Page 19 of The Magic of Provence (A Year in France #3)

‘Well, if they don’t work, they will have to do surgery. Open her chest and operate directly on her heart to do a bypass, but even then…’ He swallowed hard. ‘They seem to think she has a good chance to survive.’

Fi nodded this time. ‘I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I could feel that.’

Her smile was so hopeful, the expression in her eyes so sympathetic, that Christophe decided it didn’t matter that she might be here under false pretences. He was very glad that she was here.

* * *

Waiting was never easy.

Waiting for news that could potentially be devastating for a family she was not connected to in any meaningful way felt awkward.

The windows of this side of the cardiology ward looked down on some of the parking areas outside the hospital, and Fi scanned the distinctive shapes of the pine trees that looked like umbrellas until she found where Christophe had parked his car.

‘Would Heidi like to go for a walk, do you think?’ she asked, turning back from the window to where Christophe was sitting on a chair beside his mother, holding tightly to her hand.

He looked so disconcerted Fi kicked herself mentally. It made her feel like giving him another hug by way of apology. ‘I can take her,’ she added swiftly. ‘You need to stay here with your mum.’

Already, it felt like the tension in this small room had eased a fraction.

‘She’d love that,’ Christophe said. ‘Her harness and lead are in the back of the car.’ He pulled out his keys. ‘Don’t go too far, though. I don’t want you to get lost.’

‘I’ve got a map of the entire world on my phone,’ Fi said. ‘I won’t get lost.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sure Heidi would find her way back to you from wherever she was, anyway. I would only need to follow her.’

Heidi was, indeed, delighted at being let out of the car.

When Fi opened the map on her phone she found it was only a ten-minute walk to the beach.

Then she did a search and discovered a dog-friendly section of the coast that was half an hour’s walk away.

Finding that Heidi was very well-mannered on her leash, it was a pleasure to walk through a park with a children’s playground at the end, down some narrow one-way streets and onto the wide footpath that stretched along the coast. She stood for a moment to breathe in the sea air and admire the view of a very calm Mediterranean Sea with only tiny waves lapping the pebbles of the beach and several small boats moored near a breakwater of massive flat blocks of stone.

She felt guilty being a tourist, however. Should she even be here supporting a family that wasn’t her own when the Gilchrists were dealing with the fallout from their own crisis?

Was this another possible case of jumping from a frying pan into a fire, in fact?

Had Maria Brabant believed her son when he’d told her that Fi wasn’t his girlfriend and they were not on some romantic picnic in the forest?

The way she’d hugged her at the hospital had felt more like a welcome into Christophe’s family and, for just a heartbeat, it had also felt like that moment when Ellie had found her in the olive grove with the donkeys.

As if she’d found what she had been missing for what felt like forever.

Family.

And home.

But was that wishful thinking on her part? Was it a form of justification for what she’d been doing for too many years – running away from the difficult things in life instead of trying to deal with them?

She’d given up on her university degree.

She’d put more and more distance between herself and her family.

She’d gone to help Christophe with the donkeys today to escape the escalating tension in her own family, but she hadn’t even stayed in that hospital room with him when the whole reason for coming here had been to support him with his own family crisis.

Heidi was sitting quietly beside Fi as she stood there.

The dog’s head was at the perfect height to rest her hand on the silky hair and scratch behind her ears.

Fi glanced down to find Heidi looking up at her and, when eye contact was made, the dog’s impressive plume of a tail swept the footpath and her flattened ears and narrowed eyes were an obvious canine smile.

It felt like approval. Maybe Fi didn’t need to stand here and grapple with a growing disquiet that she was still running through life like a headless chicken, too afraid to face her demons. Maybe she could take a leaf out of Heidi’s book and simply enjoy the moment.

‘Come on. Let’s see if you want to get your feet wet.’

The beach where dogs were allowed was deserted apart from a small white dog that looked a bit like Pascal at the far end by another rocky breakwater.

Heidi didn’t want to brave the waves but she was fascinated by the smells to be found amongst the stones and sticks and shells.

Fi bent down at a glint of colour to pick up a piece of pale green sea glass, well-worn and dulled by being tumbled amongst pebbles.

She turned it over in her hand to find it was an almost perfect heart shape.

And that felt like a sign of approval as well, so she slipped it into her pocket. She pulled her phone out at the same time. She called her mother’s number but it went to voicemail so Fi left a message.

‘I hope everything’s going okay,’ she said. ‘I’m with Christophe at the moment because his grandmother’s in hospital, but I’ll call you again as soon as I’m back at the cottage. Probably tomorrow, because it might be quite late by the time I get home.’

She expected to feel a pang of guilt, as she ended the call, because she wasn’t close at hand to support her mother, but it didn’t happen.

Fi knew she was where she was supposed to be at this precise moment in her life.

Almost…

It was time she went back to being exactly where she was supposed to be.

With Christophe. And his family.

* * *

Flora Romano’s procedure was finished and she was back in the ward by the time Fi found her way through the maze of corridors, stairwells and signs in a language she couldn’t read. Fortunately a lot of words were close enough to be helpful, like cardiologie .

