Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3)

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “Besides, you know he wouldn’t stay put,” she said, speaking more to little Jean-Michael, or Jem as Laurent had begun calling him. “Would you? He would be in the potager in a flash ripping up all your precious radishes and potatoes.”

  “I do not grow potatoes in the potager,” Laurent said, turning the page of his newspaper.

  “Well, whatever you grow in there.”

  “Besides, Monsieur Jem is more than welcome to help his papa in the potager. Even ripping up radishes would be more attention than his maman has paid it.”

  Laurent's potager—parsley and English thyme interspersed with radicchio, beets, spinach and radishes—was planted at the door leading into the house, ready to be plucked as quickly as it took the grill to get hot.

  “Gardening is not my thing,” Maggie said, kissing Jem’s head and bouncing him on her hip.

  Laurent finally looked up at her and grinned. “I love to see the two of you c’est ça.” He dropped the paper and held out his arms and Maggie moved to perch on his knee, baby still in her arms.

  She loved the smell of the two of them—her two men, she thought with a happy sigh. Laurent was citrus and tobacco—although she rarely saw him smoke—and little Jem had that indefinable baby-smell that made it impossible not to kiss his sweet head whenever he was in her arms.

  “Happy, chérie?” Laurent murmured into her neck.

  She felt a spasm of warmth race up her spine as his hands stroked her back through her thin blouse. “You know I am,” she whispered.

  It was true. She loved it here. But she hadn’t always. There had been many adjustments to living in a three-hundred-year-old house, not the least of which were the antiquated bathrooms.

  She smiled remembering how hard she’d lobbied for central air when she first arrived before accepting that closing the shutters during the hottest part of the day in summer typically cooled the house sufficiently.

  It had been a long and difficult adjustment, with all profits from the vineyard going back into the vineyard.

  “Hi, you two. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  Maggie and Laurent looked up to see their friend and houseguest, Grace Van Sant, standing in the open French doors. Every time Maggie saw Grace she was amazed at her friend’s cool beauty. Grace once joked that her mother named her after Grace Kelly, but to see her now, impeccably dressed, languid in her blonde elegance and poise, it was no joke.

  Fact was, Grace’s mother had nailed it.

  Laurent stood up, slowly sliding Maggie to her feet. He was six foot four, a big man with a gentle touch and a silent tread. More than once, Maggie had marveled at how his grace and stealth belied his size.

  “If Grace is back,” Laurent said, gathering up his newspaper, “it must be time for lunch.”

  Grace walked onto the patio. “Glad I can serve as such a reliable timepiece for you, Laurent,” she said, smiling. “Is Zouzou still napping?”

  Laurent went into the house as Maggie pulled the portable baby monitor out of the pocket of her slacks and flipped it on. The sounds of the toddler’s snores competed with the static of the device.

  “Kind of defeats the purpose if you keep it turned off,” Grace remarked wryly.

  “Totally defeats the purpose of having a little peace and quiet,” Maggie said, handing the monitor to Grace, “if you have to listen to every breath and gurgle as they sleep. No offense, Grace. I assure you Zouzou’s snorts are more adorable than most.”

  Grace laughed and snapped the monitor off. “I take your point, darling.” She gently tweaked Jem’s plump cheek. “How’s this little one? Did he sleep at all?”

  Maggie sat down at the outdoor table Laurent had just left. “No, and it’s driving me crazy. Why won’t he sleep?”

  Grace sat down. “Well, I’ve heard the smart ones don’t.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Just what I’ve read.”

  Maggie looked into Jem’s bright blue eyes. When he saw he had her attention, his toothless grin widened and drool crept down the corner of his mouth.

  “Plenty of time to be an overachiever,” she said to him. “Take the opportunity of a nap when it’s offered.”

  “Good luck with that,” Grace said, leaning back into the cane chair, a tired smile on her lips.

