Recipe for a Broken Heart

Chapter.18

Chapter 18 — Lyon

Six weeks after Étienne returned, an envelope arrived at the office addressed to Camille directly, embossed with the Rousseau Industries letterhead.

Inside was a plane ticket to Lyon, dated three weeks out, and a handwritten note: My father insists on meeting you properly, in person, before he fully believes I have not invented you to make him feel better about his recovery. Come with me. Meet the rest of my world.

"You're serious about this."

"Entirely serious. My father has been asking about you daily. I do not want to wait much longer to show you where I come from."

"I've never even left the country before." A small admission of the world she'd grown up in. "What if I embarrass you?"

"Camille." He took her hands. "My father is going to adore you, precisely because you are exactly who you are, without pretense."

The trip required more preparation than expected — a rushed passport, careful conversations with her mother about covering shifts. Priya treated the trip like a personal mission, dragging Camille through three shopping trips and vetoing half of what she tried on. "You are meeting a sick French patriarch who built an empire from a warehouse. You cannot show up looking like you raided a discount rack."

"I don't even know what to say to him."

"There isn't an etiquette. He'll forgive you instantly the second he sees how Étienne looks at you. I've watched that man rearrange his entire calendar around your lunch breaks."

Marcus, meanwhile, peppered her with absurd questions about French customs sourced entirely from half-watched movies, none of it useful, though it made her laugh on an otherwise nerve-wracking morning.

"You've survived worse than one dinner with a wealthy French family, baby," her mother told her the night before she left. "Meeting a sick old man who already adores you sight unseen should be the easiest thing you do all year."

Lyon greeted her with cobblestone streets and golden autumn light. She pressed her face to the window during the descent, watching the Rhône curve silver through the old city, and felt something settle in her chest — recognition, as though some part of her had been waiting to see this exact view.

His father, propped in an armchair, turned out to be nothing like the imposing figure she'd braced for — thin, silver-haired, sharp kind eyes, Étienne's exact smile.

"So," he said, in careful English. "This is the woman my son crossed an ocean to fall in love with. I confess I expected someone more intimidating, given how nervous he has been."

"Papa," Étienne said, half-exasperated, half-fond.

"Thank you for coming, Camille. Étienne called every single day I was in that hospital. I do not think he managed that even during his years at university."

"He talked about you constantly. It's clear how much he loves you, even when he's frustrated with you."

"Especially when he is frustrated with me. That is usually when the love is strongest." His father laughed. "Tell me who you are, in your own words."

They talked for nearly two hours. "You built something out of very little," his father observed. "I built this entire company from considerably less than you might assume. I am glad my son found someone who understands the value of building something real. I worried, after everything with his previous engagement fell apart, that he had lost his faith in it entirely."

"I had not lost my faith entirely," Étienne said, looking at Camille. "I simply needed to find the right reason to believe in it again."

His brother, Julien, dropped by with his wife and two small children, who dragged Camille into an impromptu garden game. "They like you," Julien observed. "My brother is different, since he came back to visit. Lighter. My father noticed it too, before you even arrived."

"He's worth the trouble," Camille said, watching Étienne laughing with his father through the window.

The last evening before their flight home, his father called her to his bedside alone. "I will not see you again for some time, I suspect. Whatever happens with the company, with Lyon, do not let it frighten you away from him. He needs someone who chooses him, deliberately. I believe, having watched you this week, that you are exactly that."

"I won't. Thank you for welcoming me so completely."

"Thank you for loving my son well. That is the only gift I truly wanted from this visit."