Ten
Breakfast the next morning couldn’t have been less like the day before.
Everyone welcomed Gabriel warmly and paid him tons of attention. Cook heaped his plate with grilled sausages, fluffy scrambled eggs, and hot bread.
“If you feed me all this, I’ll have to go right back to bed and sleep it off.” He laughed as he spread butter on his toast and took a huge bite. “And I’ll be fat like the Michelin man.”
“It’s a good job La Canette doesn’t allow cars,” Liam said. “If we didn’t have to walk everywhere, we’d all be Michelin men.”
“What are you two talking about?” Nurse Ann glanced from one to the other. “You’re both slim and shapely. As for Adam…” She fixed the doctor with a piercing glance then huffed. “What is it about young men these days, worrying about their figures like girls?”
Gabriel had to press a napkin to his mouth, probably to stop food from shooting out with his laughter.
“You’re a handsome man, you don’t need to worry,” she said before going back to her food.
All three men exchanged glances. After only four days here, Gabriel, Adam, and Liam had become very friendly, in that jokey-competitive way men did.
Liam nodded to Adam. “I’m sure that’s you, Goldilocks.”
“I think she was talking to him.” Adam pointed towards Gabriel.
Pierre secretly agreed. Despite Adam’s classic good looks, Gabriel had something else. The way his brown hair caught the light from the overhead lamp and shone with warm highlights. It curled a little at the ends, making him look very slightly dishevelled. It was the kind of hair you wanted to reach over and tidy for him.
“I think,” Gabriel told the other two men either side of him, “that we need to stop talking about this before we get called ‘girls’ again.”
“Do you usually have a problem with that?” Adam poked Gabriel with the handle of the bread knife. “That’ll explain the beard, you’re making sure you’re not mistaken for a girl?”
“I think if anyone is going to be mistaken for a girl it’ll be blondie here.” Gabriel took the knife from Adam and used it to slice more bread.
“Call me blondie again,” Adam retorted, “and you’ll start a food fight which you will lose badly, believe me.”
“Depends if Liam is on your side or mine. Besides” — Gabriel turned to Pierre who’d been watching the banter — “We need a female perspective, please. Doesn’t he need a haircut to trim the blond fringe out of his eyes?”
She had to reorganise her thought to find an answer in keeping with the jokey questions. But no words came to mind. She, who was so good with words, found herself suddenly wordless because Gabriel’s wide eyes were on her. And they stayed on her. And there was no trace of joking in their honey brown depths.
She swallowed.
“Stop talking nonsense all of you and eat your breakfast,” Cook admonished from beside the Aga.
She tore her eyes from his and pinned her gaze to her empty plate.
“More toast and honey?” Gabriel asked, pushing the bread board towards her.
“No. I’m full and” — She pushed her plate away — “I’ve got work upstairs.”
If she knew what was good for her, she would find something to keep her busy and away from him. Her good intentions to show him St Mary’s Church would have to go on the back burner.
Good intentions usually lead to good ends. But in my case, good intentions just lead to dead ends.The words wrote themselves on the card template that was always open in her head.
She pushed her chair from the table.
“Pierre?” Nurse Ann’s voice stopped her. “Message for you from Hedge.”
Oh no, what now? She really thought she’d fixedthatproblem.
“He says,” Nurse Ann continued, “that if you and that young man want to talk to him about the Plough festival, you’d better pop in today before lunch.”
She and Gabriel exchanged surprised glances.
