Heart Restoration Project

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kate’s visit a few days later when she was finished with her affairs in Paris had everyone at Chateau Mirabelle on edge. We were still behind schedule, and with each day that passed, it seemed less likely we’d be restoring Chateau Mirabelle to its original glory, let alone even ensuring there’d be working toilets in the house.

Despite the uphill climb, the crew—back from their weekend hiatus—was hard at work finishing the flooring, plumbing updates, and drywall while René watched closely from the sidelines, barking out orders like a seasoned drill sergeant.

I tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Bonjour, René, où est Bastien? I didn’t see him at craft services this morning.”

“I’m not sure. As soon as I arrived, Mademoiselle Wembley presented me with a long list of items she wanted to see completed on the chateau before the week is out.”

“And Elliott?”

He shrugged and turned his attention back to the team of welders restoring a section of original copper piping. A few moments later, Kate came hurrying up to us. “Good, I found you,” she said, slightly out of breath. “Where’s Bastien?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Since I wasn’t needed on set until today, the last time I’d seen Bastien was when he dropped me off at the inn after our night together. Agnès, Pascal, and Odette were turning chairs over, getting the dining room ready for the early breakfast crowd. I tiptoed up the stairs and back into my room before anyone spotted me in my state of disarray and pretended like I’d been there sleeping all along.

“I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. Anyway, how are you holding up?” Kate asked.

I held up my phone. “Aside from these, just dandy.” Over the last forty-eight hours, my sisters, parents, Nancy, and almost every person on my contact list had forwarded one article or another about my Paris run-in with Rhys. Some of my favorite headlines were City of Fights, Plum Everly and Rhys Braun Showdown at the George V and Ménage à Trois—Plum Everly Confronts Rhys Braun and New Fiancée Anya Vanhulle.

“What’s that thing people say? No press is bad press?” Kate reasoned.

“I can tell you for a fact that’s not true. Especially where my family’s concerned. They don’t love seeing my name in Page Six. Especially after that tape.”

“I find that hard to believe. The Everly empire didn’t exactly build itself in a vacuum,” she said, tossing her blonde hair behind her shoulders.

Normally I appreciated when someone recognized my family’s little bit of hypocrisy, but the tone in her voice was just a little too familiar with people she’d never actually met. For some reason it rubbed me the wrong way.

“So today’s going to be a blast. Have you ever heard of Simone Allard?” Kate said, shifting the subject.

The name didn’t ring any bells. “I don’t think so.”

“Me either,” she joked, “but she’s supposed to be one of the best interior designers in Provence, specializing in chateau restorations. She’ll be here filming the next couple of days.”

“Interior design? Shouldn’t we be worried about the state of the estate first? The chateau’s a mess. Half the rooms are missing walls and the other half, floors.”

“Don’t worry about that. I made it clear to René that he needs to make sure the facades of the library, kitchen, drawing room, two bedrooms, and the grand salon are complete by the end of this month. The magic of television will take care of the rest.”

The magic of television.I’d heard that phrase before. Bastien said the very same thing to me the first day he showed me around the house. “Filming wraps in what, eight weeks? There’s no way the house is going to be anywhere near habitable by then.”

“Either way, the publicity Chateau Mirabelle generates from the show should help it sell in no time, and then you can use that money toward a down payment on a house in the Valley complete with walls, floors, and flushing toilets.” Kate glanced down at her phone. “Simone’s here. Want to walk to the front of the house with me to meet her?”

“Sure, let me grab a cup of coffee first, and then I’ll be right there.”

I set off for craft services hoping I’d spot Bastien somewhere along the route, but he was nowhere to be found. I took a paper cup from a large stack on the edge of the table and filled it all the way to the top. Just as I put the steaming brim to my mouth, Bastien came up behind me, his lips settling firmly at the base of my neck.

“Bonjour, ma chérie,” he purred.

I turned around to face him. “Hey, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I asked Madame Archambeau if she would open her shop early for me.” He pulled a gorgeous bouquet of red poppies, white peonies, lavender wisteria, and bright-yellow sunflowers out from behind his back and pushed a stray hair behind my ear. “You know, the other morning when you were asleep in my arms, you looked like an absolute angel. If Kate wasn’t in town, I would have tried to convince you to play hockey with me.”

“Hockey? You wanted to play hockey? Ohhhhh, do you mean hooky?” I giggled.

His cheeks streaked an adorable beet red. “Ah yes, hooky,” he said, giving an especially cute ooh sound when he pronounced hooky.

I pushed up on my toes and kissed him softly on the mouth.

Bastien’s name came crackling through his walkie-talkie. He unclipped it from his belt and answered the page in rapid, unintelligible French. “Les poutres en bois ne supporteront pas le poids. Nous avons besoin des poutres en acier.” He lowered the walkie-talkie to his side. “I have to go, duty calls.”

“Maybe I can convince you to stay, just a little while longer?” I pleaded.

“There’s no maybe about it, you could convince me with the tiniest crook of a finger,” he said, kissing each of mine. “But I really should get going. I have a big, beautiful house to finish building for you. I’ll find you later, I promise.”

I set out for the front of the chateau and found Kate and a woman I assumed was Simone Allard standing in the foyer, deep in conversation. Kate spotted me and waved me over to them. Simone was the epitome of boho chic, pairing a multicolored peasant skirt with a high-end denim crop top I was pretty sure I’d spotted hanging in the Dior section of Le Bon Marché. She jutted a perfectly manicured hand forward, her bouncy beach waves landing softly on her delicate shoulders.

