Page 25 of Falling for Provence

A movement of Julien’s hand deemed the apology unnecessary. ‘It was a car accident,’ he said. ‘And yes, Sarah was young. Only thirty.’

‘My age,’ Ellie said softly. ‘Or it will be, on my next birthday.’

The comparison was a timely reminder that he should go. That he definitely shouldn’t be so intrigued by this woman. By the way her face was such an open book. By how much she enjoyed her food. Because he already knew she had a big heart.

‘She was also English.’ His words were cool.

‘I’m Scottish,’ Ellie said. But then she shook her head as though dismissing the reminder as irrelevant. ‘You had your first baby,’ she added. ‘That’s such a tragedy. Poor Theo. He must miss his mother so much.’

Yes… it was tears making her eyes shimmer.

‘Carrément…’ Julien didn’t translate the murmured word, assuming that the sound of agreement would be enough. He didn’t trust himself to say any more right now, in any case. Would Ellie be this sympathetic if he told her the truth? That his beautiful English wife had been with her lover in that car. That she’d been leaving him. That he sometimes thought that Theo was better off because he never needed to know that his mother had been so willing to abandon him.

No… He’d already learned that it was easier to protect yourself if you kept an emotional distance from other people and he had no intention of getting close enough to anyone to reveal the truth. It was preferable to let them assume that he had suffered a life-shattering tragedy by having his beloved wife, and the mother of his child, ripped from his life. The spectre of an irreplaceable soulmate had also proved helpful when he wanted to extract himself from a friendship that was threatening to become too intense.

Oui… Ellie looked as if she was thinking about how devastated he would always be by losing the love of his life. A single tear escaped and rolled slowly down the side of Ellie’s nose. The strength of the urge to reach out and catch that tear with his thumb caught Julien by surprise. So did her next words.

‘I know how hard it is.’

He couldn’t look away from her gaze. ‘You’ve lost someone?’

Ellie nodded. ‘My baby,’ she whispered. ‘My son.’

So he had been correct. She was – or had been – a mother herself. He could hear the catch in her throat as she took a breath. His own breath had caught in his throat.

‘His name was Jack, and he died when he was just six months old.’ She must have seen the shocked question in his eyes. ‘It was a cot death. Unexplained. He… he just went to sleep and never woke up.’

She looked away from him. Took a deeper breath, clearly collecting herself. Then she took another sip of her wine. ‘It’s why I’m here,’ she added, in a brighter tone. ‘We found out about inheriting this house on the day that would have been Jack’s first birthday. I think that’s why my sister came up with the idea that we needed to see the property for ourselves, and my family decided it would be a good distraction for me.’

‘And is it?’

‘I think it is.’ The slow smile that tilted the corners of Ellie’s mouth was like a glimpse into what really mattered. ‘I think I’m falling in love with this house. Iwantto love it, which is actually a big thing because I’ve avoided having feelings about anything. I didn’t want to start loving something and then lose it, you know? But it feels okay to love this house. I want to bring it back to life.’ She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. ‘That sounds silly, doesn’t it?’

‘No.’

One word, but it covered a whole raft of what he already knew about Ellie. The ability to bring something – even a house – back to life would have to be healing after losing something so important to death. Bien sûr… that was why she had been so determined to save Pascal. He could remember the shock on her face at the suggestion of euthanising the little dog.

Even more clearly, he was remembering the look on Ellie’s face the first time he’d seen her. Holding his son. She’d seen Theo asleep on the ground, and Julien knew how still and pale his child could look. He’d stood beside the cot and held his own breath on occasion, waiting to see the rise of that small chest, hovering in a space that was close enough to feel the claws of panic almost touching his skin. Ellie would have been sucked into that space far more easily having had the horror of holding her own dead child.

It was heartbreaking.

And he’d been so harsh with her.

Julien wanted to get to his feet. To take Ellie into his arms and hold her. To tell her that he was even more sorry now. That he understood. That he cared…

That was enough to stop him moving, because something else Ellie had said was striking a chord. That she hadn’t wanted to start loving anything else that she might lose. He was even more firmly in that space. Apart from his professional concern for patients, Julien had no room in his life to care about anything new. He especially didn’t want to care about a stranger. A woman. AnEnglishwoman. Or Scottish. Peu importe… it didn’t matter.

And okay… maybe he was finding this woman attractive, even when she was caked in plaster dust, wearing shapeless clothing and had crazy curls of hair escaping in all different directions. But being attracted – thinking about making love, even – was one thing; caring was quite another, because it might be only a step away from falling in love, and that was never going to happen again. Because he was never going to allow it to happen again. Julien emptied his glass in one swallow and then got slowly to his feet.

‘I must go. I really only came to tell you about the possibility of a home for Pascal with my grandmother. It doesn’t have to be now. It could be when you go back to Scotland.’

Ellie nodded. ‘Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.’

‘How long—’ Julien cleared his throat ‘—are you planning to stay?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Ellie also got to her feet. ‘There’s an awful lot to do to the house, but I expect it will be just for the summer.’ She smiled, as if it was a relief to have changed the subject so definitively. ‘But it’s kind of hard to know when summer ends here, isn’t it? Compared to Scotland, it probably feels like summer for most of the year.’

Julien took a step towards the darkness of the path he needed to follow through the orchard but then paused as he turned his head. ‘Our last evening summer market happens around the end of August. The schools go back after that, and it feels like summer is officially over.’

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