The True Love Travels Series Box Set

by Poppy Pennington-Smith

  Annie bit the corner of her lip and put her spoon down, trying to work out whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  “Did you enjoy the food?” Jeremy tweaked his eyebrows at her plate.

  “It was wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Jeremy had always had a remarkably formal way of speaking. Some would say ‘wooden’ almost. But tonight he seemed even more rigid than normal.

  “Well, I suppose we should…” Annie trailed off, glancing towards the waiter as if it was time to ask for the bill.

  “Actually, Annie. There’s something important I need to talk to you about…” Jeremy briefly met her eyes, then looked down at his neatly manicured fingernails.

  “Yes?” Her stomach lurched as if she was on a rollercoaster and she steadied herself by gripping the sides of her chair with her fingertips.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed, Annie… it’s been happening for a while...” He paused and scraped his fingers through his hair. “Gosh, this is difficult.”

  Annie swallowed forcefully and felt her lips purse into a worried grimace. Jeremy did not look like someone who was about to propose marriage. He looked like someone who was about to…

  “Things between us have been changing, haven’t they? In the beginning, we both wanted the same thing but now I feel like we’re both in very different places. And I think you feel it too.”

  Annie sat back, tucking her hands into her lap and trying to keep her expression neutral. “Different places?” She managed to speak, but her voice was shaky.

  Jeremy nodded. “Exactly. This all began as a bit of fun, didn’t it? And, well, I don’t think it would be fair of me, Annie, to keep it going when it’s clear that you’re ready for more than that. You’re ready to settle down. You want…” he waved his hands as if it would help the words materialise. “A husband, kids, a fancy house.”

  Annie flinched. She’d never really cared about fancy things. She went along with the glitz and glamour of the agency because that’s what it was all about but, deep down, she could take it or leave it. He was right about one thing though – she did want children. Not necessarily right now, but someday not too far away. And she’d always assumed that Jeremy felt the same.

  “But I don’t want that. I’m just not ready, Annie. I want to be fair to you. And fair to the business. If we carry on like this, things could get messy and we’ve worked too hard to let that happen.”

  If he said ‘fair’ one more time, she might get up and throw what was left of her champagne over him. Suddenly, the sinking feeling in her stomach turned to something grittier and more resolved. Annie slowly licked her lower lip.

  “Just so I’m clear, Jeremy – you brought me to the most expensive restaurant in London to tell me that you’re breaking up with me? On my birthday? My thirtieth birthday?” She almost laughed.

  Jeremy blushed and blinked three times in quick succession. “Well, I made the reservation quite a while ago.”

  “Before Christmas.”

  “Right.”

  “But since then your feelings have changed?”

  Jeremy ran his index finger under the collar of his shirt. His neck was turning pink and blotchy. He closed his eyes, sighed through his nose, then opened them and quickly – like he was ripping off a bandaid – said, “I’ve been feeling this way for a long time, Annie. But circumstances haven’t been right, have they? You were very, very low after your grandfather’s death last year. And then the merger came up and...”

  Annie sucked in her cheeks. She was trying to stop herself from shouting in front of a room full of people, which was no doubt the exact reason Jeremy had chosen to make his announcement in a Michelin-starred restaurant instead of at her apartment. “My grandfather died eighteen months ago, Jeremy. You and I have only been dating for two years… so you’re telling me you’ve wanted to break up with me all that time? And, what? You didn’t do it because you were hoping to win me round and force me to go through with the merger?”

  Jeremy looked away.

  “Is that it, Jeremy?!” Annie’s voice was far too loud, and people were looking at them, but she didn’t care.

  Jeremy placed his hands, palm-down, on the table and spoke very slowly. “Annie, I care for you. Maybe I hoped that my feelings would catch up with yours. I don’t know. But you’ve got to admit it’s a complicated situation. The last thing I wanted was for the agency to suffer because we had a bitter breakup. But I just can’t keep on pretending. It’s not...”

