He nods.
“Did she try to get you back?”
“She didn’t accept that it was over for a couple of months, but that’s not the same thing,” he says wearily. “Once she realized that I meant it, she left in a fury and never looked back. Everything since then has been handled by lawyers and lackeys. She got her assistant to pack up our apartment on Christmas Eve, using achecklist as long as my arm.Bothmy arms, actually. She’s not used to not getting her own way.”
“You’ve broken up before though.” Lots of times. “Is it possible that you might still patch things up?”
“Not a chance in hell. She’s already hooked up with some guy from her work and we always said that there would be no turning back if either of us did that. I am absolutely one hundred percent done this time. I’m just so glad we didn’t get as far as having kids.”
When Jackson was ten, his dad moved to LA, which was the other side of the country from where he lived, and I still remember how upset he was. He never would have wanted a child of his own to experience the geographical separation that he did after his parents divorced.
“We never should have gotten married,” he says. “But my mom always said you have to fight for what you want, that the best things don’t come easily, not even love. Now I think she might have had it all wrong. Should it really be that hard? Maybe when it’s right, it’s easy. Or when it’s easy, it’s right.” He shrugs and rakes his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. But my parents are divorced and Mom has never settled down with anyone else so she’s hardly an expert.”
Not for the first time, I wonder if Sandrine actively steered Jackson away from me.
Because it would have been easy with me. Did that make me less valuable to him? To her? Sandrine has always been a snob and I’m no Manhattan socialite.
“Thanks for listening,” he says, placing the tennis ball at his side and jumping to his feet. “I’m sorry for unloading on you,” he adds as he pads over.
“It’s okay, I asked.”
“You’ve always been easy to talk to,” he says as he holds out his hands.
My insides warm as I reach up, allowing him to pull me to my feet.
And suddenly he’s right in front of me, his eyes gleaming and our hands still clasped together. I let him go and release a shaky laugh, racking my brain for something to say. Nothing comes.
I’m kicking myself as I follow him back into the living room. I need to keep my walls up, but Jackson has always found a way to tear them down. He’s disarming like that.
4
The smell of fresh coffeegreets me when I walk into the kitchen at seven o’clock the next morning. Mellie is an early riser.
“Well, hello there! I thought you’d be sleeping in,” she says jovially.
“Mm,” I reply sleepily, walking into her open arms. I feel so safe here. Always have.
My mum didn’t really do affection when I was growing up. She’d had a rough childhood. Mellie is actually her foster mother so she’s not related to me by blood, but when Mum fell pregnant with me at university, Mellie postponed her plans to move to France so that she could stay in the UK and help to look after me. She eventually turned her dreams of living in the Ardèche into a reality and I’ve been coming to visit her here ever since.
“Is this the time you’d normally get up for work?” Mellie asks as she reaches past my arm for the coffeepot.
It’s 6 a.m. in London—Ryan will be putting the coffee on and is probably blissfully unaware that Tasha is sleeping through theiralarm upstairs. I often used to bang on their door to wake her up as I was passing on my way to the kitchen.
“It is, but I couldn’t doze back off. I was too excited.” I take the cup she pours me with thanks.
“Are you seeing Jackson today?”
“Not sure. He’s going to the factory with Albert this morning.”
“Is that where you’ll be working from?”
I shake my head. “I’ll be at the office in the château.” But not for another ten days. I’m counting down. “Jackson too, most of the time.”
“That’s a nice, easy commute.”
“Much easier than my commute in London, that’s for sure.”
“Shall we sit out on the terrace?” She picks up her straw sun hat.
