Chapter 15
Every train of thought was taking her straight back to that kiss.
Making it impossible to sleep.
Safely tucked up in her own bed, Sophie had been unable to resist going beyond the sensation of falling into that touch of Luc’s lips on hers.
With the memory so intense she could still conjure up the tingle with a feather-light touch of a fingertip across her lips, Sophie had allowed herself to go back into a totally forbidden space.
She had unlocked a mental door and floated into what might have come next, if that kiss hadn’t been broken so decisively – as if the enormity of what they’d just done was too huge to acknowledge, let alone begin to process.
Sophie certainly wasn’t ready to try and see into the future.
Instead, she was tapping back into what had been her shameful secret from all those years ago.
Stepping into the fantasies of what it would have felt like to have Luc’s lips touching hers.
His hands on her body. The ultimate intimacy of feeling him inside her.
And yes… that desire was just as powerful as it had ever been.
More powerful, in fact, because she now knew that the reality of his touch blew anything she’d imagined out of the water.
She could feel the physical wanting of him like an electric current running through every cell in her body.
Sophie had never, ever, felt like this about any other man and she knew she never would.
So yeah… the pull was still there.
But perhaps there was even more reason to resist it?
Twice now, Sophie had experienced the grief of losing a loved one and having the life she knew and felt so safe in upended to the point of complete destruction.
Why would she make herself so utterly vulnerable yet again?
Who could survive that kind of pain a third time?
Her emotions were so tangled. There was no way she could go to sleep until she had, at least, decided on which thread she could trust enough to untangle first. One that wouldn’t break. One that she could wind up into a tiny ball and tuck into a corner of her heart.
She could see it, that thread. Glowing. Only visible because, for the first time, she’d gone past that final moment of physical intimacy in her fantasy and could imagine what might come after that.
She might still have missed its significance if it hadn’t been for that life-changing beat of time as that kiss had filled her senses.
That feeling of being where she belonged.
The sheer comfort of coming home.
The colours of this thread were still warm but much softer. A golden shade like sunshine, at dawn or dusk.
It was that feeling of having found what she’d been searching for her whole life.
Something that she’d seen before but hadn’t been brave enough to acknowledge, let alone reach out to touch, because it was too closely entwined with the flame-like flickers of a purely physical passion that could never be trusted.
She could sink into sleep creeping closer as she drifted into what it might feel like to be lying here with Luc’s arms around her.
To feel that safe…
* * *
She was trying to run but it felt like she was trapped in quicksand.
How could anyone run when they were wearing a ridiculous meringue of a wedding dress, the hoops of the underskirt a cage around her legs and the fabric like arms trying to catch hold of her and pull her away from where she had to go?
She tripped and fell, again and again. She could feel the pain of grazed knees and the shredded palms of her hands as she fought to get up again and follow the endless roads – lost on the outskirts of a vast city she couldn’t recognise.
She could feel people watching her from the shadows but no one was coming to help her and she’d never felt so alone.
Racking sobs that sounded like his name were trying to claw their way out but no sounds emerged from her throat no matter how hard she tried to force them.
Tom… Tom…
She found the mangled but still oddly shining blue carcass of the car but she couldn’t see through the windows because of the smeared and dripping blood…
* * *
Sophie woke as if she’d fallen out of her nightmare with a jarring thump, her heart hammering and her cheeks wet with tears.
She sat bolt upright as she tried to slow her breathing and reconnect with reality, and her first conscious reaction was one of despair.
She hadn’t had one of these horrible, recurring dreams for years.
Was this punishment because she’d fallen asleep thinking about Luc? Were they going to start all over again and make her afraid to even try and go to sleep?
No…
This felt different. Already her racing heart was slowing and the dark images her mind had thrown into her sleep were fading fast.
She could feel a remnant of the sensation of arms around her body but these weren’t trying to trap and hurt her. They were offering comfort. They were more like what she’d fallen asleep thinking about.
Luc’s arms.
This was what was so different. This was why the painful echoes of loss and fear and loneliness were ebbing so fast.
