Chapter 6
6
Noah Dufour was intrigued.
And he was enjoying this rather unfamiliar feeling, probably because he was too used to being able to predict exactly what it would take to charm a woman he desired into his bed.
He hadn’t expected this, however. To sense something so different about Laura Gilchrist from the moment he’d seen her walking out of Nice airport a few hours ago. This was a very different version of the beautiful but disapproving woman that he’d been so instantly smitten with when she’d walked into his office in that elegant, pale-green dress. Today she was wearing blue jeans and a soft-looking white shirt that had the sleeves rolled up and fastened with a little tab and button. There were delicate sandals on her feet, sunglasses perched on that stunning rose-gold hair and a large soft leather bag slung over one shoulder.
She looked like a woman who had, at least temporarily, walked away from whatever responsibilities she had in her life.
Someone who was ready to play?
Someone who was determined to play, even?
Someone who might, in fact, want to be in charge of the rules of this game?
Noah wasn’t about to argue the toss. The flirting via text messages and email over so many weeks had built anticipation to an unprecedented level and the idea that there could be something even more surprising waiting in the wings was… well, it was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in a very long time.
Possibly the most exciting thing ever.
He could hear echoes of his own voice when he’d sensed that she might be talking herself out of coming back to France.
‘You need to live a little, ma puce … You’ll love it… I promise.’
It seemed as if she had taken his words to heart. And Noah had the feeling that they were both going to love it.
Not that he was about to rush anything.
Because he was intrigued.
If it was what she wanted, he was going to give Laura every opportunity to take charge.
He might even tease her a little and make this seem like business, with a visit to his office before he took her to the nearby gallery to start her tour of local features. He could suggest that they needed to discuss La Maisonette’s marketing brochure, even though it was so close to being finished it really only needed suitable photographs.
* * *
Oh …
Laura hadn’t expected this.
This… was it playfulness? Was it her imagination, or was he teasing her?
Laura was even more unfamiliar with teasing than she was with playing. She’d been the eldest sibling. Too serious about life to tease her younger sisters, and they had probably been too intimidated to try teasing her. It was a form of banter that she didn’t really understand, to be honest.
The somewhat intimidating receptionist and assistant, Blandine, was not in the agency office. No one else was there. Noah could have taken Laura into his office with those masculine aromas of leather and tobacco and red wine and… could have had his wicked way with her on top of the magnificent antique desk Laura remembered dominating that private space.
Laura had a feeling that she wouldn’t have mustered much of a protest. Her breath caught in her throat when Noah stepped in the direction of his office but then, with a glance that crinkled the corners of his eyes – like a smile that his lips hadn’t been invited to – did a U-turn and passed so close to her she could feel a wash of warmth from his skin.
Was he going to lock the door?
No…
She let out her breath in something too close to a sigh of disappointment as he merely reached up to remove a couple of laminated window display advertisements and put them on the reception desk for her to peruse.
Were they not even going to go into his office, away from where they could be seen by any passers-by? Frustration added a new note that, unexpectedly, intensified the heat that Laura could feel simmering deep in her belly.
She’d never felt this level of physical attraction before.
She had vague memories of science lessons at school that she hadn’t been particularly interested in. She had doodled on the edges of her notepad while the teacher talked about cells and atoms and spinning electrons. About positive and negative electrical charges and magnetic fields. Not that she’d be able to explain it coherently to anyone else now, but it felt like she could actually feel it happening in her own body. As if something on a cellular level was responding to the force that was coming from Noah’s body.
A case of opposites attracting, creating an irresistible magnetic field that she had no control over?
No…
Of course she could control this.
If she wanted to.
Or if Noah intended to. She suspected he could feel that hum in the air between them as clearly as she could.
He might not be creating it on purpose but he was definitely playing with it. Intensifying it. That had to be why his hand brushed hers with a whisper of skin contact as he showed her the examples of advertising he could put in the window of the agency for La Maisonette. Was he simply enjoying the sensation himself, or was he trying to push it towards a point where it simply couldn’t be restrained any longer? Laura felt too shy to make the eye contact that might have answered that question.
Maybe she wasn’t quite ready to find out.
The twinges of this attraction might be powerful enough to border the realm of physical pain but, oddly, she didn’t want them to stop. It was a welcome reprieve, however, when they left the office and were in an open space that seemed to dissipate the effects of being close to Noah instead of bouncing them back. Laura was more than happy to be distracted. Especially since a new fear was starting to form, like a rock that had the potential to interfere with the swift flow of these unprecedented and undeniably delicious sensations.
The fear that real sex with Noah Dufour, instead of fantasy sex, might turn out to be just as disappointing as it had always been with the more suitable men she had chosen in the past.
