They were on the upper level. Jack had called it a duplex, but Lily thought it was more like a double-decker bus, only with a roof, of course.
Lily handed Jack her suitcase and he tucked it into the bins at the end of the car. She took her purse and laptop with her, figuring the rest of her luggage was safe enough.
Jack settled into his seat across from her and was looking drowsy as the train pulled from the station. Lily was too excited to sleep.
He yawned and closed his eyes as the train gathered speed, passing through the Parisian suburbs.
Lily gasped as the train emerged from a tunnel into the countryside. It didn’t seem as if they were going about two hundred miles an hour—unless of course you looked directly at the trees and bushes close to the line. They were a green blur. “Look at that!” But he was sound asleep. He really had overextended himself with that hike yesterday—no walk in the park for him. Typical man, refusing to admit any weakness.
Lily could sympathize. How many times had she put on the infamous stiff upper lip during a difficult situation? Sometimes best to grit your teeth and soldier on. But now wasn’t the time for that. She opened her laptop and began making notes for an entry for their train trip.
After an hour or so, she decided to stretch her legs and stepped into the narrow aisle, nodding to a stylish young Frenchwoman who’d had the same idea. She found the restroom, bought a snack from the bar between first and second class and then made her way back. She was walking at almost two hundred miles an hour—and her old gym teacher said she was slow—ha!
Right before she got back to her seat, she passed the Frenchwoman again. “Excuse me,” she said in English.
“Of course. American?”
“Of course,” Lily parroted back to her, feeling a tinge of jealousy at the dark-haired woman’s overall ease. Ease in English, ease in how her hair fell onto her shoulders, how her clothes were fashionable but comfortable. And how in the world did she keep linen pants from wrinkling on a train ride?
But Lily wanted to be a better person than that. “You have a lovely country.”
“Thank you. I have been to New York. Parts of it are nice.”
Damned by faint praise. “As are parts of Paris.”
But her return crack went over the woman’s head because she was staring at Jack. “Your lover is very handsome.” She was right—not about the lover part, but about him being handsome. Jack did look particularly gorgeous, almost like a Renaissance painting of a sleeping shepherd boy with his pale skin and reddish-brown hair, which curled slightly around his ears and neck.
Lily’s hackles rose and she gave her a tight smile. She was about to say he wasn’t her lover, but then realized, why give Frenchie an opportunity? “He is, isn’t he?” A little devil made her say, “And wonderful in the bedroom, as well. So inventive.” She fought back a blush.
“Frenchmen usually are, unlike American men.” Touché. But Lily wasn’t about to defend the lovemaking abilities of her country’s male population, especially since she pretty much agreed.
“But he looks familiar.” The Frenchwoman wrinkled her perfect brow as she examined the sleeping Jack.
Nice try, sister, she’d heard that before. “I don’t think so. Now if you would excuse me…” She slipped into her chair and deliberately opened her laptop, typing words like skhjaldhfkjhioeurio and dkoiasuejndkjfioadioufi in an attempt to look busy. She peered at her screen. Geez, the mess looked like a cross between Greek and Old Norse. She backspaced until the nonsense syllables were gone.
Jack had fortunately slept through her bragging on his sexual prowess. She didn’t know what had made her do that.
Yes, she did. Her face started burning. She’d been wondering about his sexual prowess ever since he’d turned up sexy and clean-shaven and she’d accidentally rubbed her thigh all over his.
She quickly opened a new document and began a blog post on travelling the TGV—Train à Grande Vitesse, the Train of Great Speediness. Like most things, it sounded better in French.
Like her name, Lily. Your average flower that showed up every Easter at the grocery store, like it or not. But it sounded better in French—Lee-lee. And even Jack’s full name, Jacques. Exotic and adventurous, or was she reminded of old Jacques Cousteau specials on the nature channel?
“Jacques,” she whispered his name, just to hear it from her own mouth.
He bolted upright, his eyes wide and staring. “Quoi? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”
“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry.” She grabbed his hand. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“What?” He turned to her, his eyes coming back into focus. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She patted his hand. “Go back to sleep. We still have a couple hours left.”
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “No, I’m awake now. I thought I heard someone calling me.”
Cringe. “I was chatting with this woman. Maybe you overheard us.”
“Maybe. Do you have anything to drink? My mouth is very dry.” She passed him a water bottle and he drained it.
“I’ll get another.” He stood and stretched, his shoulders filling out his thin pale green cotton T-shirt. “Do you need anything?”
Yeah, a cold shower for her libido and a bar of soap to wash her mouth out for lying. But since those weren’t options… “How about an orangeade?”
JACK STOOD IN a quiet corner of the train’s bar, sipping his own orangeade as he checked his voice mail. Four frantic messages from his maman, despite the fact he’d called her after leaving to apologize again for the ruins of her well-meaning, if not well-thought-out, party. He’d made it clear he and Nadine were permanently over, but her romantic soul probably thought they’d had a lovers’ tiff. Not one voice mail or text from Nadine. Good. She’d gotten his message, then.
