by Jody Klaire
I shook my head, desperate to catch my breath.
Vivienne folded her arms, slumped onto a chair, and crossed her legs. “Have you not done enough?” she spat at me.
Ignoring her, I turned to Berne. “You . . . can’t . . . go.” I gasped in between breaths. Now I knew how Rebecca had felt. That was some run.
Berne frowned, her concern more for me puffing than anything else. “Pardon?”
“You . . .” Openness. I glanced at Vivienne who had some kind of bespoke letter opener in her hand. She flicked it against her arm.
“Don’t go.” I met Berne’s eyes. “Stay.”
Berne cocked her head.
“You can find another artisan. There are plenty of them to go around.” Vivienne clicked at the counter. “Berne, I am waiting.”
I narrowed my eyes and stood up straight. She did not just click at Berne, did she?
“Berne is . . . unique.” Catch your breath, Saunders. You can’t verbally berate someone while keeling over. “There is no one as . . . talented . . . as special . . . as incredible as her.”
“It’s stone.” Vivienne clicked again. “As for other services, she’s no longer in business.”
I saw Berne’s look of utter disgust. Wow, Viper. Way to make your fiancé sound like a prostitute.
“She’s everything to me.”
Berne turned from Vivienne. I saw her shoulders rise as she took a breath. I knew that motion. I knew it when she was waiting. When she longed for something. I knew her.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving. Now.” Vivienne glared at Berne.
Berne flinched.
“Don’t go. Stay. Please.” I bit my lip. How else did I tell her? What did she need?
“What can you offer her?” Vivienne laughed.
I felt my teeth clench. She and my sister could be twins.
I turned to look at her. I didn’t have a clue where the strength came from but I could see Babs loitering at the back and Rebecca creeping through the door. I needed a way to show her what she meant to me.
“Just to stand in the fierce heat reminds me of her.” I took a breath. “When I was away, my heart was still with her. I’d stand in the sun. If only for a fleeting moment, a secret, unthinking moment, I could close my eyes and feel the touch of her.”
“Pepe?” Berne’s eyes softened. “You don’t have to—”
“I need to.” I took her hands in mine. “Your warm fingertips, light, teasing, trailing their way up my bare back.”
Vivienne went to move but Rebecca blocked her way.
“Your soft laughter in my ear. Its sound seeped into every breath I’ve taken since.” I felt tears well up and didn’t hold them back. “You’re the thudding of my heart, the wriggle in my stomach, the hammering of the pulse in my ear. You’re everything. You’re my safe harbour.”
“Pathetic.” Vivienne stood up.
I gazed at Berne. Her tears trickled down her cheeks.
“I can’t stop you leaving but if you do, let it be because you want it. Not because someone tells you too.” I sighed. “I speak from bitter experience.”
Berne took my hands in hers.
Vivienne pushed past Rebecca. “You are cunning. I give you this.”
“I’m sorry that what you saw hurt you,” I told her. I could see the shock in her eyes. “I’m sorry Berne is in this position but I’m not sorry I kissed her.” I met Berne’s eyes once more. “The only thing I ever regret was leaving.”
Before I burst into tears, started begging or throwing things at the Viper, I walked out. Madame Chamonix clapped at me from her front door.
Whether Berne would run after me, I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if it was enough but it was all I had.
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE SUMMER AIR was filled with the scent of hope. Well, some kind of weird flower that set off her sinuses as Rebecca ducked behind the wall. Vivienne had stormed out after Pippa had left the shop. Berne had stayed in there, alone, all night. Pippa had sat in the house watching DVDs until she fell asleep.
She didn’t know what Berne had decided. Quite honestly, if she’d been Berne, she would have proposed to Pippa on the spot. Okay, so they’d all been a bit dumbstruck with Pippa’s heart-soaring words. Even Babs had had a tear.
Rebecca and Babs had decided to intervene. No way were they giving up without a fight. Three cheers for next day delivery.
Rebecca placed a finger over Babs’s lips. She was giggling like a naughty school girl. “She’ll hear us.”
Babs nodded, eyes wide with mischief. “You think it’ll work?”
“It has to, that’s what started them off, remember?” Rebecca peeked around the corner. The excitement made her shudder.
“Need some warmth?”
Rebecca slapped at the cold hands snaking their way inside her top and smiled. The woman was insatiable, just how she liked it.
“Focus, my little French marshmallow. Do you want them to get together or not.”
Babs sighed. “Oui.”
Rebecca chuckled at her bored tone and raised eyebrow. “Quit making me laugh. Right, the package is being delivered.”
She gripped hold of Babs’s hand. Babs ducked underneath her arm to see.
Up came the postie, special delivery for Mademoiselle Saunders. Rebecca knew that Berne was getting a very similar package in the mail. Hiding around the corner was the only way they’d know that Pippa would definitely answer the door. It was the only thing that dragged her out of her workshop during office hours. Plus she was brooding.