They left the motorbike where it was and walked further up the hill. The road kept climbing as they went through a stand of pine trees that hid the beautifully manicured lawns on this side of the Fondation Maeght’s buildings – a lush surface for artfully placed sculptures that led them into the gallery’s reception area.
The first surprise was that someone greeted Noah by name and he walked straight past the queue of people waiting to pay the entrance fee.
Noah noticed her startled glance.
‘I’ve been coming here all my life,’ he explained. ‘My parents were patrons of the arts and some of the first members of the Société des Amis of the fondation .’
The second surprise, as they walked into the large internal gallery, was that there were children everywhere she looked: in paintings, photographs and sculptures. She could see stiff, unsmiling family portraits from centuries past on a nearby wall, images of children playing and mothers with babies in their arms. There were far more recent photographs and artworks, and in the centre of the gallery space was a charming, life-sized circle of children cast in bronze, holding hands and dancing.
Forever Young , the exhibition was titled. Representations of Children in Art Through the Ages .
A large oil painting in an ornate, gilded frame drew Laura irresistibly forward the moment they entered the room. She barely registered that Noah was following her.
The date of 1782 as part of the work’s title caught her peripheral vision but there was nothing stiff about this painting. Laura had no interest in reading the fine print and finding out who this aristocratic woman – with her impossibly small, corseted waist and elaborately curled, grey wig – might be. Or who the artist was, even. She was caught by what she could see that was bigger than any frame could enclose.
The woman was holding a baby on her silk-covered lap with one arm, holding her other hand up as if she was waving. The baby looked to be about six months old, the age Jack had been when he died, and could well be a boy despite small, bare feet peeping out from beneath a long dress. Chubby arms with perfect little starfish hands were thrown up in the air, mirroring the action of the mother.
But what was hitting Laura with all the force of a punch in her gut was the way the baby and mother were looking at each other. Holding direct eye contact. This unknown artist had, somehow, managed to completely capture the strongest bond ever: that link between mother and child.
And, to her absolute horror, Laura found her eyes filling with tears that felt hot enough to burn. She fought the urge to blink because that would make them fall and everybody would see that she was crying.
Noah would see.
But maybe he had already? Or could he feel her distress as he stood beside her? She felt a feather-light touch on her arm.
‘Come,’ was all he said. So softly that only she could hear. His hand slid down her arm until his fingers found hers and then cupped her hand.
Blinded by tears that she could now feel on her cheeks as well, Laura let herself be led away from the painting. Out of the gallery, past the reception desk and then through an external door into a courtyard that filled the space between two wings of the building. The time it took to walk to a bench was enough for Laura to find she could breathe again without fear of emitting even a hint of a sob. She sat down, brushed the moisture from her face and then rummaged through her shoulder bag in search of a tissue so that she could blow her nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I never cry. It’s just…’
Noah didn’t say anything but his silence didn’t seem to suggest a lack of interest. Or lack of concern. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was waiting.
Listening.
‘It was the way that baby and his mother were looking at each other,’ Laura whispered. ‘It made me think of Jack… Ellie’s baby.’
Noah’s tone was surprised. Wary, even. ‘Ellie has a baby?’
‘ Had ,’ Laura corrected. She gave up on trying to find the tissue she knew was in the depths of her overfilled bag somewhere and sniffed, inelegantly, instead. ‘He died when he was six months old – about the same age as the baby in that painting.’
‘Oh, mon Dieu …’ Noah sounded horrified now. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’
‘Of course you didn’t. There’s no need to apologise.’
Laura had received sympathy from many people at that dreadful time, even colleagues she barely knew. Everybody had been so shocked. They’d all said how sorry they were, but hearing Noah say the same words felt different somehow. Was it because the reaction was in response to her offering the information instead of having sympathy thrown at her like salt being sprinkled into an unbearably raw wound?
Maybe it was the sincerity she could hear in his tone. The gentle note. The respect with which he encouraged to her to say more.
‘Can I ask… what happened?’
Laura hesitated. This was a subject that she never talked about. Ever. To anyone outside the family. It didn’t make sense that she suddenly wanted to – so much that it felt that she couldn’t stop herself. Had it been bottled up for too long? Did it feel safe to tell Noah because he was almost a complete stranger and, after her visit to France, they would probably never see each other again? Was this how someone might feel if they were in a strange country and went to find a priest to make a confession? Stifling the weird desire to bare her soul and tell him every shameful secret she’d collected in her life made it easy to open a smaller window to her personal life.
