Chapter 14
14
This wasn’t Laura.
Not the real Laura. This was the Laura that Noah had almost forgotten – the buttoned-up, in-control estate agent who’d made no effort to conceal her disapproval of his self-indulgent lifestyle.
It was surprisingly disappointing. A little heartbreaking, even.
Especially given that it hadn’t felt like that in the church, when he’d seen her enter behind Julien and his mother. When her gaze had found him in no more than a blink of time, as if she was responding to the irresistible magnetic pull he was aware of himself.
The feeling of that pull was gone by the time she took her position as one of the witnesses. And that was a good thing, he had reminded himself more than once during the ceremony. That was why he’d wanted to be a part of this wedding. That was the cure. He knew that both versions of Laura felt the same way about marriage as he did. If she’d been hanging on to any desire to revisit that affaire they’d both enjoyed so much, she would be finding this ritual of commitment just as much of a wake-up call as he’d intended it to be for himself.
No wonder she was tapping into the image she had honed over so much of her life. It was a signal that he would not be welcome to get close again even if he gave in to the pull of temptation. Noah was absolutely on board with her stance, because it made the intensity of his desire to have this woman in his bed again irrelevant and therefore so much easier to dismiss. It wasn’t going to happen.
He did have to steel himself when they arrived at the reception venue, however. This was a restaurant he’d told Laura about. One of the lures he’d shamelessly played with to get her to come back to France, to give him the opportunity to discover whether she was as perfect as he’d thought from that first moment she’d stood in front of him.
There was nothing to do other than mingle with the guests and drink champagne until Julien and Ellie returned from the first round of wedding photography: shots of the happy couple in and around the medieval walled village. Group photos would be taken here, on the terrace. The ancient grapevines that provided welcome shade during the summer were bare of leaves but the generous strands of tiny lights woven between the thick stems were a seamless part of the silver and white wedding décor.
He had to steel himself again when he saw Laura standing alone on one side of the terrace. Taking a deep breath, he collected two flutes of champagne from a silver salver held aloft by a passing waiter and went towards her without a beat of hesitation.
‘Bonjour, Laura. It’s good to see you again.’ He smiled as he offered her the glass. ‘ Une coupe de champagne pour toi, peut-être ?’
Using that particular phrase had been deliberate but perhaps unwise. Because he saw that Laura remembered the first time he’d used it, when he’d sent that photograph of the romantic table at La Farigoule, the day she’d returned to Scotland after they’d first met. The photograph that, quite possibly, had been the catalyst for the entire flirtation that had followed, as well as its memorable finale.
For a heartbeat, he saw the real Laura again.
More than that, he felt the brush of her skin against his own as he reached to offer her the glass. When she took it, he would be able to kiss each of her cheeks because it was only polite to faire la bise on greeting someone he knew so well.
And, oh, mon Dieu …
This was worse than he could have imagined.
That fleeting touch might have only lasted a nanosecond but it was enough to bring every one of his senses to an almost painful level of awareness. Flashes of memory that were crowding his head but being felt throughout his entire body. The sounds and scents of making love. The taste and touch. Even the visual memories were somehow blurred into something more like emotion than mere images.
He didn’t want to be here, trapped in this crowd of people. He wanted to be alone. With Laura. Somewhere no one could find them, for a very long time.
But…
But Laura was pulling her hand back. Sharply – as if she’d been burned.
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t want any champagne.’
It felt like she would reject anything he offered. How had his touch become so distasteful to her?
Noah didn’t understand and the rejection was hurtful. He hadn’t promised her anything that he hadn’t delivered, had he? Were her memories of their, albeit brief, time together completely different to his own?
He stood there, holding two untouched glasses of champagne in his hands, feeling foolish, but rescue came from an unexpected source as Laura’s mother walked towards them.
‘ Bonjour , Madame Gilchrist.’
‘ Bonjour , Monsieur Dufour.’
‘Please, call me Noah. This is such a happy occasion for your family,’ he said. ‘I’m also delighted to be here. And look… I happen to have two glasses of champagne. One for each of us.’
Jeannie was happy to accept the drink and Noah couldn’t help a flick of a glance towards Laura as he remembered the way she had flinched at the offer. She averted her gaze swiftly, but not fast enough to hide a flash of… what was it?
Fear?
Noah could feel himself frowning. Was Laura afraid of her mother – and perhaps, Ellie – finding out how well she knew him? Would they be shocked? Any hint of the real Laura that he had discovered was certainly not visible. Had she always been hiding from her family? Had she ignored his advice to take more notice of what she wanted than what those around her expected?
