He exhaled and leaned forward. “A friend helped me get a job on a crew doing construction. It was a castle in Cavaillon being renovated by a wealthy couple from Perth. I was only supposed to work a couple of days. They had needed more diggers for the moat.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “The moat? Like a real moat?”
His lips turned upward. “Mais oui! A real moat. The project manager told the couple they should just fill it in. He imagined it would be too hard to repair, but they were adamant that their castle just would not be authentique without it. So I researched architecture from the period and figured out how we could solve the issues with the drainage and such. Not only were they able to keep their precious moat, but the house maintained its historical integrity. From that point on, I was, how do you say . . . hooked?”
I set my napkin down and wrapped my fingers around the stem of the wineglass. “I really love that story.”
Bastien reached across the table and covered my hand with his own. I looked up and into his large, inviting eyes. He scooted a little closer to me and moved his face closer to my own. I recognized the intensity in his face.
My stomach tightened as I placed a hand to his chest, keeping the distance between us. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea. And if I gave you the wrong impression last night when we were dancing at the club or perhaps in being a bit too flirty today, I’m sorry. I’ve just never met anyone like you before, and it’s been very easy to get swept away in your charm and the charm of this whole country.”
He retreated quickly, pulling his hands back and into his lap. “No, I am the one who is désolée. It must be the wine and, of course, this place where I left so much of my soul. My heart. And I cannot deny there is something a bit magical about . . .” He pointed a finger back and forth between the two of us. “And I suppose, I just got swept up in how nice it has been to click with someone. It has been a while,” he admitted, and his honesty and vulnerability made his genuineness even more apparent. This wasn’t a performance for the cameras. This wasn’t for the public. He was talking to me like a real human being about his real feelings without any showmanship or insincerity. No eyes watching, ears listening in, waiting to print it in tomorrow’s tabloids.
I brought my hand up to my chest. “I just don’t want to jump into anything too quickly. My heart’s still on the mend from Rhys, for so many reasons, and to be honest, given how frequently it’s been hurt, toyed with, and shattered, sometimes I’m amazed it’s still functioning at all.”
He nodded and reset his hand on top of my own, like a compromise. “Like Château Mirabelle, together, we will find a way to make it whole again,” Bastien said in a firm tone that suggested this was a promise he intended to keep no matter what.
I choked back the tears starting to rise from the back of my throat and raised my wineglass high in the air. “Cheers to that.”
Chapter Eighteen
The full production team from Tributary arrived over the weekend and set up their base camp in front of Château Mirabelle. Large hitched trailers and pop-up tents peppered almost the entirety of the front lawn. No wonder Monsieur Grenouille reacted like the circus had come to town; for a small, out-of-the-way village like Maubec, it probably felt that way.
The mere sight of the video village, the area of base camp where the show’s producers and directors would sit huddled around small monitors watching dailies, sent my heart straight into my throat. Why was I so nervous? I’d spent most of my life surrounded by cameras and crews. Reality TV had always been my reality, so why did it feel so different this time?
Compared to some of the other shows I’d done, Heart Restoration Project was literally a paid vacation. There were no endorsement deals on the table, relationships on the line, or prize money to win, yet the stakes already felt just as high. Spy House, Celebrity Ballroom, Love Lagoon, those were all manufactured realities whereas Château Mirabelle was a real place with a real history. And it came with a real request from Kate herself for me to just be myself. Now, if there was a job I shouldn’t be able to mess up, it should theoretically be this one!
“Come on,” Elliott said, reaching around me. “Let’s get you miked up.” He finished tucking the wires into my pocket and looked at me with concern in his eyes. “Hey, you’re shaking?”
“Just cold, I guess.”
He backed away and eyed me up and down. “What’s up? You look pale. Was it the car ride? Gervais was taking the turns a little hard this morning.” His features hardened as he studied me, and he let out an annoyed huff. “You couldn’t possibly still be hungover. Although, who knows what you and Bastien got up to the other day?” he muttered.
“I’m not hungover either,” I spat back.
He tilted his head skeptically. “So then, what gives?”
“I don’t know? I guess I’m a little nervous, maybe? First day jitters.”
He snickered. “You? Nervous about being on TV? Isn’t that like a fish being uncomfortable in water?”
“Ah, bonjour, Mademoiselle Everly et Monsieur Schaffer.” Bastien walked toward us clutching a steaming cup of coffee, a broad grin across his face. “How are you both on this beautiful morning?”
