“No. Call them now.”
Twenty-One
And he was right. Why wait; pounce on the fish before it swims away. She pulled her phone out, found the contact, and put the call through.
Ten minutes later, they had agreed a deal. A hundred pages with a hundred pictures and short descriptions. It would be expensive to rush the printing, but that was worth it, and Lord M wouldn’t object. If she could deliver the manuscript and image files to them within three days, and if she could book a courier to deliver the proofs from Jersey next Monday, then the books would be printed and shipped to La Canette in time for the wedding.
“Three days?” The realisation was more than a little scary as she tucked the phone back into her pocket.
“We’ll make it happen,” he reassured her. “What else do we need pictures of?”
She counted them on her fingers. “The Wishing Well, the Old Mill, the Apple Cider Press because they used to offer cider at weddings, and if we can, let’s get photos of spring flowers and something of the night sky for the stars. Although I’m not sure we have time because we need a cloudless sky for that.”
“I have a few of those taken the night of the new moon.”
“You do?”
“About thirty of that whole festival and the women lying on the ground looking through their silk kerchiefs, the fire, the dancing, and of course the sky full of stars. I’ll show you when we get back to the house.”
She wanted to jump up and down with excitement. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
He laughed. “I’ll have to do more impressive things if it makes you this happy.” He looked up at the sky.
“This might be the last sunny day we get before the deadline. So, let’s plan today properly,” His gaze travelled over the fields trying to work out the island’s geography. “I think the Cider Press…”
“Yes, that’s closest,” she agreed. “Then the Mill and finally the Wishing Well.”
“But first the spring flowers and the Hand-Fasting Lea.” He waved a hand at the meadow around them.
It took a lot longer than she expected. Walking around, finding pretty blooms, he took photo after photo. But whenever she thought they had enough he would say, “No, not yet.” He had to take ‘the one’ before he could move on.
An hour passed, the sun got warmer, and still he hadn’t found ‘the one’. At one point, he shrugged out of his jacket so he could move more freely, trying different angles until he had the right perspective.
“Aren’t you going to be cold in a t-shirt?”
It wasn’t a tight tee, but it didn’t have to be. Every time he raised the camera to his eyes, his biceps popped below the sleeves. When he climbed over a fallen tree and held the camera above his head to try a few test shots, the hem of his shirt pulled out of his jeans and exposed several inches of his stomach.
She tried not to look.
He wasn’t hers; he belonged to another woman.
He belonged to another woman.
The repeated words didn’t help; if anything they made things worse. The mere thought that Nicole’s hands may have touched that toned stomach, played with the light trail of hairs…
Pierre almost choked on her jealousy.
She looked around at the birds, hoping to banish the images of Gabriel in bed out of her mind.
The trick with birds and fishes was that you had to decide if something was too difficult, too hidden, or too far to be a realistic catch. A poor kingfisher might do itself injury trying to catch something unattainable. Some things were just meant to be dreams that couldn’t be caught. Not by blue-feathered birds, or green-haired girls.
She bent down to pick a long-stemmed daisy, then another. She also took some primroses, and a few long grasses.
“What can you say about this place?” Gabriel’s voice broke into her thoughts.
She shook her head to clear it. A long, long way to travel back to answer ordinary questions. “Nothing. This is just a meadow, no old association, no stories.”
“But it’s…” He jumped down from the log and came to show her his photo.
