The Awakening of Nina Fontaine Read online

  “But only recently,” he said. “You weren’t boring before.”

  She laughed. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Just a little.” He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Let me ask you something: is the age difference a deal breaker?”

  She considered the question. She liked Liam, connected with him in a way that was easy and fun and definitely sexy. She was attracted to him — who wouldn’t be? — and it seemed obvious he was attracted to her, although she had no idea why.

  Was this a chance she would regret not taking? A chance to recapture the lost possibility of her youth? To take a chance on something without thinking about the rules — rules other people had put in place, rules she’d felt obligated to follow for as long as she could remember?

  She looked at him. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then let’s stop talking about it,” he said. “Can we do that? Just for awhile?”

  She nodded. “All right.”

  “Good. And as for — ”

  He stopped talking and they both looked up at the slender man wearing an apron who had appeared at their table.

  “Are you ready to order or do you need a few more minutes?” he said.

  “We need a few minutes,” she and Liam said in unison.

  “Take your time,” the water said.

  “See?” Liam said. “We’re already saying the same thing. It was meant to be.”

  Nina swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. He was joking but it was still too heavy for her.

  “You were saying?” she asked.

  “As for spontaneity, I promise I won’t ask you to run off to Africa with me at a moment’s notice — not until our fourth date at least — and when I do, I’ll give you plenty of time to pack clean underwear.”

  She shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. “You’re making fun of me again.”

  “I’m not.” His expression had grown serious. “I like you, Nina. I’d like to get to know you better. I know you’re in a weird place right now, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m hoping we can see where this goes. That’s really all the spontaneity I’m asking for.”

  It wasn’t too much to ask — that she allow whatever was growing between them to play out, that she give up trying to foresee every possible outcome, that she be willing to roll the dice on her own life for a change.

  That she stop playing it safe. Stop playing by everyone else’s rules.

  She exhaled. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.”

  “No apologies,” he said. “Not for being honest.”

  It was a radical statement, one that brought her to an entirely new realization: she’d been living in emotional lockdown, in a place where honesty was dangerous, where it was used as a weapon.

  But here was a chance to do it differently. She would take it.

  “I want to see where it goes too,” she said.

  His relief was obvious. “I’m glad you said that because I have a confession of my own.”

  “Confess away.”

  He looked around, like he wanted to make sure no one would overhear, then leaned over the table. “I might have to order two breakfasts. I really am famished.”

  She laughed and someone at the next table turned to look. “You’re the worst,” she said.

  “I am. I really am.” He looked at her over the menu. “Fair warning: I want more of that.”

  “More of what?” she asked.

  “More of you laughing. That’s my new mission.”

  “To make me laugh?”

  He gave her a wicked grin. “Among other things.”

  She didn’t even try to hide her smile as she returned her attention to the menu.

  20

  The rest of their conversation was lighthearted by comparison. Liam ordered short rib hash and devoured it without pretense while Nina chose an omelette with a caper hollandaise so good it made her want to lick the plate. Liam told her about a project he was considering in Morocco, then asked about her job at the gallery. She’d only worked there once — a couple hours Saturday morning before she’d begun the long process of getting ready for the Amfar Gala — since their first date, but they slipped easily into a discussion about the trials and benefits of being an artist in the modern era, the challenges of making enough money to support a gallery like Edmonia’s, and a hipster culture that had produced more people who wanted to embrace the lifestyle of a photographer than those who actually wanted to take pictures.

  He was once again engaging and easy to talk to, and Nina found herself forgetting they were on a date. She hadn’t realized how much her worry about the age difference had prevented her from enjoying her interactions with him in the past. Now that they’d talked about it, Nina made a conscious decision not to dwell on it, a decision that removed what felt like a twenty-pound weight from her shoulders. Without it, she was able to be in the moment with Liam, to appreciate the excitement of connecting with someone on such a natural level.

  After brunch they wandered the neighborhood to work off their food, stepping into a handful of boutiques and antique stores and browsing a used bookstore. Nina lingered over an old, worn copy of Anna Karenina while Liam left her side to pursue the art section. It was the kind of day she never could have had with Peter — he would have been bored inside five minutes, wearing his long-suffering martyrdom like a soggy blanket — and for the first time she wondered if she and Peter had ever been well-suited.

  She thought back to their meeting in college, trying to conjure the lusty, emotional passion that had accompanied her every thought of him.

  She couldn’t. Revisiting their shared past was like watching a movie of two people she didn’t recognize — Peter funny and sweet, Nina a perfect mirror to reflect the qualities he most admired.

  She hadn’t known herself well enough to even look for someone who might be a good match for her, let alone know it when she saw it. Maybe she’d just been carried away on the hormones engineered by nature to insure the propagation of the species.

  Maybe they’d never been a match in the truest sense.

  This was something new — wandering the city hand in hand with Liam, splitting up inside the bookstore without comment, going their separate ways, neither of them reliant on the other for entertainment or company, equally content sharing an unusual find and standing alone in the dusty stacks, lost in their own worlds.

