What she felt for Mike went beyond words and intelligent exchanges. It was a force of nature. She couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before, even with Matthieu. He had taken over her life like a domineering father at first, but she had liked it—it made her feel loved and safe. It had begun to chafe with time, particularly as she gained more experience herself and a mind of her own. She ran her business the way she wanted to. She valued most of Matthieu’s advice and disagreed on some points. They had almost always agreed on how to raise their son. But Matthieu still treated her like a child at times, and he respected and valued his own freedom and independence more than hers.

Matthieu was very old-fashioned about some things, particularly about her. He was old school, which she had found charming at first and annoying later on. He was brilliant about business, but less so about people. He prided himself on knowing her perfectly, but he didn’t always. He said things that hurt her, and when he cheated on her, she found it hard to forgive him, but she always did. He was far less forgiving than she was but expected his transgressions to be forgiven every time. She was having trouble getting over the last one. After all she’d been through with his death and Axel’s, it was a final blow to learn that he had had a mistress in Russia until shortly before he died. She was fifteen years younger than Theo, which hurt too, and forty years younger than Matthieu. Now she was feeling guilty for being attracted to a man. What would people think if she stopped mourning him one day? She knew she would never stop grieving for Axel, but Matthieu had been her husband, not her child. They’d only been gone a year. It seemed like minutes at times, or days. Was it long enough? Had she cried enough? She looked down at the wedding ring still on her finger, and after a simple dinner at a diner, it felt like a lie. She wasn’t the grieving widow if she was smiling and laughing and having dinner with a man.