How sad was that?
But wasn’t this what he had been seeking all along?
The cure?
He didn’t want to be endlessly thinking about Laura Gilchrist in the future, especially if he was worried that she wasn’t happy. Her demons were not his problem. He didn’t want to care this much. He had no idea how she’d slipped through his defences to this degree, but he had to repair the damage before it got any worse.
It would only take a few hours and then he could slip away from this gathering, having done everything he had been asked to do. In the meantime, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to play the part of nothing more than a friend of the bride and groom. His ability to be charming and polite but not actually engage with people on more than a superficial level had been polished over years of working in the real estate industry.
He could make it easy for Laura to keep hiding.
Because he would be hiding himself.
* * *
She couldn’t go home.
They were all supposed to go home the day after the wedding, following a lunch at a small restaurant in Tourrettes-sur-Loup that was between the mairie and the church. This was just a casual family meal and Laura was wearing her oversized jumper, skinny jeans and boots again. Her small suitcase was with her mother’s, tucked into a corner. Julien’s mother and grandmother would be leaving afterwards, taking Theo and the little dog, Pascal, and driving back to their home in the mountain village of Roquebillière while Julien and Ellie would fly to Paris for a very brief lune de miel . Laura had a ticket to accompany Jeannie back to Scotland but she knew she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she boarded that plane.
She couldn’t go home yet because she still hadn’t told Noah and it was completely unacceptable to convey what she had to tell him by a written message or a long-distance call.
She had hoped there would be a chance to have a private word last night, even if was only to arrange to meet this morning but, despite how charming he was being to everyone and especially her mother and sister, it felt as though the only opportunity Noah had wanted to offer had come with a glass of champagne and a private reminder of how their affair had started.
And she’d refused to accept the offer.
She couldn’t blame him for being offended.
It had been a relief that they weren’t seated too close to each other at the tables for a meal that went on for course after course of amazing food that Laura could barely taste. She’d listened to speeches and watched a montage of images of Ellie’s childhood that she’d helped to gather in recent weeks.
The final course of the dinner had been the wedding cake, a stunning croquembouche – a tower of small profiteroles filled with crème patissière and thinly coated with crispy caramel – decorated with spun sugar tendrils and silver glitter, which had arrived encircled by fizzing sparkler firework sticks. Laura had been as enchanted as everyone else, but when she’d looked away from its grand entrance, Noah had gone. He’d slipped out without saying goodbye and simply vanished into thin air.
After a largely sleepless night, she had taken her phone out this morning to text him, with the intention of making an arrangement to meet, but her mother had knocked on her door while she was trying, and failing, to find a way to even begin the message.
‘Did you get the link from Ellie?’ she asked. ‘With the first wedding photographs? Oh, my goodness. I can’t believe how beautiful they are.’
It had been all too easy to gift herself just a few minutes of procrastination, but those minutes led to more and now they were all looking at the photographs again during lunch, hours later with Jeannie one side of her and Ellie on the other, trying to pick their favourites to forward to Fi.
‘This one,’ Jeannie said. She turned her phone around so they could all see the image – a view of Julien and Ellie walking away from the photographer, hand in hand through a narrow, cobbled alleyway in St Paul de Vence.
Ellie’s choice was one where she was leaning back against a stone wall with a trail of clinging ivy, beside a giant, terracotta plant pot on one of the steps of the steep street, beneath a quirky sign advertising an antique shop. Julien had one hand on the wall, his other cupping Ellie’s chin as he kissed her.
The palpable tenderness of the moment captured forever was enough to bring tears to Laura’s eyes.
Oh, help … She blinked them back.
‘Laura?’ Her mother’s voice held a note that suggested her uncharacteristic level of emotion hadn’t gone unnoticed. ‘What’s your favourite, hen?’
‘Ah…’ Laura was grateful for an excuse to spend a few seconds scrolling through images on her phone. Gathering her composure. ‘This one’s lovely.’
The happy couple were standing beside a tiny chapel just down the road from the Dufour Immobilier offices. ‘I remember standing right there with Ellie myself on our first visit. It’s such a lovely view of St Paul de Vence in the background.’