  Maggie knew Grace was working hard to keep her spirits up and her mood bright. The divorce from Windsor was finalized the week before, and although Grace was the one who had pushed for it, it had been a long, hard spring while she coped with what the breakup truly meant for her and her little family of four. When Maggie and Laurent offered refuge for her and Zouzou at their home in Provence, Grace had gratefully accepted.

  “How’s the business coming?” Maggie asked. Grace was attempting to create an online children’s clothing boutique using Provençal and Parisian wares.

  “Oh, it’s a long way from coming. I guess I thought I’d just spend my days shopping for adorable clothes for Zouzou and Jemmy, clue in the rest of the world through Facebook or something, take my middle-man cut, and go back to having a life.”

  “And it’s not like that?”

  “I don’t know what it’s like, dearest,” Grace said wearily. “I’ve never had to work before and I don’t think I like it.”

  “A startup is the most work of all,” Maggie said.

  “Thanks, precious. You always know just what to say.”

  “Oh, here comes Laurent with the wine.”

  “Case in point,” Grace said with a smile.

  Laurent set down a tray of filled wine glasses and a bowl of olives.

  “One of yours, Laurent?” Grace asked as she took the wine glass he handed her.

  “Non,” he said. “Better.”

  “No way,” Maggie said, sipping from her glass. “Mmm-mm, but whoever made it, it’s good.”

  “Lunch in ten minutes,” Laurent said before leaving them again.

  “He is a man of few words, your papa,” Grace said to the baby.

  “That’s for sure.” Maggie let the dry fruitiness of the rosé fill her nostrils before taking the next sip. Laurent was trying to fine-tune her palate when it came to wine. She began coughing, the light tickle of the aroma overwhelming her.

  “You okay, sweetie? Choke on an olive pit?”

  “Very funny,” Maggie said, her eyes watering as she gained control of the coughing.

  “Well, how about your business?” Grace asked. “Selling any books?”

  Maggie shrugged and reached for one of the olives from the stoneware dish filled with olive oil. This one had a tiny ceramic cicada perched on the rim of it. “I think I sold one. No, make that two. I sold two last week.”

  “That many?”

  “Well, I won’t find out for sure until quarterly royalties come in, but my agent has told me not to get my hopes up.”

  “Is that because you haven’t earned out your advance yet?”

  “What advance? No, it’s because I haven’t sold any books yet.”

  “Well, that’s disappointing.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Are you not promoting it enough?”

  “I don’t know, Grace, I was thinking of changing my name to rhyme with Rowling, but Laurent thinks it sounds desperate.”

  Grace laughed. “What does your publicist say?”

  “Oh, dear, dear Grace,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “She says the same thing Santa and the tooth fairy say: if only I existed I could really do things.”

  “You don’t have a publicist?”

  “It may surprise you to know that Stephen King and I are not one and the same.”

  “For that you may be thankful,” Grace said.

  “Nobody has a publicist unless they’re a well-known author, or unless they hire one themselves.”

  “Well, why not hire one?”

  Maggie scooted her chair closer to the table and looked over Grace’s shoulder at the door to the house. “Can I ask you to do something for me, Grace?�
�

  “Why do I get the idea this something has to do with not letting Laurent know?”

  “Because I don’t want Laurent to know.”

  Grace sighed. “Keeping secrets from Laurent never ends well. When will you learn that?”

  “I need you to find out something for me.”

  “Darling, when it comes to winkling information out of your husband, I would imagine you were in the best position to do that.”

  “You’d think so, but he can always tell when I’m up to something. He won’t suspect you.”

  “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to damage my relationship with the one man besides my father who is still speaking to me.”

  “I really need your help with this, Grace.”

  “If you’re worried about another woman, Maggie, let me stop you right there, because if you don’t know that darling hunk of a man by now and how crazy he is about you—”

  “That’s not it.”

  “I should think not.”

  “I need you to find out…” Maggie dropped her voice and glanced again toward the house. Grace leaned in closer to catch her words.