Berne, of course, always dragged her out but Berne was brooding too. She didn’t know much about the Frenchie but if Pippa sanded any more wood, she’d have no hands left.
The postie knocked on the door a second time and Rebecca prepared herself to rugby tackle him for it if he decided to leave.
“Come on, Pippa, you dozy clot.”
Rebecca shrank back as the door opened and Pippa poked her head out. As always, she was covered from head to toe in paint, sawdust, and other crap. After a brief conversation, she signed for the parcel, squinted down at it, and cocked her head.
“We need to get closer,” Babs whispered.
The postie headed back up the road and they dashed across the yard like very badly trained secret agents.
“You see anything?” Babs asked as Rebecca peered in through a window above her.
“Yeah, she’s reading the note.”
Babs gripped hold of her arm in acknowledgement as Rebecca gave her the running commentary. “She’s smiling . . . and shaking her head . . . all good so far.”
Pippa pulled at the package but couldn’t rip it. Rebecca ducked as Pippa scanned the worktop next to the window.
“Ça va?”
“We got incoming.”
Babs sniggered and dragged a crouching Rebecca from underneath the sill. They trampled over the weeds sprouting up before stopping at the side window. Babs thumbed at the glass. Rebecca nodded and slid upwards until she spotted Pippa.
“Okay, she’s found the scissors.” Rebecca sighed. “Those won’t work, they’re paper scissors . . . use your Stanley knife, you ditz.”
Considering she was so clever, she was a bird brain. Rebecca watched her struggle until Babs burst into another fit of giggles.
“You would make the worst spy ever.”
Babs nodded, clamping both hands over her mouth.
“Oh . . . wait . . . she’s twigged they aren’t useful.” Rebecca shook her head as Pippa walked over to the knife block and pulled out the butcher’s cleaver. “Whoa, Pip, it’s just a plastic fastener . . .” She clamped her hands over her eyes and peered through splayed fingers. “She’s going to cut off her arm or something. I should go in.”
Babs yanked her downwards and shook her head. “Non, this is interference. We do not know of this, non?”
Rebecca sighed. “I know but if she cuts off her thumb—”
Thwack.
Rebecca popped up. Pippa
wasn’t on the floor, no blood, no screaming. The box had been felled well and truly though. “She’s murdered the packaging.”
Babs giggled again.
“Shhh . . . she’ll hear you.”
Pippa frowned and glanced in their direction. Rebecca dropped down. The laughter from Babs filled with intermittent snorting.
“Will you zip it?” Rebecca could hear herself sniggering. She dragged Babs with her as they ran around to the back.
Pip opened the side door. “Rebecca?”
Why her own name sounded funny she didn’t know. Tears squeezed out of her eyes as she clamped them shut.
“Rebecca?”
Babs had her hands over her mouth to block the sound of her own laughter.
“Must be the birds.” Pippa shut the door and Rebecca blew out a breath and looked through the back window.
“Opening the package now . . . here she goes . . .”
Pippa’s laughter rang out through the air.
Rebecca high-fived Babs. “Stage one is complete.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS on the note, I made my way down to the living room “in the uniform provided.” On entering, I shook my head at the two innocents sitting on the sofa with a bowl of crisps between them.
“I’m guessing this will be a new tradition?”
Rebecca flashed a smile and turned to the TV.
“I’ll get my own crisps then?”
Both were fixated on the screen.
There was a knock at the door and I wandered towards it. I had a nagging feeling who would be on the other side because the two criminal masterminds in the living room burst into giggles again. Still it didn’t settle my nerves. Berne had texted me late in the night to tell me she needed to think. At least I’d made her think. It was something to cling onto.
“Bonjour,” Berne said as she came in, shaking the rain from her coat. “Sorry I am late. The Coins had a leak in their roof.”
I took a breath. Small talk. I could do small talk. “Please don’t tell me you were up there in this weather?”
Berne shrugged and I took her coat from her. She was daft and kind. I adored her for it.
“Did you manage alright?” I watched her take off her shoes as I held her coat like a life raft.
“A few moments where I became more religious than usual but . . . not bad.”
She turned around and I groaned at her top. “Let me guess, you got a mysterious package too?”
“And a note. I have no idea who could have sent it.” She flicked her gaze at the hysterics from the other room.
I hung her coat up, trying not to stare. “Game on, I guess.”
We wandered into the living room and I poured crisps into a bowl. Berne sat beside me as the anthems blared out. It was only a friendly. France versus England. Which meant friendly in an ironic sense. This one was in Twickenham. A rugby match that could go either way.
“Nice top, Pip.” Rebecca was grinning inanely. “I take it, you both accept the terms?”
Berne was still here, in Ajoux. That had to mean something. I hoped it meant something.
“From the giggling gorillas?” I asked, smiling at Berne. “Why not.”
Berne’s eyes twinkled. “Vive La France.”
“Swing low, sweet chariot,” I whispered back.