A voicemail from Frank in Portugal and a text from George—who knew where George was? He was traveling frequently back and forth to New York to spend time with his fiancée, Renata, a wedding-dress designer who specialized in vintage styles. Apparently Stevie was wearing one of her creations, and that was how she and George had met.
He hadn’t talked to his friends for several days and called Frank first. His friend’s yelp of delight was a boost to his dysentery-shriveled ego. Good thing it hadn’t shriveled anything else—he hoped.
“Jack, you jerk, don’t you check your voice mails anymore?” Frank clucked. He always was a mother hen.
“Nice to talk to you too, mon ami.”
“Hold on, I’m talking to George on the other line. Let me see if I can conference call on this new phone of mine.” A couple clicks later, the three of them were conversing as if they were all in the same café.
After reassuring his friends that he was not on death’s doorstep any longer, he mentioned that he was on his way to Provence.
“Wonderful!” Frank enthused. He loved being in the country himself and disliked city life.
“A diet of that hearty peasant food will fatten you up in no time,” George added.
“Nadine called me a peasant the other day,” he admitted.
Frank made a choking sound and George groaned. “When did you see that puttana?” Not a nice Italian word, but unfortunately appropriate.
He quickly explained about the fiasco at his mother’s house.
“You did the right thing to get out of town as soon as possible. I know girls like her. They think the entire country is a wasteland between Paris and Nice. She’ll never follow you there,” Frank reassured him.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Jack replied, having learned that most appropriate plea from one of his Jewish friends in New York.
“Amen,” George replied piously. “I have church on the mind, my friends. Stevie and her Teutonic knight have come up with a handful of possible dates, and we are all meeting with the Archbishop Wednesday.”
“Already,” Jack marveled.
George cleared his throat. “Stefania has a request for you and I promis
ed to pass it along.”
“Anything,” he replied promptly.
“She has realized her wedding will bring much publicity and wants to use that for the benefit of others. Would you be willing to sell her part of your lavender crop to help make a commemorative perfume to sell for her charity?”
“Sell? I’ll give her anything she wants.” Jack thought out loud. “Much of the crop is already spoken for, but there are several fields available that would be perfect for her project. Madame Simone Laurent is the master perfumer of the House of Laurent. She would be thrilled to work with your sister. I will inform the farm manager about the lavender.”
“Ah, is that still Jean-Claude?”
“Of course.” Jean-Claude had worked for his father and had even been a young worker when Jack’s grandfather had been alive.
“Stevie will be sure to come to Provence herself. She adores Jean-Claude and his wife.”
“Yes, Marthe-Louise is still housekeeper there. She loves having young women around whom she can teach how to cook all the Provençal favorites.”
“Well, you’ll have to get on the ball and bring her a young woman to teach.”
Jack gave a wry smile. Standing in the crowded bar of the Paris-Avignon TGV wasn’t the place to explain that he was indeed taking a young woman to Provence. Frank and George wouldn’t understand a brief explanation. “When would I have the chance to meet a nice girl? I don’t work as fast as you, George,” he joked. George had met his fiancée one day and invited her to Italy the next.
Jack realized with a jolt that he had met Lily yesterday morning and invited her to Provence yesterday afternoon. That put him one up on George.
And he realized he wanted to get back to Lily. “Thank you for checking up on me, mes amis. I will be in touch over the lavender.”
They said their goodbyes and Jack hung up. He dumped his empty orangeade bottle in the trash and carried a full one back to Lily. She was staring at her laptop, her honey-blond hair escaping her ponytail. Although she was typing with both hands, she clenched a pen between her teeth.
When she saw him, she looked up and smiled at him around the pen. She quickly spit it out and gave him a wry grin. “Old habit. I was an inveterate pencil chewer until I gave that up—too many splinters. But I still seem to write better this way. Strange, huh?”
He sat down across from her, charmed at her little quirk. “What are you writing?”
“My impressions of the TGV, a couple video clips I took with my phone. I hope to get some travel articles published from this trip. I’ve been publishing a few entries and photos on a blog.”
“You’re blogging?” Still leery of his run-in with the press, Jack was reluctant to be a feature.
She must have read his demeanor. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m only publishing photos of the attractions and a couple of myself when I was able to find somebody to take my photo.”
Lily would be a huge attraction for any blog, especially one with male readers. “I would like if you don’t show me in those photos. The organization I work for does not like its workers to have online photo presences. It makes us more attractive to would-be kidnappers.” It was true. As a French nobleman, he would be the jackpot for any ragtag band of outlaws who’d scraped up an automatic weapon.
He’d dodged the bullet so far but would have to see if his foray onto the social pages would make the aid directors nervous.
Her eyes widened. “My gosh, I never thought of how dangerous that would be. Don’t worry, I won’t show you. And I mentioned you briefly once but called you Pierre as a pseudonym.”
“Pierre?” He chuckled. That actually wasn’t one of his names. “That was my great-uncle’s name. He lived down the road from us and was a true Provençal character.”
“Really?”
“But of course. He had his own vineyard and made vats of incredibly strong wine. He also had several mangy-looking hound dogs and would go into the hills in the winter to look for truffles—not the chocolate kind, but the real truffle. A special, underground fungus that only dogs and pigs can sniff.”
