Heart Restoration Project

Chapter Thirty-Two

The bell chimed on the door of the ice-cream shop, and we were greeted by a middle-aged couple who could have passed for siblings. With similar wavy brown hair and rail-thin physiques, they looked a bit like a cartoon duo. “Bienvenue!” they announced simultaneously.

“Bonjour,” we echoed back. I stepped up to the counter and leaned over to Elliott. “Allow me,” I said and gestured playfully with my hand to my chest. “Nous voudrions deux boules de glace à la lavande, dans deux cornets, s’il vous pla?t.” The phrase came out painfully slow, but I guess I said it well enough that the woman nodded and bustled away behind the counter to grab our order.

Casting Elliott an aren’t you impressed face for my stellar (enough) French, to which he slow-clapped, I jokingly took a bow.

“Seriously, Plum, you really are getting so much better. I mean, when we first met you knew like four words, and one of them was shit.”

“Funnily enough, I think that one’s gotten the most mileage, actually. But thank you for saying that. I’ve really begun to enjoy my lessons with Pascal once I started to see them as more than just a means to an end, but actually something I wanted to learn, just for me.”

The woman handed us the ice creams piled high with two perfect scoops perched atop toasted cones.

“Let’s taste. On three?” Elliott suggested.

“Un, deux, trois,” I assented.

And at the first lick of the creamy, cold confection, my eyes practically rolled back in my head. The soft flavors of lavender and sweet cream, mixed with a citrusy brightness I couldn’t quite place, kicked my taste buds into overdrive.

Though the recipe was a deeply held family secret, Henri and Nadine Chapdelaine, the store’s owners, did let us in on a few of the ingredients, like cold-pressed orange zest and black currants. Really, it was the locally grown lavender that was the star of the show. They didn’t need to worry about thievery, though; there would be no way to re-create that unique flavor profile outside Provence.

“Let’s take this outside and find a bench or something,” I suggested.

We made our way across the street to a tiny park and sat in a garden of fully bloomed hydrangeas in pastel shades of pink and periwinkle. Elliott and I squeezed close, watching people pass by with their little dogs or boisterous children while we enjoyed the last of our treat.

Anyone walking by would’ve thought we were on a romantic date, enjoying ice cream on a beautiful day. If I didn’t know better, I could have easily believed it myself. I stood up to throw away a pile of sticky napkins and glanced over at Elliott, who was shifting uncomfortably on the bench.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

His face contorted, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, can I say something? I just ... I don’t know when else I’ll have the guts, and I think I just need to say it.”

My breath quickened, unsure what kind of confession Elliott was about to unleash. Hopefully not a romantic one. “Elliott, please don’t, we’ve already talked about this. I just don’t think—”

“No, it’s not that. It’s about Bastien.”

I sat back down. “Bastien?”

“I tried to keep an open mind.” He looked at me and waited, but as I was processing his words, he continued instead. “And I need you to know, I’m not saying this as a jealous guy. But the other day, when I was putting the clock from the market on the mantel in the salon, I saw Bastien and Kate huddled together in a dark corner of the chateau. They were laughing and talking like old friends, more than friends.”

“Sure, but I mean look at us now. If someone spotted us sitting here like this, who knows what conclusion they’d draw. Or on the carousel. Lines can get blurry sometimes. I’ve worked on enough shows to know how easily it can happen.”

He shook his head. “There’s something else. I didn’t think much of this when I saw it pop up on the master production schedule a few weeks ago, but did you know Kate was in Avignon a week or so before the trip to Paris?”

“No, that can’t be right. She told me she flew into Paris from LA that morning. We even texted a few days before her trip, and she asked me what the weather was like in France because she was packing.” My stomach knotted as I thought back to our meetup in the lobby of the George V where I remembered thinking she did look impossibly fresh for someone who’d just stepped off a twelve-hour flight.

He scrolled through his phone. “I’m pretty sure she was in France that whole week leading up to our weekend away. Yes, here it is, look.” He turned his phone to show me the schedule, and there it was on line three, Kate Wembley—Air France flight 1628, arriving in Avignon about eleven days before I’d met her in Paris.

“But why would she lie about that? And why would she go to Avignon, not Maubec?”

