He was coming towards her, his professional camera in his hands.
‘Look at this,’ he said quietly.
It was the last image he’d taken on the beach. Somehow, in the split second before he’d dropped this camera, he’d caught that astonishing arterial network of lightning in the sky and the light it created had made a silhouette of Natalia and Henri at precisely the moment their lips had touched in that soft brush of a kiss.
It was the most extraordinary photograph Sophie had ever seen. She had no words that could do it justice but, when she looked up, it felt like Luc could read her thoughts.
‘Sophie?’ The voice came from behind her.
It was an effort to drag her gaze away from Luc’s but Sophie turned to find Natalia beside her.
‘Sophie… I’m so sorry…’ Natalia’s hand was pressed to her neck. ‘I don’t know how it happened – it must have been when we were climbing those rocks so fast. I knew I’d torn my dress but I had no idea that the necklace had broken.’
She lifted her hand, her neck bare beneath it. ‘I’msosorry,’ she repeated. ‘We’ll replace the necklace for you, of course.’
Sophie knew she would have to find the words that could hide how she was feeling but it would take a moment.
The precious link to the man she had loved enough to marry was gone.
There was no way on earth it could ever be replaced.
Without any conscious direction, her gaze shifted. Seeking comfort? Or had she felt that Luc was watching her?
Had she known that she would see, in his eyes, that he knew exactly how devastating a loss this was?
Of course he did. He was the only person in the world whocould.
13
The storm abated with less of the drama of its arrival but with almost the same speed, leaving a remarkably clear sky, sprinkled with stars, in its wake and a sea that was calm enough to reflect a ribbon of light from the rising moon.
It was time for Natalia and Henri to get changed and into the limousine that was waiting outside the guarded gates of the Villa Céleste to whisk them to airport. There was no reason that their flight would not be able to take off on time. The guests drifted away soon after that and Henri’s mother and sister decided to go into Nice for a late dinner. The caterer cleaned up the kitchen, Tilly drove off with the large van they used on occasions like this after it had been loaded with the broken archway and all the chairs that would go back to their storage facility.
Sophie would be the last person to go. It was her responsibility to leave the venue as close to how they’d found it as possible. There was no reason for Luc to have stayed this long but he’d been very helpful, carrying crates for the caterers and stacking chairs into the van. He was sweeping the ruined petals from the flagstones of the terrace when Sophie went outside.
‘You don’t need to do that,’ she told him. ‘The gardeners will be clearing up all the storm damage tomorrow.’
Luc propped the broom against a wall. ‘I was waiting for you to finish.’
Sophie’s heart skipped a beat. All she could think of was the way Luc had been looking at her as she’d struggled to hide the shock of learning that her necklace had been lost.
The same way he was looking at her now?
As if he not only understood how much it hurt but that he cared in a way that words would never be enough to capture.
‘I thought…’ Luc’s face twisted a little. ‘…that maybe you’d like to go down to the beach. I know it’s a long shot but those rocks are so jagged – it’s not impossible that a chain could be caught on them and a diamond’s going to reflect light.’ He slid his phone out of his pocket, touching an app on the screen to activate a bright beam of light.
Sophie’s heart was melting. He knew exactly how much that necklace had meant to her and he was offering to help. But what about what he had lost? She knew just how precious that camera had been to him.
She’d had this sensation of a bond forming between herself and Luc once before. During that silly ‘Ding Ding’ game that had started with the biblical adage that money was the root of all evil. When they’d exchanged a look that acknowledged they were both outside the golden bubble that the Baxter wealth had created for their best friends.
And that made this feel… as if time was being rewound. That an opportunity for a new beginning was being created?
Sophie’s heart might have sped up after missing that beat but her breath was catching somewhere deep in her chest.
This also felt like it was stirring embers of a fire that she had been so sure could only ever be glowing on her side. She’d felt that heat in the gardens of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or, but she had doused it with the cold hard realisation that Luc was only helping her because it was what Tom would have wanted him to do. That any heat on his side of the fire had long since been extinguished by the icy hatred that she – and Hannah – had hurled at him.
Swallowing hard before she responded to Luc’s suggestion was more than enough time for the riff of emotions to float past and settle somewhere out of sight.
