by Jane Linfoot
Xander gave a wry laugh. ‘Astrid’s a whole lot more ambitious than Kate Middleton.’
Izzy’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’
‘No, actually I’m being unfair.’ Xander gave a sheepish grimace. ‘Astrid’s great. We still work together now and then. She’s smart, funny, and scarily good at her job.’ He propped his chin on his hand, and sent her a matter of fact grin. ‘I think you’d like her.’
Somehow Izzy wasn’t as optimistic as Xander about that. She looked back to the crowd again, where Astrid, almost a head taller than many people, was easy to spot. What an advantage for Astrid to look Xander straight in the eye, instead of staring at the shirt buttons half way up his chest. Maths wasn’t Izzy’s strong point, but even she could work out that Astrid’s legs were possibly nine inches longer than her own. Even if he’d parted company with his ex, that was the type of woman that Xander would be heading for next time. Izzy was bloody grateful for the reality check. Small, stroppy and scruffy, from Matlock, was not going to cut it with Xander. No wonder he couldn’t commit. To her.
He pushed himself to his feet, flexing his shoulders. ‘Time to get back to work then?’
Izzy followed him up. ‘Sounds like a plan.’ Way too late to wish she’d gone for stilettos instead of the practical flats, which somehow hadn’t looked scratty at all when she’d pushed her feet into them earlier. Not that heels were going to make a difference here. It took a whole lot more than shoes to elevate a girl from a five to a ten out of ten. Some leaps in life were simply not possible.
Xander obviously wasn’t going to be hiding away from his ex in the bar then. It might have helped that he was heading straight for the rotisserie stall, where he queued while Izzy took time to haggle over some baskets, and bought them delicious roast lamb baguettes, which they ate as they wandered around the stalls.
Although Xander might have brushed himself off and moved on from seeing Astrid, Izzy found that harder to do. For the rest of the afternoon, Izzy saw her willowy silhouette lurking behind every armoire. But if Astrid had lingered at the market, they hadn’t seen her again. What Izzy couldn’t get out of her head, was how Xander and Astrid must have been a dazzlingly attractive couple. The thought of them together, looking like they’d stepped straight out of the pages of a glossy mag, made Izzy shudder.
‘Your French is better than you think. You were bargaining like a pro back there.’ Xander, coming back from another trip to the van, had stumbled in on her tussle with a local farmer.
‘I had a lot of holidays in France, when I was younger.’ Before her dad walked out on them, obviously. But it was true, simply being here, smelling the garlic smells drifting out of the cafes, seeing the sun bouncing off the orange pantile roofs, and watching people choosing postcards from the pavement displays, took her straight back to when she was younger.
As for ex-wives, the thing about broken relationships was that they left you with baggage. Not that she could count Awful Alastair in that one. On a baggage scale, with luck and a following wind, he possibly made it to the status of a small paper bag, and a crumpled one at that. But that was another good reason for staying right out of the relationship game. If you didn’t participate, you wouldn’t become a casualty. She would do well to remember that.
‘I hate to say this to a relentless bargain hunter, whose energy is apparently unflagging, but I think perhaps we need to be heading back now.’ It was a long time later, when Xander, dusty now, and flagging under the weight of a pile of suitcases, managed to look at his watch. ‘We’ve got to unload when we get back, and I don’t believe I’m saying this, but we can always come back again in the morning. They do it all again tomorrow you know?’
Who’d have thought Xander would still be this enthusiastic at four in the afternoon.
‘Thanks, I may take you up on that.’ Izzy grinned. ‘Don’t tell me you’re getting a taste for vintage.’
‘Never.’ Xander gave an exaggerated grimace of disgust. ‘But I’ve still had a great time.’
Izzy raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Really?’ She failed to see how shopping for “rubbish” and an ex-wife mounted up to great in Xander’s book.
The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘Three things I’ve enjoyed especially.’
‘Well?’ This she had to hear, although she had a feeling from the way he was laughing that she might want to hit him when he told her.