  “…if we are having money troubles.”

  Grace frowned and leaned back in her chair. “That’s it?”

  “You don’t know the French if you think that is not a very big deal. And a very private deal.”

  “Even from you?”

  Maggie looked beyond the terrace in the direction of their vineyard. A platoon of olive and fig trees lined a pebbled path from the terrace leading to the fields. From there, the truffle oaks, thyme bushes and cypresses created a virtual park, framing the forty hectares of grape fields and emphatically demarcating the property.

  The vineyard was cut into four quadrants by two narrow dirt roads. The larger of the two—often used for tractors—sliced down the center of the vineyard past an ancient shed with an abandoned well at its threshold. It was a beautiful walk, Maggie mused, especially at sunset, and she and Laurent often enjoyed taking it with the dogs before dinner, when the final rays of sunlight draped the vineyard in a soft glow.

  “Laurent never talks about money,” Maggie said, turning back to Grace. “I have no idea where our money comes from or how.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And because of how he made his money before we met…” Maggie raised her eyebrows to indicate that Grace should feel free to fill in the blanks.

  “You know he doesn’t do that sort of thing any more,” Grace said. She was bouncing the baby, who was becoming more and more agitated, on her knee.

  “I know it’s in him to cut corners, grease a palm here and there, take advantage of a situation. Did I ever tell you he once told me he couldn’t promise not to lie to me because he might have to sometime?”

  “That’s actually kind of honest.”

  “Laurent has his pride. I haven’t brought a single solitary euro into the family coffers since we moved to France. It’s been all him.”

  “And now you think there’s a problem with money?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know.”

  “And he won’t tell you?”

  “He brushes aside my questions, or worse, gets annoyed with me for even asking.”

  “I see.”

  “I really wish he’d confide in me, you know? We’re in this together but he’s such a…sexist he doesn’t see that. Just find out for me, Grace. If there’s a problem I can always go to my dad for money.”

  “That’s probably the last thing Laurent would want.”

  “What is the last thing I would want?” Laurent asked as he joined them on the patio, a tray of dishes in his hands.

  Maggie mouthed the words to Grace: hearing like a bat. “For Grace to have a piece of chewing gum before lunch,” she said sweetly.

  “Sacré bleu!” Laurent turned to look at Grace with horror. “You are chewing gum?”

  “No, of course not, Laurent,” Grace said. “I just asked Maggie if she wanted a stick for later and she said—”

  “Chewing gum obliterates the purity of the taste experience,” Maggie said, as if reciting it from memory. “Oh, warm goat cheese on mesclun! Here, hand me Jem, Grace. He adores the rosemary balsamic reduction that Laurent makes.”

  “That looks amazing, Laurent,” Grace said as Laurent placed a goat cheese cake on a bed of greens and set it in front of her.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, but Maggie could tell he was pleased.

  “Laurent,” Maggie said, spearing a chunk of goat cheese, “I told you about my brother and his wife coming next weekend, right?”

  “Bien sûr.”

  “Your brother is coming to France?” Grace asked as Laurent refilled her glass of rosé.

  “He’s actually already here. Haley talked him into taking this Côte d’Azur tour. You’ve heard of the Bob Randall show? The travelogue guy who goes around Europe?”

  “Of course. Your brother’s traveling with Randall’s tour?”

  “It’s supposed to be a trial tour of some kind for the television show. Haley and I went to school with one of the tour guides, Lanie Morrison. Lanie told Haley they needed a couple of people to play tourists on the trip so Haley and Ben got to come for next to nothing.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I’m not sure. They were coming down through the Luberon.”

  “They didn’t stop?”

  “No, they wanted to do the whole tour and come see us after it was over.”

  “Has Ben ever visited you and Laurent before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you guys not close?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Maggie waited until Laurent had retreated back into the house for the next course. “Ben is a big hotshot lawyer back in Atlanta. Laurent and I have, like, zero in common with him.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “Haley’s sweet. I love her to pieces, but because of Ben I never saw much of her when I lived in Atlanta.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  Maggie shrugged. “Not Lex Luthor evil. Just kind of a low-grade douche.”