  “Fair?” Annie raised both of her eyebrows and folded her arms in front of her chest.

  “Well, yes.”

  Shaking her head, she pushed her chair back from the table and began to stand up. “You know what, Jeremy. If you had just told me the truth from the beginning, it wouldn’t have been bitter at all. We could have gone back to being friends and business partners, and everything would have carried on as it was before. But now? The way you’ve played this? We’ve got no chance.” Starting to walk away, she turned back and loudly added, “I should have known what kind of man you were when you persuaded me that the agency would go under if I took time off to go to my grandfather’s funeral. In fact, I should be thanking you right now Jeremy because, clearly, I’ve just had a very narrow escape.”

  2

  Annie

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  The flight from London had been almost empty and when Annie stepped out into the bright mid-day sunshine she felt as if she might have the whole of Southern France to herself. The airport was unlike any other that she’d visited, and it hadn’t changed a bit over the years; it was small and square with just one low-ceilinged hall for both arrivals and departures. There was a not-always-open coffee bar and no taxi rank. You could rent a car, but Annie had never driven on the ‘wrong’ side of the road before, so her grandmother had promised to send someone to collect her.

  The last time Annie visited her grandparents’ chateau in Provence, she had been sixteen years old. She shuddered at the memory and pushed it quickly away, feeling both guilty and sad that it had taken her so long to return. She hadn’t even made it back for her grandfather’s funeral. Thanks to Jeremy, she’d felt like taking time off would be damaging for the business. Even just a few days. Her brother Tommy, who was serving in the Royal Air Force, hadn’t been able to either. So, Annie’s parents and her Aunt Susan had made the trip on their own.

  On their return, they had shocked everyone with the news that they’d brought Grandpa’s ashes home with them. Annie couldn’t imagine her grandmother wanting that to happen but, apparently, Mum and Aunt Susan had insisted that Grandpa return to ‘the soil he was born on’. And GiGi had given in.

  GiGi was the name Annie had always called her grandmother by, because when she was little she couldn’t get her tongue around the French word ‘Grand-maman’. And, even as she grew, the nickname had stayed.

  Annie hadn’t told GiGi about Jeremy. When she’d called and asked whether she might be able to visit the chateau for a few weeks, her grandmother had been so excited – and had sounded so grateful – that Annie couldn’t bring herself to reveal the real reason for her sudden escape to Provence; to put some distance between herself and Jeremy, and the agency, and the ruins of her former life.

  Almost immediately after their breakup, things had started to fall apart. Annie had tried to carry on as normal, but then someone told her that Jeremy had asked Cassandra from Accounts out for lunch. A few days later, she’d seen him deliver a bunch of roses to Cassandra’s desk. And after that, she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  That very same evening, she’d called a friend of hers who worked in private Real Estate and asked how much her apartment would fetch if she sub-let it. As it turned out, her friend knew of someone who was urgently looking for a place in Central London. So, the deal was done. Annie emailed Jeremy and told him she would be taking some long-overdue vacation time and that she didn’t know when or if she would return, then called her grandmother and boo
ked her flight to France.

  Just like that. Her entire life had changed.

  And she had no idea what she was going to do next.

  Annie had been waiting outside the airport for almost an hour when she decided to give up, go inside to the rental desk, and beg for help. She’d tried calling the chateau but there was no answer and she had no idea who GiGi was sending to collect her.

  Puffing her hair from her face, and marvelling at how it could possibly be so hot at just nine in the morning, she was about to drag her suitcase back inside when a white pick-up-truck pulled up in the space that used to be the bus stop.

  Annie frowned at it through her sunglasses, trying to make out who was inside.

  Then, slowly, the driver’s door opened and a guy with broad shoulders and thick sandy hair unfolded himself from behind the steering wheel. Turning towards her, he waved.

  Annie felt her mouth drop ever-so-slightly open. She wanted to say something but her throat was suddenly so tight she couldn’t get any words out.