“I’m Simone. Lovely to meet you,” she said in a surprising British accent.

“You’re not . . .”

“French? I am but spent most of my childhood in England at Mayfield, a boarding school in Sussex. I only came home on holidays, and sometimes not even then, depending on whether or not my parents could afford the train fare after paying for tuition that semester.”

“So where’s home, then?”

“Cabrières-d’Avignon, about five kilometers from here. It’s not perched on a hill like many of the other towns in Provence. It has no real natural beauty to speak of. I think that’s why I fell in love with all the other villages and their grand chateaus.” She looked up at the incredible arched entranceway. “And Chateau Mirabelle, she is one of my favorites.”

I smiled. “Mine too.”

“Great, so let’s talk about what we can do to spruce the old girl up a bit. I have some ideas.”

For the next several hours, Simone and I walked through each and every room of the chateau discussing the interior design and decor, finally landing back in the grand salon where we started the house tour.

“And finally for this room,” she said, spinning around on her heels. “You see those dark spots on the walls? That’s where the crystal girandoles once hung. I know we’re repairing all the electricity in the home, but I think there’s just something about these cavernous rooms that calls out for candlelight, don’t you? Here, let me show you what I did on another project.”

Simone zipped open an oversize leather portfolio and carefully slid out a large photograph affixed to a Styrofoam backing. She carried it over to the side of the room and leaned it up against the wall so we could take it all in. “This is from a home I worked on not too far from here that’s been converted to a luxury hotel. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, Chateau du Val d’été?”

“Yes! I actually spent an afternoon there not too long ago. It’s absolutely gorgeous. You worked on that renovation? Then you must know Bastien Munier?”

She looked up. “I’m sorry, who?”

I grew self-conscious about my pronunciation and gave a bit more flourish to the vowel sounds as Pascal had been teaching me. “Bastien Mun-i-er? He worked on the renovation there. For a few years, I think.”

She packed the photograph back into the portfolio. “I don’t really recall, but to be fair, it was a while ago now. All these restoration projects start to blend together after a while.”

“Well, I’ll try to find him later, that way the two of you can catch up.”

“I’d like that.”

Elliott poked his head into the salon. “Kate said I’d find you both here.”

“We’re just wrapping up for the day,” Simone said.

He handed each of us the filming schedule. I scanned it and looked up from the paper. “We’re not filming at the chateau tomorrow?”

“René wants everyone out of the chateau the next couple of days. He needs to deal with some mold removal on the second floor. It’s pretty toxic stuff.”

“And Bastien?”

Elliott snapped his notebook closed. “I’m not sure what he’s working on?”

“Well, lucky us, we get to spend the day at Brocante de Beaucaire,” Simone said, clapping her hands together with a wide grin.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“My favorite antiques market in all of France. You will absolutely love it. Where shall we meet?” Simone asked.

I looked over at Elliott. “The van will be at the inn at five a.m.,” he answered.

I did a double take. “Five a.m.?”

“Trust me, you want to get to the market bright and early, that’s how you find the very best stuff,” Simone said with a nod.

“We’re staying at the La Cigale Chantante,” Elliott added.

She nodded, tucked the itinerary into the side pocket of her portfolio, and said, “I know it well. See you both tomorrow morning.”

After Simone left, Elliott stepped a little farther into the room to examine the crumbling fireplace. He reached up and grabbed hold of a small paint curl dangling above the mantel and dragged it down the wall, peeling it away to reveal the faint outline of an image underneath. He reached up again, tugging at an even larger paint curl, and like a streamer, this time, exposed a huge section of the picture.

“From here, it looks like it could maybe be the top half of a lion. That’s right, I remember seeing a painting over the mantel in one of the photos at Saint Orens,” I said.

Elliott backed away from the fireplace. “I noticed a lion was part of the Adéla?se family crest. I bet if we kept peeling away the paint, we’d find the whole thing intact. You should make sure to point it out to your designer friend. It’d be a shame to see it covered up again. Maybe they can restore it? Feature it in the design?” Elliott wiped the paint dust from his hands off onto his pants.

“Hey, Elliott?”

He faced me. “Yeah?”

“I wanted to say thank you for letting Bastien know I’d be coming into Avignon so late the other night. That was really ... um ... thoughtful.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’s fine, Plum. Don’t mention it, it’s no big deal.”

“It was a big deal. I don’t know if you could ever understand, but when the paparazzi closes in on me like that, I feel like one of those animals with their legs caught in a trap. Like a lion being chased by hyenas. Completely helpless. I needed to get out of there, and I wasn’t thinking clearly, so I’m grateful that you were.”

“I swear, I didn’t know who it was you were talking to in the hotel lobby, on my life, I didn’t. Or I wouldn’t have filmed you and Rhys. All that gotcha stuff, that isn’t me. That isn’t who I am as a person or filmmaker.” He took a few steps closer so we were just inches apart. “I’d never do anything to hurt or embarrass you.”

“I know,” I whispered.

We stood there, so close our breaths were practically touching.

“Plum, good, there you are,” Bastien called from the doorway. “I have a busy next couple of days, so I wanted to see if you were free to grab some dinner?”

“Sounds good. Just give me one minute to finish up,” I called out to him. I turned back to Elliott. “Are you finished for the day too?”

“I think I’ll stick around and explore a little more before heading out.” Elliott fixed his light-blue eyes on me. “I feel like there might still be something here I’m missing. Sometimes the most special things are right there in front of us, just waiting to be discovered,” he said softly, his words hanging delicately in the air between us.