Sophie found herself lying down again, still imagining being inside that circle of Luc’s arms, her head against his chest, feeling the beat of his heart beneath her cheek. She knew it would feel like the beat of her own heart. Her own life.
That was what made it feel like home.
And that made it the most important thread in that confusing knot of emotions to untangle and keep. She wanted to hold on to that tiny ball forever but she also wanted to show it to Luc.
She wanted to tell him that she understood. That she knew he would have had and maybe still did have, his own version of her nightmares.
She wanted to tell him how sorry she was.
He had loved Tom as much as she had. As much as Hannah and the rest of his family had, even.
Yet they’d all blamed him for Tom’s death.
The whole family had conveniently forgotten that it had been Luc who had quite possibly saved Tom’s life by stopping him going off the rails and ruining his life with drugs as a teenager.
They’d acted as if it had been intentional and not simply a stupid accident.
It had been a unanimous decision that Luc was not to be allowed to attend Tom’s funeral.
There was shame to be found in remembering that.
And, for the first time, Sophie realised how selfish she’d been.
The Baxter family had protected her privacy in her initial shock and grief, but she’d been complicit in that blame game by letting them shield her.
By trying to somehow carry the shared weight of the grief that was crushing herself and Hannah.
By buying into the unspoken verdict that Luc deserved whatever pain he might be experiencing because this was, quite clearly, his fault.
Had she allowed Luc to be blamed because it somehow absolved her of having to admit that she had betrayed Tom in a different way?
By being about to marry a man she loved but wasn’t in love with?
She had been willing to accept a love she would never have been able to return equally and Tom had deserved so much more than that.
Luc knew that. He’d loved Tom.
But he’d also loved Sophie.
There were more threads in her own knot. The heat of the physical pull had by no means melted the filaments of guilt and shame and grief. There was the new realisation of what she’d been searching for all her life, too, and the empathy for Luc that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel before.
But… what was also there that was making her heart beat more quickly and her skin prickle in awareness?
Was it love? The in love kind of love?
Or was it hope…?
Did she want to unravel threads like that if they were part of the knot?
It would be safer not to.
And what about Luc’s knot?
He might have burned that ball of threads, along with everything else that he’d risen from to start his life like the mythical creature he’d named himself after. Maybe those feelings no longer existed anywhere other than in memories. Or nightmares?
With a sigh, Sophie pushed back the covers of her bed. She might as well get up and make herself a cup of tea. It was unlikely that she was going to go back to sleep anytime soon.
* * *
‘You look tired, ma belle.’ Tilly was frowning as she stepped back from kissing Sophie’s cheeks. ‘Were you home too late last night? I should have stayed to help you.’
‘You helped a lot by taking the van back to the box de stockage.’ Sophie poured coffee into mugs for them both. ‘We weren’t late. I… just didn’t sleep very well.’
‘We?’ Tilly’s eyebrows rose sharply. ‘You and Monsieur Phénix? Oh là là.’ She touched her throat with her fingers, her eyes wide. ‘I knew there was something you weren’t telling me. I’ve felt it all along.’
‘He didn’t come home with me.’ Sophie handed Tilly her coffee. ‘I meant we weren’t late leaving the villa. He stayed to… to help me look for the necklace I let Natalia borrow. The one that got lost.’
‘Ah…’ Tilly’s face fell. ‘C’était une catastrophe. I’m so sorry you lost the heart, Sophie. It was the wedding gift from your fiancé, oui?’
‘Oui. C’est ca.’
Sophie knew she could leave it at that. They could both turn to answering emails and opening electronic diaries and getting their working day underway but…
this felt dishonest. As far as her employees knew, her link to Luc Moreau was only through his friendship with Greg, but Tilly was a very close friend.
As Hannah had once been.
And there was another thread that was part of the tangle her shared past with Luc had created. Regret. Loss on top of loss.
‘Sophie?’ Tilly touched her arm. ‘What is it?’
‘Have you got anything urgent to do right now?’
Tilly shook her head. ‘I was going to spend some time on a presentation for promoting the new part of our business.’
Sophie found a smile. ‘You’re really keen on this idea of building proposal events as a separate speciality to the weddings, aren’t you?’