Elliott raised his arm. “Hold up a second. Can I have the two of you do that whole exchange again?”

“What exchange?” I asked.

“That whole bit with the helmet, that’s the kind of thing Kate wants me to make sure I’m capturing. You two getting to know one another as the show kicks off.”

A large lump formed in my throat. Yes, I knew perfectly well the reason I was in France was to film reality TV, but over the last couple of days that fact managed to slip further down in my consciousness. Elliott’s request, though, brought it all right back to the surface. Like one of those trained seals, as soon as I saw the camera, boom I was standing up straighter and tracking the sun to figure out the most flattering light. Quippy one-liners that could be used as potential sound bites raced through my head.

“Are you serious?” Bastien asked.

I squeezed Bastien’s forearm and looked up at him. “It’s fine. Let’s just give him what he needs so we can move on with our day.”

Elliott repositioned me and Bastien so the steeple of Saint Orens was now our backdrop, held up five fingers, and started mouthing a countdown. When he got to one, he pointed to us, indicating it was time to start the scene, but Bastien just stood there in stunned silence.

“Bastien, say something,” I whispered.

“Comme quoi?” He glanced at the camera and then at me, the panic clearly visible on his face.

I gripped his shoulders and stared into his dusky eyes. “Just pretend like nobody’s watching us. It’s just you and me and nobody else. I promise, after a while, you’ll forget the camera’s even there. Okay?”

Bastien nodded, moistened his lips, and exhaled. “D’accord.”

Elliott stepped forward. “Let’s do this. Bastien, you pull up on your Vespa, while Plum steps out of the van again. We’ll pick up the conversation there. It’ll read more naturally that way.”

Elliott called out “Action” as Bastien revved up the Vespa’s motor. He pulled up to the van, a curl of smoke trailing behind the engine. I hopped out of the van and turned my body slightly to accentuate my best angle to the camera and kept my face toward the light as I’d been taught from a young age.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Everly.” Bastien flashed me his most dashing smile. “Are you ready for our adventure?”

I crooked my right eyebrow. “Adventure, did you say?”

“Ah oui. Provence is all about finding beautiful places to get lost in. Today, we’ll get lost in the beauty of L’église de Saint Orens,” he said, pointing up to the old church.

I tilted my head and turned up the flirt. “How will we get up there? The road looks far too steep for the van.”

He patted the back of the Vespa.

I smiled coyly and looked from side to side. “But I don’t have a helmet.”

Elliott zoomed in for a close-up while Bastien reached under his seat, pulled one out, and placed it on my head. He leaned down to snap it closed, coming within inches of my face, and took my chin in his fingers once the clasp was fastened. His dark eyes were inviting, enticing me with every seductive flicker of his thick lashes. “Voilà, there you are.” His breath warmed my cheek, and I felt the undeniable and irresistible magnetic pull of us drawing closer and closer.

I chewed my bottom lip completely, forgetting about Elliott and the camera in front of us. “Merci,” I whispered, eyeing his mouth and his eyes looking at mine as if we might—

“Annnnddddd cut!” Elliott yelled, shattering the moment in a blink.

“How was that? How was I?” Bastien stood upright. “Plum? What did you think?”

What did I think? I thought we were going to kiss, that’s how real the moment felt. I expelled a breath that had been caught in my lungs in preparation for the smooch I thought was coming, but didn’t. “You did great. It was all very, um, natural. Right?” I shifted from Bastien, stepping away to widen the space between us, and turned to Elliott. “So what did you think? Did you get what you need?”

“Yeah, it was great,” Elliott replied flatly, in a tone that made me wonder if he was lying or simply over this job before it’d even really begun. He’d made no secret that he was here for the paycheck, nothing more. Hoisting the camera onto his shoulder, he wordlessly set up the steep road toward Saint Orens.

Bastien motioned for me to hop on the bike. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and off we went zipping up the hill, leaving Elliott in the dust.

Chapter Fifteen

Sitting high on a rocky outcrop overlooking Maubec, Saint Orens—with its white limestone ramparts, ancient rectangular walls, and bell towers—was even more spectacular up close.

“What’s the church’s denomination?” I asked Bastien as we approached the large and imposing front gate.