Lily nodded. “They are quite good shaved over pasta. I’ve always wanted to try the Italian white truffle, but those are terribly expensive, even more than the black.”
Now, how did she know so much about truffles? Most thought truffles were chocolate bonbons. And many did not care for their earthy, fungal scent and taste. “I’ve never tried the white truffle myself.”
She grinned at him. “We’ll save our money and chip in. Last I saw, they were about $10,000 per kilo.”
He winced. “Ah, so expensive.”
“I know.” She tapped the back of his hand with the dry part of her pen. “Between me, a writer, and you, an aid worker, we would have to save for years.”
Jack nodded. Part of that was true. He’d refused most of his salary and had donated it back to the aid organization, so he wasn’t swimming in cash. His family was loaded, as the Americans liked to say, but most of that was tied up in real estate, farmland and the house in Paris. He had enough for his daily needs and never considered tapping into the long-term investments. God willing, he wouldn’t be the last Comte de Brissard, and he didn’t want to be known as the profligate count that flushed the family holdings down the loo. “You must have worked very hard to be able to come to France.”
She laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. My magnum opera include ‘How to Potty-train Your Toddler in Ten Easy Steps,’ ‘Top Ten Organic Dog Food Brands’ and ‘Ten Historic Heroines of Philadelphia.’”
“I sense a theme.”
“Magazine editors love articles with numbers in them, and ten is usually about right. It makes good cover copy.”
The first article struck him. “Lily, what do you know about potty training? You do not have any children, do you?”
“Of course not. I researched online and talked to moms and a preschool teacher.” She frowned at him. “And what would I be doing here all summer on my own? I’m not one of those upper-class mothers who leaves her children with the nanny and jaunts off to Europe. No, thanks.” She made a sour face.
Jacques nodded. His own mother had often left him with not only his nanny but with Madame Finch and Bellamy when she wanted to travel. It was a typical situation for children of his class, as Lily had so succinctly explained.
He wondered where she had learned so much about the moneyed class, like black truffles and absentee mothering. Maybe from American movies and television. They were notable for their celebrity interest.
She tipped her head to the side. “You know, you bribed me with telling me about French scouting but never did get around to that. Time to pay up. I may sell a freelance article on this.” She clicked on her laptop. “Okay, here’s a new file for my notes. Now tell me the French version of the scouting pledge.” She looked expectantly at him.
Jack couldn’t decide whether to grin or groan. He was thinking the least noble thoughts possible at how her breasts curved under her peach-colored T-shirt and how her enthusiasm was a bright sunburst compared to all the cool, collected women he’d known. “Well, there are many scout organizations in France depending on religion and politics.”
“Fascinating,” she murmured, her lips parting and eyes widening. His breath sped up, as well. “Tell me more, Jack.”
“On my honor,” he muttered, remembering his promise to Madame Finch, the governess with the evil streak. He could practically hear her laughing all the way from London.
6
LILY RESTED HER head against the seat in the rental car. They had arrived in the amazing steel-and-glass Avignon train station in less than four hours as promised. It left Jack enough time to show her the famous bridge of Avignon that only extended halfway into the Rhône River due to strong currents as well as the beautiful stone Papal Palace that was the home of several popes during the 1300s.
While they were grabbing a couple sandwiches for a late lunch, Jack had noticed a sign on a public bulletin board that a ne
arby town was hosting a lavender harvest festival. “Do you want to go?”
“Sure.”
He had consulted the board again. “There are several hotels and a hostel. It’s not a huge festival, so we should be able to find a couple beds at the hostel.”
“Sounds good.” A quiver ran through her stomach at the word beds. She’d been imagining Jack in a bed since last night. He’d given her nothing more than a couple sidelong glances but she could tell he was interested in her, too.
It had been so long since her last relationship, and the mild spark she’d had with her ex-boyfriend was nothing compared to the fiery sizzle she felt with Jack. She hadn’t come to France to jump in the sack with a Frenchman, and it probably would even be counterproductive to her writing efforts.
On the other hand, France was full of examples of artsy types who managed to combine sexual passion and their creations. Look at Van Gogh—no, not him. Creepy. Or the sculptor Rodin and his protégée Camille Claudel—but she wound up in a mental institute. There was a huge Rodin gallery in Philly and Lily remembered that poor woman’s story well.
Um, there had to be a happy ending there. Unfortunately, all she could think of were the artists who would have benefited from modern pharmaceutical therapy and the writers and poets who drank too much absinthe, the notoriously strong liquor that was banned in France about a hundred years ago.
Was that a blog post? See, she could combine her writing work and thoughts of him. A veritable romantic multitasker. “Jack, have you ever drunk absinthe?”
“Ah, they call that the green fairy for its color and supposed effects on the mind.” He went on to discuss the active herbal ingredients in absinthe while Lily scribbled rapidly. He finished, “But there is little evidence that it can cause hallucinations, and it’s now for sale in France again.”
She shook her head. “Geez, you know a lot about the medical side of it.”
He grinned. “And yes, I have tried it, but I don’t care for it. Licorice-flavored, you see.” He wrinkled his nose.
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