Invitation to Provence(73)



This was the second great invitation of Franny’s life. The C?te d’Azur was a dream place she’d only glimpsed on travelogues on television, and now she was going there. Rafaella not only had confided the story of her love, she had given her something to look forward to while her own love was away.

She put her arms around Rafaella and hugged her. “Thank you,” she said, and Rafaella knew she meant for telling her the story of her and Lucas.





57





SCOTT HARRIS WAS TAKEN by surprise, pleasantly so, when Clare arrived at sundown the next evening, carrying a picnic basket. She appeared in the crushing shed when the machines were going full blast.

“Hey,” she said, standing in the doorway and peering into the dimness. “I brought supper. I figured every guy has to eat sometime, even the superman winemaker.”

Scott grinned and brushed back his hair wearily. “I guess you’re right. I’d probably have ended up with the same old ham and cheese somewhere around midnight.”

“If I had not come to save you.” Clare put the wicker picnic basket on the rickety Formica-topped table that already held a laptop and several dozen empty Badoit bottles. “Watch me wave my magic wand,” she cried, flinging open the lid and waving an elegant arm at its contents, like a circus performer taking a bow after a particularly difficult stunt.

“Will the magic wand also turn me into a prince?” Scott asked hopefully, and she laughed and shook her head.

“That’s asking a little too much, even of me, but I promise it can turn you into a happy man, if only for a brief moment. Look, here’s a magical rotisserie chicken—direct from Alliers, and”—she showed him the box—“potatoes roasted in the juices!” She bit into one, moaning with pleasure. “Mmm, oh my god, that’s so good. Plus”—she waved a baguette at him and took out a bottle and two glasses—“cheap local wine from Mademoiselle Doritée’s and a hunk of cheese. Now I ask you, what more could a man want?”

“You,” he said, and he kissed her.

She stepped back, surprised but not displeased. “You always thank people with kisses?”

“Only the pretty ones.”

She frowned, suspicious. “I wouldn’t want you to have gotten the wrong impression.”

“My only impression is that you are lovely and that you are also an eater. True?”

“True,” she admitted with a sigh. “I love food. That’s why I’m taking the cooking lessons. One day I’ll be a comfortable fat old lady, still enjoying her roast potatoes and rotisserie chicken at eighty.”

“And with a glass of wine, I hope,” he said, inspecting the bottle of white she’d brought before opening it. He poured it into glasses and said, “Tell you what. It’s too windy outside, why don’t we take our picnic into the cave? We can light the candles and pretend it’s romantic.”

“But we don’t have to pretend—it is romantic,” Clare said minutes later, sitting opposite him at the stone tasting table in the candlelight, with their picnic spread out on paper plates.

“What are you really doing here, Clare?” he asked, hacking a hunk of chicken for her with his Swiss Army knife since she’d forgotten to bring one.

She bit into the chicken, chewing silently, thinking. She shrugged. “Like JFK and his famous wife, I accompanied my friend to Paris.” She looked up and met his eyes. “Actually, the truth is that I had left my cheating husband and was looking for revenge on the woman he’d been having an affair with. One of the many women he’d had an affair with. I filed for divorce before I left and I made sure to max out his credit cards.”

“A woman scorned?”

“You betcha!”

“And what will you do now?”

She knew it was a loaded question. “Now? I’ll become a chef, of course, take a job as the lowest commis in some smart L.A. restaurant, work my butt off for no money, and eat for free.”

“At least you won’t starve.”

“Would that worry you?” She eyed him, smiling.

“You know I wouldn’t allow that to happen.”

Clare stared demurely down at her paper plate scattered with chicken bones. “It’s nice to know you care. Well, now that I’ve made sure you’ve eaten tonight, I’d better let you get on with the crush and go home.”

“Home? Is that the way you think of the chateau now?”

She hesitated. “It’s more than just the chateau. It’s the village of Marten, it’s here, it’s Saint-Sylvestre, it’s… . Provence.” She shrugged. “Of course it’s not my home. I have no real home, but this place sure beats the real one where I started out, in the onion fields, working alongside my sharecropper dad. God, I never want to see a Vidalia again.”

She was laughing but Scott could tell she was still hurting inside from the hard childhood memories. He helped her pack the remains of the picnic back into the basket, and they walked up the stone stairs and into the grape-scented night.

Clare took a deep breath, standing by the car, the keys ready in her hand. “You could get drunk on just this.”

“You’d have to wait for it to become wine first. And thank you for the picnic, it was great.” He stepped awkwardly back from her, unsure of whether to kiss her again, but then she did it for him, a quick brush of her lips against his and she was in the car with the keys in the ignition, already turning the wheel and heading across the courtyard to the arched exit.

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