‘What?’ she said.
‘Wine-tasting holidays,’ he said, an edge of triumph in his voice. ‘People could come and stay in a beautiful location, and I could teach them about wine. What do you think?’
‘Finally.’ Fran rolled her eyes, then grinned to let him know she was joking. ‘Thought you’d never get there.’
‘Seriously?’
Johnny’s look of confusion had her stifling a laugh.
‘Miles ahead of you,’ she said.
‘You don’t think I’m mad?’
‘No. I think it sounds perfect.’
His eyebrows squashed together again. ‘There would be so much to sort out, though. I don’t even know where I’d start.’
‘It’s a good idea, though, isn’t it?’ Fran didn’t want him to lose the momentum he’d built up.
His slow nod hinted at cogs turning inside his brain, new-found possibilities coming into view. ‘I’d need someone to take on the accommodation side of it, though. Furnishing the place, managing the rooms, that sort of thing.’
The thinking continued, and Fran had to admit she was imagining the transformation, too. Those chairs reupholstered, bun feet polished and resting on the parquet to one side of the foyer, a magazine table between them, a huge circular mahogany table with flowers on top in the centre of the space for no other reason than the dimensions allowed for it. Johnny in his element with bottles of carefully procured wines, ready and waiting to share his knowledge with excited guests.
Her own smile at the images in her mind faded as she realised Johnny was staring at her. The intensity in his expression the same as in that doorway to Chateau des Rêves. It made her stomach flutter.
‘Here’s a radical thought. Would you be interested in being the chateau’s interior designer? Maybe work on the pieces for the refit.’ He paused, his brow furrowing. ‘Have you ever thought of moving to France on a more permanent basis? With all your skills, you could take on the accommodation side of the business. How would you feel about going into business with a worldly worn but still plucky thirty-something-year-old?’
Yes please.
As much as she wanted to say the words, she bit them back. Because although Fran wanted it far more than she had imagined when the idea had occurred to her, wanted far more from Johnny than to be his business partner, there was another man Fran had recently invited into her life whom she hadn’t considered in all this. And she wasn’t thinking about the cat.A man who had given her opportunities unlike any she’d ever experienced before.
For now, she needed to keep her counsel, had to put her burgeoning feelings for Johnny, the feelings she was finding increasingly difficult to suppress, to one side.
Fran needed to think.
To defuse the tension she was feeling, she defaulted to flippancy.
‘Thirty-something?’ she said. ‘You told me you were twenty-one. Where did that decade go?’
He didn’t smile, though. Instead his reply carried more weight than Fran had expected.
‘Seems it went on learning the value of truth,’ Johnny said.
Chapter 19
Penny was doing her best to rise to Harry’s challenge of making pancakes. When they first met, she’d told him just what an appalling mess she made every time she attempted to cook, but somehow, he’d always presumed she was teasing him – that she could at least manage the basic skills.
From the look on his face, he was beginning to realise that, while she might joke about a lot of things, her inability to cook wasn’t one of them.
‘Do you believe me now?’ she said, grinning at the mess she’d made on the stainless steel of the kitchen worktop. Flour had gone everywhere when she’d sieved it, and she’d managed to spill the milk, too. She raised the whisk like a weapon. ‘OK, I’m going in. Wish me luck.’
Harry grinned at her, sliding his toque from his head, and squashing it into a pocket. ‘I don’t think it’s you who needs the luck – the kitchen will be lucky to survive.’
Whisking the gloopy mixture was more difficult than she’d been expecting, and within seconds she’d managed to flick a sizeable blob onto the floor.
‘God help us,’ Harry said, moving behind her and steadying the bowl in one hand, then placing the other over the top of her hand on the whisk.
Was Harry pressing her against the countertop on purpose, or was he genuinely focused on the batter? It was fair to say Penny had lost all interest in pancakes, allowing herself to move with the motions of his hand, and making the most of the pressure from his body. If he wasn’t doing this to turn her on, if he didn’trealise what he was doing to her, if she didn’t do something to make him understand – Penny couldn’t take this any longer.
