Invitation to Provence (27 page)

Alain, home for a couple of months for the holidays, made no bones about the fact that he resented Jake, but then he also resented Lucas. Rafaella understood, but as always, Alain lived his own life. On the other hand, Felix liked Jake. He went out of his way to make him feel at home, though not exactly his “friend” because Felix did not have friends, and besides he considered Jake just a kid. But he didn’t talk
down to him and he took him around the winery and explained how the
vendange
worked. He even allowed him into his room to see his collection of model race cars. Jake and Felix always respected each other, even though they did not understand each other, and Rafaella had appreciated that.

Jake never asked Rafaella about her relationship with his father. He never asked whether they would marry, but then Rafaella had never asked that question, either. She thought now, as she fell asleep, that perhaps she’d been too afraid to find out the answer.

A
ND NOW LIFE HAD
come full circle. Jake was “home” again, and the filigree white gazebo was welcoming a new pair of lovers.

C
LARE WAS FIRST UP
the next morning. She threw on a short denim skirt, a white shirt, and sneakers then stepped outside into the corridor. Both Franny and Little Blue’s doors were shut and she decided she’d better not wake them.

Downstairs everything was silent, though she suspected Haigh was up, after all it was after ten o’clock. She decided against disturbing him too, figuring he’d be in one of his
huffy moods after the late night, and headed outside instead.

She ambled down the long straight driveway, her sneakered feet crunching on the gravel, sniffing the sharp cypressy scent that reminded her of the pinewoods back home. Soon she was out in the narrow lane that followed the perimeter wall of the château’s grounds. The banks were high with wildflowers whose names she did not know, blue and purple and the yellow of the sun itself and she picked a few, feeling like a kid again, when she would pick field flowers and put them in a jam jar of water and watch them rapidly wilt. Birds sang and the morning air was clean and winey, the way city air never was.

She told herself it was mere coincidence that she ended up in the village square, waving good morning to Monsieur Allier who was busy attaching hand-chalked price tags to his
courgettes
and melons.
“B’jour, mademoiselle,”
he called,
“ça va bien?”
Smiling, she called back,
“Bien, merci, Monsieur Allier, et vous?”

She headed purposefully across the cobblestones to the Café des Colombes. A good strong cup of coffee was what she needed, and also, hopefully this morning, a couple of croissants. A chat with Laurent Jarré would be kind of amusing too, or was he the
real
reason she was there?

Putting that stray thought to the back of her mind, Clare bounced up the steps onto the terrace and strode into the café, a smile already on her face. But Jarré wasn’t there. She walked around the back of the
zinc
counter, inspected the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. She helped herself to sugar which came wrapped as tiny sausages in fancy pink and white paper and strode back onto the terrace, picking up a well-thumbed copy of yesterday’s French newspaper as she went. Installed at a shady table under the awning with her
feet propped on a chair, she sipped the coffee, flicking through the incomprehensible newspaper, waiting.

She didn’t have to wait long. Jarré appeared from the garden behind the café carrying a straw basket piled with greenery. He stopped in his tracks and his dark eyes grew even darker when he saw her. Clare leaned back in her chair, looking over her shoulder at him, one eyebrow cocked.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Jarré,”
she said, but there was an impish curl to her lips as she emphasized the
Monsieur.
“That is, if I can still call the man I danced with so many times last night
‘Monsieur’ ” .

Flustered, he said quickly in French. “It is the polite way in our village,
mademoiselle.”

Clare unraveled herself from the chair. “Well then, we’ll just have to change that, won’t we? How about I call you Jarré? I like it better than Laurent. And you can call me Clare. Okay?”

Jarré nodded solemn as ever. “Okay,” he said reluctantly.

“As you can see, I helped myself to some coffee.”

“I’ll make you some fresh.” He hurried in to the bar.

“Jarré,” she called after him, and he popped his head out again and looked questioningly at her.

“What do I have to do to make you smile?”

Jarré was smiling as he turned back to the coffee machine and prepared a
grand crème
for the beautiful woman sitting at his table. He also prepared one for himself then he took them and went and sat opposite her.