‘The complete concentration on your face as you shop, the way your skirt pulls across your bottom as I follow you.’ His face broke into a full blown grin now. ‘And the freckles that are coming out across your nose…’
50
Saturday Morning, 12th July
XANDER & IZZY
Christina’s Terrace, Les Cerisiers, France
Exclusion zones
As Izzy emerged through the huge barn doors, onto the terrace by the kitchen, Xander clocked pale skin, and curving, delicious smoothness, all the way up to her shorts.
And beyond.
Izzy was wobbling towards him across the limestone flags, with a coffee pot and cups on a tray, frowning with concentration as she tried not to spill, and looking closer to undressed than dressed. He was so darned temped to adjust that bra strap, which had slipped and was slanting above the dimple of Izzy’s elbow.
‘That’s a bit below the belt, under the circumstances.’ He had to fight his corner here.
That much thigh on show was going to kill any guy.
‘What?’ She looked up at him as if she had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Shorts, that’s what, when I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that there’s a strict exclusion zone operating around you.’ It was the first time he’d properly broached Luce’s terms and conditions, but realistically, how the hell was he supposed to keep his hands off Izzy when she wandered out, looking like that? ‘Not fair.’
Her head shot up. ‘Excuse me? You were the one who claimed “unavailable” status first.’ Her chin stuck out, but just for a moment, then her face softened into a wide defiant grin. ‘Hard luck, anyway. It’s only eight o’clock and twenty six degrees out here already, you’re going to have to get used to it.’
Great. Defiant grins were a lot easier to work with than silences, even if her shorts were giving him a hard on he’d rather not have.
Xander poured coffee, and pushed a giant cup across to Izzy, who was already tearing a croissant apart. He might as well take this opportunity to clear up something that was hanging over from yesterday, and had been bothering him.
‘Just to put Astrid into context.’ Xander saw Izzy’s head shoot up.
‘Mmmmm…’ Izzy had already gone back to her jam spreading.
In his experience, ex-wives were always best brought out into the open. That way there were no secrets, and everyone knew where they stood. It was the best thing to put Izzy in the picture, and let her know he and Astrid bore no grudges, especially as they were still linked by the film company.
He cleared his throat. ‘I was the one who messed up the marriage, Astrid was completely blameless.’ He hoped that went some way to covering it.
Izzy was biting her lip, but she didn’t look up enough to meet his eye. ‘Okay.’ She said it slowly, as if she had no idea why he was telling her this.
‘It was entirely my fault, I asked too much of her, when I should have known not to. That we didn’t make it was completely down to me.’ More so now Astrid was in the area, wandering around in person, it seemed important to absolve her of any responsibility for a marital failure that had been all his doing. ‘All break ups are hard, but this one was amicable, and we still maintain a good working relationship.’
Xander took the fact that Izzy had spread jam twice on the same croissant to mean she was probably listening more than she was pretending to.
He carried on, just to make certain he hadn’t done badly by Astrid. ‘She is an amazing person though, I wouldn’t want you to think in any way that she wasn’t.’
Izzy blinked
, grimaced at her croissant, then looked up to meet his gaze with a smile that was possibly a shade too bright. ‘Great, that’s fab to know. Thank you for sharing that, Xander.’
Was Izzy’s expression too brittle? There couldn’t have been anything there for her to object to, especially seeing as he’d skipped over the bit about him currently working with Astrid.
So, now that was out of the way, they could get on with their day. ‘What are we up to later? Today I’m in your hands.’ He gave a smile in Izzy’s direction. If she could push him with delicious acres of bare thigh, that were taking his temperature at least twenty degrees above the already hot morning, he could definitely retaliate a little.
While Izzy’s narrow eyed glare told him to back right off with the innuendo, her reply was surprisingly cool and unruffled. ‘Perhaps the market again this morning.’
Xander let out the loud token groan she was expecting, largely so he didn’t blow his cover. No way did he want to go down as a happy shopper. ‘Okay, but only on condition we make time for a proper lunch.’ He wasn’t sure either Izzy, or Luce for that matter, would be happy if they knew quite how much he was looking forward to following Izzy around the market for a second day. He’d been longing to spend more time with her, and yesterday hadn’t disappointed. It was kind of weirdly, surprisingly comfortable, yet at the same time, all electric and zingy.
