Chapter 3 #3
‘I’ll arrange extra accommodation.’
‘That might not be easy. It’s high season.’
It was no more than a glance this time but it didn’t need words to make it comprehensible. If you were prepared to pay enough, it said, then almost anything was possible.
And Tilly had contacts which could make it more possible than it appeared. Friends she could stay with. Lists of boutique chambres d’h?tes and g?tes that were off the beaten track or exclusive enough to be unaffordable for most tourists.
Did she want to spend several days travelling alone with an angry man?
Angry Angus…
It occurred to her then that his dismissive gesture might not have been simply because money could solve any problem inherent in them sharing a room. Or a bed.
Perhaps it wasn’t a problem because he didn’t find her remotely attractive. That she would be perfectly safe with him even if they did need to share a bed.
She could have been offended by that but she was, in fact, on board with it.
Any inappropriate thoughts and feelings she’d been grappling with since she’d first seen his photograph had been scorched the moment he’d arrived, thanks to the lack of respect he’d demonstrated and, even more, by his astonishing antipathy to that list of anything that carried a nuance of romance.
Those storybook flourishes that had been life goals for Mathilde Pascoe since she was old enough to absorb every tiny drop of the magic that made fairy tales so perfect.
Angus was waiting for her to say something. To offer another objection that he could refute?
Tilly ignored the faint sensation deep in her abdomen as she made her decision. A frisson of something that might have been a warning but could just as easily be interpreted as excitement, so it was best to ignore it completely.
‘I’ll take you to Aix-en-Provence,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to book another room at the hotel because my mother lives in the town. I’ll have dinner with you. You can ask me to come with you again after that, if you still want me to.’
She could see a muscle twitch in his jaw, as if her words had struck a nerve.
Pas de problème.
It wasn’t a problem. Perhaps Angus needed time to have second thoughts himself.
* * *
The words had been a slap in the face.
‘…if you still want me to.’
As if he was the one who had control of what other people chose to do, like employing Tilly to be his guide.
Or Moira to continue working for him.
Angus carried his bag as he followed Tilly along a footpath to where she’d parked her car.
There were trees along the way and the sound of cicadas was loud.
The clear blue sky was darkening into dusk and he remembered Tilly explaining the timetable of the arrival on this first evening.
Given that he’d made them late leaving the airport, he would only have enough time to drop his bag at the hotel and then they would be due to have dinner in that courtyard restaurant that could apparently provide the best bouillabaisse in Provence.
The romantic courtyard.
Angus could feel himself scowling. Again.
He couldn’t expect Tilly to change any romantic elements of the restaurant’s ambience, but hadn’t she mentioned paying some kind of musician to serenade the table?
This could be a good test of whether his plan might work.
Instead of saying anything, he could wait and see if she remembered to cancel that in advance.
If she did, he would ask her again to be his guide and companion.
If not, he would go it alone and make whatever changes to the itinerary that might be needed if it became uncomfortable in any way.
Not that he was going to demand a refund.
Because it wasn’t only this evening’s timetable that he was remembering. It was disconcertingly easy to replay the moment he saw the fear in Tilly’s eyes and the way the blood had drained from her face when he’d made the suggestion of asking for his money back.
It did more than make him cringe inwardly at his harshness this time.
It made him feel an urge to protect her from anything that had the power to make her look that afraid.
How weird was that?
Angus McLeod was wary of anything that didn’t have a rational explanation.
The unknown was a minefield of potentially hidden risks and he’d made it his business for his whole adult life to mitigate all kinds of risk.
That this woman might represent a rather large risk herself hadn’t occurred to him and that, in itself, was making him feel curiously off balance.
Tilly had stopped in front of a perfectly ordinary red Renault SUV. She was pointing a key fob at the vehicle and the blip told him that the car was being unlocked.
‘Here we are,’ she said. She opened the back hatch. ‘You can put your bag in here, Mr McLeod.’
Ah… At least he could grab hold of something that might even be accepted as a form of apology for having ranted at her.
‘Please,’ he said, deliberately echoing what she’d said to him, although he couldn’t quite achieve what you might call a friendly tone. ‘Call me Angus.’