She shook her head. ‘Nobody knows. He just died in his sleep. They used to call it a cot death but now it’s called SIDS . Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.’ She let out a shaky breath. ‘That was why Ellie was with me when we came to your office the day I met you. It was six months after Jack had died but it felt like Ellie was sinking into a hole she was never going to be able to climb out of. We were all worried about her, and our mother thought that it would be a good idea to bring her to France with me for… you know… a change of scene.’
‘Your mother sounds like a wise woman. This is a good place to be.’
They sat in silence for a long moment and Laura finally looked around the courtyard that was, she discovered, populated with sculpted figures. Very tall, thin and knobbly people, single people and groups standing sentinel, others looking as if they were walking to a new position. She could imagine that one was walking towards her. To protect someone vulnerable who had entered their community? A flight of fancy, of course, but it added to the feeling of safety that surrounded her like a heartfelt sigh.
‘I love these sculptures,’ she said.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Noah agreed. ‘Do you know the sculptor? Alberto Giacometti?’
‘No.’ Laura bit her lip. ‘I’m ashamed to admit that I’m a bit ignorant about art.’
Noah’s lips curved with just a hint of a smile. ‘I envy you,’ he said. ‘I have been here so many times, the pieces in the permanent collection are like close friends. You will get the… émerveillement for the first time. Come…’ His smile grew. ‘There is so much to see. Come with me into the labyrinth.’
He held out his hand and it felt the most natural thing in the world to take hold of it, but Laura felt a little shy. She distracted herself by trying, and failing, to remember what the French word Noah had just used meant.
‘ Qu’est-ce que c’est l’émerveillement ?’ she asked, finally, as they left the courtyard.
‘It means…’ Noah frowned. ‘The surprise, I think. But also the joy and… something being so wonderful it’s hard to believe.’
Laura was nodding slowly as she took in the fantastically shaped marble sculpture beside them, with the shiny patches where countless people had touched the creature. ‘I think I have some of that émerveillement right now. And… ohh…’
She had turned her head and then drew Noah further along the path to get closer to what had elicited the exact sound that word embodied – that moment of being captured by something that, for whatever reason, touched a part of your soul.
On top of a stone wall ahead of them was a metal sculpture, dramatically dark against the endless forest and bright blues of the sky and sea beyond it. A cone-shaped base supported a triangle with a circular hole in it, and balanced on the sharp tip of the triangle was a huge pitchfork.
‘This piece is called La Fourche ,’ he told Laura. ‘It’s one of many works by Joan Miró here and one of my favourites. They suggest it’s like a bird. The circle is the eye and the teeth of the fork are… plumes. No… feathers. Sometimes I forget my English.’
‘Your English is perfect. But what I’m forgetting is to take some photos.’ She let go of his hand to take the camera from the bag he had over his shoulder, and the sound she made now was one of bemusement, as if she couldn’t understand how she could have been so distracted. ‘And that’s what we came here for, isn’t it?’
* * *
Noah smiled but said nothing.
A brochure for a house that was about to go on the market was the last thing he was thinking about right now.
He’d known there was something different about her when they’d met face to face for the second time, but it wasn’t what he’d thought – that she was a woman with a couple of days off from her normal life who was determined to have fun. Well, that was part of it, perhaps, but there was something else there.
And now he thought he knew what it was.
Laura wasn’t going to be making up rules to enhance the pleasure they could have together. Any rules she imposed would be to protect herself.
Beneath that confidence and the beauty and distance that had made her seem such a goddess, she was – unexpectedly – vulnerable.
Lost, even…?
To see those amazing eyes fill with tears like that had shocked him. So had hearing the bare bones of a story that he knew had scarcely touched the world of pain buried between its lines.
Curiously, what he’d just learned about her was pulling him closer when it would normally have sounded an alarm for him to retreat – politely, but swiftly. Noah avoided any significant emotional involvement with the women he invited into his bed. With anyone in his life, in fact.
But there was something about Laura Gilchrist. Something he understood all too well. He knew what it was like to feel lost. To be unable to let anyone too close. How hard it was to learn to cover it up with things like confidence and success.
There was only one way to not feel lost.
And that was to not feel alone in that dark, empty place.
Noah wanted to take hold of Laura’s hand again. He wanted to let her know that he understood.
That, in this moment, she really wasn’t alone.
He wanted it so much it should have been another warning, but it was easy to dismiss because it wasn’t actually possible. Both of Laura’s hands were occupied with the camera, taking pictures of La Fourche . She was moving on from the pull back into her past that had left her in tears and that was a good thing.
But Noah couldn’t let go of the thread that he could feel connecting them on a level quite unlike anything he’d ever experienced, and he felt it was important that Laura knew it was there. Physical contact had been the obvious way to try and communicate that sense of connecting without giving it too much significance, but it wasn’t the only way, was it?