“Like most churches in this region, Catholique. You know, this chapel used to be a formidable Catholic defense site during the religious wars.” He pointed up at the flared profile of the bells’ bronze curves. “One of the two, I’m not sure which one, how do you say . . . commemorates? . . . the courage of the Maubec villagers who were massacred during the war.” Bastien took my hand and led me to the church’s arched entranceway. “In fact, symbolic characters and animals can be found carved into most of the limestone walls.”

I glanced around the space. There were so many little details and flourishes. You could spend days here and not capture them all. “I love how people honor their history here. Back home, we’re just flitting from one thing to the next. Me included. These days, I don’t seem to stick anywhere for too long.”

“Can I ask you a question? What happened last night with the paparazzi and you being ambushed like that, does that sort of thing happen to you a lot?”

I made my way around the perimeter of the church, admiring the old biblical scenes etched in colorful stained glass. “Not as much as it used to. But it still happens enough to make for a scary situation, especially when I’m not expecting that kind of attention.”

“I cannot even imagine what it must feel like to be hunted like that,” Bastien said sympathetically. “You are very brave, Plum.”

Nobody had ever called me that before. Certainly not as it related to my public exploits. “To be fair, over the years, I’ve given the paparazzi plenty of reasons to chase me and seek me out for a salacious story. I’m not even sure I should step into this church, I might vanish into a pillar of salt,” I joked.

“You know, anyone at all can seek sanctuary at a church, at any hour, day or night. That is the beautiful thing about churches. They never lock the doors. They’re never closed to those who need them. I really love this one,” he said, pointing to a stone carving of a lion surrounded by a pack of hyenas etched into the wall between two large arched windows. “Look at the fear and desperation in the lion’s eyes. It is so realistic, non?” Bastien pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of his pocket. He kneeled down and placed the white sheet up against the carving. “If you rub the pencil over the image like this,” he said, dragging the point back and forth over the deep lines in the stone, “the outline transfers onto the page.”

He passed me the pencil, and I stooped down beside the image. Bastien put his hand over mine and moved the pencil forward and back, his warm breath making all the baby hairs on my arm stand up. I watched in amazement as the entire scene slowly appeared on the paper.

“There you are,” he breathed. His fingers moved across the paper with a fluid grace, as if they possessed a language of their own, one that communicated desire and connection without words.

“There is an expression in French, ‘les murs contiennent des souvenirs,’ which roughly translates to ‘walls have memories.’ Now, ma chérie, you have a memento, of the church, and of our adventure.” Bastien helped me off the ground just as Elliott came around the last bend in the road leading to the church’s entrance, red faced, sweating profusely, and completely out of breath, which for a man who went running every morning was really something.

“Hey, are you doing okay over there?” I asked him.

“I’m fine,” Elliott said, struggling to wipe the sweat that was pouring off his forehead as he was bent in half.

“Here, let me help you,” Bastien offered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a kerchief. Elliott grabbed the bandanna from Bastien’s hand, sweeping it over his drenched face before attempting to hand it back to him.

Bastien’s eyebrow lifted, and his lip curled. “Non merci, you can have it.”

Elliott nodded and stuffed it into his back pocket. “Do we just go inside, or should we like knock first?”

“We can go inside,” Bastien answered, never taking his eyes from my face as he pushed open the massive wooden double doors. “As I just explained to Plum, churches are never locked.”

I broke away from his gaze and saw Elliott was already heading inside the chapel to find someone who could direct us around. After he spoke with a cloaked clergyman passing through the church’s nave from the pulpit, Elliott walked back up the aisle to rejoin us at the front door.

“Bad news, Father François was called away to visit a sick parishioner earlier this morning and hasn’t returned yet. We’ll have to film this on a different day, although I’m not sure when we’ll have time, the schedule is already pretty jam-packed,” he explained.

Bastien held up his hand. “Give me une moment, I’ll go and have a word with the clergyman.” Then he whisked himself away with an enviable sense of confidence.

“He’s wasting his time and ours,” Elliott said once Bastien was out of earshot. “Nobody’s allowed in the archives without Father François.”

A few minutes later, Bastien clapped his hands together, the sound echoing off every wall of the chapel. He turned and gave us a big thumbs-up.