The French Mis-Connection

1. Iris

1

IRIS

“ I ris, are you here?” Chloe’s voice echoed around the stone walls of the winery.

I put the bottles I was clutching on the wooden table and looked up to find my best friend. Her body was silhouetted in the sunlight streaming through the doorway. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

I brushed my hands on my skirt. My afternoon assisting Thierry, the Marsan estate’s old winemaker, hadn’t gone to plan. He asked me to help catalogue his store of old bottles. Judging from the cobwebs and dust coating them, some had been sitting in the dark since the sermon on the mount. I wasn’t sure I’d created much order out of the chaos, but if nothing else, I’d given them a good clean.

“Thierry, I’m heading off. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I shouted into the cavernous building, my words bouncing off the thick stone walls.

There was no reply. Lord only knew where he was. I hadn’t seen him since just after lunch. We’d shared some excellent stinky cheese, along with some crusty bread. To say I was enjoying my French adventure would be an understatement. My shorts grew tighter by the week, but my taste buds were in absolute heaven.

As I neared the door, Chloe’s grin came into focus. Her red curls glowed in the sun, and the corners of my lips ticked up. I couldn’t imagine backpacking with anyone else. We’d been on the road for months, but thanks to our paltry bank balances, we’d made an unscheduled stop to pick grapes in France for six weeks.

I took one look at her grimy face and dirty dungarees. “Big day?”

She shrugged. “Oh, you know, the usual. Sweat and toil in the fields.” Her Scottish burr rolled over me. “Not everyone is lucky enough to be plucked from the masses and live a life of relative comfort inside.”

I huffed a laugh. I thanked my lucky stars every day for the opportunity to help Thierry. Not that I didn’t like getting my hands dirty, but I’d take working in the cool of the cellars over the relentless French summer sun any day.

Apparently, my stellar experience as a dental nurse earned me the position. I was the only one amongst the current pickers who’d worked in any sort of office, and the old winemaker needed help to organise his stores. Giving tooth flossing tips bore no relation to cataloguing and stacking bottles, but the winery gig had other perks. In return, the old winemaker took it upon himself to teach me some French and a little about winemaking. If my education included a few tastings, who was I to protest?

Chloe held open the door as I pushed past her into the daylight.

“I honestly don’t know how you convinced him to pick you. I can stack bottles just as well as you, and I know more French.”

I grinned, waving her comments away with a hand. “What can I say? Perhaps he wanted some tips on brushing his teeth. Anyway, I thought you preferred being out in the fields with all those strapping pickers. Any new arrivals?”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “One or two. Manual work definitely sorts the men from the boys.”

I had to chuckle. Chloe was popular with the male pickers and the locals, too. Sometimes, the room we shared felt like Grand Central Station. She was living her best life, though. She always kept it classy and cleared the decks before I got home.

We started up the path running alongside the Chateau Marsan, the gravel crunching beneath our feet. “What’s for dinner?” I asked, turning my face into the sun. I already knew the answer. We’d lived on a steady diet of cheese on toast with a side of fresh figs for weeks.

“The usual. Plus, a bottle of red I picked up in town. I thought you could pass it over your newly educated taste buds. I might send a crate back to my parents if it gets your seal of approval.”

“I’m hardly the best judge. I’m not sure what Thierry is trying to teach me or why. But I enjoy all the free samples.”

Chloe’s brow wrinkled for a second, and then her high-voltage grin hit me again. “You know what you are? You’re his Pado -wine, and he’s your OB- wine -Kenobi!”

I groaned. “Oh, Chloe. That’s terrible.”

She grimaced. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

As we passed through the dappled light, the trees parted to give us a glimpse of the chateau. There wasn’t a day when the sight didn’t take my breath away. Its faded yellow stucco walls, the flash of its grey tiles in the sun, and the beautiful, vibrant gardens. Hell, the place even had towers.

The staff called Marsan the “house,” but really, it was a medieval castle straight out of a Disney movie. Maybe I’d been born at the wrong time or watched too many costume dramas, but there was something comfortable about the place .

“Speaking of bosses,” Chloe said, “ours has been in the news again.”

“Agnes?” I asked.

Agnes Deval was the housekeeper at the chateau. She was manicured, coiffed, and downright terrifying. All the workers lived in fear of her. She'd been particularly snippy with me since my elevation from dirt to dust.

“No, silly. Her boss. The elusive and very exclusive King of the Smoulder.”

I giggled. “Sorry, what?”

“Luc Du Comtois. You know? The one who actually pays our wages.”

I’d have to be living under a rock not to know who our real boss was. Chloe described him as the poster boy for rich, arrogant playboys everywhere and he was constantly in European society pages. Barely a night went by when I didn’t hear some gossip involving him from amongst the pickers.

“What about him?”

She turned to me, warming to her subject. “It turns out he’s France’s answer to Chris Hemsworth.”

I drew my brows. “He carries a giant hammer?”

Chloe rolled her eyes, the soft breeze ruffling her curls. “No, silly. He has abs for days.”

“Our boss was in the news because of his abs?”

“Not specifically, no, but based on the pictures I saw of him on a yacht, I think his six-pack deserves its own headlines.”

I shook my head, fighting a smile. Chloe was all kinds of crazy. I’d only seen a few pictures of Luc Du Comtois. I wasn’t really into gossip magazines or society pages.

“So why was he really in the news?”

She hummed a note. “I’m not exactly sure. The article was in French, meaning I only understood about a third of it. But according to one maid, he’s unmatched in the proud, silent, knicker-melting stakes. It probably had something to do with that.”

