Chapter 33
The problem is, I do have feelings for étienne. And now I have to hide them or risk scaring him away.
I keep thinking of Lise’s predator-in-a-cage analogy, imagining him pacing back and forth, looking out at me warily, wondering how I’m going to hurt him.
Turns out I’m the one in the cage.
What’s really funny—not funny at all, actually—is that Jackson is suddenly being incredibly attentive.
When I drove away from Les Saules yesterday, three texts buzzed in from him as I regained reception.
The first was asking me if I was still free, the second reminded me that I said I’d come over for a swim, and the third was just my name with a question mark.
Then I realized that he’d left a voicemail too: Just calling to check you’re okay… Ring me back.
I hadn’t felt like seeing him after how distant étienne was when he’d dropped me back to Mellie’s—I left her car at the garage so Léo could do her tires today—so I declined his invitation, but this morning at work, he answered the front door to me himself.
Usually it’s Patricia, but he’d obviously been waiting.
The hug he swept me up in was brief but heartfelt.
All day he’s tried to make casual conversation, coming with me to the kitchen to make tea and coffee and occasionally laying a hand on my shoulder when I’m sitting at my desk and he’s passing to get something from the filing cabinets.
We haven’t brought up the conversation we had at La Terrasse on Saturday night—about him knowing that he broke my heart—but his actions are making it clear that he’s been thinking about it.
“Do you want to stick around for a swim?” he asks at the end of the day, just as my phone begins to vibrate with an incoming call.
“Hang on.” I flip it over to check the caller ID and my heart leaps: éTIENNE FOURNIER.
I’d added his surname to his contact details after his last garage party—it felt like one small way to lock down another piece of him.
“Mellie’s car is ready if you want to come get it,” he says when I answer. “Or I could drop it back to her if you prefer?”
“I’ll come get it,” I reply quickly, checking my watch. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“D’accord.” Okay.
He ends the call.
“Sorry, I can’t stay for a swim,” I tell Jackson as I begin packing away my things. “I’ve got to go and collect Mellie’s car from étienne.”
“She goes to his garage now?” he asks with a frown.
I turn to see that he’s reclining in his chair, unfolding a paper clip.
“Yep.” I nod. “Another reason to tell your mum to keep her hands off it,” I say in a teasing tone that still has a bit of bite to it.
“We’re going to take a look at the hotel on Wednesday,” he reveals, looking down at what he’s doing and hastily putting the mangled piece of metal to one side. “If she likes it, he’ll be off the hook.”
“Well, either way, she’d better find something else,” I warn, slipping my laptop into my bag.
“I’ll make it clear,” he promises.
“Thanks,” I reply, noting his sincere expression.
He launches forward as though to say something, just as I get up from my chair.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask awkwardly.
He nods, averting his gaze. “See you tomorrow,” he replies brusquely, moving some papers around on his desk.
Mellie’s Clio is on the forecourt, looking all clean and shiny with brand-new tires, but the garage is locked up.
I wander down the hill to étienne’s apartment.
All the doors are wide open so I see him as he comes out of his bathroom, drying his hair with a towel.
He’s wearing shorts, but his chest is bare, and my pulse speeds up as he comes over to greet me with two cheek kisses.
He nods at Mellie’s keys on the coffee table.
“How much do we owe you?”
“Nothing,” he replies.
“étienne!” I chastise with a laugh. “That’s no way to run a business.”
“You’ve been helping me at Les Saules,” he says with a shrug. “That’s how it works with friends.”
At least he considers us that much.
“You want a drink?” he asks over his shoulder as he wanders back into the kitchen.
“Sure.” I pick up Mellie’s car keys and drop them into my bag. “I’ve actually been thinking about another way that I might be able to help,” I say as I follow him.
He glances at me, waiting for me to go on.
“You’re not on Instagram.” I don’t mean personally—obviously I did a deep dive into that weeks ago, as any respectable single girl would—I’m talking about Garage du Rallye.
“I’ve been overhauling Eau de Sainte églantine’s website and social media channels and it’s got me thinking about your business.
I wondered if you could show people the restoration process—there’s such a demand online for that sort of thing.