Izzy shared a passing eye roll with the barn door, and skipped over his plea for proper food. ‘And maybe we can try some of the things in the house later on.’
Not okay. There were times when guys needed to prioritise their stomachs.
He wasn’t backing down on this one. ‘We can eat in Périgueux. Christina gave me special instructions to call in there for some towels for the pool.’
Breezing through, and sounding a lot more chilled about that than he was too. Markets were one thing, home shopping à deux, in what Christina described to him as Périgueux’s premiere wedding list shop, was something else. He wasn’t sure he was ready for it.
51
Saturday Afternoon, 12th July
IZZY & XANDER
In Chic Couleurs, Périgueux, France
Enthusiastic about towels
‘You’re definitely not railroading me out of a proper lunch tomorrow. Chips and mayo are all very well, but a guy needs to eat, and the food here is too good to miss out on.’
Xander’s bemused expression, as they wandered through the town streets, shouting to each other over the roar of the early afternoon traffic, suggested the skipped lunch might almost have happened without him realising.
‘You could have warned me you don’t so much wind guys around your little finger to get your own way, as crack them over the knuckles with an iron bar.’
‘Years of practice, living with brothers I’m afraid.’ Izzy laughed at the truth of that. ‘But those chips in boxes were delicious, and after spending so long at the market this morning, there really wasn’t time to lounge around over lunch. And for the record, I never met anyone who grumbled so much as you.’
The dead eye she tried for failed when she didn’t keep her face poker straight. She wasn’t backing off here, but she was definitely regretting putting on those shorts for breakfast. Provocative was the last thing she’d intended at the time, but unfortunately for her, provocative was how Xander had interpreted it. Whatever, the shorts had kicked off an episode of sparring between herself and Xander, which through the morning, had ranged from gentle teasing, through to playful, to full blown wind up. While she knew she was as much to blame as him for keeping it going, somehow she couldn’t not retaliate, nor could she simply make the whole thing go away, by not reacting. Even if they were jibing, it was way more relaxed now than when she’d arrived yesterday, when the atmosphere had taken stiff and awkward to new highs. She was also pretty certain she was nailing the sex blanking thing Luce had trained her up for, face to face with Xander, if not privately. On her own, was another matter. Xander being so close had her body strung like a piano wire, and the downside of that was her personal sex with Xander replay button had got stuck on repeat, and consequently it wasn’t only the baking sun that was making her over heat.
Hopefully the man in question wouldn’t guess there was no way she was going to a restaurant, because she couldn’t face looking at him through a whole damned meal. In any case, the more time she hung round with him, the less appetite she had. She usually devoured her food, but with Xander around, her stomach did so much flipping, that hunger was the last thing on her mind.
‘Well at least I’m not complaining about going to the towel shop.’ Xander’s brow furrowed. Wounded protest was yet another angle he had polished. ‘I categorically don’t do shopping, but I admit it’ll make a change to look at something new, not old. We’re turning here…’
As he steered her into a side street, he ended up so close to her they almost bumped hips. Dismissing that as an accident, she let it go.
‘That’s actually yet another complaint, just skilfully wrapped up.’ She wasn’t going to let him off that too, but she wished she’d chosen another word than “skilfully”, given she didn’t want to dish out compliments. And if she was truly amazed at his shopping stamina, she definitely wasn’t going to weaken her position by admitting it.
‘Here we go, this is it. Chic Couleurs. How’s that for a shopping emporium?’ He gave her a triumphant grin, as they turned in through the double height plate glass shop frontage, as if he were personally responsible for the amazing scene in front of them.
Despite feeling like she was bowing too much to the opposition, Izzy couldn’t stop her smile stretching beyond her ears, as they walked into the cool lofty space, and she took in the sparse, yet beautifully stylish, shelves.
‘Homeware in rainbow colours, this is beyond perfect.’ She let out a long sigh. ‘Aren’t the displays immaculate?’