“You dance very well … Clare,” he said.

“And so do you … Jarré,” she said.

“You looked very beautiful last night.”

“And you looked extremely handsome.”

“How long will you stay here?”

“I thought a couple of weeks, but now … it depends …”

“It depends?”

“It
depends.”

He nodded, looking at her in a way no man had ever looked at her before. Clare was used to admiration, to lust even, but Jarré’s eyes trusted her.

“I will do everything I can to make your stay happy,” he said.

The idea came to her in a flash. “Then I know what you can do. You can give me cooking lessons.” She flung her arms wide, shaking her head in astonishment at her brilliant idea. “Jarré I cannot even boil an egg, I
failed
mashed potatoes in home ec, I’m a disaster in the kitchen. Do you think you can change me?”

He shrugged,
“Bien sûr,”
he said, looking a little doubtful.

“Then it’s settled,” Clare said happily.
“I’ll
show up every morning and help in your kitchen and
you
will teach me how to cook.” She held out her hand, “Deal?”

He took it. “Deal,” he said, and this time he was smiling.

T
HE TOUR
of the Domaine Marten winery was to begin at six, followed by dinner at the Moulin d’Argent in Saint-Sylvestre, the
village perché.

As usual, Clare was first to be ready, sitting on the stone lion by the front steps, legs swinging. Little
Blue and Franny came next, quickly followed by the exuberant Pomeranians and Juliette, elaborate in a flowery caftan, bead necklaces, and many clanking gold bracelets. Jake appeared, walking up the driveway from the village, hauling Criminal tied with a piece of rope in lieu of a lead, something he’d never previously needed.

“He spends more time in the village than at home,” Jake said, unconsciously reverting to calling the château “home,” which was the way he’d always thought of it.

“It’s the lure of the wild,” Juliette cried out cheerfully. “Criminal must be in love with one of those
méchant
dogs that linger by the fountain all day. Trust me, there’s some little French
mademoiselle
he can’t resist.”

Clare didn’t need to look at Franny, she could practically feel the sexual electricity sparking between her and Jake. She wondered worriedly about Jake Bronson; he had a special and sometimes dangerous job, and he was a man with secrets—and probably a past. She only hoped Franny would make the right move this time. “Salt-of-the-earth type, Franny. Remember?” she reminded her, looking pointedly at Jake.

“Oh … oh
definitely.”
Frannie beamed and Clare crossed her fingers. Meanwhile, she wondered what her own “right move” was to be.

Finally Rafaella and Haigh came out onto the portico. Little Blue, pretty in a yellow cotton sundress rushed to greet her.
“Grandmère
Rafaella,” she cried, “I was missing you.”

Rafaella stopped in her tracks—at that moment she knew true happiness. Beaming, she kissed her grandchild, “And I missed you too, and I want you to ride with me in the Bentley Juliette too, I think. And Franny and Clare, you’ll drive with Jake.”

Sitting next to Jake, driving up the road that wound its way through soldierly-straight rows of vines loaded with bunches of overstuffed grapes, Franny wondered how it was possible that a place could get even more beautiful. But then Jake told her she should see the different beauty of the vineyards in winter, leafless and cut back into small witch-like branches.

“Sometimes it rains so hard,” he told them, “and then the mistral comes and knocks down trees and tiles from the roofs and makes everybody bad-tempered. Around New Year’s Eve, the cold creeps in, though it’s still possible to eat lunch out on a sunny sheltered terrace. The night air feels sharp in your lungs and so clean you can almost drink it and you shiver as you pile on jackets and sweaters and go to Jarré’s to dine on his hot
soup au pistou
and his hearty venison stew, and maybe drink a bottle or two of the wine we’re going to taste now.” He sighed happily. “I’ll tell you, life does not get much better than that.”

“But how can you remember it so clearly from all those years ago?” Franny said, astonished.

“How could I ever forget?” he said simply.

At the winery, Scott was waiting for them. The stone arches behind him glowed honey-color in the evening sun and the old monastery bell in Saint-Sylvestre tolled the hour.

