Chapter 11
‘So… this is where you live?’
‘Yes.’ Sophie stepped back to let Luc through the sky-blue door of her house. ‘And work, which is why I suggested you made a bit of a detour on your way to the airport.’
Ouah… Was that an intentional put down? Letting him know that she would never have invited him into her home for a personal reason? Perhaps the thought showed in his face because there was a flash of comprehension in Sophie’s eyes and he could feel that she was thrown off balance. Disconcerted?
‘Our next wedding’s more than a bit hush-hush,’ she added, hurriedly, pushing the door shut. ‘Which is why I didn’t want to discuss any details in a public place or put things in writing that could potentially be intercepted.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ Luc said.
He was looking around a long, thin room that made up the ground floor of the house.
At the far end was a huge, arch-shaped window divided into small panes that flooded the space with natural light and he could see framed fragments of forest-covered hills and the Mediterranean in the distance.
Two couches sat at right angles to each other beside the window.
At this end of the room were two antique, wooden desks and a tall bookshelf piled with file boxes and stacks of paper.
Tilly was sitting at one of the desks.
‘Hi, Tilly,’ Luc said.
‘Cou cou, Phoenix,’ Tilly said. ‘?a va?’
‘Très bien, merci,’ Luc responded. ‘Et toi?’
Tilly just beamed at him.
‘Tilly’s in her happy place,’ Sophie said. ‘She’s organising a destination proposal.’
‘I think I might like them even better than weddings,’ Tilly said.
‘It’s the first real commitment – the question that makes someone so…
vulnerable. The holding the breath for what the answer is going to be.
The wedding is… pfft.’ The movement of her hand looked like she was throwing the opinion of others over her shoulder. ‘La cerise sur le gateau.’
Sophie laughed. ‘It’s a lot of work organising those weddings if they’re just the cherry on the cake.
Or the icing, for that matter. Which reminds me – can you give Francoise a call, please, and check on the catering details for the Gilchrist–Dufour wedding?
See if they’ve made a final choice for the cake flavour and decoration.
I can’t keep Luc too long or he’ll miss his flight. ’
‘I’ll call her while I walk,’ Tilly said, getting to her feet and taking her bag from where it was hanging over the back of her chair. ‘I must get to the post office and clear our bo?te postale.’
‘We’ve been using a post office box for all the correspondence to do with this wedding,’ Sophie explained to Luc as Tilly slipped out of the house to head into the village. ‘Just as a security precaution until NDAs are signed.’
‘Sounds like you’ve got a lot to fill me in on.’ Luc really was intrigued now. ‘Just as well I’ve left plenty of time.’
He was taking in more details of Sophie’s home as he spoke.
A narrow staircase against the wall clearly led to another floor of the house and opposite the staircase was a fireplace that was incongruously ornate against the rustic exposed beams in the ceiling and the pitted square terracotta tiles of the floor.
The fireplace was marble, with a carved, leafy grapevine trailing down the sides.
Beneath the mantelpiece was a row of inlaid yellow ceramic petals around white centres, like reverse daisies.
It was as quirky as the colour choice for the front door and he liked it.
He liked the whole feeling of this room, in fact.
Even if it was set up as more of an office than a living area, it felt welcoming.
‘Have you lived here long?’ he asked.
‘Only a year. It took me a long time to find something I could afford that was also somewhere I could fall in love with living in.’ Sophie cleared her throat, as if she felt she’d revealed too much. ‘Come and sit down. Would you like a coffee? Or tea?’
‘No. Thank you, but I don’t need anything.’
He caught another flash of discomfort. Had it been his turn to deliver a reminder of boundaries? As if he’d meant that he didn’t want anything that she might be willing to provide?
Her nod was almost resigned – as if she’d expected the response. She gestured towards the sofas by the window. ‘Make yourself comfortable. I’ll just grab the file.’
Luc remained standing, pretending to admire the view.
He didn’t like the frisson of something awkward that he was so aware of.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to try and close the gap between himself and Sophie because it represented safety.
And he needed safety. When he’d left that lunch having promised to buy Sophie some time, he’d felt as if he’d managed to push the past back where it belonged.
Their gig at the Chateau de la Chèvre d’Or had undermined that confidence.
