Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I s it unfair of me to have had a few expectations? I mean given the fact that the website’s description of this family was “modest couple with three mild-tempered children in need of basic assistance.” Something must’ve gotten lost in translation.
The quaint cottage I’d been duped into believing would be my home for the summer turned out to come with a major upgrade. I shouldn’t be so angsty about staying in one of the most pristine villas along the French Riviera. But as it turns out, the peacefulness of the house doesn’t match the juvenile creatures I’m now tasked to watch over. My preconceived notions of the type that would live here were teased out in my shock at their style of dress. When I first stepped foot on the property, heard their English accents, I’d pictured them dolled up in polos and sundresses. Rather, I found Josie boasting what looked like something picked up at France’s version of an Old Navy, Manon in a Twice K-pop band tee, and Milo in basketball shorts and a grass-stained cotton T-shirt.
At least a few of the mysteries could be solved now that Jamie was with me, forced against his will by Josie’s puppy-dog eyes. We find our way through the olive groves adjacent to the mansion and eventually come to a dirt road lined by chestnut trees. To my right and over a few verdant hills, a conical stone tower pokes out, but I can’t see the entire structure it’s connected to.
“C’mon,” Jamie says, nudging my elbow. “This way.” He forges ahead to the end of the lane. I refuse to let any other heat splotches invade my body. It can’t happen, not with Angela’s strict no-frisky-business-with-the-eldest rule. I won’t give into temptation. It’s not worth getting fired and forfeiting my destined spot in the Young Soarers program.
The road spills into an open field dotted with wild daisies and buttercups. The ocean shimmers in the distance, its current lines clear and fierce. We set a gingham blanket out before arranging the food buffet-style. If this isn’t an aesthetic, I don’t know what is.
The kids scarf down a few pieces of bread with figs and brie. Jamie makes them each have at least ten green beans before they start playing games in the field.
“You’ll thank me later,” he says. His siblings don’t catch a whiff of what he means, though I can’t help but chuckle. We’ve all been there.
Then, it’s just me and him. In forty-five minutes, I’ve met two Jamie Chessleys. One gentle and kind. The other a callous and supposed flirt. But which one is real?
I’m hoping he’s the first to make the small talk, but lo and behold, he just drinks in the sun, leaning forearms behind him. At this point, I’m over it and starving for information.
“What was that all about, back at the house?”
Jamie shrugs, sips on some lemonade, and says indifferently, “Can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”
“Why’d you pretend not to know me?”
Jamie squints his eyes at me. “ Do I know you?”
“Oh come on, cut the crap.”
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth before settling back to neutral.
“You didn’t know your family hired a complete stranger to watch your siblings for two months?”
“Not sure if you can tell, but my parents and I aren’t exactly close.” Jamie looks off toward his siblings who are currently chasing each other around the daisies swaying in the sea breeze. “I wouldn’t have told you about what I do if I had known you’d be?—”
“Why does that matter?”
Jamie shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
God, I really hate that line. How assuming. How pretentious. How degrading to my emotional intelligence. I leer back at him.
“Try me.”
“Well for starters, you’d probably be on your way back to the States if it seemed like we’d already bumped into each other. I didn’t mean to come off like an asshole, but I had to keep Mum off my scent and yours.”
Huh, that’s a relief. Jerk-wad Jamie is just an act. But he seems to lean into it sometimes even when Angela isn’t around, like he’s trying to temper the buoyant side of him.
“So you know about the no-frisky-business rule too?” I tilt my head and chew my inner cheek, my gaze sheepishly straying away toward the field.
Jamie paws through the picnic basket for some grapes. “Practically ingrained in my brain for the last decade. And every year, I get the same lecture on it. Mum’s a bit of a control freak about it, if you can’t tell.”
“Well, have you ever...”
He shakes his head, a few loose strands of hair framing his sharp cheekbones. “No, no, I’ve never been interested before.”
Before? As in, something’s changed this time around? My sternum and neck are set on fire. Any moisture on my tongue evaporates after I muster a miniature gulp. I catch Jamie’s still gaze for a few milliseconds, his face solemn, like he’d just said something he shouldn’t have. He quickly peels his eyes away and continues assembling a plate of fruit and cheese.
“Besides that,” Jamie says assertively, as if erasing the moment that just transpired. “If Mum knew we met, she’d go down every rabbit hole to figure out when and where. She doesn't need to know about my spare time and that’s the end of it.” His jaw tightens, but before I can respond, he adds, “No one knows about my job at the Vigne besides Emi, Marie, and Antoine... I don’t know why I told you. It just came out.” He scrunches his brow.
