He was still here.
Still in her life.
And, okay, maybe this was more about Angus discovering whohetruly was, but Tilly had been part of that journey and, judging by her thoughts about romance in the last few minutes, she was beginning to discover new things about whoshewas. Perhaps it was because they were so different that it had been inevitable that some things they believed about themselves would be challenged. Could it be that Angus was feeling something shifting in his life, as she was?
Something that felt huge. Precious.
But fragile, too. It would be too easy to find the challenge daunting enough to make them run.
Petits pas…
There was a need to protect what was newborn and still vulnerable. To avoid sudden moves, or declarations that mightmake a return to emotional safety paramount – for either of them.
And it was still far too early to know whether what was between them could be trusted to last the test of a timeframe that could cover the rest of her life. Or whether that was something that had even crossed Angus’s mind.
It was madness for Tilly to be thinking of it herself. The kind of thing a teenage girl might dream of when she was pulling the petals off a daisy.
Je t’aime à la folie…
Butil m’aime?
Yes, she loved him madly, but didheloveher?
It might, at times, look andfeellike Angus was in love with her but he’d never said the words and she could never say them first because that was a part of the fairy tale she couldn’t bring herself to abandon.
And, if he couldn’t say them, that would be a deal-breaker. Because that would mean that the cake – totally exposed because it had no icing on it at all – was definitely hollow.
She was a beat too late to realise it was time for her to produce the champagne but it didn’t matter because it was easy to look as though she had been so caught up in the romance of the proposal. With smiles and congratulations, she opened the still icy-cold bottle and poured the wine into two crystal flutes.
The sunset was still glowing strongly enough for the facets of the cut glass to act as prisms and create so many fragments of colour they were like tiny rainbows. Marc was smiling as he captured the moment.
This was going to be a photo that could take pride of place, on a bedside table perhaps, in a sparkly, heart-shaped frame.
19
Angus McLeod would have thought being a passenger in a vintage French van that was painted purple, decorated with sunflowers on the sides and lavender across the back doors, unthinkable a few weeks ago.
This vehicle was even emblazoned with the name of Tilly’s destination proposal business in a very decorative, curly font that was not to his taste at all.
A Promise in Provence.
Like its font, the name was overly romantic but, remarkably, perfectly acceptable because this was Tilly’s van and hewasstill in Provence. Admittedly, he had brought a big part of his real life into the mix but this still felt like they were inside that bubble of this not being quite real life.
It was still safe.
What happened here could stay here. If it all turned to custard, Angus could simply retreat to the life he’d created in Scotland to be as risk free as possible, maybe with a resigned sigh and a mutteredc’est la vie.
He hadn’t announced any particular length of time he intended to stay because he didn’t know. He’d rented LaMaisonette for a month but Ellie was open to a longer tenancy. That hewouldgo home was not in doubt – it was a matter of when, not if.
In the meantime, he had no reason to think he needed to give up either the delights of Provence or those of Mathilde Pascoe’s company, and she seemed just as happy to have him here. It wasn’t as if they were going to be together every hour of every day. They both had their own work to get on with.
Yesterday, Angus had immersed himself in some very real risks for both Novaryn Pharmaceuticals and their volunteers. He was on standby to travel at a moment’s notice, if necessary, to take charge of risk management if the situation showed any signs of deterioration but, for the moment, the situation seemed stable. Angus knew that putting him on the payroll as a consultant was just a precaution, so he’d been happy to agree to a small adventure with Tilly to climb up her favourite mountain – the guardian of her hometown that had the cross on the top.
He couldn’t have said no, mind you. Not when the invitation had been part of the whispered pillow talk in the dark cocoon of the night, with Tilly snuggled against his body, her head in the hollow of his shoulder, both of them on the verge of falling asleep.
And he couldn’t have changed his mind in the morning when her eyes were shining with the anticipation of the outing and it had been her idea that she drove him for a change.
‘I know where to go,’ she said. ‘There’s a little parking space off the road that is close to the start of the path.’