  “Yikes. Your own brother. So why is he coming to see you now?”

  “I have no idea. My parents are excited about it because they think this means he’s going to reach out more to the family, but I think it’s just going to be awkward as hell. Might be a good time for you to take a little shopping trip to Paris. Maybe I’ll go with you.”

  “Not on your life. While I adore how utterly stress-free and serene life at Domaine St-Buvard is with you and Laurent, frankly I could use the stimulation.” Grace sipped her wine. “So is your school chum, the tour guide, coming to visit too?”

  “No. I thought about inviting her for like a nanosecond, but we’re not really friends any more.”

  “Some dramatic reason why not, I hope?”

  Maggie laughed. “No, we just drifted apart. I heard she got married and then divorced, and the one occasion I saw her in the last ten years she spent most of the time riffing on how much she hates men.”

  “Well, we have that in common.”

  “It’s weird, because when we used to hang out I was actually closer to her mom.”

  “That is weird.”

  “She was a very cool mom. Always laughing and ready to share a secret. Every time I came over to Lanie’s house, I ended up talking to her mom for hours. And yet Lanie treated her like she was a hideous bore, and stupid beside.”

  “Exactly as wee Jemmy will treat you when his time comes.”

  “Shut up. He never will. Will you, muffin?” Maggie kissed the baby’s ear and squeezed him tight. He reached for her with fingers sticky with goat cheese.

  “Allo, Zouzou is ready for her lunch,” Laurent announced as he came back out to the patio, this time with a three-year-old girl in his arms, her face creased from her nap.

  Grace stood up and took her from Laurent. “Merci, Oncle Laurent,” she said. “Are you hungry,
petal?”

  “You have cheese in your hair,” Laurent said to Maggie as he reached for Jem.

  “I know. My lover finds it particularly alluring.”

  “Oui,” Laurent said, his eyes glittering with meaning. “He does.”

  “Come on, join us, Laurent,” Grace said. “Oh, my goodness, is that fried calamari? Wherever did you get it?”

  “Try the lemon pepper aioli,” Maggie said, scooping a small fritter into the golden sauce. “It’s the reason I married him, I kid you not.”

  “We need more wine,” Laurent said, scanning the table with a frown.

  “We have plenty,” Maggie said. “Come and sit down. Tell us all about how plump and sweet our grapes are at the moment.”

  “I see you are being witty,” Laurent said, pouring himself a glass of wine.

  Grace laughed. “Yes, tell us, Laurent. Maggie says the harvest looks awesome this year. I don’t know ripe grapes from tennis balls, but they do look pretty on the hills surrounding the house.”

  Laurent sat down and Maggie couldn’t help notice that his usual zeal for talking endlessly about the vineyard seemed to be lacking. She knew for a fact the harvest was better than it had ever been. Something wasn’t right if Laurent wasn’t clapping his hands together in delight, ready to recount every minute detail of the vines’ growth pattern.

  “It will be a good harvest this year,” he said simply, sipping his wine.

  “Yay,” Maggie said, leaning over and taking Jemmy’s hands and making them clap together. “A ‘good harvest’ means many trips to Paris for Mommy and a nice private école maternelle in Aix for Jemmy.” She shot a covert glance at Laurent to see his reaction but, not surprisingly, his expression was impossible to read.

  “That’s great, Laurent,” Grace said. “It’s earlier this year than last, isn’t it? Or am I imagining that?”

  Maggie watched Laurent’s eyes and for a moment she thought she saw a shadow pass across his face. An earlier ripening generally meant a better quality product. So why did the thought of it seem to make him solemn?

  “Non,” he said. “It’s true. We will harvest sooner this year.”

  Maggie exchanged a look with Grace. Something was definitely not right.

  Two