41. Sourdough Puff Pastry
SOURDOUGH PUFF PASTRY
*Let it rise at its own speed.
I slept maybe a few hours before nerves woke me ahead of my five-thirty alarm.
Early?
Yes, especially since I’d barely managed to fall asleep just after three.
I’d take a nap in the afternoon. I had a soft launch to run before we welcomed official guests next week. I needed to know where the kinks were in my operation, and the only way to find out was while I still had people here.
Quickly, I showered and dressed in a wool skirt that had become one of my staples since moving here, paired with a thick cardigan and knee-high socks that saved me the discomfort of tights, even in the winter.
As I descended the narrow wooden stairs from my quarters, the chateau was silent except for Nonna’s light snore from the second-floor guest wing and the occasional whistle of a breeze sneaking in through the chimney.
Breakfast wasn’t served until nine, but just like my schedule at Prideview, my day needed to start much earlier to have all items on the table.
Today, I was swinging big with a few new recipes: chestnut muesli, loganberry skyr (an Icelandic-style yogurt), and a variety of pastries made from a sourdough puff I’d been experimenting with for the last two months.
It had taken weeks of working with the local starter, but I felt confident that I had finally found the right hydration and flour blend to make the tangy flavor shine.
It just needed enough time to rise, and in the unpredictable winter weather of the Dordogne valley, sometimes that took hours, but sometimes it took days.
Lucas was letting himself into the reception room, carrying his cashmere coat and wearing casual jeans, boots, and a button-down wool flannel when I landed on the bottom stairs. With the addition of his facial hair and the plaid shirt, he looked like a cross between a lumberjack and a model.
The combination was undeniably attractive.
“I’m surprised you wanted another job that forced you to wake up like this,” he said as he followed me into the kitchen. “I would have thought you’d be finished with early mornings.”
I frowned. “I never minded the early mornings. It was the late-night ordeals that got me in the end.”
The mild friendliness on his face shuttered. “So they did.”
We stared at each other for a moment.
“Marie—”
“I have to get started,” I said. Apparently, I wasn’t quite done avoiding things. “I told you, we can talk after breakfast.”
I could feel Lucas glowering from the other side of the room as I marched around the island. Part of me wished he would shout at me to stop, or just say whatever it was he wanted to say. Do whatever he came here to do instead of studying me and waiting to determine how he should respond.
But he didn’t.
And honestly, maybe his lack of action was part of the problem here.
Maybe if Lucas actually said what he really thought, was honest about what he wanted, acted a little more on instinct instead of improvising so much based on others’ thoughts and feelings, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
“Like that would ever happen,” I muttered as I went to examine the pastries where they had been safely covered with flour sacks overnight. “Oh, shit .”
“What’s wrong?”
“The viennoiseries haven’t risen.”
“The what?”
“Pastries,” I snapped. “They won’t be ready in time to bake for breakfast. Damn it. It must have been too cold last night.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Lucas looked completely helpless, like he knew there was absolutely nothing he could do to manipulate a tempestuous leaven into doing what he wanted.
“Not unless you have a magic wand.” I put the flour sacks back over the pastries. “I’ll have to run to the bakery in town. Camille and Georges will be up, if they ever went to sleep last night. If anyone gets up early, tell them I’ll be back in a few with croissants and bread.”
I swept around him and back out to the front hall, only realizing he was still following me when I grabbed my vintage Barbour jacket off the coat rack.
Lucas followed suit with his own coat.
I paused. “What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.” He answered like going with me was the most normal thing in the world.
“That’s really not necessary,” I said as I put on my coat. “It’s just a short walk from here, and I won’t need much to feed four people.”
I left before he could respond, stepping into the crisp, surprisingly bright morning air.
The light of a pending sunrise was seeping through the barren trees, touching the earth and frost-tipped boughs with warmth.
Tourists flocked to this part of France in the summer for the sunflowers, castles, and hot weather.
I found I preferred the area at this time of year, when the fluctuations of the weather created a new story daily for anyone willing to stay still and watch.
I strode through the south end of the property, planning to take a trail along the river that cut up to the village.
I made it perhaps fifty feet toward the water before I heard footsteps behind me.