  She’d been flipping through the classics for nearly a half hour when he came upon her, lost in Tolstoy. He showed genuine interest in what she was reading, inspecting the 1944 publication date and commenting on the beautiful watercolor illustrations sprinkled throughout the book.

  She put it back on the shelf and they exited the store with a wave to the woman behind the counter.

  It was almost warm outside, the sun shining on streets clear of snow and ice. Nina felt lighthearted, filled with a sudden burst of gratitude as they made their way to the subway.

  This was her life now. Not a vacation or a temporary respite from the quiet house in Larchmont, Peter’s weighted silence, the hours filled with tasks that in hindsight had been repetitive and monotonous, but her real life. She would have as many days like this as she wanted, as she would allow, and she suddenly wanted to allow a lot more of them.

  It was late afternoon when they exited the subway and started for her apartment, but the time of day in no way alleviated the impulse to ask Liam upstairs. Instead of imagining his body against hers in the dark, she saw it lit by the setting sun, imagined them laying in her bed as night fell.

  She considered it as they came to a stop outside her apartment, then discarded the idea. Giving herself permission to see where things went with Liam — and with Jack Morgan — didn’t mean she was ready to jump into something physical. That’s what had gotten her in trouble with Peter when she’d been at the whim of her hormones and the false certainty of youth.

  But she wasn’t in college anymore. She knew better now, and while she was opening up to the idea of taking
chances, of allowing herself new experiences, the possibility of being intimate with someone was still overwhelming.

  “You’re not going to invite me up, are you?” Liam asked with a good-natured grin.

  She smiled and shook her head, rocking on her heels and looking at her feet. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just…”

  He slipped his hands into the hair at the back of her head and tipped her face so that she was looking at him. His eyes were bright, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth.

  I must be crazy not to take this man to my bed this instant.

  “There’s no rush,” he said. “We’ll take it slow. You call the shots.”

  His hands were velvety and strong on her face. They were hands that had carried a camera through every continent on earth, hands that had moved downed brush in small villages, that had handed out candy to kids trailing him in the slums of Calcutta, and yet she had no doubt they would touch her tenderly, that they would explore her body with the same care and attentiveness he used to document stories with his pictures.

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Although that doesn’t mean I’m not dying to kiss you,” he said, his gaze locked on hers.

  “It doesn’t mean I’d say no to it either,” she said softly.

  His expression grew serious, his gaze more intense as the words left her mouth.

  He closed what little distance still separated them until his chest was touching hers.

  She shouldn’t have worried about what it would be like to kiss someone else, about what to do if the situation arose. Her hands went around his waist automatically, like they’d been there a million times before. He angled her head, still cradled in his hands, and scanned her face, hesitating over her cheeks and mouth before returning to her eyes.

  He bent his head and touched his lips to hers, the pressure gentle but firm, and she relaxed into his body, let him sink into her lips. His tongue in her mouth was a gentle exploration, an unasked question for which her body had all the answers.

  Heat moved through her like a desert wind, soft and powerful, blowing life into corners that had been too long locked away. The exploration of his tongue sent desire coursing through her veins like rogue flames. She was immediately wet, immediately desperate to feel him inside her.

  She explored him with the same attention to discovery, using every moment to catalog his mouth, to memorize the taste of him, coffee and comfort and laughter.

  He pulled away slowly and rubbed his thumb across her lower lip.

  “Nina,” he said softly.

  She wasn’t imagining the longing in his eyes. It was echoed in her own body.

  “I’m glad I didn’t say no,” she said.

  He gave her one of his lazy smiles, but this one held new knowledge. “Me, too.” He hesitated. “I’m going to have to leave eventually, aren’t I?”

  Her body was still pressed to his, her face still in his hands. “Eventually.”

  He touched his lips briefly to hers, then stepped away and started walking backward as he watched her. “Well, there’s always tomorrow.”

  She smiled as he turned around. She was still standing there when he disappeared around the corner.

  21

  Nina stepped off the elliptical and paused for a minute to catch her breath. She left to grab a bottle of cleaning solution and a rag and returned to wipe down the machine. When she was done, she picked up her water bottle and towel and wiped her face as she headed for the lockers to get the rest of her stuff.

  Normally she would have taken time to stretch at the end of her workout, but she’d told Edmonia she’d put in a couple hours at the gallery before she went to Amy’s for a Friday night potluck.

  “See you tomorrow, Nina.”

  She looked up and waved at Tom, one of the owners of the gym. “See you.”

  Outside, spring was in bloom, the temperature mild, the April sun gentle now that winter was behind them. The shift had happened almost all at once — her neighbors smiling and saying hello, shop owners shouting out cheery greetings as she passed, the sidewalks busy with people at all hours, every day of the week.

  It was like watching the entire city emerge from a long hibernation, and Nina was no exception.

  She felt reborn, in bloom.

  When she turned her head toward the gym as she passed, she caught her reflection in the glass and almost didn’t recognize herself.

