Chapter 22 #2
‘He wanted to help others,’ the man was saying.
‘He was that kind of man and that’s why he volunteered to be part of this trial.
He wanted a cure to be found. So did we.
There’s nothing worse than seeing someone you love suffering like that…
’ He broke off as he struggled to hold back tears. ‘Sorry… I need a minute…’
The lump that suddenly formed in Angus’s throat had edges that were sharp enough to make something behind his eyes prickle.
He’d seen his own father suffering. How terrifying had it been to see his father cry for the first time ever? It had felt like the end of the world to a thirteen-year-old boy. A glimpse into a future he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to face.
But it was the way the dog looked up at the sound of distress in the man’s voice that made this unbearable. Angus hadn’t felt a pang of grief for Robbie like this in too many years to count.
The hole in his life was yawning deeply enough to fall into. He knew what was missing – a wife, a child, a dog. A family and a future. But he felt as far away from achieving it as he’d ever been.
What he needed was…
No… He wasn’t at all sure what he needed.
Without the focus of dealing with other people’s issues, there was no escaping the need to sort out his own but Angus was, for the first time in his adult life, feeling… lost.
Those safety barriers had failed and he was standing in a space he had no idea how to navigate safely. Perhaps if he went back to the familiar world he had felt safe in, he would be able to think? To decide what to do next?
The intense focus he’d given the Novaryn crisis had made Provence and everything that had happened there take on the slightly fuzzy edges of a dream it was getting harder to recall. An image in a rear-view mirror.
Did he want to go back?
Or was the real question whether Tilly would want him to go back?
Why would she? The last thing he could remember was what he’d seen in Tilly’s eyes when he’d sabotaged the vision of a new creative direction for her business that she’d been so excited about.
It had looked like broken trust.
She’d made him feel like he could do – or be – the best version of himself he could possibly be.
He’d made her feel as if what she had to offer wasn’t good enough. Within minutes of meeting her, he’d told her that her business was based on romantic nonsense. He’d left her, having pronounced that her new plan was so reckless she might end up hurting people.
But the only person who’d really been hurt had been Tilly, and Angus would be very surprised if she didn’t hate him just as much for that as he hated himself right now.
In the end, he booked tickets to get back to Scotland rather than France.
Because, when you felt lost, safety was irresistible.
* * *
One day at a time.
Tilly got up in the mornings after restless nights and tackled those days, one at a time.
The first hour was probably the hardest. That was when she’d sit down in front of her laptop, a strong coffee in her hands, and scroll through all the news she could find on the scandal of a Swiss drug company’s trial of a new medication that had gone so horribly wrong.
Angus hadn’t told her the name of that company or what sort of drug it was but it was easy to put two and two together and she’d had proof a few days ago when she’d spotted him in the background of a BBC news bulletin, with police holding back an angry crowd of protesters to let a group of men wearing suits leave the hospital grounds.
She replayed that video link again and again.
He looked pale, she thought. Grim. Totally in his professional space.
A man who had devoted his life to helping other people avoid risks.
Who practised what he preached in his own personal life – apart from when he was on holiday and it didn’t matter because nobody was ever going to see him again after he left.
He could take all sorts of risks without damaging his raison d’être then – like a balloon ride, or dancing in public or having casual sex with a stranger. Extending that holiday on a whim, even.
He was pushing through the crowd of protesters with the same determination that he had displayed as he came through the arrivals hall of Marseilles airport and walked straight into Tilly’s life.
Into her heart.
A heart that was aching for him as one day bled into another.
Was he getting anywhere near enough sleep?
Eating proper food? Did he have people to support him, the way Sophie and Luc were supporting her?
Tilly had lost count of the number of times she’d picked up her phone to send him a message.
She’d even started typing them on more than one occasion.
I’m thinking of you.
I miss you.
I hope you can come home soon.
And wasn’t that a silly thing to think of saying?
His home was Scotland, not France, and it was where he would return to, probably sooner rather than later after this disruption.
It was likely to be the last straw after Tilly had scared him off by being so obviously captivated by the engagement ring he’d chosen for the woman he wanted to marry.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, she’d appalled him by being prepared to risk the business she’d worked so hard to create with a plan that even Sophie and Luc had to admit they thought was blatantly unwise.
Dangerous, in fact.
In the end, they had used the terrace at La Maisonette for the photo shoot – the clichéd ultimately romantic setting that Angus had suggested.
They’d waited until the golden hour before sunset and they lit every candle and turned on every string of fairy lights and there were champagne glasses and rose petals and Clara was wearing a lovely floaty dress and Antoine was down on one knee and it was everything that A Promise in Provence set out to offer in a destination proposal event.
Luc’s photos were fabulous and it should have made Tilly very happy.
But it felt like a hollow cake.
And… okay, maybe the mornings weren’t the worst part of these days that were ticking past so slowly. Maybe it was when she was too tired to stay on her feet any longer and she crawled into her bed.
Alone.
And so lonely.
That was when it was even harder not to pull out her phone and send a message that could provide a feeling of connection to the man she was never going to stop loving this much.
But that made it the most dangerous thing she could possibly do and it was not a risk she was brave enough to take.
It was like being the first to say Je t’aime. Because it would break the fairy tale. Because she would never, ever know if he loved her enough to take the biggest risk there was and put his heart on the line.
For her.
The offering of the gift of that kind of love would take the courage that the slaying of a fairy-tale dragon had symbolised for Tilly.