Julien’s chair scraped as he pushed it back. ‘Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.’
And it was clearly an unpleasant thought. Alice was closely related to a man he loathed. He was disappearing behind the barriers again and Alice didn’t want him to go. It wasn’t fair to dismiss her because of who her father or grandmother was.
‘Did the doctor say anything about the blood tests? Do we know if we’re cleared for immunity for measles now?’
Julien shook his head as he got to his feet. ‘No. Those results are not back and although he expects it won’t be any later than tomorrow, they will be too late to help. A decision about my travelling has to be made today. This morning. So the show will have to be cancelled. There is no way around it and it is a disaster.’
‘You would have been allowed to travel if you had proof of immunity?’
‘Yes. And I expected it would have come well before this or I would have taken the offer of being immunised again but it is too late now.’
‘But other people who are immune are allowed to come into the house, aren’t they? Like the nurse that we don’t need?’
‘It would seem so.’ But Julien wasn’t really listening. He had his mobile phone in his hand and was staring at the screen as he moved towards the door.
He was moving further away with every heartbeat and Alice could feel the distance growing. She should just let him go. If she couldn’t see him, maybe she could clear her head—and her heart—of the nonsense that had taken root.
But her mouth opened before she could stop it.
‘Why can’t you film the show here?’
‘Quoi?’ Julien stopped in his tracks and turned to face Alice. ‘What did you say?’
‘It’s just an idea...’ And probably a stupid one judging by the look on Julien’s face. ‘This is a huge kitchen. It could be in a restaurant somewhere. How many people do you need to film a show?’
Julien shrugged. ‘A skeleton crew might be only a cameraman and a sound person and someone to do the set-up and lighting. My producer perhaps.’
‘What if you could find people that had proof they were immune to measles? Or if they had no chance of catching it? The kitchen has a back door, doesn’t it? They wouldn’t need to go into the house and I could keep Jacquot out of the way...’
The look of concentration on Julien’s face was as fierce as he’d looked when he’d been cooking in the last couple of days.
‘I don’t know... There would be a lot of questions that need to be asked. An impossible amount of organisation to do if it was possible...but...’
* * *
But there it was.
A glimmer of hope in what had been an insurmountable problem that Julien had been putting off making a decision about because the repercussions were so huge.
Nobody in his management team would have thought of this possibility because they had no idea what the kitchens were like in the Laurent mansion but why hadn’t it occurred to him?
Yet again, the little Scottish pixie had waved a magic wand.
Perhaps.
There were a dozen or more phone calls that needed to be made and Julien didn’t want to waste a single minute.
An hour of calls being made and received stretched into two hours and then three. Strings were pulled. Concessions made. Permission granted. Plans put into action.
Julien took the stairs two at a time. He burst into the nursery and Alice whirled around from where she had been bent over the cot, tucking the baby in for a sleep.
The curtains had been pulled to dim the room but a shaft of sunlight had found the gap between them and Alice turned into it, her hair glowing like a halo around her head.
Julien took a stride towards her. And then another. He caught her shoulders in her hands and bent his head to kiss her on one cheek and then the other. A perfectly ordinary greeting between French friends.
‘You are an angel,’ he told Alice. ‘You have solved the problem of the show. Merci, chérie. Merci beaucoup.’
Maybe it was the way his heart had been captured by a baby smile that had made him remember his little sister with such a burst of love. Maybe it was the way Alice’s eyes were shining with such joy at his exuberant appreciation of having the wheels of a solution already turning. Or maybe this had just been something that had become inevitable ever since that first moment of being caught by those extraordinary eyes.
Instead of leaving the kissing within those polite parameters, Julien bestowed a third kiss. Directly on Alice’s lips.
A brief kiss—but not nearly brief enough because now he knew what it was he’d been trying to avoid defining. That peculiar sensation he got when he looked into her eyes was nothing compared to the electric shock that came from touching her skin. Touching her hand had been manageable. Kissing her cheeks even. But the touch of his own lips on hers?
It was so powerful. This sense of...recognition.
Of finding something you hadn’t had any idea you were even looking for.
It couldn’t be real. It had started when he’d been in an emotionally exhausted state and right now he was high on the relief of a massive problem being on the way to resolution.
Julien needed to remember that this woman was the daughter of the man who’d been his enemy. Who had put the knife in and twisted it in those first awful moments of trying to come to terms with his sister’s death.
‘You’ll never see her son. My son—unless it’s over my dead body...’
And she was the granddaughter of Madame Laurent—the matriarch of the family he despised who was just as determined to take his nephew out of his reach.
He was already on his way out of the room as the shock waves of his impulsive action faded into ever smaller ripples.
Julien needed to make sure he didn’t touch Alice McMillan again, that was all. And that should be easy with the chaos that was about to descend on this house.
