Page 40 of Falling for Provence

‘Pride and joy,’ Mike nodded.

‘Where did it come from?’ Julien turned to Ellie, his gaze catching and then holding hers. ‘Have you bought a car, Ellie?’

She could only shake her head. Still smiling. Still holding that eye contact.

‘It’s been locked away in this garage for goodness knows how long,’ Mike told him.

‘But it sounds like it’s going well.’

Gary was wiping his hands on a rag. ‘This car’s a beauty,’ he said. ‘All she needed was a tune up.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got time to take her for a bit of a road test. Why don’t you come along?’

Julien shook his head. ‘Thank you, but I have my own driving to do. I’m off to Roquebillière in a few minutes.’

‘Ellie? You want to come?’ Mike peered into the car. ‘Or maybe not. Needs a bit of a clean, that back seat. And I suppose we should make sure it’s not going to conk out first.’

‘Good idea.’ Ellie was trying to find a balance between savouring the anticipation and fending off the disappointment that clearly today wasn’t going to be the day. ‘I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea when you get back.’

Julien waited with Ellie just until the little red car was moving up the road. They could both see that someone was standing near his gate.

‘My mother’s anxious to leave,’ Julien said. ‘I’m taking her and my grandmother and Theo up to Roquebillière now, and I’ll be staying there tonight.’

Disappointment had definitely taken the lead in the battle for balance.

‘But I will be back tomorrow,’ Julien added, as he turned to leave. He glanced over his shoulder at Ellie. ‘And I am hoping I could take you out to dinner.’

Anticipation totally obliterated disappointment.

‘I’d like that.’

Her words sounded shy. Hesitant, almost? Maybe that was why Julien simply nodded and began to walk away.

Ellie searched for something else to add and remembered what she’d overheard this morning in the village square. ‘À bientôt,Julien.’She also remembered to pronounce his name with a softJ.

He looked back again, and this time there was a lopsided smile tilting his lips. ‘À demain, Ellie. Yes… see you soon.’

Even if she’d had an entire wardrobe full of dresses, Ellie would have chosen to wear the pretty blue one with the tiny white daisies, puffed sleeves, and buttons all the way down the frontbecause she could remember wishing she’d been wearing it when she’d met Julien for the very first time.

When he’d been so angry. So protective of his tiny son. So dark and passionate and… so incredibly drop-deadsexy…

She washed her hair, letting it dry in the warmth of the late afternoon sun and then brushing the curls into soft waves that she intended to leave loose, as she had also done that night she’d worn the dress for the first time in so long. She changed her mind, however, and twisted a thick tress along each side of her head to keep the hair away from her face, leaving the length rippling over her back. A compromise between looking tidy but having the comfort of what felt like a shield protecting her back. A shield against the scary part of an anticipation that was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

A touch of mascara and lip gloss was the only makeup she chose, having never been as concerned as Laura about covering up her generous sprinkling of freckles. She brushed Pascal, too, in case he was included in this invitation for dinner. For this… date.

Oh… there were nerves hovering in the wings with their talent for creating doubt, but Ellie wasn’t about to let them spoil what might be the last of this particular shade of anticipation. Because there could only ever be one first time with someone, couldn’t there? But that thought, cloaked in the knowledge of what was almost inevitably going to happen later this evening, only added a much sharper edge to that anticipation. The kind of edge you might find on a metal sign warning of danger?

Luckily, distraction was close at hand, and, by the time Julien knocked on her front door, Ellie had finished both a glass of wine and a session of practising her French phrases.

‘Salut,’ she said, as she opened the door, because ‘hi’ seemed a friendlier way to greet him than ‘good day’.‘Ça va?’

‘Oui. Ça va. Et toi?’

Lost already, Ellie just smiled as she picked up her shoulder bag. At the signal she was leaving, Pascal came to sit in front of her. She glanced at Julien. ‘Can he come too?’

‘Of course. Dogs are welcome everywhere in France.’ He was already heading for his car, which was parked by the gate. ‘Except in supermarkets.’

He took a route that Ellie didn’t recognise, to circle the old walls of Vence and arrive on the far side of the city, where they parked near the cemetery.

‘It’s the first summer evening market,’ he told her. ‘I thought you might like to walk through it.’

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