  She was still curvy, but her dedication over the last month had highlighted muscles she didn’t know she had. The extra skin on the underside of her arms had diminished to almost nothing, showcasing newly defined biceps and triceps. Her thighs were still on the pillowy side, but she was no longer self-conscious about fat knees when she wore dresses, and her thighs had serious definition thanks to the squat rack.

  Best of all, she’d dropped her excess body fat, leaving her with an almost-flat stomach after years of fighting a muffin top.

  But it wasn’t just the gym.

  If her time alone at the house in Larchmont while she and Peter had been in the middle of their divorce had been a period of incubation, the past month had been a period of revelation.

  Her relationship with both Liam and Jack had continued, and while she’d had to force herself in the beginning to follow Karen’s advice about playing it close to the vest, she’d become more comfortable with the idea of dating both men at once.

  She didn’t know if she’d still feel that way once she slept with one of them — a decision that was imminent in both cases — but she’d enjoyed getting to know them, had allowed herself the freedom to do so without guilt.

  It helped that she was surrounded by so many curious, intelligent women — women who challenged the status quo and questioned traditional gender paradigms. She could feel her perspective expanding, could feel herself growing.

  It also helped that the two men were so different, her relationships with them proceeding at different paces and in different directions.

  She’d settled into a routine with Liam, comfortable except for the passion his kiss, his touch, woke in her. He texted her every day, sometimes just to say hello and see how her day was going, and he was a frequent visitor to the gallery when she was working.

  She’d thought it was an old routine until Edmonia had teased her that thanks to Nina, she might just get more shows out of Liam yet.

  They ate meals out and ate meals in at her place or his, an expansive but warm loft apartment in Williamsburg. They watched movies and attended gallery shows, Liam asking her opinion on interesting pieces, then sharing his own observations.

  The temptation to sleep with him had only grown since their first kiss after brunch outside her apartment. He was patient, never pushing, never even showing frustration, but it was getting ridiculous, even for her “take it slow” standards. She had no idea what she was waiting for, although sometimes, when she was in the mood to be really honest with herself, she thought it was about Jack.

  She hadn’t even had a chance to turn him down. She’d been out with him five times since the Amfar gala, each one increasing the level of sexual tension between them.

  And yet he hadn’t tried to sleep with her. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her.

  She was almost positive he was attracted to her. She could feel the chemistry move between them, an invisible energy field that almost rippled the air.

  If she had to guess, she’d say the delay was about control, something Jack liked to wield in all situations. They’d been to three five-star restaurants, a Broadway show with a yearlong waiting list, and another charity dinner — this one far less formal than the Amfar gala.

  Every date had been orchestrated by him, her presence more or less demanded. He always sent her clothes before their dates, insisting that he didn’t want them back after she’d worn them, that they were a gift. Once, he’d sent her a diamond bracelet to accompany a cocktail dress. He’d almost looked hurt when she’d handed it back to him at the door of her apartment,
insisting that she couldn’t keep it, that if he made a big deal of it she would have to cancel their date.

  While the chemistry between her and Liam was taut with affectionate anticipation, the tension between her and Jack was close to the boiling point. He was as careful not to touch her now as he’d been the night of their first date, and she’d begun to have the impression that his actions outside her apartment after their first date weren’t a choice, that maybe he’d gotten carried away by the energy between them.

  She’d waited breathlessly during each of their subsequent dates for a similar lapse but it had been to no avail. If Jack hadn’t kept demanding her presence, she would have thought he wasn’t interested in her at all.

  She was ashamed of the thrill it gave her. The withholding of all but a hand to help her out of the car, an arm to clutch on the way into a restaurant, an unexpected aphrodisiac that would make any self-respecting feminist shudder.

  But she couldn’t deny it: the only shuddering she was doing around Jack was due to her intense arousal, his restraint only increasing her need to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on her body.

  She forced herself to push away thoughts of both men — something she had to do more often than she wanted to admit — when her apartment came into view.

  After a quick shower, she hurried to the gallery where she was greeted with a quick wave as Edmonia ran out to look at a new artist. They were still packing the photographs from the Janet Wexler show. All but three had sold, most of them within the first two hours, and Nina had felt an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction as she and Edmonia closed down the gallery that night. She’d been sad to see the Sari photograph go — purchased by an anonymous buyer and picked up when Nina wasn’t working — but she was happy for Janet, a sixty year old woman who’d gone to India with nothing but a backpack and a camera after her divorce ten years earlier. She’d spent the last decade taking pictures and finding herself, and from the glow on her face at the show, it was safe to say both were a success.

  Nina was happy for Edmonia too. She and Nina hadn’t quite crossed into friend territory, but Nina enjoyed her company, and they worked easily and comfortably together. Nina had learned that Edmonia had a Masters in Fine Art and had lived in Paris for several years before opening the Stockholm Gallery. She also had a ten-year-old daughter named Angela who already had her mother’s eye for curation.