‘Even I have to admit it’s pretty impressive.’ Xander slid her a sideways smile. ‘Although somehow it feels like we should be holding hands here.’
Izzy gave a gulp. ‘What…?’ She watched his smile crack into a grin.
Dammit. She’d just reacted to another of his prods. With all her brotherly experience, she should know better than to rise.
‘Wedding List posters and dinner services? It’s married couples all the way in here. Don’t forget, I know the signs, I’ve lived through it.’ Xander gave a low laugh. ‘If the other customers are anything to go by, they probably won’t even serve us if we aren’t snogging each other’s faces off.’
Shit. Why the hell had her neck gone sweaty and prickly? Full blown panic about getting hitched was ridiculous, when he was only joking around, and his point about the couple bit was true. Despite the array of zingy colours, the shop oozed Coupledom, with a capital C, and the coupley customers were jaw-droppingly “hands on” to say the least. Exactly the kind of place she avoided like the plague, because she was so far from wanting what it stood for.
He tilted his head and shot her a full on, dazzling smile. ‘Maybe we should pretend we’re married whilst we’re choosing towels? Or set up a wedding list, just for fun.’
Now she’d heard it all. As for the way that smile of his was making her feel like she’d just jumped off a cliff edge…If this is where wearing shorts for breakfast got her, tomorrow she’d make sure she was in a long sleeved onesie, with feet attached.
The glare she shot him would have been enough to close down any one of her brothers in a nano second. ‘Just get over here, and shut up, will you.’
‘Whatever you say, Mrs Blackman.’
‘Sorry? Mrs who?’ For a moment Izzy didn’t understand. ‘Who’s Blackman?’
‘Me, of course.’ He stared at her, his voice rising in surprise. ‘How did you not know that?’
Izzy’s insides dropped like a lift shaft.
‘But your paperwork always said Porter…’
‘Yep, Christina is Porter, I’m Blackman.’ His matter of fact words hung in the air, and
he smiled at her inscrutably. ‘Oh, and for the sake of completion, Astrid is Duval, and always was, she stuck with her maiden name.’
Izzy reeled. ‘I’m not happy about this.’ Understatement of the century, for so many reasons. At least it explained why nothing had come up when she’d googled Xander Porter. But sleeping with a guy when she didn’t know what he was called? Even Luce insisted on a name before she did the deed. As for his gravelly voice calling her by his name? Mrs bloody Blackman? Damn to the way it made her dizzy too.
‘Do you know you’ve turned so pale I can count the freckles on your cheeks individually?’ He was milking this for all it was worth now. ‘Come on, Mrs Blackman, what shall we choose then?’
She raised her hand, half threatening him to start behaving, half pretending she was going to slap him, then immediately regretted it, as he snatched her wrist from mid-air, and held it between his fingers.
Shivers zinged up her arm as he hung on to her, and radiated out through her body. For one tantalising moment she watched his eyes blur, and then she just knew he was going to bring that horribly sensuous mouth of his careering onto hers. Her heart jolted, and she held her breath, knowing she was daring him here, goading him – willing him? – to kiss her.
He stood, his hand welded to her wrist. Then suddenly, he let her hand drop.
For some reason, he was a few words in before he regained the same joking tone he’d had before. ‘Watch out. That assistant over there couldn’t look more disapproving if I’d thrown you over the counter and ripped your dress off.’ Another achingly slanting smile. ‘Which I’m quite happy to do, by the way. You just have to give me the go-ahead.’
Shit. She had to shut this down fast, even if they both knew it was all empty bluff.
‘In your dreams.’ She stuck her chin in the air. What the hell happened to unavailable Xander?
The sinking feeling in her chest had to be relief, not disappointment. No way had she actually wanted him to kiss her back there. Had she? She took a fistful of skirt in each hand – she refused to let him accuse her of flouncing – and proceeded as smoothly and unhurriedly as she could across the polished concrete floor towards the sweeping elliptical staircase. Then realising he wasn’t following her, she turned and scowled at him over her shoulder. ‘Come on Mr Whatever-Your-Name-Is, towels are on the first floor.’