‘Out of signal,’ he mutters.
She clearly doesn’t believe him. ‘Then it’s a good job I came when I did, isn’t it? I had a meeting with a client in Normandy this morning and, as you were somewhere around here, you left me with no choice but to find you in person, no matter how hard you tried to make it. Masters are an important client of my agency and I’m not about to let them down because you’ve taken a holiday. Next time you decide to drop off the grid, at least answer your phone.’
‘That defeats the object,’ I say.
She frowns at me like I’ve just ribbitted.
‘Have you heard anything from me or Masters?’ she demands, turning back to him.
‘No,’ he says. ‘What should I have heard?’
‘The shoot’s been brought forward. It’s next week, not at the end of the month. They want you there on Saturday for a fitting, the shoot will commence on Monday.’
‘Short bloody notice,’ he mutters.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for three weeks,’ she snaps. ‘It wouldn’t have been short notice if you’d answered your phone.’
He actually looks like he’s about to cry. He looks wretched and intimidated, and I want to hug him, but I’m certain he wouldn’t appreciate me hugging him in front of this Kinzi. I hug his hoody to my chest instead.
‘You’ll be there, of course,’ she continues.
He grunts.
‘I don’t care if it interrupts your holiday or whatever it is you’re doing in this ugly old place, you will be there on Saturday, bright and early, and none of this…’ She waves a hand up and down with a sneer on her face. ‘None of this comedy glasses and whatever hedge you’ve dragged your hair through nonsense. And do find a razor that works in this stupid country, that scruff is not attractive. You need to make a good impression on them even at the first fitting.’ She tuts. ‘Honestly, Julian, this is the sort of thing I expect to tell my younger, inexperienced clients, not you.’
I really don’t like this woman. ‘He’s on holiday,’ I snap. ‘No one does their hair when they’re on holiday.’
She peers at me. ‘So I see.’
I stare back and wish I could find something about her to throw an insult at, but she really is the most perfect person I’ve ever seen. She looks like she’s climbed out of the pages of Vogue. Pristinely smooth blonde hair, cut in a bob with such straight ends that she’s surely just this second left the hairdresser’s, red lipstick that matches her nails, shoes that probably cost more than a year’s rent on my flat, and a skintight black designer dress that makes me wonder how it’s physically possible for someone to have a waist that small.
Julian’s clutching the back of his neck, trying to hold his hair down, looking awkward and uncomfortable in a way I haven’t seen before.
I feel inferior in her presence and wonder how on earth I came so close to kissing him last night. If he was interested in a relationship, this is exactly the type of woman he’d go for. Perfect model looks, just like him. I’m overweight and dishevelled at the best of times. Even when I scrub up, I look like someone’s put your nan’s Sunday best on a pony.
Kinzi stares at the château with a look of distaste. ‘Have you rented this dreadful place for the summer?’
‘Yeah,’ he says.
I wonder why he’s lying. He’s telling this Kinzi a lot of lies. I remember him saying he wouldn’t tell anyone he’d inherited this place, but he also told me no one knew where he’d gone, and suddenly his agent turns up on the doorstep.
‘It looks like they should be paying you to stay here.’
‘I’ll skip offering you a guided tour then, shall I?’ he says, sounding like the Jules I know for the first time since her car pulled in.
‘There are broken windows,’ she says, like it might be something that had escaped our notice. She cocks her head to the side and looks up at it again. ‘Although it could be a great place to stage Halloween pictures. I’ll take some photos and show them to my clients.’
‘I doubt the owners would be open to that,’ Julian says.
‘Nonsense, everyone’s open to letting a camera crew in if you offer them enough money.’
He coughs.
‘Is there a restaurant around here, JuJu? I’m starving. You can treat me to lunch to make up for the massive inconvenience of tracking you down to make sure you don’t miss the most important job of your career.’