” And there’s obviously a huge market for his cool retro cars.
“I have no idea if you want to expand, but I thought it might help you to reach buyers further afield.”
Word has obviously spread about his showroom parties, but he might not always want to host them.
“Léo has been saying a similar thing,” he says thoughtfully as he opens the fridge. “He takes a lot of photos.”
“Well, that’s perfect! If he’d be happy to share them with me, I could set it all up.”
“Don’t you have enough work to do?” he asks with amusement, bringing out a couple of ciders and offering one up to me with a questioning look.
“I don’t mind. I’d like to help.” I shake my head at the cider. “I should probably stick to something soft as I’m driving home.”
“Drive back in the morning,” he suggests casually.
I try to keep a straight face as I pretend to contemplate this. “I suppose I could.”
He smiles and sets the ciders aside before taking two steps across his tiny kitchen and bracing his hands against the worktop on either side of me.
His hair is damp, clean, and curly—and whatever he used to wash himself with smells out of this world.
As his lips tug up at the corners, my heart slips out of my chest and falls at his feet.
I try to ignore it, figuring I’ll get it back eventually.
Or maybe I won’t.
Over the next week, étienne consumes most of my waking thoughts—and most of my unconscious ones too. I’m falling hard and fast and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
It doesn’t matter how much I repeat his warning back to myself, it doesn’t take effect.
I’m not someone who gives up easily anyway so I can’t help but think that I might be able to bring down his defenses. I know he’s scared about giving his heart away again and getting hurt, but I’m not Eve. We just need to go slowly.
On Sunday, Dion and Charles come to help with the garden. I’m only half surprised to hear that they haven’t visited the house in years. They’ve all been friends since they were kids, but they stopped coming round when Estelle got too tired to handle callers.
I get stuck into the weeds by the strawberry patch and soon realize that there’s a terrace underneath.
Meanwhile, the men attack the brambles and then strim and mow the grass.
We all swim in the river afterward and drink cold ciders on the bank and then étienne kayaks me back to town—it’s the first time he’s done this since we were seventeen.
I’m supposed to be having dinner at the chateau, but I’ve run out of time to go home and get changed. I don’t mind. My blond hair has dried into natural waves after the dip in the river and my skin is glowing with a golden tan. I feel beautiful: happy and carefree.
By coincidence, Jackson happens to be driving past as we arrive at the landing point. He pulls over and gets out of his BMW, hanging his arms over the bridge railings and watching us with a smile.
I wave up at him.
“Hey!” he says. “You need a lift?”
“Yes, please, that would be great!” I turn around to say bye to étienne.
He never used to get out of his kayak—he’d always just hold it steady for me so that I didn’t slip and fall—but now he makes a point of disembarking so he can give me a passionate kiss on the bank.
Jackson does not look happy when I climb into the passenger seat.
“Are you okay?”
He was smiling a few minutes ago.
He shakes his head and pulls away from the curb, his mouth set in a grim line.
“What is it?” I ask uneasily.
“Him.” He jerks his head to the right, indicating the person we’ve just left at the riverside.
“What about him?”
He shakes his head again, his jaw clenched.
“What?” I press.
He sighs loudly. “I just get the feeling that he’s fucking with me.” He stares hard out of the front windscreen. “It’s like he’s fucking with you to get to me.”
My mouth drops open. “What, you don’t think he could actually like me?”
He glances across at me, doing a double take at my expression. “That’s not what I’m saying. Of course he likes you, I just…At first, I thought you two might be trying to make me jealous, but there’s something else going on. It’s like it’s personal. With him, I mean.”
“Are you kidding me?” I hate that he saw through our ruse, but I also can’t believe that Jackson is making this about him. étienne and I are no longer pretending.
“I’m sorry,” he says, shooting me a concerned look.
“Can you take me home?” I ask sharply. My face is burning, even though the air-conditioning is hiked right up.
“Aren’t you coming to ours?”
“I want to shower first.”
I wasn’t planning to bother, but suddenly I feel as though I need to scrub myself clean.
“I’m sorry,” he says again as he pulls up outside Mellie’s.
I yank the door open and storm out of the car.