“Marie, stop.”
I kept walking, my boots crunching over fallen leaves. “Go back to the chateau, Lucas. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Not until we talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about right now.”
“The hell there isn’t.”
The footsteps behind me quickened, and I walked faster, heading toward the trail that would be deserted right now. It was a favorite of local fishermen, deer that roamed these valleys, and me.
“You can’t just run away every time you see me,” Lucas called as he followed me through a grove of young maples. “Goddamn it, Marie, I just flew six thousand miles to be here. The least you could do is let me tell you why I came.”
I spun around, anger flaring hot in my chest. “The least I could do? The least I could do…for you ?” I stomped to where he stood in front of a massive old oak and poked him in the chest.
He stepped back, jaw clenched, like he was holding something back. So very Lucas. Always holding back.
He took a deep breath. Then another, raking his hands through his hair before he finally spoke in a newly calm, utterly infuriating tone.
“I don’t know what will make this better, but I’m determined to fix this.
I can’t stand feeling like I ruined everything for you, knowing that the best person I’ve ever known is unhappy because of something I did. ”
I folded my arms across my chest. “So, you’re here to, what, assuage your guilt?”
He said nothing. Admitted nothing.
His silence was answer enough.
I started pacing up and down the path. “Well, feel guilty no more, all right? Look around you. I’m fine.
More than fine. With the very generous severance pay I received from your stepmother, I bought myself this dream.
An inn, a little restaurant in a beautiful place. I have friends, family, even my own?—”
I stopped there, my hand instinctively brushing over my stomach. No, I wasn’t ready to go there. Not yet.
I would.
But not yet.
“And a what?” Lucas demanded, his eyes following the movement of my hand with confusion. “A man? A French lover? Is that what you meant to say?”
I scowled. “No. One was quite enough for me this year, thanks.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I would hate it, and if I’m being completely honest, I’d kind of want to murder any other man who put his hands on you, but I wouldn’t blame you .”
He smirked, the cocky bastard.
I wanted to slap him for the third time.
“How nice,” I snapped. “How magnanimous of you. Now, listen here, I don’t need you to do anything for me, Lucas Lyons. This is my life. I have a business to run, guests to feed, and a future to build. I am just fine on my own. You are too fucking late .”
The veneer of self-confidence finally dropped, revealing the storm clouds that were always brewing. And maybe just a bit of fear. “I couldn’t have come any sooner.”
“Oh, really? And why’s that?”
He opened and closed his mouth several times, as if words kept rising to the surface and dipping back down into his throat like fish jumping from the river.
Exhausted with the give and take, I turned on my heel and continued down the path, which dipped over a log and then widened down by the water, where it was sheltered by pines, cypresses, and the occasional willow.
A few minutes later, Lucas spoke again. “You left too, Marie.”
I stopped and turned. “I’m sorry, what?”
He stepped forward. “You left too, or do I have to remind you? You asked me to give you space, which I did , but when I got back to that hotel room, you were gone. No note. No message. No nothing. And, yes, at first, I tried to accept it. I took it as a sign that I didn’t deserve you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Probably still don’t,” he countered back. “But I don’t care. For almost three months, I stayed away, tried to leave you alone. And you know what I realized, baby? I can’t fucking do it.”
“Oh, really?” I spat. “And why, pray tell, is that?”
“Because I’d rather give up everything I have, everything I know, than take one more step without HALF MY FUCKING HEART!”
It was like a grenade had been set off between us, the force throwing us both back a few feet. Lucas Lyons, who never lost control, had exploded completely.
Over me.
We stared at each other, gasping hard enough that our breaths erupted in plumes through the air between us. The pain in Lucas’s voice, the sheer desperation, combined with all that I’d been carrying alone for the past months, broke something open inside me.
The dam broke, and my tears flooded everything else.
“Oh, God.” Lucas stepped forward, hands out, like he wanted to take me, stop me, hold me, who knew?
My body shook with the force of my emotions. I keened.
“Sweetheart. Fuck, no .”
And then his arms were around me, like he physically couldn’t keep himself from gathering me against his broad chest and cradling my head while he stroked my hair, hummed into my ear, and absorbed one of the many sobs that wracked my entire body.