“Right on time,” he called, opening the door of the Bentley. “Welcome, ladies,” he said, though with his Aussie accent
ladies
sounded more like “liediss.” He got to Jake’s car just in time to open the door for Clare.

Knees demurely together, she swung her long legs out. She looked up at Scott and her heart leaped. God, he was cute, and
truly
salt-of-the-earth… . He was everything she was looking for.

“You’ve come just at the right moment,” he told Rafaella. “Harvesting on the west hill begins tomorrow. Everybody’s geared up, the migrant workers are here, ready to go, plus the locals of course. We should be able to start the first crush tomorrow night.”

Rafaella always enjoyed the
vendange.
It was exciting to see the grapes roll through the huge machines that removed the stems, then watch them tumble into the giant crusher. It was intoxicating to smell the sweet juice, and later taste a thimbleful to assess its sweetness. Too sweet? Too acid? Too green? Then see it cascade into the huge, freshly scoured fermenting vats from where, several weeks later, it would emerge as the beginnings of a new Domaine Marten wine. It was then that Scott’s expertise would come into play. He was the “nose,” the only person to blend the Domaine wines, using his knowledge and experience and his instinct to add or subtract, to sniff and taste, to correct until he was satisfied with the new vintage.

Scott explained the process to them as they toured the big stone sheds, inspecting the tall steel vats and the huge machines. Then he took them down to the cool dim sixteenth-century
caves.
The stone walls were arched and banded with old beams, and the aroma of wine made them giddy. On a stone table in the center of the largest cellar waited an array of glasses and a half dozen bottles of wine ready for the tasting.

Scott opened the first one and poured a small amount into each glass. “This was a great Domaine Marten vintage,” he said proudly, demonstrating to the novices how to first swirl the glass to release the aroma, then take a sip, let it slide over their tongues, then allow it to rest for a second on the palette. “Then you spit it out,” he said.

Little Blue stared at him, shocked. Of course Chinese peasants spat but she had never expected to see her elegant French
grandmère
do that. Still, they all sniffed, swirled, and sipped obediently, though Clare and Franny drank theirs instead of spitting. “Too good to waste,” Clare told Scott with a grin.

After their tour, they drove up to the historic
village perché,
past old farms clinging to the rocky hillsides and the strange little conical stone buildings called
bories,
believed to be ancient shepherds’ huts. The very walls of the
bastide
grew out of the rocks, and cobbled streets wound through the small village that still looked the way it had hundreds of years before.

Jake held Franny’s hand, Rafaella held Little Blue’s, Juliette held the Pomeranians (for once on their leashes), and Scott fell in step with Clare. She was instantly aware of him, his lean body, his easy outdoorsman stride. “Tell me, did we dance together last night?” she asked, pretending not to recall.

“We did.”

“Hmm, if it was that good surely I would have remembered?”

She was flirting with him and he was enjoying it. “Don’t you remember I told you how beautiful you were?”

She tilted her head, looking at him under her lashes, “And do you still think that?”

“I do,” he said, sounding as though he were taking marriage vows, making her laugh.

“I like a guy I can laugh with,” she said, linking her arm companionably through his as they walked.

They went to the sprawling outdoor café in the square, where they dined on roast chicken and the best
pommes frites
while the first stirrings of a mistral tugged at the umbrellas and
sent their hair and napkins flying. Holding hands with Jake under the table, Franny hardly dared believe she was here in this paradise with a man she loved.
A man who loved her. A man whose bed she couldn’t wait to share tonight.
The veterinary practice in Santa Monica suddenly seemed a long way away.

The monastery bell was tolling eleven as they drove back down the winding road to the château, and this time Franny, too, thought it was like coming home.

T
HAT NIGHT
Little Blue could not sleep, for worrying about Bao Chu. She thought of her grandmother’s cough and the way it shook her whole body, and the sweat streaking down her exhausted face. Terrified, she realized that Bao Chu might die soon, and that was why she’d insisted Little Blue go to France alone.

She got up very early the next morning and went and sat cross-legged, outside Rafaella’s door until she saw Haigh carrying her breakfast tray. Then she asked if he would please ask Rafaella if she could speak to her.