Impossible

“Don't worry. I won't do anything hasty. I'm not planning to do anything at all, just enjoy our time together, for as long as it lasts.” She still believed it wouldn't last long, and had no great hopes for the future. Bernard was relieved to hear it. He thought an affair with Liam was fine. A lifetime was something else.

“Do the children know?”

“No, they don't. Tatianna would probably kill me, and I'm not sure how Xavier would feel. He and Liam are good friends. That's hard to predict. I'm in no rush to tell them, and I won't if I don't have to. Who knows where it will go. Our time together has been very erratic. We stopped seeing each other from February to April. We just got back together before this trip, and it was lovely. We'll see what comes next.” She sounded extremely philosophical about it, and not stressed.

“Keep me posted,” Bernard said as he stood up. He was glad he had asked her. It all seemed discreet and sensibly handled to him.

That was all he had wanted to know. And she seemed happy with Liam. “Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.” That was enough for him for now.

“You just did. Just keep it quiet. I'm not planning to tell anyone, at least not until we see how this works for a while.” Bernard agreed. It had helped her to talk to him. She'd been worried that the people in her life would be horrified and fall out of their chairs in shock and disapproval. Bernard seemed perfectly comfortable with it, which made Sasha feel more at ease. She had no intention of telling Eugénie for the moment, or anyone else at the office or elsewhere. Although Eugénie took his calls, when he called the gallery, which was rare. Most of the time he called on her cell phone. And she was not planning to tell her children for a long time. She and Liam had agreed on that, and thought it was a wise decision. Telling her kids could complicate things, and they had enough to adjust to and deal with as it was. But so far so good. This time.

Liam came to Paris for the next two weekends. The weather was beautiful, they had a great time together, and they were both in good spirits. They spent all of their time together when he was there, and saw none of their friends. There was too much they wanted to do together, and they had little enough time as it was. They didn't want to share it with anyone, his friends or hers. And during the week, he had been hard at work preparing for his December show in New York. She was anxious for the world to see his work. He could hardly wait, and the work in his studio in London was going well.

They were walking in the Bois de Boulogne with Socks when she asked him about his children in Vermont, as she often did. She always encouraged him to talk about them. She knew he missed them a lot. It had been a year since he'd seen them. The divorce was in progress, and would be final around Christmas. Beth had told him she was getting married as soon as it came through. He said he had made his peace with it, and Sasha was convinced he had. They had both moved on. But the children still needed him, in her opinion, as he did them. Maybe more than he thought, or was willing to acknowledge. In Sasha's opinion, he seemed all too amenable to letting Beth handle them, and staying out of the way.

“Why don't you go over and see them this summer, Liam?” she encouraged him, as he threw a stick for Socks, who retrieved it. He had taught her a few tricks as well, and she had turned out to be a lovely dog. Sasha was crazy about her, even more so because she had been a gift from him. “I have to spend time with my kids in August.” They all had time then, and she loved spending every minute with them that she could, particularly when she and her two children could go away on vacations, which was becoming rarer and rarer as they got older and had ever-busier lives. She knew that one of these days they would have serious significant others, and it wouldn't be possible at all. These were her very last chances to do it, and each year seemed like the last one. “Maybe we could go away somewhere this summer after we both spend time with our kids.” She was always organizing him, which annoyed him at times and amused him at others. He knew it was just what she did. For everyone. She was a classic mother hen, which he also loved about her, especially when she mothered him.