  “Good morning, Annie.”

  “Sebastian?” If she hadn’t been holding on to the handle of her suitcase, she might have actually weakened at the knees.

  “Bonjour, Annie.” His voice was like silk, or treacle, or honey… his French accent rolling off his tongue and bringing back floods of memories. Good memories. Wonderful memories.

  Annie smoothed her travel-weary red dress and tried to slow down the tsunami of thoughts tumbling through her mind. She had no idea Sebastian still lived here. GiGi hadn’t mentioned him for such a long time that Annie assumed he’d moved away. When she booked her flight back to Provence, she thought about him. Of course she did. But she didn’t think he’d be here, in front of her, all grown up and tall and handsome.

  “GiGi sent you?” Finally, she managed to speak.

  “She did.” Sebastian walked slowly around the front of the truck and stopped in front of her. Smoothly, he slid his arm around her waist and air-kissed her cheeks one, two, three times.

  When he pulled away, Annie was blushing furiously.

  “You forgot that we greet our friends this way?” Sebastian tilted his head to the side and smiled at her.

  Annie tried to compose herself. Three cheek-kisses was the way people in Provence said hello to one another. It was completely ordinary. An everyday occurrence. And yet it had sent Annie’s heart racing uncontrollably. “I had, actually,” she laughed.

  “Then you have definitely been away for too long.” Sebastian reached for Annie’s luggage and smiled, as if he wasn’t fazed in the slightest by seeing her again after fifteen years apart. “Shall I?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late.” He picked up her suitcase and hurled it, a little too roughly, into the back of the truck. It landed beside a collection of wood, nails, and toolboxes which indicated that Sebastian had fulfilled his dream of becoming a carpenter.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s nice to be in the fresh air.”

  Sebastian chuckled. “Nice now. By mid-day it will be too hot.” He gestured to the truck. “Are you ready?”

  He was talking to her as if they were friends, as if things were completely normal between them, as if Annie hadn’t suddenly stopped replying to his letters and broken his heart all those years ago.

  Her heart jittering in her chest, Annie slid into the passenger seat and tucked her hair behind her ear. She hadn’t seen Sebastian since the summer she had become his girlfriend. Back then, they had been so very in love…

  “Your grandmother is very excited for your visit. She hasn’t stopped talking about it since you called.”

  Annie shifted uncomfortably in her seat and fastened her belt. Her bare legs felt sticky against the warm leather seat. “I’m excited to see her too. It’s been too long.”

  Sebastian pulled out of his parking space and began to drive towards the highway. Annie thought he might say something about her being absent from her grandfather’s funeral. But he didn’t.

  After a moment’s silence, she finally allowed herself to look at Sebastian properly. He looked the same – slightly wavy hair, piercing blue eyes, sun-kissed skin, slim but muscular shoulders – except now there was more depth in his voice and the hint of stubble on his jaw.

  As they pulled off the main road and onto a series of smaller ones that led through towns and villages, Sebastian glanced at her and smiled. “It is very good to see you.”

  “You too.” She paused and picked at the hem of her dress, just below her knee. “Sebastian, I…” She felt like she should say something – like she should explain what had happened all those years ago. But before she could, Sebastian interrupted her.

  “Annie…” He sighed, his face suddenly a little more serious. “You should be prepared for a big change at the chateau. Things are not the same as they were.”

  Annie frowned and took off her sunglasses. “Change?”

  Sebastian chewed the corner of his lip. “Since your grandfather passed away, your grandmother has found things very hard. It’s a big place. And organising the weddings and events… it’s hard for one person.”

  Annie felt a knot form in the bottom of her stomach. She had been so wrapped up with her own business in London that she hadn’t really even thought about how her grandmother was coping with running the chateau alone. For years, Annie’s parents – and Aunt Susan – had tried to persuade GiGi and Grandpa to either sell up or hire an events company to help them. But they’d insisted they could manage on their own – they were a team, and always had been.