She was also awake, propped up on her pillows, with Maria sitting on one side of the bed and Christophe on the other. Six dark eyes were fixed on Fi as she entered the room and they were all smiling a moment later. Even Nonna.

Especially Nonna?

She took her hand away from where it was being held by Christophe and held it out. Fi could see it shaking. She could hear the waver in Flora’s voice as well, but her words were clear.

‘Fiona…’ she pronounced it just like Christophe did. ‘ Ciao, mia cara… ’

‘She’s happy to meet you,’ Christophe translated.

Fi could see that. The eyes under the thick, silver waves of her hair were bright and her smile was deepening the crinkles of her entire face.

She looked like a woman who smiled often and always with complete sincerity, and it was impossible not to respond to the invitation.

Fi couldn’t remember a grandmother on either side of her family and this, apparently unconditional, welcome from Nonna Flora made her realise that this was something else she’d missed out on in life.

She moved close enough to take Flora’s hand and hold it, but that wasn’t what happened.

Instead, Flora reached up to pat her cheek as she leaned past Christophe, and when Fi saw what looked like tears of joy in the old woman’s eyes, she leaned down and kissed the soft skin of her cheek.

‘ Ciao , Nonna…’ she murmured.

‘Oh…’ Flora sighed. ‘ Bellissimo. Perfetto , Christophe.’

‘She likes you,’ Christophe said.

Fi straightened and caught his gaze. She knew that was not an accurate translation but, when her gaze met his, it didn’t matter a jot.

He was looking at her – and smiling – as if she was as beautiful as Flora clearly thought she was.

As if she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

The only woman in the world he wanted to be with.

And, as if he wanted everyone to know how he felt, he lifted his hand and touched her hair, letting his hand drift down to a soft stroke on her cheek with his fingers that ended with just one of them tracing the line of her jaw.

It was an echo of the way his grandmother had welcomed her but so much more intimate, and along with the way he was looking at her it felt absolutely like the caress of a lover.

Fi could feel it in her whole body. A spear of sensation in her belly. A tingle as far as her toes.

She knew this was only a pretence but… ohh …

imagine if this man was actually looking at her as if she was the love of his life.

She shouldn’t have worried about not being able to play a convincing role of being in love with Christophe Brabant, because, in this instant with that gentle touch on her skin and the far more intense touch of his gaze, it felt ridiculously real.

But there was a safety net of knowing it wasn’t real.

And…

Dear Lord… it felt so good …

Utterly compelling.

It was touching a place in her heart, or possibly her soul, that she didn’t even know she had and she could feel herself falling into that feeling.

Wanting more.

Wanting something she had believed she could never dream of – having someone who wanted her.

More than anyone else on earth. For that person to be someone like Christophe Brabant was beyond her wildest imagination and Fi knew she was staring up at him as if she was experiencing some kind of miracle.

Because she was?

Was this what it would feel like to be in love and not simply be caught in the riptide of a crush?

It would certainly look like that for anyone who saw them looking at each other like this.

And someone was.

It was the sound that Flora made that broke the moment.

Not quite laughter, more a sound of contentment.

Fi realised she had been staring at them as intently as she had been gazing at Christophe and, as Flora started speaking with far more animation than she had up to now, Fi could guess that she was telling her daughter exactly what she thought of Christophe’s choice for his future wife and the mother of his children.

They were all talking around her and nobody was translating the conversation, but Fi couldn’t miss the glances in her direction, including one from Maria that was a mix of curiosity and satisfaction – as if she’d received confirmation that she’d been right all along and that her son, for whatever reason, had been hiding the fact that he was in a serious relationship for the first time since he’d had his heart broken so badly.

She listened to them talking over each other. She watched the smiles and gestures. And Christophe’s increasingly embarrassed expression.

‘Enough,’ he finally said, in English. ‘It’s rude to be speaking in Italian in front of Fiona.’

‘It is,’ his mother agreed. ‘I’m so sorry. And Mamma…’

‘She’s telling Nonna she needs to rest,’ Christophe whispered to Fi as Maria switched back to Italian.

‘That she’s going to get something to eat from the cafeteria in the hospital and then come back to stay the night with her.

’ He joined in the conversation briefly and then nodded.

‘We will stay here to keep Nonna company until Mamma comes back, and then she says I have to take you somewhere to eat. Somewhere nicer than the cafeteria.’

He was smiling at her again. With that smile.

And that look. He must have had so much practice to be so good at this, Fi thought.

How many women had he had in his life, and his bed, since he’d decided to join the elite ‘library’ that was readily available to charismatic, gorgeous men?

Perhaps he could even fall in – and out – of love as easily as clicking his fingers and be charming enough about moving on to leave those women feeling privileged instead of heartbroken?

Not that his past mattered at all given the way Nonna was also smiling.

And nodding, even though her eyes were drifting shut.

She looked from Christophe to Fi and back again, and he clearly received an unspoken message because he leaned close to Fi.

Close enough that his lips were tickling her ear and his voice was no more than a hum.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured. ‘She thinks you are perfect for me and she is so happy…’