She turned around quickly, eyes wide, and grabbed my arm. “Oh, crap! Can you imagine if he came down here and took one look at you? Blonde, gorgeous, and newly knowledgeable about grapes. You’re every wine tycoon’s dream. And he’s not that much older than us.”

Chloe had spent far too much time with her romance novels. “Stop, will you?” I dragged a hand through my hair. With all the dust and dry air in the winery, it currently resembled straw. “Nobody is looking at anybody. Not to mention, I’m not into the grumpy, silent type, no matter how good their abs or knicker-melting abilities. Besides, there’s been no sign of him in all the weeks we’ve been here.”

Chloe furrowed her brow as if deliberating whether chickens or eggs came first. “You’re right. He’s been too busy cavorting around the Greek islands with his friends. I’ve put a few pictures up in the dorm to keep us warm on chilly nights.”

I snorted a laugh. “It’s still summer.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “You’re such a killjoy. Almost as bad as Agnes.”

I chuckled. “Nobody is as bad as Agnes.” She was a total wet blanket with her pursed lips and passive-aggressive criticisms. She’d even banned the pickers from using the swimming pool in the gardens. The weather was hot and sticky, and the pool lay empty day after day.

We reached the end of the path, and the smell of lavender assaulted us from the flower beds as we passed the formal garden. An abundance of huge white statues nestled amongst the bushes. The naked warriors gleamed in the light, holding shields or lying around, comparing the sizes of their broadswords. Chloe called it the “Garden of Girth.”

“I often wonder who all these men were,” I murmured.

Chloe sighed. “I have no idea, but I’d love to have been a fly on the wall during the posing sessions. I’d happily chisel any of their marble if you get my drift.”

I nudged her with my elbow before linking my arm through hers.

“Of course, they could be relatives of the Du Comtois family,” she said. “If so, Luc definitely inherited their genes. I see a resemblance in the abs.” She tapped the stomach of the nearest statue throwing me a wink.

“Don’t call our boss Luc. He’s not our friend.” In fact, I didn’t think anyone could be friends with someone like him.

Sure, I’d heard of his reputation as a heartbreaker—a distant but dashing playboy. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Nobody could be attractive enough to melt knickers, and really, lying around on beaches all day and brooding behind sunglasses didn’t seem that hard.

We turned away from the chateau, following the path that led to the staff quarters. I hadn’t lived in shared accommodation since I was at university, around ten years ago. It was safe to say Chloe and I were two of the oldest backpackers in recorded history. But we weren’t travelling out of wanderlust.

“I had another text earlier,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket.

Chloe winced. “From Nathan?”

I let out a breath and nodded.

“Oh, joy. What did he want?”

“Just to heckle me again .” I opened the message and passed my phone to Chloe.

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at the screen. My ex had spent the last six months holding my cat hostage, and his messages were getting more menacing by the day. I’d attempted to rescue him, but Nathan always had an excuse, or he conveniently wasn’t home. My mum even tried to pick him up, but once again, my ex had been AWOL .

This time, he’d sent a picture of my calico cat next to a bottle of beer, with a handwritten sign in the foreground.

Chloe read the sign out loud. “‘My mum has abandoned me to a life of debauchery. Send money.’ Oh, bloody hell. What a dick.”

My teeth clamped tight. She wasn’t wrong. I wasted four long years on Nathan. He was one of those guys who lit up a room. Who everyone gravitated towards. Who all the women hit on. So many times I smelled perfume on him or found scratches on his back. He’d sworn blind that he was faithful to me. He told me I was crazy and made me out to be the distrustful bad guy. But I’d never forget the day I walked in on him banging a stranger on our kitchen counter.

“He has his moments,” I said.

Chloe tucked herself closer into me. “Well, at least you’re best out of it. He won’t do anything to hurt Stuart. He just wants to annoy you.”

I stopped on the path, my Crocs scraping the gravel. We were almost at the dorms now. “I don’t get it. He was the one who cheated. I may have left him a little high and dry on the rent, but it hardly compares.”

As soon as I’d discovered Nathan “in the act,” I’d grabbed some clothes and high-tailed it to Chloe’s. She’d been the one who convinced me to take an extended holiday. To cleanse myself of Nathan. As a result, I’d left my boring job and nasty boyfriend far behind.

Unfortunately, I’d also left behind a debt for half an apartment deposit, a month’s rent and my beautiful cat.

Stuart was like my spirit animal. He adopted me after turning up in my garden. His appearance in my petunias followed a particularly nasty fight with Nathan, and the little fluff ball’s head bumps helped dry my tears. He’d visited every day for the next week and then moved himself in.

I always regretted not taking Stuart with me the day I left, but I couldn’t find him in the garden. My devastation hadn’t helped, but Nathan said he’d look after him until I’d found somewhere else to live.

Only now, he’d changed his story. Nathan was keeping Stuart until I paid him what I owed.

My best friend tipped her head to one side. “Maybe he wants you back?”

“I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.” I turned my face into the light breeze and pulled in a breath. “Nope. I’m not interested in any complications at the moment.”

“Not even if some tall, dark, handsome grape picker showed up? I know you love burly forearms, and one usually accompanies the other.”

I wagged my head. “No. I’m on a forearm ban. And I have a plan. I’m giving myself a year to get my life back on track.”

“Oh, yes? What exactly does your plan involve?”

I drew up to my full height. “I’ll change professions, get my own apartment, and be more careful about my choice in men. And come hell or high water, I’m going to get my cat back.”