* * *
The kitchen was out of bounds for Alice as soon as the first of the convoy of trucks and vans began arriving later that day. The sound of voices and furniture scraping and even loud hammering could be heard coming from the kitchens as she wandered around upstairs with Jacquot in her arms, keeping him amused while he was awake.
Julien brought her a mug of coffee and a fresh baguette filled with ham and cheese as a late lunch.
‘Filming will start very soon. There will be more than enough food for dinner later but it may be quite late. Will you be okay to wait?’
‘I’ll be fine. Good luck—I hope it goes well.’
Alice filled in the time easily to begin with. Jacquot was clearly feeling much better today and the smiles came more often. He even giggled when she squeaked one of his toys in his bath and Alice ignored how wet she was getting from the splashing as she leaned over to kiss him.
‘You are adorable, Jacquot. I love you so much...’
It was a joy to feed him after his bath and to sing softly to him as he fell asleep and it was in the quiet moment before she put him into his cot for the night that the idea first occurred to Alice.
She could raise her little brother. She could give him a home and love him to bits, and if Julien could be persuaded that it was a good idea they could both be all the family this little boy could need. Surely the grandmother would agree that it was best? She was an old woman and it wasn’t as if it was someone outside the family taking on Jacquot’s care. She was his sister but she could be a mother as well.
The idea grew wings as she tucked Jacquot into his cot. Maybe Madame Laurent—and possibly Julien—would insist that Jacquot be brought up in France but Alice could manage that. She would learn this beautiful language. Julien could keep teaching her.
She could keep seeing her tiny brother’s uncle. Become part of his life and maybe he would kiss her agai
n...
Alice found she was touching her lips with her fingers as she stood there looking down at the sleeping baby. It took very little imagination to pretend that this feather-light touch was how it had felt when Julien’s lips had touched her own.
Suddenly the time that needed to be filled became interminable. There was nothing Alice needed to do unless Jacquot woke again and, with the baby cam handset, she was free to wander anywhere in the house.
Downstairs...where Julien was...
She fought the desire for a while but it got the better of her and eventually Alice crept downstairs with the intention of maybe peeping through the kitchen door. As she got closer, the alluring aroma of roasting meat made her stomach growl so loudly she had to stop and press her hand against her belly, willing it to be silent.
Another few steps and she could hear Julien’s voice. He was speaking in French and the tone was confident. Light. As if he was smiling as he spoke?
She had to see. The kitchen door wasn’t completely shut and the space inside was brightly lit. Surely nobody would notice if she pushed it open a fraction more and watched for a few minutes?
No heads turned as she pushed the door open further and then Alice forgot to worry about interrupting what was going on. She barely recognised the space. It wasn’t so much the professional lights and microphones on the end of long poles that looked as much out of place as the man with a huge camera balanced on his shoulder. It was more that the kitchen had been turned into a Christmas wonderland.
Long ropes of greenery threaded with fairy-lights hung in loops on the walls a little below ceiling height. A tall tree stood in the corner, with tiny lights sparkling amongst red and silver themed decorations, and a wreath of mistletoe hung from a central light fitting. The huge kitchen table had been pushed to one side of the room and decorated as if a family was about to sit down for Christmas dinner.
Fine white china, gleaming silverware and crystal glasses marked each place setting. Christmas crackers with red and silver paper lay beside each plate. There were places for platters of food to rest on wrought-iron trivets and any remaining space on the table was covered with candles in glass holders with wreaths of greenery studded with red berries. The flickering flames of the candles glinted on the silver cutlery and champagne flutes.
There was Christmas music playing softly in the background. Carols that were instantly familiar and beloved to Alice because they were being sung in English. Memories of Christmas dinners shared with her mother and grandmother brought a lump to her throat and Alice had to look away from the table.
To where Julien was standing behind the island bench, smiling into a camera as he spoke. His hair was neatly tied back in the usual ponytail but his face looked different. Had make-up emphasised those thick, dark eyebrows and lashes, the shadowing of his jaw and the beautiful olive tone of his skin or was it the white chef’s tunic he was wearing, underneath a striped apron, with the neck unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up? Maybe the difference was simply that he was smiling in a way Alice hadn’t seen. A non-crooked way.
He looked happy. More than that—this was a man who was sharing something he was totally passionate about. The superb knife skills as he diced an onion and celery sticks and the way he could toss a frying pan full of tiny pieces without spilling a thing might be showmanship but they were as natural as breathing to Julien.
Such a contrast to how she’d seen him standing—bewildered—staring down at his howling nephew when he’d had no idea of what to do.
The sight of him now made her catch her breath but the memory of him holding Jacquot had caught her heart completely.
She might think she’d stayed in control but, in retrospect, that had probably been the moment she’d gone past the point of no return when it came to falling in love with Julien Dubois.
Or had that moment been when she’d caught his gaze when they’d both been under the spell of Jacquot’s first smile?
Or maybe when he’d brushed that kiss on her lips this morning?
