He could feel what was coming. The question he’d hoped he’d never be asked. But it had tobeasked and he’d known that, as well, perhaps from that first moment he’d seen Sophie again.
‘Why did you do it, Luc?’ Her words were so raw they were bleeding. ‘Why did you drive that night, when you knew you’d had too much to drink?’
Here it was.
The crux.
He couldn’t tell her. Not all of it, anyway. He certainly couldn’t tell her that he’d been drinking that night because it was the eve of her wedding to Tom and that had to mark the end of any wishful thinking that things could have been different.
That, if Tom hadn’t fallen in love at first sight like that, perhaps Sophie would have fallen in love with him.
Non…
He couldn’t tell her.
Because of the promise.
Because, as far as he was concerned, it had always been about protecting Sophie as much as Tom and he could never stop doing that. How could he when he loved her more than life itself?
He could still be honest with her in what hedidsay, though. Would it be enough?
‘There’s nothing in my life I regret more than what happened that night,’ he said, so quietly he wondered if Sophie could even hear his words. ‘A choice made in a heartbeat can be enough to destroy a life. More than one life but… the answer to that question is stupidly simple.’ Luc had to close his eyes, despite knowing that it would dislodge the tears that were gathering. ‘Tom asked me to…’
If he had intended to say anything more, it wasn’t going to happen. He was too choked to breathe, let alone speak.
Sophie tried to say something but couldn’t. She reached up to brush a tear off his face, instead. And then she was in his arms and they were clinging to each other, the barrier that had prevented them sharing the grief for the loss of someone they both loved gone, as completely as if it had never existed.
Perhaps it had been melted by their shared tears.
19
The weather couldn’t have been more perfect for a beach wedding.
Sophie and Tilly were on the restaurant terrace, putting the finishing touches to tables that had been pushed together to make one long, communaltable de fêtewhere the buffet-style picnic and barbecue food would be served, along with speciality salads and small plates oftapas françaisesfor the adults.
The long strands of fairy lights were on but couldn’t compete with the sunlight filtering through branches of the pine trees that had been pruned and trained over decades to stretch out like enormous umbrellas over the outdoor area. Tilly was on a stepladder, tying the strings of silk butterflies to the branches. Florence was tucking some sprigs of recently dried lavender into bouquets of fresh wildflowers down the centreline of the long table. The daisies, cornflowers, cosmos, rockroses, wild marigolds and even some late-blooming sunflowers were explosions of colour against the white linen cloth beneath big glass preserving jars that were being used as vases.
Sophie found herself wrapping her arms around her body, giving in to a moment of soaking in what looked like a visual interpretation of happiness.
‘I love this,’ she told Tilly. ‘This might be the happiest wedding we’ve ever been a part of. It’s starting to feel like the whole world is smiling.’
Ohh…
Those two words were enough to hear Luc’s voice, as clearly as if he was murmuring in her ear – an echo of the past she’d never imagined she would allow, let alone welcome back into her life.
‘…thewholeworld, huh?… I’m impressed…’
She was smiling herself as she turned to look down at the beach, shading her eyes as she tried to see as far as the car park on the other side of the bay. Was that shape a horse float? The middle sister, Fiona Gilchrist, was in charge of the transport of their unusual addition to a wedding party today, but there was no sign yet of three small donkeys being led along the beach to the shady area that had been prepared for them near the rose-covered archway where the ceremony would take place.
What Sophie could see, however, was the man standing alone at the water’s edge, a wave rolling over his feet and soaking the bottom of his jeans as he took in the view in exactly the way Sophie had when she’d come here just a few days ago. The day she’d driven up to Draguignan in the afternoon and Luc had taken her out for a dinner that had almost turned into a disaster.
There were parts of that night that would be in her memories forever.
The mention of Hannah that was a reminder of losing such a precious friendship.
The realisation that this wedding was taking place on a significant anniversary of Tom’s death.
Together, they had stripped away whatever emotional cushioning she’d been using to avoid digging too deeply into the darker implications of being with Luc.
