“Keep moving! Drive! Go to your cut-off!” Strategy from his own soccer experience.
“Make the other girl anticipate you! Then do what she doesn't expect. Control the ball! Find the opening, then pass. Trust your teammate!”
It drove her crazy. He drove her crazy. And she was a better player for it, good enough to make the college team. And he was there to see them win that last game and the championship.
The sign was at the roadside, then the rooftops came into view.
The village was like a picture from a calendar or a brochure promoting places to visit on the next vacation, the main street winding through a cluster of plaster cottages with slate roofs, the center of the village closed to automobiles, with vendor stalls lining the street. Market day.
Weekly markets were found all over France, where people gathered to purchase local produce, crafts, food prepared by local chefs, the sounds of vendors, tourists, and farmers,mingling with the smell of fresh baked bread, meat prepared over an open fire, and an insane variety of cheeses.
James parked the car and turned off the motor.
“It's a place to start,” he said, hitting the remote lock on the rental. “Small towns, everyone knows everyone for miles around.”
He watched her as they left the car. He would give her this much. If nothing turned up, then he would take the next step. He had to, to protect her. Then they needed to have that talk after what had happened at the inn in Amiens.
They were both adults. God knows they were capable of making their own choices and decisions. And mistakes.
It should have been easy to simply call it for what it was—sex, that survival instinct after what had happened, basic human need, a mistake, pure and simple.
It should have been.
She walked ahead, entering the closed street, joining people afoot, cyclists in their tight shorts and helmets who took advantage of the food and wine, locals with baskets hooked over their arms who meandered from stall to stall, the women picking up a piece of fruit followed by the usual chatting away that was inherent in small villages, people who appeared to be from the larger city purchasing fresh produce, eggs, an assortment of late-season berries, squash, and baskets of red and gold apples from those orchards.
It reminded her of street fairs in New York, that blend of cultures, accents, home-made crafts, and food. They were fewer now.
Thousands of miles away from New York, the smell of food from one of those stalls filled the air, along with conversations in French and English along with a blend of Dutch and German, the way it had for hundreds of years.
She spoke with the vendor, a short, portly man with an immaculate apron tied around his substantial waist, a balding head, and hand gestures typical of a man who appreciates food, and asked about a family that a friend had told her lived in the area and gave him the name—Marchand. He shrugged, filling a bag with his specialties—she must try this and some of this...
She thanked him, no doubt paying more than the food was worth. No answer, but the small beef wrapped pastries were delicious.
“What did you expect?” James commented. “Your French is so bad, he was probably propositioning you.”
She shrugged in answer. “A man who cooks like that? I could be persuaded.”
There were other food stalls offering olives in seasoned oil; truffles from the forest that she would have paid a small fortune for, back in New York; cinnamon pastry from the local patisserie, the scent thick in the fall air; and then there was food grown locally—roasted nuts, squash, persimmons, pears, apples, and honey, gleaming like liquid amber in jars.
It was possible that neither family lived in the area any longer. The war had changed things. People were scattered or left after the war, unable to make a living on farms the way they had before the war. Others moved to the cities where there were jobs as cities were rebuilt after the war.
Small villages were now picturesque stops that found other ways to survive, where people rode bicycles through the countryside, escaping the cities for a weekend or holiday. Others escaped permanently, leaving the cities behind for a simpler way of life, possibly like the young woman in the next to the last stall. She was slender, with dark hair and green eyes, a long braid hanging over one shoulder.
She was younger than the other vendors, pretty, with little makeup except for lip gloss, and freckles across her nose. Typical college student, Kris guessed.
She wore jeans, a flannel shirt buttoned over a thermal shirt, sleeves rolled back at the cuffs, hiking boots, and the usual array of tattoos that circled her wrists. There was a tattoo of a lotus blossom at one side of her neck, and another symbol inked on the opposite side—the Cross of Lorraine! The symbol the French Resistance had adopted during the war.
Coincidence?
It was late afternoon and the girl was stacking empty trays. A few apples were displayed on her table. By the number of empty baskets spread across the front counter, it had apparently been a good day.
“Those are not so good,” the girl told her as she picked up an apple. “These are better.” She pointed out another tray with a half-dozen apples.
“These were picked earlier in the fall, sweeter.”
She was packing up for the day as customers thinned. Others were also closing, packing up what was left of jars of honey, olives, wine, the food vendor closing down his grill.
The girl spoke to the vendor in the next stall with animated conversation in that way of people who know one another. He laughed and gave her a jar of almonds with something in that conversation about sharing it with someone.
