Invitation to Provence(74)



She leaned her head out the window, looking back at him still standing there, watching her. “You’re kinda cute, Scott Harris, you know that?” she yelled, and he heard her laughing as she drove, too quickly, under the arch and back down the hill to the chateau.





58





CLARE WAS NOT SURE which she enjoyed most, cooking with Jarré or tasting wines with Scott. In fact the “cooking lessons” mostly consisted of the work that Jarré told her would be her lot as a commis chef—the lowliest assistant on the restaurant scale.

Clare was enjoying herself. She liked the prickly frisson between her and Scott, who was still pursuing her—whenever he could, that is, because after all it was the winemakers’ busiest time of the year. He’d sent her flowers, called her, asked her over to share his sandwich, showed her his home, a charming old stone house fronted with an arbor of bougainvillea and fig, the inside of which was a masculine jumble of old furniture, piles of books and horse magazines, with a beautiful old English saddle on a wooden stand taking pride of place in the hall. He showed her his stable and of course his horse, and though she couldn’t ride he took her out on a small steady mare, ponying her up and down the rocky hills until her backside could take no more. And she enjoyed it all, though she didn’t kiss him again.

But then each morning when she walked eagerly to the village, she found herself looking forward to seeing Jarré, who would be waiting behind his bar to greet her, his innocent black eyes regarding her as though she was the most beautiful woman in the world, astonished that she was here, working in his kitchen. He’d have her grand café crème ready, plus now he always had freshly baked croissants. She was aware of him physically as they bumped into each other in the too-small kitchen, and she chatted to him in her newly acquired bastardized French, complete with a perfect Proven?al twang, just like his.

Trouble was, she liked both men, she could fall hard for either one. But neither of them was from her world, and she knew neither of them would truly understand where she was coming from. She needed to share her problem with Franny, who was getting ready for her trip to the C?te d’ Azur. But first it was time that Franny knew her real background, so Clare decided to tell her about herself. There could be no deceit between friends. Or lovers. Win or lose, it was the moment of truth.

Criminal leaped up growling when he heard Clare come into Franny’s room, but then he subsided again, wagging his tail.

“Hi, Criminal, hi Fran,” Clare said.

“Oh, hi.” Franny shoved the final T-shirt into the bag. “Sure you won’t come with us? It’ll be such fun, and anyway, how can you bear to miss the C?te d’Azur?”

The moment she said it Clare knew the reason why she couldn’t go. It came to her like a revelation, but she couldn’t tell Franny about that yet. She’d come to see Franny for a reason, and she’d better get it over with. She plopped down onto Franny’s big green-and-white silk-covered bed, staring miserably at her.

Franny looked worriedly at her. She’d never seen Claire so solemn, not even at the Italian restaurant the night she’d told her about Marcus. Even then she’d been cheery and sarcastic and fun.

“Franny, I have a confession to make.” Clare sounded so serious that Franny stopped what she was doing and went to sit next to her.

“A confession?”

“I have not been exactly truthful with you about … about who I was. Am,” Clare corrected herself. “I told you I was Miss Georgia… . Well, I wasn’t that. I mean I was, but in another way.” Her shoulders slumped, and her hands dangled limply between her knees as she thought of how to say what she needed to say. “Oh well,” she said finally, with a resigned shrug, “I guess the only way is to start at the beginning.” She glanced up at Franny, sitting next to her with that look of loving concern in her eyes, and suddenly she wanted to cry. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she muttered miserably, then added, “well, not exactly the hardest, as you’ll see in a minute.”

Franny took her hand and Clare took a deep breath. “I told you I was a poor kid. I never had a real home, you know, just that kind of shiftless life, always moving on to new places, new schools, new friends. Most people think that kind of rural poverty doesn’t exist anymore because they never come in contact with it. They think it’s something from the past, but believe me,” she said bitterly, “it’s still very much alive and kicking. Anyway, the short version is that I kicked my way out of it.” Her eyes met Franny’s again. “Just like you did,” she said, “only you did it the hard way, getting an education, working nights, all that. I went for the easy version. At least, that’s what I thought it was going to be.”

She bit her lip, staring silently down at the floor, and Franny sympathetic as always, said, “It’s okay, Clare. You don’t have to tell me. I understand, really I do.”

“No. No, you don’t,” Clare said tonelessly. “Unless you’ve been there you can’t know. Anyhow, when I was sixteen I ran off to New York. Of course I was broke—hah, broke doesn’t even begin to say it. But I was a pretty kid. I lied about my age and ended up dancing in a club, one of the real sleazy ones where every girl was like me, a dropout from their real lives, a loser, desperate in their hearts for someone to put their arms around them and tell them they loved them.”

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