Yes… perhaps Luc hadn’t been so far off the mark to suggest that her whole life was built around unfinished business.
The unfinished business that had derailed her old life and redefined her as a person.
The business thatwouldhave been finished if it hadn’t been for Luc Moreau.
* * *
Luc hadn’t been lying when he said he needed to scan what was available in the way of backdrops for photos but the need for some time to himself was far more urgent.
He hadn’t felt the roll of emotions like this for years and he certainly couldn’t deal with them the way he had the last time he’d been anywhere near Sophie Spencer, back in the wake of Tom’s death.
By running away.
Putting a pack on his back and never stopping anywhere long enough to feel connected. Learning that overpowering emotions could be drowned by using a flood of adrenaline and that it could provide a guaranteed respite. He’d gone skydiving in Switzerland and rock climbing in the Dolomites in Italy. Costa Rica was amazing for white-water canoeing, France for black-run skiing and Australia had introduced Luc to surfing. It didn’t matter what country he found himself in, there were always beautiful women who were happy to provide physical distraction with no strings attached and that was almost as good as an adrenaline rush. The one thing he’d never taken had been the easy road to sidestepping any feelings – with alcohol or drugs. It wasn’t simply that he’d seen where that had taken his mother. He’d pretty much turned his back on interfering with his body chemistry in any way the night he’d lost Tom.
Tom Baxter. The person who’d been so much more than merely a friend. He’d been his brother from another mother. His soulmate. The person he’d loved the most and who’d opened the door to a world he might never have reached alone. The person he would have died for if it could have savedhim.
Luc slowed his steps. He needed to at least look as if he was cataloguing the best spots around the castle for some of the expected, normal wedding portraits he needed to deliver, having promised Greg he wouldn’t do anything outrageous here. That spiral of ancient stone steps that led to an arch-shaped medieval door in one of the towers was perfect. The bride could be sitting on the steps, perhaps leaning down to where the groom was standing beside the narrow staircase, lifting his head to receive her kiss.
Thepigeonnier, a tiny stone tower with a conical roof, would also be a winner, especially if the resident doves would cooperate and fly overhead, and the old chapel was almost off-the-scale picturesque. There were chairs filling the courtyard in front of it, so presumably there were more guests than could be accommodated inside and the exchange of vows would take place with the chapel in the background. Perfect. He could take the bridal couple inside for a more intimate connection with this tiny building that had been used for worship for hundreds of years.
Even better was the cemetery at the back of the chapel. The monuments to lost souls were right up Luc’s alley with the blurred inscriptions and creeping lichen that suggested they no longer truly mattered. A bridal couple about to start their new life together against the backdrop of death? Fabulous.
Except that being amongst these ornately carved headstones was deepening the maelstrom of emotions and memories that being close to Sophie Spencer had triggered. Why on earth had he agreed to come here today? Deep down, he’d known exactly how hard this was going to be.
And maybe that was the real reason he’d come. To test himself. To find out if there might actually be a way to move forward in his life without being haunted by this woman and the memories that still clung to her like perfume that had soaked into the very pores of her skin.
He’d made a fresh start when he’d finally stopped running. Started a new life by going back to his first love of photography but with a very new edge to his art. He could enhance a heartbeat of real emotion by framing it in the context of something unthinkable.
The birth of a new life amongst symbols of death.
The power of love shining through the evidence of complete destruction.
Putting a spotlight on the superfluous dusting – with fancy white dresses and frilly horseshoes – on something as meaningful as promising to love and honour someone for the rest of your life. Perhaps those ‘drown the dress’ photo shoots were his personal favourites. In his latest triumph, he’d had the wedding couple in a swamp, having a mud fight. The bride and groom were so covered in mud it was hard to see the ripped dress or the hairstyle that had unravelled. Or had it been that those details had been as superfluous as they’d always been thanks to the way the couple were looking at each other as they laughed. The joy – thelove– evident in that photograph had been why it went viral.
It was, after all, what everyone wanted.
Luc had a feeling that it was, in fact, the meaning of life itself.
D’accord…
He took a deep, slow breath. He was calm again. He could go and meet this bride. Luc took the opportunity, as he walked back to the main entrance of the château, to google Zara Beaumont to give himself a heads-up on what style of photographs she might want to have seen on her Instagram feed. It didn’t take long to realise that she would want to be selling the dream. Pure romance in the dream setting with not a single curl of hair, perfect flower, or fold of a veil out of place.
The clatter of the metal lid of a rubbish bin made him look up from the screen of his phone as he walked between the old stables and a kitchen garden. Someone was dumping rubbish. Or trying to. In this normally unseen part of the grounds, the amount of detritus was challenging the methods for disposing of it. Bins were overflowing. Empty champagne bottles were piled in an amusingly drunken heap. Luc could imagine his wedding couple sitting on those dirty cobbles, between the overstuffed bins, looking at each other as if they were the first people ever to find treasure in an infinite sea of trash.
He put his phone away and took out his faithful old Leica camera to snap a few frames of the scene that had captured his imagination.
Then he remembered what had been instantly obvious online – that it was Zara’s lifestyle focus on simple perfection and creativity coupled with respect for heritage and tradition that had made her famous and, with a heartfelt sigh, he let go of the spark of passion that was still glowing in his heart.
The stone stairs and thepigeonnierwere exactly what was needed today.
Maybe he could let Greg take the credit for this wedding album?
And maybe, with a bit of luck, he could also let go of any lingering desire that things between himself and Sophie Spencer could be different.
At least he hadn’t felt the same waves of hatred that had filled the space between them the last time he’d stood in front of her. If anything, she’d almost looked frightened. Ofhim. Once upon a time that would have broken a piece of his heart, but not today.
She no longer had that kind of power over him.
