Hesitantly, N. made her way towards D. through the compact crowd surrounding the Palais Garnier plaza in Paris. The lights of the Opera house shimmered in the misty air of the cold November rain and despite the early afternoon hours it was almost dark.
Weary of people staring N. had long taken to the habit of wearing shades in public places. She had been feeling at her most vulnerable lately, and shades were helpful indeed to avoid the distress in her eyes leaking out and stirring speculations on what was going on with her.
Why did she pull out of the race for presidential elections at the very moment when she was trading so high in polls, D. left far behind by the revelations about his private life, his Russian wife G and their children.
France was turning into a media-fuelled democracy for good, with candidates not expected to shield their family, as family belonged to the public, was part of the image.
D. had come up as single, ascetic, had built this almost puritanical image of the man dedicated to his mission since the very beginning of his skyscraping ascension to the top where his blasting success had shaken the foundations of the business tycoons community.
People would buy any electoral program provided they can follow the feuilleton of their favorite celeb'. D. had an impressive political agenda, truly innovative but not revolutionary in a disturbing way, reassuring but original. Withholding his privacy from the public had outweighed his ideas, and the people were not going to let him get away with that.

 D. was at her before she had the time to pull the shades away to look at him and he gently took them off her face, his finger lightly brushing her check in the most accidental but sweetest stroke.
Here they were, looking deeply, hungrily, into each other's eyes as to try and reach beneath, to the bones and soul. They had not met for months, let alone face to face.

Time had passed. Yet he still had the same ravaging anxiety about her, like he alone could sense the frailty under the shield of the public image, the winning smile she had always displayed.
From the very first time they had met on that night ferry from Dover to Calais and she was shivering in her long trench coat, him vying for her attention, uncertain what more intoxicating to him of the blend of Yves St Laurent's Opium or her breath when she whispered for him to hear over the fury of the tempestuous sea, he had felt compelled to her, summoned to protect her.
A drive more imperious than his unrelenting desire for her, more persistent than subsequent rivalry when they'd had to work hand in hand in the financial empire fostered by Marcello Donough Ferrero, more powerful than the forces tearing them apart.
Only he could look into the abysses of despair she would at times dive into, falling from her highest height, and haul her back to the world of the living.

Almost painfully thin, she looked brittle as crystal, and surprisingly tiny, her broken ankle making her wobble, distorting the catwalk sashay that had been part of her self since her modelling years. At a bare six feet, stilettos had been an extension of her figure for so long that she swayed even in the flat shoes, like a tree in the cold breeze of that grey afternoon. Her face was as pale as a porcelain vase about to crumple.
Yet the spell between the two of them was intact, and this unspoken vow of his unbroken. She had appeared for him to protect and yet when his gaze lowered from her eyes to her lips, he could have forgotten her frailty, his principles, the past and the future mixing up in the longing for the taste of her lips he could never shake, all these restless nights spent dreaming she was asleep next to him and the ghastly bewildered awakenings to find out she was not there, would never be.

The crowd disappeared and suddenly there was only the two of them, again. It would be so simple, the ravishing taste of bliss only half an inch away.