Trying to identify when it had happened was pointless. It was probably the combination that had filled that jar past bursting point. Alice could almost feel the pieces shattering and the emotions the jar had contained rushing out to fill every cell of her body.
It was creating a heat like nothing she had ever experienced.
Desire that was so much more than purely physical.
She’d never wanted the touch of any man the way she wanted Julien Dubois.
As if he felt the force of that desire, Julien suddenly glanced up from what he was doing and his words stopped in mid-sentence. His hands froze in mid-air just as he was about to add another handful of ingredients to the frying pan and for an insanely long moment it felt as if the world had stopped turning.
He knew exactly what she was thinking and...for that moment Alice could swear he had caught that desire like a match to a fuse and it was about to explode.
The moment was shattered by a bark of incredulous sound that came from a man holding a clipboard and the cameraman sounded like he’d uttered a succinct oath as he lowered his camera to turn and stare at Alice. Filming had clearly been interrupted and it was only then that Alice realised she wasn’t peering around the edge of the door any more. When had she stepped right into the kitchen without noticing herself moving? In that delicious stretch of time when her bones had been melting and she’d been unable to think of anything but her longing to be with Julien?
What on earth had she done? Was it possible to pick up filming at the place they had stopped or would they have to film that whole demonstration of preparing whatever it was in the frying pan again? A peek in Julien’s direction revealed that he was as angry as everybody else in this space. A girl holding the microphone and somebody else beneath a light stand had moved so they could join in the incredulous staring.
She didn’t need to understand a word of French to know that more than one person was telling her to go away and not come back but it was Julien who made sure she understood by translating.
‘Go away, Alice. Do not come near here again.’
It sounded more like Do not come near me again.
Mortified, Alice could feel the worst blush ever flood up from her neck into her face. Even her ears felt like they were burning.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry...’
She closed the kitchen door behind her as she fled.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HEADLONG FLIGHT DIDN’T leave any room for rational thought.
Instead of running upstairs to the safety of the nursery suite, Alice found she had gone in the direction of the first place she’d felt safe in this house.
The conservatory.
The room was dark but there were muted floodlights in the garden that illuminated the swimming pool and filtered in through glass walls to provide a hint of green on the dark shapes of the indoor trees and made the white furniture easy to find. It was the same couch she’d sat on when she had held Jacquot for the first time that Alice chose to curl up on to wait out the shame of the trouble she’d caused.
And the pain of the way Julien had dismissed her.
She’d been remembering her family the last time she’d come in here alone. The way her mother and grandmother had always been able to know if she wasn’t telling the truth. Would they be able to see what felt stupidly like a broken heart right now?
He’s French, her grandmother might have sniffed. What did you expect?
But her mother? Might she have given her comfort because she would understand? Had André sent her away looking like he’d never wanted to see her again when she had already gifted her heart to him? When she had been carrying his baby in her belly?
She had no idea how long she sat there, failing to win a battle with tears of self-pity, but Alice finally pulled herself
together.
It was ridiculous to feel like she had a broken heart. This wasn’t a fairy-tale, this house was not a palace and Julien wasn’t any kind of fantasy prince. He’d been forced to live in the same house as her with the rest of the world shut away and, yes, there had been moments where she could convince herself that something amazing was happening between them but he was back in his real life now and she had absolutely no part in it. It had been the promise of being able to do that that had led to him kissing her in the first place.
The worst part of it all was that he’d seen the desire that must have been glowing from her face like a neon sign. He’d been so shocked he hadn’t been able to look away. It wasn’t that he felt the same way at all. He’d been...appalled.
There was no point wallowing in it. It might be as soon as tomorrow that the results of those blood tests came through and that Jacquot would be deemed to be no danger to others. This quarantine would end. Jacquot would be taken into the care of his grandmother and she herself would have to go home and she would never set foot in this house again. The opportunity to find out anything about her father that she couldn’t find printed in a magazine or revealed in a television interview would be lost for ever.
Her heart thumping, Alice got to her feet and went to the room that Julien had taken her to when she had first arrived. Flickering screens from the security system showed her where she could turn on a desk lamp rather than the main lights of the room. Even in the soft light the shards of glass still clinging to the oversized portrait of her father was a shocking reminder of that violent action of Julien’s and the pent-up grief and hatred it had revealed, but Alice pushed any thoughts of him away. She was here in the hope of finding something that might let her believe her father hadn’t been a man worthy of that kind of hatred. Maybe something she could keep to give Jacquot in years to come.
There were stacks of magazines with pictures of André Laurent on their covers. Silver trophies and framed photographs of André with people that Alice could recognise as being famous. Film stars and someone she thought had been a French president. Moving behind the desk, she found a smaller photograph in a heart-shaped silver frame. A much older-looking André with his arms around the waist of a very beautiful, young, dark-haired woman who had to be Julien’s sister.
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