The Wealthy Frenchman's Proposition by Katherine Garbera

Tristan.
    Again the toast was in French. Tristan didn’t lift his glass this time. Instead he put it on the table and stood up, leaving the room without a comment.
    Sheri felt awkward. “I’m sorry, my French isn’t good enough to know what you said.”
    Blanche shook her head. “I just said that we were happy to see him moving past the pain of heartache and moving into a new love.”
    But the way they were all staring at her, she realized they knew what she’d known all along. That Tristan wasn’t in love with her. It was fine for the two of them to know that lust was all they had between them. But his family…
    “I’m not the love of his life,” she said.
    “I’m not so sure about that, Sheri. You’re the first woman he’s brought to meet us in eight years.”
    Sheri took small comfort in that. “Will you please excuse me?”
    “Of course. If you are looking for Tristan, try the third floor. Fourth door on the left.”
    She left the room without another word. Walking slowly through the house, she was reminded again that there was a huge difference between her and Tristan. This one—the material things—didn’t seem as big a deal as their difference in willingness to love.
    Tristan was such a dominant, arrogant man, she had a hard time imagining that he was afraid of anything, especially falling in love again.
    But those rumors about his first marriage…about his first wife…She needed to find out exactly what she was up against.
    She climbed the curving staircase, looking at the huge portraits hung on the walls. Pictures of men who resembled Tristan, and some portraits of people who were vaguely familiar to her. His famous grandparents, she thought.
    He’d grown up surrounded by a rich history, whereas she had only what she took with her. Aunt Millie’s warm memory and the cold emptiness of her father’s desertion.
    She got to the third floor. At the landing there was an upholstered chaise centered under a dominant portrait of the Sabina siblings when they were younger…probably late teens, she thought.
    Blanche was seated in the center and Rene and Tristan stood on either side of her. Blanche was elegant even as a teenager, smiling beguilingly out of the portrait. Rene was serious and even then looked as if he were all business. And Tristan. Her heart caught in her throat. He was laughing, very much the rebel in his casual rock T-shirt, whereas his siblings were dressed to the nines.
    She had never seen an expression like that on Tristan’s face and she thought that this is the part of him that died when his wife did.
    She reached out to touch his face, letting her fingers hover over the curve of his mouth. It felt like what she’d done so many times in her apartment late at night. Lusting after a man she couldn’t have.
    And now that she had the Tristan she’d thought she wanted, she realized he only was giving her half of himself. The part he thought she’d accept without question.
    And she knew now she wanted more. She was falling in love with Tristan Sabina, and she wasn’t going to be satisfied with merely keeping him from leaving.
    She needed him to fall in love with her. Not just to care for her, but really fall head over heels in love. She turned to walk down the hall and saw the gilt-framed mirror and the reflection of the woman there.
    She was going to have to make some serious changes if she was going to win Tristan’s love.

Nine
    T wo weeks later, Sheri wasn’t sure who she was anymore. Despite the fact that Tristan wanted their lives to remain the same, they had been changed by the “engagement.” Blanche had even taken her shopping before allowing her to leave Paris. And Sheri had enjoyed her time with Blanche.
    She found herself interested in clothing for the very first time. Standing in front of her closet in the brownstone in Brooklyn, she realized that it might be a bit small. It never had been before.
    But then, she’d never had a closet full of outfits for every