I straightened out my shoulders and forced a smile on my lips. Heart Restoration Project might be a different type of show than I was accustomed to, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have to turn my enthusiasm up to a ten in order to earn my keep. “Good. Great. We’re both doing very well,” I answered in a voice so perky and upbeat, it caused Elliott to do a double take. I studied Bastien’s face. Something about his appearance was different, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was? “You look . . .”
“Oh, I know, très ridicule. I spent the last hour in hair and makeup. They insisted.”
Elliott shook his head disapprovingly at Bastien before throwing a camera over his shoulder. “I need to grab today’s schedule from base camp. Service around here sucks, and I can’t seem to pull anything up on my phone.” He grunted as he stuffed his useless cell in his back pocket. “I’ll see you both inside the house.”
After Elliott walked away, I pointed to the trailers on the far side of the vineyard. “Was I supposed to go into hair and makeup? Nobody’s said anything.”
“If they didn’t, it’s only because you are such a natural beauty.” Bastien reached over and pushed a stray hair out of my eyes. “Of course I’d seen photographs of you in magazines long before we met, but may I just say, none of them did you any justice,” he said, his eyes lingering on my face.
“Plum? Plum Everly?” a voice called out from behind me. An older gentleman, probably close to my father’s age, came around to join us. He tucked a walkie-talkie into his back pocket and extended his hand to me. “I am René Laroque, the project foreman.”
Bastien slapped his forehead. “Where are my manners? Of course, Plum, this is Monsieur Laroque, one of my personal heroes. He just completed an unbelievable renovation of the Royal Chapel of Versailles. We should be very grateful he has agreed to join our crew. He is an absolute genius in the world of renovations.”
René’s forehead puckered as he rocked his weight from leg to leg. “Lovely to meet you, Mademoiselle Everly. I’m sure we’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other.” He tipped his hat forward and said, “Bastien,” then quickly continued on his way.
Bastien leaned down to whisper to me, “René was on the shortlist for project manager, and he’s been a bit irascible—um . . . how do you say . . . prickly? irritable?—since he learned Tributary offered him the foreman job instead of the top spot. I guess he figured after the Versailles job, he was a shoo-in. But none of that matters. Let’s focus on what’s really important, Château Mirabelle. She is the real star of the show, non? Today I thought we could take another tour of the house, this time for the benefit of the cameras, and then I can share some blueprints and a project plan with you for how we are going to get started.”
“Plum Everly needed in hair and makeup. Repeat, Plum Everly needed in hair and makeup,” a crackly voice coming through Bastien’s walkie-talkie repeated.
I raised my eyebrows. “So much for the natural-beauty theory.”
“Nah, it’s la cerise sur la gâteau . . . just the cherry on the cake.”
Several hours later, Elliott had managed to film me and Bastien in almost every square inch of Château Mirabelle. We laughed, we exchanged light touches, and more than once, I managed to forget a small film crew was capturing every single one of our interactions. At Elliott’s insistence, we even re-created some of our conversations from my first visit to the house, while also literally and figuratively covering new ground. This time, Bastien took me into Château Mirabelle’s kitchen, bedrooms, and, most interestingly, the underground cellars—or what was left of them, anyway.
I followed Bastien down a dark, narrow tunnel to the exact spot where explosives had been set off over seventy-five years earlier and brushed my hand along the cracked walls, thinking about the courage of the men and women of Maubec who risked their lives to do what they believed was right. “Bastien, do you have a piece of paper and pencil I could borrow?”
He nodded and pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and a clean white sheet from his clipboard. He handed both to me, his hands lingering on mine. We broke apart, and I kneeled down in front of the damaged wall. Elliott motioned the boom operator to come in closer to us while he took two steps forward so that his camera was just a couple of inches from my face. I could practically feel the droplets of sweat beading down Elliott’s forehead. He wiped it off with the same dark-blue handkerchief Bastien gifted him at the church.
I placed the paper over the deep fractures, dragging the pencil point back and forth until the spiderweb design appeared on the page, cracks zigzagging out from the epicenter in every direction. The metaphor wasn’t lost on me. This one act, to blow up the house, had set into motion an expansive chain reaction from which Château Mirabelle was never able to recover. I held up the paper to show Bastien. “Walls do have memories.”
“Yes, they do.” He playfully wove his fingers into the belt loops of my jean shorts and inched me closer to him. He stroked my hair and slid his hands down my back to settle on my hips.