The match began in brutal fashion. As always with the two nations, the history pulsed onto the pitch and men clattered into each other with deafening crunches, blood splattering, and mud spraying everywhere. A torrential downpour added to the madness with the French slipping and sliding through tackles to score, only for the English to come back through metronome penalty kicking.
Eighty minutes, the game was hanging in the balance, the scores level. The ball was fed out from the scrum to the English fly-half. He took aim, drew his leg back.
Smack.
The French number nine drove him backwards to the ground. The ball rolled over the sideline. The whistle blew. All square.
“Well, that wasn’t in the script.” Rebecca threw a pillow at the TV for good measure.
Berne and I burst into laughter. They tried so hard, bless them. The entire match, I’d felt Berne’s thigh next to mine. She was here, she had worn the shirt. Was she staying?
“You didn’t leave with her?”
Berne smiled. “Non.”
My heart burst into a sprint. “Are you staying for . . . well . . . me?”
Her eyes twinkled. “Perhaps.”
Why I giggled, I didn’t know but an idea washed over me.
“I tell you what,” I said to Rebecca. “How bout we both do the forfeit?”
Rebecca and Babs perked up at that.
Berne’s eyebrows shot up as I turned to her. She looked something else in a French shirt. Vive La France indeed.
“You too scared to run in the rain, Chamonix?” I got to my feet. My voice sounded like I knew exactly what I was doing and that I had clearly done this kind of thing before. “Think you can’t cope?”
Berne was up and marching to the front door. “I have no problem with the rain.” She opened it. “Après toi.”
I looked out at the crashing torrent and wobbled. “Couldn’t we wait for it to pass a bit?”
“You afraid of a little water, Pepe?” Her eyebrow arched. Hunger pulsed through her eyes at me. My stomach wiggled and I was quite sure that I may have fanned myself.
I tore my eyes from hers to spot Rebecca and Babs in the doorway. They gripped hold of each other, not making a sound. They looked like they were still watching the rugby match.
Rebecca gave me a curt nod and I tapped the rose on my chest. “Never. No proud Englishwoman would be scared of such drizzle.”
Drizzle? It looked like something you’d see in a hurricane.
“I only worry that you won’t be able to keep up.” I launched forward, planted my lips on Berne’s, ripped off my rugby shirt, and sprinted into the freezing cold rain.
I howled with laughter, the sensation of the water washing away my cares. I felt free. I felt . . . flipping freezing.
My flip-flops flew off as I giggled. I held my face up to the sky as the rain poured down onto my skin. I felt whole.
Two warm, strong hands caught me as we got to the bridge. “You owe me a kiss, non?”
I turned. Berne’s eyes were intense, filled with desire, and twinkling. I stared into them. Stared up at the face I’d spent my life dreaming of. I felt blessed beyond any words I could find. The heartbeat in my ears sounded like it was launching into a mad victory parade.
Still, I had to fight a bit. “Do I?”
The smile slid across her lips. Oh, how I had longed to feel them again.
“Oui, you kiss me. It is only fair.”
She made a good argument. I let Berne pull me until only inches separated our parted lips. I felt that finally I was well and truly alive. I could give in now. I was ready to give in. I’d earned back her trust. I felt like I made an impact now. I had fixed up a house, been with Monsieur Chamonix until help arrived. I’d taken on my past, taken on Fish Lips, and you know what, I’d survived it.
I got scared, I made mistakes, and I messed up, and you know what, I was okay with that. I didn’t have to be perfect anymore. I could be something better. Me.
“There is something else in that too,” I whispered. “Paying back the kiss, I mean.” I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of her skin against mine.
“Oui?” Berne purred. Her hands ran up and over my back. “It is important?”
“Yeah, it is.” I brushed away her hair, hoisted myself up, and wrapped my legs around her waist.
If I was doing this. I was doing it in style. I sank into the kiss, letting every single want, need, desire, and hope pulse through me into it. I could hear her groan against me, then whimper as I pulled back and jumped down.
“Now we’re equal.”
She strolled towards me and I smiled, holding her bra in my hand. She narrowed her eyes,
that mischief shining through.
I giggled and turned to run, howling like a madwoman as I splashed through the puddles towards the house.
I grinned at Rebecca who looked prouder than I’d ever seen her. “I’d say advantage England!”
Babs poked her. “Pepe kissed her first, that is France win, non?”
Berne caught me, hauled me upwards, carried me inside and up the stairs that I’d fixed.
“What do you think, Pepe?” she asked, the rain dribbling over her strong, sexy shoulders.
“It’s pretty decisive,” I murmured against her lips. “Game, set, and match . . . to love.”
About the Author
Jody Klaire is an author and a massive tennis fan. At the grand old age of thirty-two, she has been everything from a serving police officer, to recording artist/composer and musician until finding her home in writing. She lives in sunny South Wales in the UK with a lively golden retriever called Fergus and other furry friends. Oh, and she has a slight affection for cake . . .
Website: http://jodyklaire.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jodyklaireauthor
Twitter: @jodyklaire