It had been going so well, too, until close to the end when he’d snapped the photo of the groom lifting the bride from the horse and captured them looking at each other as if nobody else on the planet existed.
If love were visible, the air all around them would have been filled with the sparkle of a million fireflies.
The air had felt thick enough with that invisible glow to make it hard to catch a breath.
Luc had felt that kind of love but it hadn’t had this element of tangible joy.
It had been the most heartbreaking moment in his life because he’d known, in the same instant he’d recognised it, that it was a dream he would never be able to catch in real life.
Had it been because Sophie was filling his thoughts or that he could feel her gaze on him that had made him look up?
And even though it was on the cusp of being too dark to interpret any expression at that distance, he’d known that Sophie had been just as affected by what had conjured up the fireflies.
Oh là là… The words in his head were a weary sigh. Were they never going to be able to get out from under the shadow of that moment?
He’d started to think, that evening, that it might even be possible to enjoy keeping his promise to help keep Sophie’s business afloat, but that wasn’t going to be the case if a single moment in the past could pop up like a solid wall of unfinished business.
He wasn’t going to break a promise, so perhaps he needed to change his perspective.
Some people believed that things happen for a reason, so maybe he could embrace that theory and assume that the reason fate had thrown himself and Sophie Spencer back together was so that they could lay some ghosts to rest and enable them both to move on to a less shadowed future.
* * *
Sophie was holding the Manila folder stuffed with every detail of the upcoming, high-profile but very discreet wedding she’d been planning for months, including an NDA form for Luc to sign.
Not that he seemed overly keen to hear about his next job. He was standing right beside the window, his head tilted sideways.
‘You can almost see the Baou de Saint Jeannet,’ he said.
‘You just need to be a little further out,’ Sophie told him. ‘It looks like it’s hanging over the house from the balcony off the kitchen upstairs. I can sit out there with a glass of wine in the evening and it feels like I’ve got company.’
The corner of Luc’s mouth lifted. ‘It does feel like a living thing, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘I can remember it from when I was a kid. I thought it looked like a lion who’d been turned to stone by the White Witch – like the creatures in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.’
Sophie liked that he wasn’t dismissing her fanciful suggestion. ‘Apparently inhabitants of St Paul de Vence used to look up at our baou and say that witches lived in Saint Jeannet.’
Luc’s smile widened a little. ‘And do they?’
That smile. What did it remind her of?
Oh, yeah… the kind of smile he used to share with Tom. Or Hannah. A smile that was genuinely amused. Unguarded. The kind of smile he’d never given her. Because he was being so careful to hide his feelings?
With good reason.
Perhaps he didn’t have to do that now, because it was so far in the past those feelings were no longer relevant. Maybe they no longer even existed?
Sophie didn’t feel that safe. Feelings were threatening to leak from her own memories and, while they might have been dormant, they didn’t feel dead. There was danger lurking in that space and Sophie had no intention of getting too close.
So she stopped herself smiling by pursing her lips thoughtfully instead. ‘If I told you that,’ she said lightly, ‘I might have to turn you to stone.’
The sound Luc made as she sat down on one of the sofas was more of a grunt than a chuckle but he followed her example and sat down on the nearest end of the other sofa.
Their knees were almost close enough to touch but the solid rolled arms of the furniture and the corner of the coffee table created the feeling of solid walls between them.
‘I spoke to Greg this morning,’ Sophie said, her tone serious again. ‘He said to say hi.’
‘How is he?’
‘Doing well. I think he’s actually enjoying the cooler weather in Scotland.’
‘He might change his mind in winter.’
‘He might.’ Sophie bit her lip. ‘You were actually the reason he rang me.’
‘Oh…?’
‘Mmm. Do you remember the guy at Zara’s wedding? Raven Vale?’
Luc made an unflattering sound. ‘Hard to forget.’
‘His article came out in Vogue Weddings last week. Have you seen it?’
‘No. Do I need to?’
Sophie shrugged. ‘Not really. His photos are okay. His writing is too flowery for my taste but Zara will be delighted at his descriptions of her. The staff at the Chateau d’Orval should be a lot happier now and he’s dropped credits to everyone else, as they do – my business, Florence the florist, the caterers, limousine service.
He also mentioned that you’d covered for the usual photographer that we use. The “enigmatic Phénix”, he called you.’
Luc raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that a problem?’