He put down the chickens he was holding, ripped the feed away from her, sprinkled a whole heap on the path and watched as the chickens all ran to the spot and began feasting.
‘Maybe other people’s action is enough for me,’ Orla suggested. ‘When you’re in the spotlight you’re just setting yourself up for someone to tell you you have no right to be there.’
‘Someone has made you feel like that?’ he queried, getting angrier by the moment.
‘Someone made you feel like that too,’ she reminded him. ‘MaybeIshould build myself a fortress in a forest and never come out.’
He grabbed her then, with a bit more force than he had intended, until her back was up against a fir tree. ‘Don’t you say that.Youshould never hide away. You are too beautiful, too clever, too charismatic to not be one of the biggest parts of this world. I can’t believe someone would dare to try to make you think otherwise.’
He was breathing hard now, exactly how he had been last night before they had kissed. And she was looking at him with those beautiful eyes. It would be so easy to get caught up in the moment. But it would just be a moment…
‘Orla,’ he said softly, stepping back from her.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I… take you out to dinner?’
He was holding his breath now, waiting for her reply.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But… there is one condition.’
‘What?’
‘Can it be something we haven’t had to catch first?’
He smiled. ‘Agreed.’
‘And can I just check? Did you just call me charismatic? Because, if you did, I might want to add that to my résumé.’
‘If you carry on helping me with these chickens you might be able to add “farmer” too.’
She laughed. ‘Just so we’re clear, this isyourstory and I am merely the describer.’
‘We will work on that,’ he answered.
And as she picked up two chickens and the abandoned bag of feed, a warm feeling he hadn’t experienced for a long while grew strong in his gut. He had slowed things down for now, disconnected the immediate intensity, but only because everything was telling him that he wanted more than a moment with Orla Bradbee.
38
DELPHINE’S STORE/CAFÉ, SAINT-CHAMBÉRY
‘What happened?’ Jacques asked, elbow deep in tinsel with Gerard as they both worked to support Delphine’s rummaging around in the biggest cardboard box he had ever seen. It was so large it could easily have homed all Santa’s reindeer, the sleigh, gifts and Santa himself.
‘She has gone crazy this year,’ Gerard remarked, baubles rolling out onto the floor of the shop. ‘There are three more of these boxes in my bar!’
‘Delphine, come out of the box,’ Jacques ordered. ‘Tell us what you’re looking for in there and we can find it.’
The last thing he wanted Delphine to be doing was getting overwhelmed by anything that could make her condition worse. Right now he wanted her to be in bed, resting and taking care of herself. Or, better still, letting someone else take care of her the way she usually took care of everyone else. He thought back to what Orla had said about people who worked backstage to let others shine…
‘I am not finding anything specific!’ Delphine called, voice muffled by mountains of Christmas regalia. ‘I want it all out! It all has places to go!’
With those words said she made a high-pitched gasp and an avalanche of tinsel, bells on strings, angels, Santa Clauses, and enough baubles to fill thebrouettethree times over rolled out of the box, Delphine coming with it.
Jacques caught her as the decorations continued to come like they were being powered out by a leaf-blower.
‘It is like a tsunami!’ Gerard exclaimed, being forced back into the shelving of tinned goods.
Finally, it stopped and there it was, a mountain of festiveness blocking the entire aisle. Why had she opened it in the middle of here? Surely taking it into her stock room would have been much more sensible.