  Sebastian reached over and put his hand on top of Annie’s. He had always been tactile but, still, the sudden contact between his skin and hers made her blink. Sebastian smiled at her, as if he knew exactly what she was feeling, took his hand back, and lightened his tone. “But that’s why it is such good news that you’re here. Do you know how long you will stay?”

  Annie reached forward and began to fiddle with the air conditioning vents. The sun was beating through the windshield and making her feel too hot and a little flustered. “I was thinking six weeks… maybe longer.”

  “The company will survive without you for that long?”

  Annie shrugged and blushed. “I’m owed a lot of vacation time, so it’ll have to.”

  If Sebastian thought there was something odd about the fact she wasn’t able to take time off for her grandfather’s funeral but could suddenly be away for six weeks – maybe longer – he didn’t mention it. He just kept on driving. And they settled into the kind of comfortable silence that Annie had never really experienced with any other person… as if they were two old friends who saw each other all the time. Not childhood sweethearts who hadn’t so much as written to one another for over a decade.

  Glancing towards the materials in the back of the truck, Annie changed the subject. Smiling, she said, “So, you did it? You became a carpenter?”

  Sebastian looked at her quickly, then back at the road ahead. “I did. Your grandfather trained me, like he promised. He recommended me to a firm in Montpellier but last year I started working for myself. Now, I rent the old stable at the chateau as my workshop.”

  “That’s fantastic, Seb.” Without thinking, Annie had slipped into her old habit of calling him by his nickname.

  Sebastian blinked and his smile faltered. But then he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “It works well. I help your grandmother when I can, with repairs and jobs, and she refers all of her rich friends to me.” He laughed and his eyes twinkled.

  “She has plenty of those.”

  “Ah, not as many as before. But enough.” When Sebastian said ‘ah’, he shrugged his shoulders. And this tiny gesture, and the tone of his voice, took Annie right back to when she’d first met him.

  She and her brother Tommy had spent pretty much every summer of their childhood in France, because when they weren’t at boarding school their parents didn’t know what to do with them.

  The summer that Sebastian mov
ed to town, Annie had just turned nine. She was awkward, a little up-tight, and anxious about almost everything. But Sebastian, a gangly French ten-year-old with boundless energy, had instantly become her friend. No questions asked. Sebastian had made everything seem easy. For him, nothing was impossible. Dreams weren’t just dreams, they were possibilities. But Annie had never been quite as optimistic as he was.

  During the summers they spent together, they were inseparable. But now they were adults,, the differences between them seemed to be magnified ten-fold.

  Sebastian sat in the driver’s seat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other dangling casually out of the window of his truck. His white t-shirt was crinkled and work-worn, his jeans had holes in their knees and, even when he wasn’t purposefully smiling, his mouth turned up at the corner as if he was thinking of something happy. After the way she’d behaved, any other person would have been awkward or frosty towards her, but he was still just… Seb.

  Beside him, Annie felt stiff and tense. Suddenly, her sunglasses felt too expensive, her dress too formal, and her luggage too over-packed. In London, they were what people expected. Here, they seemed totally incongruous with her surroundings. And, although Sebastian didn’t seem to be remembering the string of letters he’d sent her, Annie couldn’t get them out of her head. She’d read them, of course she had. But how could she explain to him why she’d never replied?

  “Annie? Are you alright?” Sebastian glanced sideways at her.

  She had been staring out of the window and turned to smile at him. “Sorry. Just taking in the scenery. I forgot how beautiful it was.”

  “London is beautiful too, no?”

  Annie almost laughed. “In a very different way, I suppose, yes.”

  “You’re happy there?” Sebastian asked the question in a very off-the-cuff way, but to answer it properly would have required far more insight into her current situation than she was willing to give. So, she just shrugged and said, “Most of the time. It’s nice to get away for a while though.”