“Do you really want me to have to be the one to say it?” he asked.

I wanted to jump to Bastien’s defense—to tell Elliott that he’s wrong and to keep his unwanted opinions to himself. That he was the pot calling the kettle black since he had kissed me and maybe he should be the one not to be trusted, not Bastien. That Kate’s secret trip to Avignon was obviously to meet about the show and its production and nothing else. But something in my gut was telling me I needed to give this more thought. I’d never been the best judge of character when it came to people or love, and maybe I did need an outsider’s perspective, even if the outsider wasn’t entirely unbiased.

I sucked in a deep breath and said, “I appreciate you wanting to protect me, I do, but Bastien’s been good to me, and I want to believe his intentions are genuine. There has to be another reason.”

“Well, that’s the thing, Plum. Do you want to believe it, or do you actually believe it?”

I stood up to gather my thoughts, but instead my eyes darted up to Saint Orens and down to the ice-cream shop and back up to the church again. I blinked hard. Wait, was this the same place where my dad proposed to my mom!? I did a full circle in my spot and muttered, “I think this is it.”

“You think this is what?”

“I think this is the exact spot my dad proposed to my mom forty years ago.”

“Wait, really?”

“Before I left for France, he told me about a trip he and my mom took to Provence. He talked about a gorgeous church on a hill, delicious lavender ice cream, and a small park where he got down on one knee to ask her to be his forever. This has to be it.”

He chuckled. “I have news for you, Provence is practically made up of gorgeous churches and quaint little ice-cream shops.”

“No, I know this is it,” I said resolutely.

“So what happened? I guess she accepted, right?”

“No, she didn’t actually. The timing wasn’t right. They needed to live a little more, learn a lot more, and let some things go before they were ready to settle down to make a life together.”

“There’s a good lesson there. Do me a favor, Plum, just don’t rush into anything with Bastien. You deserve better.”

“And by ‘better,’ do you mean ...?” I lifted my brows, expecting him to understand my implication without me having to say it.

“I mean, better.” Elliott shifted his bag onto his shoulder. “I can’t believe how late it is. I need to check in at the chateau to see if we’re on schedule to resume filming tomorrow. Want the van to drop you back at the inn?”

With the seeds of doubt I already had about Bastien and Kate now having been watered by Elliott, I said, “Actually, I think I’ll go with you.”

To say that the chateau was in a state of chaos when we arrived was a gross understatement. René had walked off the job about an hour earlier, and the general mood of panic and stress among everyone who was left on-site was almost palpable.

“Bastien, what on earth is going on here?” I asked, trying not to allow my horror to overtake my voice. “Where’s Kate?”

He ranted in French, of which I could understand nothing. He railed and hollered, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when he grabbed one of the samples of decorative stone we were looking at for the fireplace and hurled it across the room to put a hole in the already damaged Sheetrock.

“Okay, we’re leaving,” Elliott announced, stepping next to me. “You need to calm down and get your shit together, man. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Bastien stepped toward Elliott, their size difference ever apparent, and he stuck a finger to Elliott’s chest. “Stay out of it. You don’t know anything about anything!”

For as escalated as Bastien’s blood pressure was growing, Elliott’s face and voice remained even and clear. “As production director, actually, I kind of do. And I think you’re acting like an asshole right now. Unprofessional. Hostile. And a little unhinged.”

“Va te faire foutre!” Bastien spat back. I wasn’t exactly sure what that translated to, but if the vein popping out of his neck was any indication, I had a feeling I knew the meaning.

Elliott grabbed for my hand and started pulling me toward the door. “C’mon, Plum, Gervais is waiting out front. Let’s head back to the inn, and we can sort this out with Kate tomorrow.”

I was pinned, trapped between the two of them, and the metaphor of the whole situation was not lost on me. Who the hell was this guy throwing rocks through walls and screeching like a banshee? This wasn’t the Bastien I had come to know and fall for over these past several weeks. I stood there suspended in indecision and saddled with confusion over the utter mess in front of me. The chateau was in disarray. My beau was acting like a horse’s ass while also possibly carrying out a torrid love affair behind my back.

And all I knew for certain was that my sanity was hanging on by one very rapidly fraying thread.