“You don’t think I’m gonna tell your parents?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Why would I?” I don’t give him the chance to answer before I blurt out, “Why the big secret anyway?”
He wraps his arms over his shins. “Because I’m not looking to change who they think I am.”
“They think you’re a tequila-obsessed womanizer.” The bite of bread and soft brie I take loosens my scrunched brow. Creamy, pillowy, wholesome. It takes the utmost concentration to bring me back to the conversation.
“Exactly.” Jamie stretches out his legs, kicking off his brown suede sneakers. “What I do between four and twelve has nothing to do with them.”
I shake my head. His jigsaw answers confirm his intention not to get any clearer than he already has. But it leaves more to be desired.
After a few prolonged moments, the breeze intercedes our silence, sending my piece of baguette flailing down the hill, and we both laugh. He proceeds to fill me in on some useful details about his family.
They are the Chessleys. His father, Nicholas, just so happens to be the tenth Earl of Harrowby. But what that means, Jamie tells me, is a spot on the guest list at the Queen’s Jubilee and other exclusive London parties. Having grown up in farm-country England, Nicholas leveled up to become one of the top commercial real estate brokers in all of Europe. He’d met Angela on a business trip to Paris, where she was studying fashion at the time. They were inseparable. She agreed to marry him on the condition that she would finish out her remaining school years first and that no matter where they settled, that they’d vacation here in the French Riviera every summer.
Now he is Nicholas Chessley, European real estate magnate on the verge of settling one of the largest deals in retail properties across the Netherlands. It’s a pinnacle career moment, thirty years in the making, worth well over fifty million euros. And then of course, there’s Angela Lavergne, CEO of France’s leading sustainable luxury fashion brand. It baffles me why the au pair company wouldn’t advertise their accolades.
Jamie shrugs. “Mum’s a pretty guarded person.”
I huff through my nostrils. Fair enough. Truthfully, I can’t confidently say I would’ve clicked submit on the application had the villa’s photos been posted on the site. My level of luxury usually stops around a Best Western with breakfast included.
“What about Emi and her parents?” I ask. “They know about you and the Vigne. And they’ve never let it slip?”
“We have an arrangement,” Jamie says. “I’ve convinced our head chef to source local. Local ingredients. Local businesses. The Vigne gets all its wine from Aunt Marie and Uncle Antoine. So their business always has a client even when tourist season slims down.”
“And in exchange, they keep your secret?”
“They’d keep it anyway. They know the chaos on the other side of Mum and Dad finding out that I’m shattering the career plans they’ve manufactured for me. What I’m doing at the Vigne is pure mutiny, but I’m not throwing my life away to appease them. It’ll be the big family blowout of the century, and I’ve been avoiding it ever since I started shaving.”
“If you feel so strongly about it, why not come out with it?” I press, kindly but firmly.
Jamie, taken aback, broadens his shoulders. “Dad’s spent half his life dedicated to this deal he’s finalizing now. He’s sacrificed more than he’s willing to tell us. And he’s told me a million and one times that there can’t be a shred of bad press about the family if this deal is going to go through. So his clients can’t find out that the heir to Chessley Enterprises is clearly not fully invested in the company.”
“Not the most credulous,” I tack on.
“Exactement,” he replies, twirling a buttercup stem he’d picked from the grass. “I’m playing along until the contracts are signed and the deal is done. Then, I’m out. I’ll help Dad find a new heir to the company, even if they aren’t blood.” He pauses to take a breath. “I don’t hate them, you know. My parents. Sure we don’t get along most times, but I won’t get involved with things—at least not publicly—that might put a dent in their image and hurt their businesses and everything they’ve worked for.”
I nod. “So you allow yourself the moonlighting job at the Vigne. What have you said no to then? What aren’t you getting involved with?”
Jamie looks me up and down, flares his nostrils, and gulps quickly. My heart flutters for a split second. My palms go a bit sweaty as I wait for him to expand, but he looks off to the ocean. The wind has picked up, twirling our hair in a frenzy.
Manon, out of breath, comes running up to Jamie and me on the blanket for their promised desserts. Jamie only concedes after he redirects the request for my approval. My brow lifts ever so slightly. A tingly feeling dances along the crown of my head and back neck, but I dispel it, giving my nod to Jamie and his sister. He hands her the pastries sitting in scalloped paper shells. She thanks him and me at Jamie’s demand. By the way she tears her side-eye glance from me, I can tell I’m not included in her idea of a perfect holiday in France.
