Page 42 of The Magic of Provence (A Year in France #3)

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Prologue

Five minutes.

It wasn’t a very long time at all.

But, when the rest of your life could depend on what happened at the end of that five minutes, it felt like a very long time indeed.

Laura Gilchrist put the cap back on the plastic stick and put it on the cold porcelain edge of the bathroom basin. She set the timer on her phone to three minutes. Then she glanced in the mirror over the basin.

It was automatic to smooth a single stray hair back into place so that her sleek, red-gold, shoulder-length bob was as perfect as it usually was.

How good would it be to be able to smooth away the visible fear she could see in her eyes?

Laura hadn’t seen herself look like this since she learned how to hide fear when she was no more than about nine or ten years old. When she’d learned how to control her own emotions so that she could protect the people who were the most important in her life.

Her family. Her mother. Her younger sisters.

She turned her back to the mirror. It was too disconcerting to see that everything she had worked so hard for in life – her control, success, independence – could be slipping away from her.

She stood very still. And waited. She jumped at the sound of the timer and turned it off instantly. As she reached to pick up the stick, she realised she had known all along what she was going to see in the tiny plastic window.

Two lines.

She was pregnant.

How, in God’s name, had this happened?

A sound that was probably closer to a sob than the intended huff of laughter escaped Laura’s suddenly dry lips.

She knew exactly how this had happened.

She also knew that this was entirely her own fault.

Had she, on some deeply hidden level, wanted this to happen…?

Chapter One

‘ Look out! ’

The urgency in her sister’s voice was enough to make Laura freeze in the heartbeat before she pushed open the driver’s door of the car. A millisecond later, a huge, black motorbike roared past within what seemed like only an inch or two of her fingers, still curved around the latch.

Both women stared as the engine noise changed to a protest of gears being rapidly downshifted.

The back wheel locked enough to provide a subtle but still dramatic skid as the rider came to a halt just ahead of them, one booted foot coming down at the last moment to stop the huge bike from tipping too far.

He’d stopped right in front of the destination Laura had programmed into the GPS of the rental car – the highly recommended Provencal estate agency, Dufour Immobilier.

At least the distraction provided a means to wind down a rather intense conversation Laura had been having with her sister about the direction her life was going – or not going – in.

Changing the subject might even be enough to stop Ellie getting out of the car while they were still at odds with each other.

‘Has to be a courier,’ she said, as if the identity of the bike rider was what they’d been discussing. ‘Nobody else would drive that badly on a bike at home. He’s got a satchel over his shoulder, so he’s probably delivering a sales and purchase agreement that the agent’s holding his breath for.’

‘Doesn’t look very professional,’ Ellie said. ‘There’s no signage on the bike. What is it, a Harley-Davidson? That’s kind of cool. Maybe he’s a client.’

‘I’d be double-checking his references if he wanted to rent something from our agency. You wouldn’t want to find a commercial weed-growing operation under lights in the garage.’

Ellie snorted. ‘You’re so judgy , Laura.’

Laura was silent. Perhaps she was but, to be fair, she was harder on herself than on anyone else.

She’d probably said too much already, but Ellie could do with taking a leaf out of her book and acknowledging what she needed to change in her life.

How else were things going to get better?

Life wasn’t easy. Or fair. Sometimes you had to work very, very hard to get to where you wanted to be.

Like she had…

They could only see the back of the man as he pulled his helmet off and carelessly slung the strap over the handlebars of the powerful bike before walking into the agency’s office building.

His shaggy, dark hair was long enough to be brushing the collar of the leather jacket he was wearing and there was a smear of dirt on the faded blue denim of his jeans.

Laura couldn’t see the top of the boots he was wearing but she was deeply suspicious that they might have those curved tops and embroidered stitching popular with cowboys.

‘On second thoughts,’ Laura said, ‘my guess is that he’s a handyman or a gardener. He probably gets employed to do maintenance or repairs on rental properties.’

‘Maybe he’ll be the person who does the work on our house.’

‘Let’s hope he’s better at his job than he is at riding motorbikes, then. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near that close to a parked car.’ Laura turned her head to check the road behind before finally opening her door. ‘It’s two o’clock. Time to do what we came here for.’

To finish what they’d come to the South of France for.

They’d gone straight from the airport in Nice to the house in Tourrettes-sur-Loup that morning.

Laura had never driven on the right-hand side of a road before but it was exactly the kind of challenge she thrived on, having discovered long ago that a mix of focus, control and confidence could get you through most of the stickier situations life could throw at you.

You just had to be able to rise above the emotional reactions that could undermine what you were trying to achieve.

It was Laura’s independence and ability to problem solve that provided the building blocks of her continuing career success, working as an estate agent. Adding an international property offering to her portfolio might be a new direction but it was one she was more than willing to embrace.

Especially for a stone-built, quintessentially French cottage that was so picturesque it was more than Instagram-worthy, a terrace with a view to the rocky foothills of the Alps that looked like mountains in their own right, forests and a tantalising glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea in the distance.

Even a lemon orchard! It would be far more desirable, mind you, when the damage and dust that had accumulated over too many years of neglect were sorted.

There were bats residing in the one of the bedrooms. Electrical issues and broken shutters.

A garden that was a complete wilderness.

Which was why the partnership she intended to cement with this local agency was the missing piece of the puzzle.

They would be able to access tradesmen without being ripped off.

They would also be in a position to connect with people who wouldn’t necessarily consider buying a holiday home in the South of France but were here on holiday and found themselves falling in love with the region.

The Gilchrist sisters had an appointment scheduled with the managing director of this company – Monsieur Dufour himself.

They went inside. From behind the reception desk an elegant woman, in a plain black dress with a white collar, gave an approving twitch of an eyebrow at the pale, olive-green linen dress that Laura was wearing, but her nostrils flared ever so slightly as she noted Ellie’s jeans and tee shirt.

‘ Bienvenue ,’ she said, directly to Laura. ‘ Vous devez être Mademoiselle Gilchrist .’ She switched to perfect English. ‘Welcome. My name is Blandine. Monsieur Dufour is expecting you both. Come this way, please.’

Both the younger women came to a halt the moment they were ushered into a large office.

They exchanged a glance with each other.

Ellie looked as if she was trying not to smile.

The man standing behind the antique desk was definitely smiling.

Laura had never felt less like smiling.

Because she was staring at the… cowboy . How on earth could someone who looked so… so… disreputable be the managing director of an estate agency whose outstanding reputation had reached well beyond the borders of his own country?

He had hazel eyes, she noticed in the briefest moment of eye contact that could be considered polite as she grappled with having to try and readjust her judgement of this man.

A dark hazel that was a golden-tinged shade of a brown that reminded her of, what… milk chocolate? Not quite as dark as his hair – or that designer stubble, for that matter – but it added up to a dark impression.

Sinfully dark…

And he was looking at her with such a blatantly admiring gaze. As if she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life. With a crinkle at the corners of his eyes as if he knew perfectly well that the admiration was not being reciprocated but he was amused, rather than offended.

Good grief…

The confidence of that look was as disturbing as finding she needed to interact with someone so inappropriately dressed or groomed but, quite inexplicably, Laura had to dismiss an urge to touch her hair – like a teenager trying to get the hang of flirting?

How ridiculous! Laura had never flirted deliberately in her life.

She was far more comfortable taking the hand that was being extended towards her, in the wake of Noah Dufour’s introduction, for a brief but firm handshake and another graze of eye contact that was short but to the point.

This meeting was purely for business purposes.