‘Well, not locally, but there’ll be one in the nearest big town. Just let me go and tidy myself up.’ He looks at me and I’m not sure if he’s trying to invite me or not-invite me without being rude.
‘Oh, I’m superbusy today,’ I say, jumping in to save him the awkwardness. I paste on a smile and clutch his hoody a bit tighter. ‘You two have fun!’
He hesitates like he wants to say something, but Kinzi claps her hands. ‘Chop, chop, if it gets too late, I might have to stay here for the night, heaven forbid. It looks like it smells.’
She looks like she smells. Probably of designer perfume, but still.
‘We can take my car.’ She looks at the tarp covering his. ‘What on earth happened to yours? Have you been in some kind of accident?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Masters are going to be extremely angry if you turn up for the shoot covered in cuts and bruises, JuJu. You need to be more careful.’
I wonder what Jules sees in a woman who’s more concerned about a photoshoot than about him if he really had been in an accident.
‘This way.’ He herds her towards the château. ‘Just give me five minutes to sort myself out.’
Personally, I think he was a lot more sorted before she turned up.
He looks back at me as they go, but I stay put. If I follow them in, he’s going to go off and get ready, and I’m going to be left trying to make conversation with her, when really I quite fancy pushing her into the moat too.
‘I’m going to…’ I hold a hand out in the vague direction of the garden. ‘I’ll catch you later.’
I wander up towards the chestnut orchard through the paths he’s cut. I’ve still got his hoody in my arms as a breeze blows, and I can’t stop myself slipping it on. It’s even bigger on me than on him, but it’s butter-soft and the cosiest thing I’ve ever worn. It smells of his aftershave, and even when the sun comes out from behind the clouds and warms me up, I bury my face in it and can’t bring myself to take it off.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’m downstairs in the kitchen later that evening, making a practice run of shortbread for the stall on Saturday, and I can’t stop thinking about Kinzi. I’m not so much rubbing in butter and sugar as wringing its neck. I grind it between my fingers, crushing the life out of it until it’s nothing but grains of sand. It’s therapeutic when I picture the sneer on her perfect face earlier. She doesn’t even like him. She looked him up and down like she was evaluating which toaster to buy, like an item on a shelf. He deserves better than that. No wonder he puts up walls to protect himself.
‘So that’s where my hoody got to.’
I jump so much that my hands slam into the mixing bowl and clunk it against the unit, sending butter and sugar crumbs flying everywhere. I should be annoyed at him for sneaking up on me, but I’m secretly just glad to see him.
‘Sorry. I was cold,’ I lie about the hoody. I don’t tell him that I just liked the way it smells. ‘Let me wash my hands and you can have it back.’
He holds his hand up. ‘Don’t worry about it. It suits you.’
I blush.
‘What are you up to? And more importantly, do you want a taste tester?’
‘So, what? You think you can wrangle shortbread out of me in exchange for wearing your top?’
He laughs. ‘Firstly, I think you look good enough in my top that you should just keep it. Secondly, the only thing I’m trying to wrangle out of you is uncooked dough, everyone knows that’s the best bit.’
I look dow
n at the crumbled mixture and try not to smile. Eulalie would’ve loved him. ‘Seeing as you’ve got nothing better to do now?’
‘No, seeing as I haven’t seen you all day and it’s probably wrong of me to say I missed you, but I kind of missed you.’
I glance at him over my shoulder to see if he’s joking, and he holds my gaze, challenging me to find something insincere in it. I go back to the mixing bowl because I can’t think about Jules missing me or how much I missed him today.
He hoists himself up on the empty unit inside the door and sits there swinging his legs like he did the other night. He looks like the old Julian McGit again. His hair is smoothed down with styling product, his glasses are gone, and he’s wearing black shorts and the tightest black T-shirt, which clings to every curve of muscle. He doesn’t look comfortable. He looks like he’s been vacuumed in and will need to be doused in talcum powder to peel the shirt off.
He looks like a different person to the one slouched on the sofa with me last night.
