Page 70 of Love In Provence
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and touch his arm. He lets me.
I hug him. He lets me do that too.
Then he pulls his head back and looks me straight in the eyes. He’s so much like Henri. He’s not Henri, I remind myself. He’s someone who is missing his dad and is too proud to say so. I don’t know what to say to make him feel better. I’ve said all I can.
He stares at me, with angry, searching eyes, and I finally feel I’m starting to see the real Zacharie, Henri’s son. Slowly he leans in to me and I feel the connection between us. I want to tell him I understand his pain. I want us to work together, celebrate his father’s life. I want us to be friends. Suddenly he leans in a little more and his lips are on mine. They rest there for a moment, offering some comfort, before I come to my senses and pull away.
‘Whoa!’ I say, stumbling into a chair and table.
‘What?’ He doesn’t move and raises an eyebrow. ‘You don’t want to kiss me? I knew you did when you came here the other night shouting and fighting. It’s okay. I get it. It’s foreplay.’
I’m feeling hot and queasy. ‘No, it is not. And I don’t,’ I say, wiping the back of my hand across my lips.
‘Are you sure? I heard you like younger men!’
I’m so angry I could— I don’t know.
‘I do not want to kiss you!’ I say firmly.
‘So, you’re not inviting me to bed?’ He’s back to where he was before I saw the chink of damaged young boy.
‘No!’ I snap.
‘You are a tease.’ His face becomes red and angry. ‘You keep turning up here, wanting my attention, and when you have it, you think you can play with me.’
Suddenly I’m nervous. ‘No!’ My face is reddening too. I need to leave.
‘Really? So it’s not just younger men you have a thing for. Maybe it was my father you were secretly in love with, seeing as you’re so keen to remember him here.’
‘I wasn’t in love with him! He was – he was like a brother!’
‘So you say! My father had a habit of breaking hearts.’
I turn and see Rhi in the doorway behind me suddenly looking as she did when she first arrived: confused and in shock. She turns to hurry away.
‘Rhi! Come back!’
‘And your home-cooked café? I will get you shut down! I don’t need any reminders of my father around here,’ Zacharie calls after me.
I storm out after Rhi.
‘I promise you, I was never in love with Henri. Only like we all loved him, as a family member, perhaps the head of the family.’
‘You were close,’ she says, sitting in the shade at thebrocante.
‘We were. But that’s just Zacharie trying to sow seeds of doubt. He’s trying to destroy anything that remains of Henri’s legacy. Trying to wipe out the friendships he forged, all the good he did. We’re all missing him and wishing him back. Zacharie is trying to destroy everything.’ I sit next to her on the town-hall steps.
‘I just came to see if you were all right,’ she says. And I wonder if she saw him kiss me. I feel sick. Did I encourage him? No! I just wanted to comfort him. What a mistake.
‘If only we’d had a funeral service for him. I think it would have helped,’ Rhi says.
I nod.You have to know when the journey ends, I say to myself. I can still taste the unpleasantness of Zacharie and this battle.
‘And the new beginning starts,’ she says.
‘Let’s go back to the farmhouse,’ I say. ‘Fabien will be home any time soon.’ And every bit of me wants to hope this is where our journey ends and begins, at Le Petit Mas. Together. I just hope he does too.
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