out, seeming not to see the irony in her words. ‘I’m not going behind Mel’s back, she’s totally OK with it—you wouldn’t want me to turn down my big chance, would you?’ She pinned a mournful expression on her long face as her shoulders slumped.
It was such a patently silly thing to say that Veronica rolled her eyes. Of course she wouldn’t selfishly stand in the way of her sister’s newly minted ambitions—and Karen knew it!
‘Stop looking so tragic,’ she ordered, and Karen instantly obeyed, obviously sensing victory in the snappish words.
‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she begged earnestly. ‘I know it’s incredibly bad timing, but when destiny calls, what can you do?’
Veronica was tempted to roll her eyes again, but controlled herself. Her head had now recovered from its weird floating sensation and had settled to a painful throb.
‘You were the one who persuaded me it was such a great idea for us to spend our holiday together—’ She sighed, thinking of the whirlwind weeks of excited organising that had followed her late-night phone call to London on her sister’s birthday.
‘Yes, but you were the one who first brought it up,’ Karen pointed out. ‘You wanted me to persuade you, and once France was mentioned there was no stopping you. You said it would be a great chance for you to pick up some ideas and contacts for your little gift thing.’ Her voice became bubbly and teasing again: ‘You also had a pret-ty good reason for wanting to be out of New Zealand right now, if I remember rightly—’
‘Well, that’s all irrelevant now, isn’t it?’ Veronica cut her off hurriedly. The ‘little gift thing’ that Karen dismissed so lightly was the new business she was starting up—a corporate and personal gift-buying service, which she was intending to expand from what had been until now a thriving sideline into a fully-fledged company.
She throttled another upsurge of choking disappointment as she faced the full impact of her sister’s defection. ‘What are we going to do about all our bookings?’
But Karen had it all worked out. She didn’t care about losing her half of the expenses—she was going to make all that and more from her modelling, she said. Since everything was prepaid, Veronica should simply stick to the plan—go to Paris for five days, then on down to Provence. When Karen got back from her week or so in the Bahamas, she would get a cheap flight down to Marseilles—and join her sister for the rest of the holiday.
And when Veronica expressed reluctance about imposing herself on the Reeds, Karen scoffed.
‘Oh, don’t talk rot! They’re already down there and expecting you to turn up. It’s a self-catering cottage in the garden, not a guest suite in the villa. You’ve met Melanie and Miles before, and others are just family, so it’ll be all very laid-back and casual. Mel likes you, you know she does. She thinks your working for Mum and Dad’s organic farm business makes you a kindred spirit. I’ve been to France before, so it was more for your sake than for mine that she made the offer … after I told her all about your secret passion for all things French and how you drooled over her books set there—’
‘Oh, you didn’t?’ Veronica groaned, not fooled by her sister’s innocent look. Had Melanie recognised the manipulative ploy? ‘That just makes it even more awkward—you made me sound as if I was a freeloader, angling for an invite. Maybe I should at least suggest some kind of payment—’
‘Oh, well,’ said Karen meekly, instantly raising Veronica’s suspicions. ‘I suppose there is something you can do that they’d appreciate much more than money …’
Melanie, it transpired, had broken her right elbow in a fall on the day of her arrival in Provence, and was going to be wearing a sling for the next four to six weeks. Consequently, she had rung to warn Karen that she might be asked to do a little bit of work during her holiday stay. Of course Karen had agreed, but with her arrival delayed, perhaps Veronica offering her help would be a clever way to repay the Reeds for their generosity without risking offence? Melanie might not take her up on it, after all she had her family there for all her personal needs, including her widowed mother, but if she did require assistance on something relating to her work, it was bound to only be the occasional errand or bit of note-taking—the sort of thing that Veronica could dash off in a jiffy without even breaking a sweat!
Melanie hadn’t been the only one who had ended up being manipulated in that little scenario, Veronica thought wryly as she looked out the window at the late-comers to the first-class carriage hurrying to board before the doors began to close.
As for sweating—plenty of that had broken out when what Veronica had dismissed in London as a bad case of jet lag and tried to sleep off with regular doses of paracetamol had been diagnosed as a nasty case of flu by the emergency doctor she had called in a panic when she had staggered into the apartment in rue de Birague with a raging temperature and only a hazy memory of her trip through the Chunnel.
Fortunately the information sheet in the apartment had provided a number that guaranteed a home visit within thirty minutes, but, regretfully, all the sympathetic doctor could do for ‘la grippe’, he explained in broken English that was far better than her French, was to prescribe double-strength paracetamol to bring down the fever. She had spent two days languishing in her sickbed, alone, miserable, and heartily sorry for herself.
It was no wonder she had gone crazy when she had finally recovered enough to venture out!
She turned her flushed forehead against the cool glass of the window, and when she opened her eyes she saw the last of the stragglers heading towards the front carriages. One of them was a man carrying a laptop, accompanied by a porter wheeling his suitcase on a trolley. Probably heading for one of the other first-class carriages, she deduced with amusement, since everyone else seemed to be carrying all their own luggage.
He was tall, and walked with a loose-limbed stride, which looked lazy, but which had the stout porter trotting to keep up. A white panama hat with a turned-down brim covered most of his head, but it was the short black pony-tail, almost invisible as it tucked down inside the loosely flicked-up collar of his shirt, along with a certain set of his shoulders, that suddenly caught her eye and made her heart jump into her throat.
No. No, it couldn’t be!
There were millions of dark-haired men in Paris, and any number of them with hair long enough to be worn in a pony-tail.
She leaned forward, her own pony-tail tickling her collarbone, her gaze fixed on the back of his head, but he continued to look straight ahead, giving her not even a hint of a profile.
Her scrutiny shifted, drifting down over the loose, dark olive shirt hiding the waistband of his straight-legged jeans, to settle on the tight backside encased in the faded denim, throwing a sexy hitch with every striking stride.
It was absurd to think that she recognised it.
She only had a brief moment to judge its familiarity before he suddenly turned and stepped up onto the train. She wrenched her eyes back up to his face just in time to see a hawkish nose and unshaven jaw flash out of sight.
Veronica pushed back in her cushioned seat, sliding her hips forward so that her head sank below the height of the row. She wasn’t hiding, just getting comfortable for the trip, she told herself.
Of course it wasn’t Lucien. Maybe it was just someone who looked a little bit like him, and her guilty imagination had sketched in the rest.
She