‘I’m sorry she came here,’ Jules says after a few minutes of not speaking. ‘I know you probably don’t believe me, but I didn’t tell her where I was. I gave this address to one person only, and that was the manager at my father’s care home in case something happened with him. I assume she went there and wheedled it out of them somehow. Kinzi’s unbeaten at getting what she wants, which is great when it’s a pay rise from a company, and not so great in situations like this.’
I kind of wish I didn’t believe him, but I do. I think of the things he’s said about his job and the way he’s avoided his phone and seemed glad to be off the grid here. I don’t know if it’s as simple as not wanting to be disturbed on holiday or if there’s more to it, but I do know he was shocked to see her drive in this morning, and it wasn’t the good kind of shock. ‘It’s fine, it’s not your fault.’
‘Yeah, but this is…’ He twists his hands together as he searches for the right words, and I can’t take my eyes off him because seeing Jules tongue-tied is about as rare as seeing a Dodo in the queue at M&S. ‘This has been, like, our sacred space. Just ours. And I feel like it’s been violated and I should have protected it better.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say, even though I know exactly what he means. Staying here has been like living in a bubble with the real world shut out, and someone from the real world turning up has made me realise how close it is.
‘I only took her out because I didn’t want her here. I kept trying to get away. I thought she’d never bloody leave.’
Once again, I wish I didn’t believe him, but I do. ‘So what does she do? She gets you on modelling shoots?’
‘Yeah.’ He kicks a heel against the cupboard underneath him. ‘Clients go to her agency looking for models and she hears about jobs early and puts her models forward. She got me the long-term contract with Masters of Gym. She negotiates with companies over payment and stuff like that. She came here because of this big shoot coming up. Apparently my bosses at Masters were getting worried because they hadn’t heard from me, and part of her job is to make sure I’m there when I’m supposed to be there. If I’m unreliable, she loses a big contract and a lot of money. That’s why she came.’
‘Well, I didn’t think it was to check on your wellbeing, JuJu.’
It makes him look up at me with a grin. ‘Told you Jules wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever been called.’
I can’t help smiling back. What started off as a way to annoy him has become a nickname that makes me feel warm inside every time I use it. ‘Well, she could’ve been nicer about it. Within zero-point-three seconds of getting here, she’d insulted you for being short-sighted.’
‘She doesn’t know I’m short-sighted. No one does. She’s never seen me with my glasses before, she’s never seen me in baggy clothes or without my hair under control before either. They’re imperfections and you can’t be imperfect in this business.’
‘Some people would say that your eyesight has no bearing on you as a person or your ability to do a job.’
He laughs but it sounds tired and weary. ‘Her job isn’t to stroke my ego, her job is to make money from me.’
I bite my lip in an attempt to stave off the sadness at those words. ‘Doesn’t that make you feel like a thing? An object?’
‘No, it makes me remember how much my next car payment is.’ He sighs. ‘My job is to have my appearance critiqued. I stand under microscopes so photographers can find every flaw and Photoshop it out. I don’t care about that. I was just taken by surprise this morning because no one from that world has ever seen me up to my elbows in mud, hungover, and without even running a brush through my hair.’
I know what he really means. No one from the modelling world has ever seen him without his armour on. It makes me want to hug him. I think about his ex and what he said last night about not being good enough. Good enough. Two little words that make this gorgeous guy think his looks are all that matters.
‘Besides, I have put on weight, look at me,’ he says, poking at his stomach.
I want to go over and pull his hand away but I force myself to stay still. ‘You look perfect. You look happy and relaxed, Jules, at least you did until she got here.’
‘I was until she got here,’ he mutters. He jabs at his stomach again, which is just as perfectly tight as it was three weeks ago.
I hate seeing him picking at his appearance so I march across the kitchen, grab his hand, and shove a mixing spoon into it. ‘Here, you can make yourself useful and mix this.’ I go back and dump the sieved flour into the bowl of butter and sugar and take that across to him too.