“Gracie!” he calls after me with alarm.
“Leave it, Jackson.” I slam the door in his face.
I’m too angry to feel embarrassed. I figure fury is better than wanting the ground to open up and swallow me, so I go with it.
Mellie picks up on my mood. “What’s wrong?” she asks as we walk down through the lower paddock.
I shake my head. “I don’t think I want to talk about it.”
“Is it Jackson? Or étienne?”
“Both,” I admit.
“That’s a bit greedy.”
I glance at her. She gives me an impish look and I can’t help but laugh.
“It’ll all come out in the wash,” she says reassuringly, patting my back. “You look lovely, by the way.”
I’ve washed my hair and have blasted it straight and I’m wearing an emerald-green above-knee-length dress with red lipstick.
I wrap my arm around her waist and give her a squeeze. “So do you.”
I feel a bit more like myself when we arrive at Chateau Angèle, but it’s still hard to look at Jackson. Mellie asks Sandrine about the hotel she’s been to check out for a possible Thermalisme extension.
Sandrine turns her nose up. “It’s nothing special. I prefer the garage.”
Okay, enough of this. I need to nip Sandrine’s vision in the bud once and for all. “So étienne, who owns Garage du Rallye,” I say, prompting everyone to look at me. “His mother is the artist who painted Sainte églantine.”
“And?” Sandrine regards me with impatience.
“One of her paintings is on the outside wall of the building,” I explain. “étienne is sentimental. He won’t sell the garage because he won’t want it to be painted over.”
She waves her hand dismissively and points at the house bell on the wall. “More champagne, darling,” she prompts Jackson before turning to her father and saying something in French that I think translates to: I’m bored of this conversation.
Albert looks uncomfortable as he changes the subject.
As soon as I’m able to, I escape to the balcony for some fresh air. The sun hasn’t set yet and soft swaths of pink and blue drift across the sky like candy floss.
I hear Mellie, Albert, and Sandrine relocating to the living room.
Jackson joins me. “Sorry about Mom,” he says gruffly, coming to stand right beside me. He rests his elbows on the balustrade.
“You don’t have to apologize for your mother,” I reply, edging away to put distance between us. “But why doesn’t Albert ever speak up when she’s rude?”
I love him to bits, but it’s frustrating to see how he panders to her.
“He was always too scared, I think. Maybe he was worried that if he upset her she’d bundle me up and take me back to America, never to be seen again. I think it’s a habit now that he struggles to break.”
I turn to look at him. “Why weren’t they close, when you first came here when you were seven?” It had been four years since Sandrine had last brought him to France. “What happened?”
His eyebrows pull together. “From what I understand, Mom grew up playing second fiddle to her brother and she resented it. She got married to my dad and moved to America to teach them all a lesson. Albie doesn’t fly so he could only see me when Mom felt like bringing me over.”
“I can’t imagine Albert favoring a son at your mum’s expense.”
“Neither can I,” he admits. “I’m not sure he did. I think Mom’s just extraordinarily needy.”
I smile at him. He smiles back at me. I’ve felt myself thawing as he’s opened up.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his smile fading. “I’m sorry about what I said.”
I release a long breath and turn to look at the view again, folding my forearms and resting them before me on the cool stone.
“But it did work,” he says, adopting the same pose.
“What worked?” I ask mechanically.
“It did make me jealous.” As he says this, his fingers come down on top of mine.
My stomach kick-flips and I glance at him with shock. His eyes meet mine, glinting beneath his brown lashes. He turns to face me properly, leaning his hip against the balustrade. I feel deeply on edge as he stares at me, so tall, so broad, so Jackson.
But my mind whispers, étienne.
His free hand comes up to touch my jaw.
“Jackson,” I murmur, giving him the slightest shake of my head.
“Gracie,” he implores softly, his eyes gleaming as he gazes at me. He swallows. And hesitates. And then he says, “I think I might be in love with you.”
I stare at him for several seconds as his words land.
And then I release a sigh as I say, ruefully, “Trust me, if you loved me—by now, after all these years—you’d know it for sure.”
He grimaces as I take a step backward. And then I turn and walk inside to see if Mellie is ready to go home.