Ellie’s choice was definitely one of her own favourites. Or maybe it was one of the less formal pictures that had been taken on the outdoor terrace of the Colombe d’Or, the lack of greenery in the roof of twisted old grapevines more than made up for by thousands of tiny lights. Or the indoor shots of the beautifully set tables in the private area of the restaurant, with the background of beautiful artworks on walls of pale plaster mottled with the patina of time and smoke. There was a picture of Noah, with his guitar, playing and singing what had to be the most romantic song she had ever heard, even if she couldn’t understand the words well enough.
He had taken off his jacket by then and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. The string tie had been loosened, and his hair…
Ohh … it looked as if someone had run their fingers through it to make it so tousled, and Laura’s heart had been breaking with the longing that she could have been the one to have done that.
She had wanted desperately to let every one of her senses soak this in but she hadn’t dared let her gaze rest on him as he sat on a wooden bench beneath windows that looked out onto the terrace, wall sconces with flickering candles on either side. If he’d looked up and made eye contact, he would have been able to see into her soul, and Laura knew the rejection that would come as he recognised how she felt about him might very well feel like the end of the world. So she’d kept her head down and allowed only the sound to fold itself around her bones.
But… she could secretly print this photograph and keep it somewhere very private. She could show it to her daughter when she was old enough to understand.
That’s your papa…
Ellie reached across the table to touch her hand. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
Laura found a smile. ‘Just tired,’ she said. ‘It was an amazing party but I’m not used to such late nights. And… I haven’t been sleeping that well lately, anyway. Work’s been a bit… stressful, I guess.’
‘You need a break,’ Jeannie said firmly. ‘You work far too hard, Laura. You’ve been looking a lot more stressed than usual lately.’
‘It’s nearly Christmas. I’ll get a couple of weeks off soon.’
‘Why don’t you stay here for a couple more days?’ Ellie suggested. ‘You wouldn’t have to pay for the hotel. You can have La Maisonette all to yourself. It’s got everything you could need. You could keep the rental car and go anywhere you want, but I can guarantee a peace and quiet in La Maisonette that you could never find anywhere else. There’s something else there, too… Something special about that wee house. Something magical.’
Laura opened her mouth to say that she couldn’t possibly not return to work as planned but then pressed her lips together. That wasn’t true. She had nothing scheduled that couldn’t be postponed. And this was it. Another chance. If she didn’t take it she might end up getting on that plane later this afternoon and then she’d have to live with the lifelong guilt of not having done what she knew was the right thing to do.
‘You know what?’ Somehow, Laura managed to keep her voice neutral, even though her heart rate had picked up and nerves were making her stomach clench. ‘I just might do that.’
* * *
The text message was unexpected.
Noah had assumed that all the Gilchrist women were out of town, either in Paris or Scotland. He believed that the awkward, overly formal, interactions with Laura at the wedding were the last he would ever have with her, face to face.
But maybe not?
For some inexplicable reason, Laura had decided to stay. Not only that but she was asking to see him.
I need to talk to you, Noah. But not on the phone, please. I’m staying at La Maisonette.
Noah took his time, finishing his cigarette and glass of wine. Absorbing the shock – or was it possibly delight – of this message.
Judging by his disturbed sleep last night, being present at a wedding ceremony hadn’t quite provided the cure he needed to be free of this… obsession with Laura Gilchrist.
Maybe he was the only person that Laura felt she could be entirely herself with. She might want to apologise for that hurtful coolness towards him because of the presence of her entire family.
Talking to her might help.
But could he be that close to her and not want more?
Of course not. But whether something more happened was entirely up to Laura.
Could that turn out to be the cure?
Did he just need to be with her once more because it couldn’t possibly be as good as he remembered the first time being? He’d made it into some kind of fantasy that was endangering the potential enjoyment of any future liaisons, and that really needed to be sorted so that he could move on. Properly. All it might need was a dose of reality. It would be good – he hadn’t the faintest shadow of doubt about that – but it wouldn’t be that good. Nothing ever was.
He stubbed out his cigarette. There was a wine shop just over the road and he knew they would have an excellent, and well chilled, bottle of champagne available.
He finally answered the text.
à très bient?t
* * *
The path to the front door of La Maisonette looked so different to the last time he’d been here with Laura. There were no lavender flowers on either side of the pathway or pretty roses smothering the stone archway of the entrance. There was none of that heady anticipation, either. That deliciously playful dance of words and looks and gentle touches as they stretched out a time that could exist only once – before they made love for the very first time. Knowing that it would also be the last time had made everything so sharply focussed.
So… intense.
So utterly unforgettable.
Noah could hear the echoes of Laura’s laughter and see her smile and feel her pleasure in what she was doing, like taking photographs of this door knocker, a hand holding an apple.
