a gift for your host. ‘Merci, Allegra.’ He untied the ribbon and discovered that the box held his favourite weakness: thin discs of dark chocolate studded with crystallised ginger. She remembered such a tiny thing, after all these years? And she must’ve bought it this morning: he recognised the box as coming from Nicole’s shop in the village. She’d made a real effort, and it knocked him completely off balance.
‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
To his surprise, she followed him into the tiny kitchen area. ‘Anything I can do?’
Yes. Sell me your half of the vineyard and get out of my life before I go crazy with wanting you again. He just about stopped himself saying it. ‘No need.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I take milk and sugar?’
‘You never used to, and it’s obvious you still don’t.’
She blinked. ‘Obvious, how?’
He spread his hands. ‘You wouldn’t be so thin if you did.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a bit personal.’
‘You asked,’ he pointed out.
‘Gloves off, now?’
‘They were never on in the first place.’ And now his mind was running on a really dangerous track. Gloves off. Clothes off. Allegra’s shy, trusting smile as he’d undressed her for the very first time and she’d given herself to him completely.
Oh, Dieu. He really had to stop thinking about the past and concentrate on the present.
He finished making the coffee and placed it on a tray. He fished a bowl of tomatoes and a hunk of cheese from the fridge, then took a rustic loaf from a cupboard and placed them next to the coffee, along with two knives and two plates, before carrying the lot back to his office.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, gesturing to the food.
‘Thank you.’
When she didn’t make a move, he raised an eyebrow, broke a hunk off the bread, and cut himself a large slice of cheese. ‘Forgive me for being greedy. I’m starving—I was working in the vines at six.’
‘L’heure solaire.’
He smiled, oddly pleased that she’d remembered. He could still hear England in her accent, but at least she was trying. No doubt she hadn’t spoken French in a long, long while.
‘So what’s the agenda?’ she asked.
‘We’ll start with the sensible one—when are you going to sell me your half of the vineyard?’
‘That’s not on the agenda at all,’ she said. ‘Xav, why won’t you give me a chance?’
How on earth could she not know that? Did he have to spell out to her that, the last time he’d needed her, she hadn’t been there and he didn’t want to put himself in that position again? He certainly didn’t trust his own judgement where she was concerned. He’d spent a sleepless night brooding over the fact that he still wanted her just as much as he had when he was twenty-one; it was a weakness he really didn’t need. ‘Because you’re not cut out to work here,’ he prevaricated. ‘Look at you. Designer clothes, flash car…’
‘A perfectly normal business suit,’ she corrected, ‘and the car’s not mine, it’s a rental. You’re judging me, Xav, and you’re being unfair.’
Unfair? He hadn’t been the one to walk away. The sheer injustice stung, and he had to make a real effort to hold back the surge of irritation. An effort that wasn’t entirely successful. ‘What do you expect, Allegra?’
‘Everybody makes mistakes.’
Yes. And he had no intention of repeating his.
Clearly his thoughts showed in his expression, because she sighed. ‘You’re not even going to listen to me, are you?’
‘You said it all yesterday.’ And ten years ago. When she hadn’t given him time to deal with the way his life had just imploded, and she’d dumped him.
‘This isn’t just a whim, you know.’
And then he noticed the shadows underneath her eyes. It looked as though he wasn’t the only one who’d spent a sleepless night. No doubt she’d been reliving the memories, too, the bad ones that had all but wiped out the good. And he had to admit that it had taken courage for her to come back, knowing full well that everyone here would have judged her actions and found her very much wanting.
‘All right,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Explain, and I’ll listen.’
‘Without interruptions?’
‘I can’t promise that. But I’ll listen.’
‘OK.’ She took a sip of her coffee, as if she needed something to bolster her—though her plate was still empty, he noticed. ‘Harry and I fell out pretty badly when I first left for London, and I swore I’d never come back to France again. By the time I graduated, I’d mellowed a bit, and I saw things a bit differently. I made it up with him. But I was settled in England, then. And I…’ She bit her lip. ‘Oh, forget it. There’s no point in explaining. You wouldn’t understand in a million years.’
‘Now who’s judging?’
She gave him a wry smile. ‘OK. You asked for it. You grew up here, where your family has lived for…what, a couple of hundred years?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You always knew where you were when you woke up. You were secure. You knew you belonged.’
‘Well, yes.’ Even when he’d planned to go to Paris, he’d always known that he’d come back to the Ardèche and take over the vineyard. But he’d thought he’d have time to broaden his experience in business, first, see a bit of the world.
‘It wasn’t like that for me. When I was a child, I was dragged all over the world in my parents’ wake—the orchestra would be on tour, or my mother would do a series of solo concerts and my father would be her accompanist. We never settled anywhere. The nannies never lasted long—they’d thought they’d have an opportunity to travel and see the world, but they didn’t bargain on the fact that my parents worked all the time and expected them to do likewise. When they weren’t on stage, they were practising and didn’t want to be disturbed. My mother would sometimes practise until her fingers bled. And then, just as somewhere started to become home, we’d move on again.’
He could see old hurts blooming in Allegra’s expression, and her struggle to keep them back. And suddenly he realised what she was trying to tell him. ‘So once you’d settled in London, you had your own place. Roots.’
‘Exactly. And I could run my life the way I wanted it to be. I wasn’t being pushed around and told what to do by someone else all the time, however well meaning they were.’ She looked relieved. ‘Thank you for understanding.’
He
