I nodded. We — myself, Jesse and Nate — had video called this morning. Nate was taken with the idea for many reasons, especially the cottage on site that was on the renovation list for autumn, with a view to being ready in spring. The plans were for it to have its own pool, self-contained enough to maintain privacy, but with the use of the chateau’s restaurant too. “They’re both set. I think Jesse pretty much was ready to go before we came out here, but seeing it has made his mind up completely.”
“It’s a good place and it will be a success. I think it will be a big success.” She nodded, a flash of determination in her eyes. “Carina dreamed about this from when we first met — a sanctuary where people could relax. Be themselves. Find themselves.” Her smile was bigger than I’d ever seen it. “You know, we had an amazing gastropub back in England, a small village in Norfolk, too small really for us to be much. But we created this fantastic place where people could escape, and found a chef who had aspirations for a Michelin star. Moving here was a risk. We slept in a caravan for the first nine months, until this became habitable.”
“You really followed your dreams.”
“Which is how you should spend your life. I know you want to write — Jesse told me. He said you had a successful event planning business.”
I nodded, wondering where this was going. I respected what Carina and Suzette were doing here: I could only imagine the life changes they’d made and the finances they’d put on the line, but that didn’t mean I needed a lecture.
“He’s proud of you. He said your book is really good, too.”
I saw her eyes dance.
“He’s read it?”
She nodded. “I’m looking forward to seeing how things work out between the two of you, but even if they don’t, remember how it felt to be here, when you have that flight of first lust, because nothing’s more magical than that, however long it lasts.”
“How do you and Carina keep it like that? Magical?” I knew relationships changed. My parents had been married more than thirty years, but I still saw my dad looking at my mother like she’d hung the moon and the stars as well. I’d seen Nate’s marriage to his first wife Chan change, and I had wondered just before she was diagnosed with cancer whether she was content to be Nate’s wife, looking after their girls. I’d seen her head turn — not that I’d ever let my brother know that and I never would.
“I don’t think a relationship can always be magical. There are times when it is, and times when it’s hard work and difficult, like treading through treacle based on sinking sand, but maybe it’s those parts that let you know what that person’s really like, and you know the bones of them. Maybe those are the bits that matter.” Suzette shook her head, smiling at me as if I was a butterfly about to flutter for the first time. “But now’s not the time for you to think about treacle, unless you’re licking it off him.”
I smiled, feeling my cheeks grow hot, that blush I’d never been able to master pushing through any tan I’d managed to develop.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think it might be a holiday romance.” Because that was what he’d said.Just while we were here.
Suzette shrugged. “In that case, go and enjoy your holiday. I’ll bring you some of this that I made.” She gestured to the pitcher. “Go sit back with your beau.”
I smiled, nodding, hearing the wisdom in her words and letting it stop my mind from galloping after notions of what might happen.
We lazed by the pool, spent an hour with Simone and Jack and their kids talking about food and diets and restaurants in Manchester, and walked around the grounds and the vineyards, the hot Mediterranean sun sultry on our skin.
As we walked, Jesse took my hand. It was tentative, his gesture, his fingers brushing against mine, the back of our hands meeting briefly, before he caught my hand in his.
I didn’t ask, but I didn’t think he’d ever held a girl’s hand before.
We talked about home, about his schedule when we got home because pre-season was starting, the first game six weeks away. There would be friendlies, fitness training and a whole remit of media for him to attend as club captain. There was also the build-up to the World Cup which was happening through November and December, when I’d definitely be with Amber and the new baby, plus my two naughty nieces, as we wouldn’t be travelling to the Middle East. The heat would be too much, and the travelling, plus the amount we’d see of Nate, would be minimal. All of his focus — and Jesse’s — would be on the games and the competition, as England pushed to be world champions, something they hadn’t done for nearly sixty years.
We didn’t talk about what was happening when we got home. I didn’t ask him if we’d still steal moments together, or whether we would leave last night and this morning here in France.
Or this afternoon, when he kissed me in a vineyard and I felt like I was seventeen again, falling in love for the first time with a boy who held all my happy endings in his hand.
It was a kiss that relegated all of my other kisses to just faint memories of things that barely ever happened. His hands were on my waist, almost chaste in their touch, and his lips met mine tentatively, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do, or how I was going to respond.
A light breeze whispered through the trees shielding us. No one else was around. The only sound was the breeze and the call of birds.
I pulled myself closer to him, my arms around his neck, body pushing against his, letting him control the speed of the kiss, how deep it went, how much it demanded. My body responded too easily, the pulse between my legs growing stronger, heavier, need increasing.
The night before, when he’d told me what to do, had been a new experience. My previous lovers hadn’t had that confidence or that craving to take control in that way. Jesse had owned it. In that time, he’d owned my body, or at least I’d loaned it to him.
This morning, I’d been surprised. Part of me hadn’t expected a repeat of the night before at all, let alone more, with him coming inside me. Jesse sheltered behind a wall he’d carefully constructed, one with a moat and a defensive system designed to repel any attack on his emotions. For some reason, he’d let me breach them without so much as a warning shot.
In the shower, I’d felt that moment when he didn’t even try to put those defences back up, when he’d made that careful decision to keep his arms down, letting me step into his territory.
In this field, filled with wildflowers and fruit trees, the chateau rising in the distance like some maternal goddess, I didn’t try to analyse and work out his strategy; instead, I just was.
Here. His arms encircling me. A kiss that tasted of summer and hope and want. All the sweetness of that brush of what love there could be.
“I don’t know how I should be doing this.” His words were the finest of whispers, barely overheard even by the bees hovering nearby.