Jamie hands me a golden-brown cream puff filled with fresh-picked strawberries and the lushest, fluffiest whipped cream I’ve ever tasted. I’m about halfway through when it occurs to me that Jamie had been watching me pound it the entire time. My abdomen tenses. I wipe the cream off the corner of my mouth and put the half-eaten pastry on my napkin.
“Too heavy on the vanilla, isn’t it?”
Feedback. He wants feedback. I relax.
“Did you make this?”
He offers a bashful shrug in response.
“It’s amazing,” I say, taking another bite. “Seriously. I judged the bake-off at my mom’s parish fundraiser, so I think I know what I’m talking about.” A grin pushes through my cheeks.
“And how do I compare?”
“Slightly better than Marjorie’s mega-goopy lemon squares, but not as enticing as Roxy’s burnt brandy snaps with curdled cream.”
Jamie clears his throat, forcing away a brimming laugh. “Well, I’ll have to up my game then.”
“Oh, if you want a chance at beating Karl’s raw apple strudel, big time.” I bow my head, suppressing the giggle bubbling in my throat.
Sighing, Jamie straightens his spine, a coolness bristling over him.
With Angela at least a mile away, I didn’t expect him to resume the can’t-be-bothered act so soon. Was it something I said?
“So,” he says firmly, paring an apple into slices. “What’s your story?”
That question. It irks me. Always has. It’s like asking someone how they’re doing. Like, do you want the quick, conventional response, or do you want the gritty truth with more nuanced layers than a croissant made from rough puff?
“What do you want to know?”
He tilts his head. “You’re in on one of my secrets. Don’t you think I’m owed a bit more detail on Kat McLauren.”
“I don’t owe you anything.” My tone chills.
Jamie plays with a loose string on the blanket.
“Can I then request some more detail?”
Broadening my shoulders, I fix my gaze on the ocean while dishing out full name, age, place of origin, education, and career plans a la Continental Air.
“Any hobbies? You know, what do you like to do, rather than what you have to do?”
I swallow hard. Though his face remains solemn and tense, he leans back on his forearms. The sun gleams over the wavy sun-bleached curls caressing his neck, his hickory roots are almost imperceptible in the sunlight. From what little I know about Jamie Chessley, he’s used to putting on airs for others while harboring truths unbeknownst to anyone else. He values his passion. My gut feeling is that his curiosity in my own is genuine.
Am I really going to tell him? My pleather backpack is glued to my hip. I tug at the strap, and my hand moves to the zipper pocket where my journal sits inside. My cheeks warm with a blush, but the moment is cut short when Jamie’s cell phone rings.
When he sees the caller, he answers hastily in French. The only words I pick up are, “no, no, no, no, no.” He scrambles to get his shoes on before he bolts off the blanket. “I need to go,” he says to me.
“What, but...” I gesture to the kids.
“You can handle it.” Jamie waves to his siblings. “Au revoir!”
They don’t seem to notice, too busy climbing some olive trees outside the groves.
In a matter of moments, Jamie’s disappeared and the kids, exhausted and covered in dirt, are sitting at my feet asking what’s next. Like I have any clue? I don’t have an agenda. I haven’t brushed my teeth since I left Massachusetts, and my knowledge of this area is beholden to the car ride I just had and what I remember of the movie To Catch a Thief .
Manon rolls her eyes when my silence crosses the four-second mark. Her expectations are going to be the hardest to please. Fortunately, Milo and I seem to be buds. At least, that’s what I’m assuming based on the way he requires that I hold his hand on our way back to the house. The sisters lead, snickering as they occasionally look back over their shoulders.
“This way!” Manon takes a sharp left turn, clearly opposite the direction of the villa and straight through the olive groves.
“Manon!” I duck underneath the low-hanging branches. The kids make it through without a problem. The trees form a canopy above them. Milo releases my hand, and they’re at least thirty feet ahead of me. The brambles and trees seem to thin out in front, and when I’ve finally made it to the clearing, my feet sink into a shallow ditch filled with sun-baked mud. The fertilized stench reeks of manure.
The kids erupt in roaring belly laughs. Even Milo did me dirty, literally. And I thought we were friends. At least that hopeful truth is confirmed when he comes over and assures me that he’ll show me where they keep the towels.
I thank him gratefully, though I hold back that my concern isn’t about my being dirty. It’s about Angela’s reaction should she still be at the house. I don’t want to make it a habit of not living up to their mother’s standards.