with her family. But Landon knew the One who had the answers. The One who could see Ashley even that very moment, and who could do the thing Landon could not.
The God who could protect her.
Landon could see himself, there on his knees, tears in his eyes, calling out to God on behalf of Ashley. A chill ran down his arms and legs. Was that one of the days the men in black had been following her? It was possible. Either way, God had answered his prayers from that night and many nights after it.
Not only had He watched over Ashley, He had saved her life. He had brought her back home and now…Landon held her close… now she was here in his arms. Only God could’ve done that.
But what about the men? Landon stared at his beautiful wife. If they’d been ordered to kill her, had they passed that job on to someone in the States after Ashley left? His heart beat faster than before and he realized he’d been holding his breath.
Gradually he exhaled. Surely not. More than two decades had passed since Ashley had been here, and Jean-Claude had been dead for much of that. Everything was fine. The story had shaken him, for sure, but Ashley was not in danger now. Obviously.
Still, that night, despite every wonderful thing about their anniversary, and even with Ashley in his arms, Landon dreamed that he was wrong. That other bad men were being paid by some evil employee of Jean-Claude’s estate, someone still checking off a master hit list, maybe. And now with Ashley back in Paris, indeed, someone was after her once again.
In the dream, Landon was walking with Ashley down cobblestone streets and narrow dark paths at night. He would hear footsteps behind them and turn around, but no one would be there. Then they were at a restaurant, only the place was cavernous, and cobwebs hung from the ceiling. Landon had to use the restroom, but the pathway there was barely passable and the ceiling kept getting lower.
When he finally returned to their table, Ashley was gone.
He raced from one side of the building to the other, crying out for her, screaming her name… but he still couldn’t find her.The police,he thought to himself. They could help him! But his phone wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and even when he ran outside there wasn’t another person anywhere.
“Help me! Someone help!” He shouted into the empty street. “Ashley!”
That’s when he woke up, out of breath, his heart racing. The sheets clung to the sweat on his bare stomach. What had happened? Landon reached for his wife as he opened his eyes and she was there. Ashley was fine, asleep beside him. It had all been a nightmare.
Nothing more.
But even after they got morning lattes at Terres de Café and headed to the Louvre, Landon struggled to shake the feeling. Ashley could’ve been killed. He worked to stay in the moment, smiling at his wife and trying to share her excitement about the museum morning ahead.
“You could spend a week at the Louvre and never see it all.” She practically danced beside him. Her pretty face somehow looked a decade younger, as if everything that had weighed her down, every bad memory and terrifying secret was finally and fully gone.
They were walking up to the main entrance and Ashley stopped. “Can you believe it?” She looked at Landon. “We’re really here!”
“We are.” The bad dream was leaving him. They didn’t have much longer in Paris. Just the show tomorrow andone day after that. He wouldn’t waste another minute being concerned over nothing. “You know something, Ash?” He felt himself relax a little more.
“What?” She turned to him.
“I’ve always wanted to take you to the Louvre.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “You, my artist girl, my love.” He smiled. “I think I was in high school the first time I thought about it. How one day I wanted to bring you here.”
“Really?” Ashley looked smitten, the way she had on their wedding day.
“Yes.” Landon remembered something else. “I did a paper on the Louvre my junior year in high school.” He chuckled as the details grew clearer. “I was obsessed, Ashley. Chasing you… hardest thing I did in all my life.”
She winced. “Yeah… sorry about that.” Her eyes lit up again. “I guess I forgot about that English paper. Do you remember any of it?”
“Let’s see.” He narrowed his eyes. “The Louvre was originally a fortress built sometime around the year 1200. Then three or four hundred years later it was redesigned to be a grand royal palace. The goal was that the Louvre be breathtaking, one of a kind. With every change of monarchy, the Louvre was made bigger, more ornate until there wasn’t another building on earth like it.”
Ashley looked back at the front of the museum. “Mission accomplished.”
When they stepped inside, they read a plaque on the wall. “Looks like it became a museum in 1801.”
“Mmm.” Ashley looked intently at the description. “Today it’s the largest museum in the world. Thirty-five thousand art pieces on display.” She shook her head. “I can’t even imagine that.”
“Well.” He took her hand. “We have to at least try. What time are we meeting Alice and her mother?”
“Four o’clock.” Ashley walked with him through the museum entrance. “So much to see, so little time to see it!”
Over the next five hours, they first visited Leonardo da Vinci’s famousMona Lisa. Ashley stared at the eyes in the painting. “What did she know?” She linked arms with Landon. “Do you ever wonder that? What was behind that expression of hers?”