‘Yes, boss.’
I raise an eyebrow but he grins his cheeky grin and starts mixing with the spoon. It’s just an excuse to stop him focusing on his imperfections, but it does nothing to stop me focusing on his strong forearms as he sticks his fingers into the bowl, rolls a ball of the mixture and pops it into his mouth.
‘You’re not supposed to eat it,’ I say, even though it makes me smile. ‘Now the recipe will be all uneven.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he mumbles with his mouth full, grinning at me. ‘It’s Scottish shortbread. It’s made for me.’
It’s got to be wrong for a thirty-eight-year-old man to be this adorable. He grins, knowing I’m not really annoyed with him, and keeps his eyes on me as he rolls another ball and pops it into his mouth.
I go over and take the mixing bowl away from him. ‘You’re worse than a toddler sometimes, do you know that? How am I supposed to practise for the stall with you eating it before it’s even reached the oven?’
‘You don’t need to practise.’ He holds both hands out towards me.
‘No, you’re not having it back, you’ve eaten half of it,’ I say, even though I can’t stop smiling. He’s only eaten a couple of mouthfuls, and I couldn’t care less if he eats the whole thing.
‘It’s not the bowl I want.’ His voice is a hoarse whisper and his eyes are downcast. His hands are shaking as he holds them apart in front of him. I understand what he wants because I need to hug him more than anything else right now. I toss the bowl on the unit and slide my hands into his, my thumb rubbing against the two white holes at the base of his thumb, the snake bite scarred over now, an incident that seems like it was months ago, not a couple of weeks. I’m still not as tall as him, even when he’s sitting on the unit, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters because he wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him. I bury my face between his neck and shoulder, and his stubble, back to being perfectly contoured, rests in my hair. I preferred it when it was scruffy. I breathe in his scent even though I’ve been burying my nose in his hoody all day, and I close my eyes and just stand there, losing myself in his embrace. His arms get lost in the folds of the huge hoody I’m wearing, and he does nothing but hold me.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that all day,’ he says when he eventually speaks. He sounds peaceful and, even though I can’t see his face, I i
magine his eyes are closed and his jaw is slack.
‘Me too,’ I murmur into his T-shirt.
I don’t know what’s happening between us but I know I shouldn’t be standing here cuddling him. Even having sex with him wouldn’t feel this intimate. This is the side of Julian that he never shows anyone. This vulnerability is what he hides under his layers of perfect armour. This is who I’m going to struggle to say goodbye to. And even as I stand here with my mind listing all the reasons I shouldn’t be cuddling him, I know it would take an earthquake to make me step away.
He’s so quiet, so relaxed, his arms resting limply on my hips, hands crossed over at the base of my back, and I let mine wander up his neck to the ends of his hair, hard and stuck down tonight. I run my fingers through it, loosening the hold of hair product, letting the strands slip through my fingers. He mumbles something incoherent and nestles closer, and I know I could stand here all night and be content enough to fall asleep standing up in his arms.
‘Jules,’ I whisper when I can’t take it any more.
‘Mmm?’
‘I’ve spent all day trying to figure out how to say what I was too drunk to say to you last night.’
He tightens his arms around my waist but doesn’t otherwise move. Good. Maybe it’ll be easier to make a fool of myself without looking him in the eyes.
I think about the comment his ex wrote somewhere. You’ll always be fat, ugly, and boring on the inside. If I’m remembering rightly through the Calvados haze anyway. Throwaway words she probably didn’t think twice about, but it’s one line that says everything there is to know about Jules. ‘I thought you were ugly when I met you.’
‘Once again, I ask myself how I’ll cope without your insults next week.’
I smack him lightly round the head. ‘But now I’ve got to know you as a person, you’re much different on the inside…’
‘So my ugliness is limited to the outside? Thanks, I’ll be sure to tell my bosses that.’
The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters Page 26