Words might be a clumsier pathway, especially in a language that wasn’t his by birth, but it might be safer. He could take the first steps on what was a more circuitous route and turn around to escape if it felt like he was treading on dangerous ground.
They walked further into the labyrinth. There were other people nearby but it was quiet in the summer heat of the afternoon. Even the cicadas sounded as if it was too much of an effort trying to attract a mate. Laura was, again, drawn to one of Miró’s works, this time the mammoth egg, reflecting its mysterious engravings on the still surface of the shallow basin of water that surrounded it.
‘I love this, too,’ she said quietly. ‘I love everything about this garden. Thank you so much for bringing me here, Noah. There’s… something magical about it.’
‘Perhaps you are one of the guests who are able to sense what went into its creation,’ Noah said. ‘Some would argue that’s a curse rather than a privilege, I think.’
Laura’s brow creased, making lines that Noah was tempted to smooth away with a fingertip. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘This is La Fondation Maeght. Aimé and Marguerite Maeght had a successful art gallery in Paris but they moved to the French Riviera in the 1950s because they thought the climate would help their young son who was very ill. With leucémie . A blood cancer?’
Laura nodded. ‘Leukaemia.’
‘ Oui, c’est ca. The son, Bernard, sadly died and the Maeghts were in despair. It was some of their artist friends who suggested the project of building a place like no other. A place that was built with the sole purpose of being perfect to exhibit paintings and sculpture. I expect they were trying to give them a reason to live again.’
Laura’s face had gone very still. ‘Like Ellie and that house,’ she whispered. ‘It’s brought her back to life.’
There was a shine to her eyes that suggested more tears weren’t far away and Noah felt that he was seeing, for the first time, a small window in the walls he had constructed so carefully around his heart.
He opened it. Cautiously. Just a crack.
‘That was why my parents became involved. They also knew the pain of losing a child. My sister, Elise.’
Noah could actually feel Laura picking up the other end of that thread of connection. Holding it as she pushed that window open a little further.
Her voice was as soft as the warm air around them. ‘How old was she?’
‘Only seven. She had been unwell with brain cancer for several years.’
‘How old were you ?’
Noah shrugged. ‘Twelve. More than a child but too far away from being old enough…’
Laura’s hand moved, as if she wanted to make physical contact, but something made her change her mind so it was only her gaze that held his. But it felt like a physical contact.
‘You can never be old enough for something that changes your life so unfairly,’ she said.
‘No…’
They held that eye contact for a heartbeat longer. A space of time that crossed the barrier of acceptable closeness between friends and became a foray into a more intimate arena. Not that it was acknowledged by either of them. By tacit consent, a long moment later, they walked on through the labyrinth, visited the chapel and revisited the sculpture garden that led back to the pine forest.
Neither of them said anything for stretches of time but the silence wasn’t awkward. It felt as though they were both feeling that invisible thread between their fingers and trying to define its strength or significance.
They paused for a final time as Laura took a photograph looking past the trunks of pine trees to a huge, spiky, sheet-metal sculpture with the gallery buildings behind it. Watching her intent expression as she focussed on getting the perfect shot gave Noah a moment of clarity.
He didn’t want Laura making up any rules.
He wanted to teach her how to throw her rule book away.
He could give Laura far more than he’d planned for this time, which had been no more than une liaison sans lendemain. A brief affair that might well be memorable for the sex as well as experiencing some of the delights of the South of France, but nothing that would actually change her life for the better.
Noah knew exactly what it was like to be inside walls that were built for self-protection. He knew how lonely it could be, but he also knew what had helped him survive. Techniques that made life something to be celebrated and not simply coped with.
He knew how to focus on what was in the moment, not in the past or the future. How to make the most of the best that life had to offer.
Did Laura know how to do that?
Now seemed as good a time as any to find out. Here, in the shade of the pine trees, with their scent heavy in the air around them and the sound of cicadas providing the music of summer. It seemed inevitable, in fact, when Laura came close to put the camera back in the case that was still hanging from his shoulder.
Perhaps she could feel the intensity of his thoughts, because she went very still, slowly lifting her chin until her gaze met his. The question he was asking received a response so clear that it felt as if this conversation couldn’t possibly be as silent as it was.
Laura wanted this.
As much as he did.
Noah lifted his hand to brush one perfect strand of fiery gold hair away from her face. Then he traced the line of her jaw, very lightly, until he reached her chin. He left it there, tilting it just a little, so it was at the perfect angle when he lowered his mouth to touch hers. A gentle kiss, to seal the connection they had found. A connection that they could both trust more than well enough for the short time it was going to exist. A time where they could be together and neither of them would feel alone.
This was where it would begin.
With this kiss…