He could feel the coldness of the brass as he lifted the hand to announce his arrival. He only tapped softly but the door swung open seconds later, as if Laura had been waiting beside it. She stepped back as he entered but she was still holding the door and she was in the shadow so much that he couldn’t interpret the look in her eyes.
He paused, leaning forward to brush her cheek with his lips, one side and then the other.
‘ Bonsoir , Laura,’ he murmured.
‘ Bonsoir , Noah. Thank you for coming.’ She shut the heavy wooden door behind her but didn’t move towards the couch that was within a welcoming circle of warmth from the fire flickering in the grate.
He held up the bottle of vintage Dom Pérignon. If she accepted the offer this time, he would know how this meeting would end. Noah didn’t realise he was holding his breath until he saw the shake of Laura’s head.
A tiny shake but it was enough to make the smooth fall of her hair swing, the light catching its red-gold threads and making them glimmer.
‘You don’t want the champagne?’ His voice was as heavy as his heart.
‘I can’t,’ Laura said quietly. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Putain!
He hadn’t seen this coming and he had no idea how to respond. To try and gain a few seconds he walked further into the room. Far enough to put the unwanted bottle of champagne onto the table and then turn to face Laura, who still hadn’t moved.
He tried, and failed, to find a smile.
So Laura had another man in her life. She was going to have his baby. To marry him, peut-être ? Because a child was something that could change even a well-founded stance on whether or not they wanted to make a lifelong commitment.
‘Ah…’ Noah cleared his throat. ‘I must offer my félicitations . This is more happy news for your family. Especially your mama.’
‘She doesn’t know yet. Nobody knows. I couldn’t tell them when they were so happy about the wedding.’ Laura was finally moving, walking towards the couch, but she didn’t sit down. She stood at one end of it. Noah was standing on the other end. The distance between them felt very much greater than the length of this piece of furniture, however.
‘I understand,’ Noah said, nodding. ‘And it’s early days, n’est pas ? Many couples prefer to keep the news private for a while anyway.’
Why was she telling him ?
There seemed to be a soft, almost imperceptible buzzing sound in the room. A kind of hum, like you might associate with the electricity of an approaching storm.
‘It’s not early,’ Laura said quietly. ‘I’m five months pregnant.’
The humming was louder now. It was interfering with his brain’s ability to make sense of the information. Five months ?
Had Laura already been pregnant when she came back to France?
He could actually see the movement of her throat, as if it was very difficult for her to swallow.
‘It’s your baby, Noah.’
‘ Pfft…’ The sound was as dismissive as the gesture Noah made with his hand.
‘Not possible,’ he added, but then felt a chill trickle down his spine. ‘Unless you were lying to me? About being protected?’
She shook her head harder this time but Noah didn’t notice any glimmer of her hair catching the firelight.
‘I wasn’t lying,’ she said. ‘But… sometimes. Rarely… it happens. The pill can fail to give protection.’
She was telling the truth. He might not want to believe it but he knew she wasn’t lying the moment he met her gaze and held it hard enough to make her flinch.
‘And you chose not to tell me when you found out?’
He’d never seen anyone look this guilty. Or distressed.
‘I didn’t want you to know.’ Laura’s voice cracked. ‘Not then. I didn’t want anyone to know because I was just going to make the problem go away, but…’
‘ But ?’ The word was savage. Bitten out, coated in ice.
‘But I needed to make my own choice.’ Laura raised her chin and held his gaze. ‘I needed to listen to the words I could hear coming from here.’ She laid her hand over her heart. The way Noah had when he’d told her to listen to the real Laura. The one that was hiding. The one who knew what she wanted and what she needed.
‘I want this baby,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t expect anything from you, Noah, but you have the right to know that you are going to be a father.’
Non… non, non, non…
Not that the words were allowed to emerge. The buzzing sound had become a roar. Noah didn’t dare open his mouth to say anything because he had no idea what might come out after that impassioned denial.
He had no control over what was happening here, even though it was happening to him . And that was… terrifying.
He hadn’t felt this afraid since…
…since he was no more than a child. When his beloved sister was having a seizure right in front of him. Dying… and there was nothing at all he could do to stop it.
But he wasn’t a child now. And Noah Dufour had been in complete control of his life until this moment. He wasn’t going to sink into that fear. He could take control again.
He did.
He turned and walked towards the door. He opened it and then shut it behind him in a quiet, controlled manner.
And kept walking.