Page 12 of Best Laid Plans
He grimaced as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. ‘The right time,’ he repeated flatly.
‘Yeah, I firmly believe that kids turn up when you most need them to.’
Looking over the top of his sunglasses, he gave her a withering stare.
Irritation pricked at her skin. ‘So, I’m guessing you don’t have kids either?’ she asked, determined to ignore his negativity.
‘Non.’ The word was terse and had a definite full stop at the end.
‘But you’d like to, one day?’
‘Can we change the subject?’ he said levelly, but with an undertone of steel.
‘Um, sure.’ Clearly, she’d hit a nerve.
Perhaps it was for the best that they talk about something else anyway. The subject wasn’t exactly an inspiring one for her now that she was single.
Indigo nibbled at the crust of her pizza while she thought of a new topic of conversation.
‘Your English is very good. Where do you live?’
‘In Paris, but I conduct a lot of business in the English language.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
For the first time that night he seemed to relax, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head again and sitting back in his chair. ‘Oui. My business acquires and renovates high-end holiday homes in France for clients all over the world. We also source and maintain corporate Parisian apartments for executives to live in whilst they conduct business in France.’
‘Nice.’
‘I enjoy it.’
‘Lucrative.’
‘Oui.’
‘Good for you.’
‘What about you? What do you do?’ He took another large bite of his pizza.
‘I run a cafe that uses mostly surplus and past best before date food from supermarkets and restaurants. We have an affordable menu for people on low incomes so they can come and get a square meal at least a couple of times a week. Since we opened, we’ve had a lot of elderly gentlemen come in who’ve lost their wives and have no idea how to cook, so I started running cookery lessons in the evenings aimed specifically at people like them, to give them a grounding in making basic, healthy meals for themselves at home. It’s going well so far, but it’s been hard work. We rely a lot on donations and public grants so there’s loads of form filling and face to face negotiating and quite a bit of pleading on bended knee.’
She took a large bite of her food to punctuate her monologue, not wanting to think about what would happen to the cafe if the next lot of funding didn’t come through.
‘I imagine you’re very good at the negotiating part,’ he said with a twist in his smile.
‘Usually,’ she said through a mouthful of pizza, smiling back at him with her eyes. It felt good to finally hit on a subject he wanted to talk about.
‘It’s hard work to keep a project like that adequately funded, though. There’s a constant threat of grants being pulled or reduced so I spend a lot of my time looking for new sources of cash. It’s hand to mouth in every way, but we make it work.’
‘Did you set it up by yourself?’ The last of his pizza disappeared into his mouth.
‘Initially, but I have a dedicated team of both paid workers and local volunteers now.’ She took another bite of her own food, aware that she needed to eat quickly now to catch him up.
‘That’s impressive. No wonder you need a holiday.’
‘Yeah, I’ve put in some very long days this past year. It’s never going to make me rich, but it makes me happy.’ At least it had, until her relationship with Gavin ended because of it.
Julien studied her again, this time with a small pinch between his brows.
