I sat back down. “Bastien?”
“I tried to keep an open mind.” He looked at me and waited, but as I was processing his words, he continued instead. “And I need you to know, I’m not saying this as a jealous guy. But the other day, when I was putting the clock from the market on the mantel in the salon, I saw Bastien and Kate huddled together in a dark corner of the château. They were laughing and talking like old friends, more than friends.”
“Sure, but I mean look at us now. If someone spotted us sitting here like this, who knows what conclusion they’d draw. Or on the carousel. Lines can get blurry sometimes. I’ve worked on enough shows to know how easily it can happen.”
He shook his head. “There’s something else. I didn’t think much of this when I saw it pop up on the master production schedule a few weeks ago, but did you know Kate was in Avignon a week or so before the trip to Paris?”
“No, that can’t be right. She told me she flew into Paris from LA that morning. We even texted a few days before her trip, and she asked me what the weather was like in France because she was packing.” My stomach knotted as I thought back to our meetup in the lobby of the George V where I remembered thinking she did look impossibly fresh for someone who’d just stepped off a twelve-hour flight.
He scrolled through his phone. “I’m pretty sure she was in France that whole week leading up to our weekend away. Yes, here it is, look.” He turned his phone to show me the schedule, and there it was on line three, Kate Wembley—Air France flight 1628, arriving in Avignon about eleven days before I’d met her in Paris.
“But why would she lie about that? And why would she go to Avignon, not Maubec?”
“Do you really want me to have to be the one to say it?” he asked.
I wanted to jump to Bastien’s defense—to tell Elliott that he’s wrong and to keep his unwanted opinions to himself. That he was the pot calling the kettle black since he had kissed me and maybe he should be the one not to be trusted, not Bastien. That Kate’s secret trip to Avignon was obviously to meet about the show and its production and nothing else. But something in my gut was telling me I needed to give this more thought. I’d never been the best judge of character when it came to people or love, and maybe I did need an outsider’s perspective, even if the outsider wasn’t entirely unbiased.
I sucked in a deep breath and said, “I appreciate you wanting to protect me, I do, but Bastien’s been good to me, and I want to believe his intentions are genuine. There has to be another reason.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Plum. Do you want to believe it, or do you actually believe it?”
I stood up to gather my thoughts, but instead my eyes darted up to Saint Orens and down to the ice-cream shop and back up to the church again. I blinked hard. Wait, was this the same place where my dad proposed to my mom!? I did a full circle in my spot and muttered, “I think this is it.”
“You think this is what?”
“I think this is the exact spot my dad proposed to my mom forty years ago.”
“Wait, really?”
“Before I left for France, he told me about a trip he and my mom took to Provence. He talked about a gorgeous church on a hill, delicious lavender ice cream, and a small park where he got down on one knee to ask her to be his forever. This has to be it.”
He chuckled. “I have news for you, Provence is practically made up of gorgeous churches and quaint little ice-cream shops.”
“No, I know this is it,” I said resolutely.
“So what happened? I guess she accepted, right?”
“No, she didn’t actually. The timing wasn’t right. They needed to live a little more, learn a lot more, and let some things go before they were ready to settle down to make a life together.”
“There’s a good lesson there. Do me a favor, Plum, just don’t rush into anything with Bastien. You deserve better.”
“And by ‘better,’ do you mean . . . ?” I lifted my brows, expecting him to understand my implication without me having to say it.
“I mean, better.” Elliott shifted his bag onto his shoulder. “I can’t believe how late it is. I need to check in at the château to see if we’re on schedule to resume filming tomorrow. Want the van to drop you back at the inn?”
With the seeds of doubt I already had about Bastien and Kate now having been watered by Elliott, I said, “Actually, I think I’ll go with you.”
To say that the château was in a state of chaos when we arrived was a gross understatement. René had walked off the job about an hour earlier, and the general mood of panic and stress among everyone who was left on-site was almost palpable.
“Bastien, what on earth is going on here?” I asked, trying not to allow my horror to overtake my voice. “Where’s Kate?”
He ranted in French, of which I could understand nothing. He railed and hollered, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when he grabbed one of the samples of decorative stone we were looking at for the fireplace and hurled it across the room to put a hole in the already damaged Sheetrock.
“Okay, we’re leaving,” Elliott announced, stepping next to me. “You need to calm down and get your shit together, man. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Bastien stepped toward Elliott, their size difference ever apparent, and he stuck a finger to Elliott’s chest. “Stay out of it. You don’t know anything about anything!”
For as escalated as Bastien’s blood pressure was growing, Elliott’s face and voice remained even and clear. “As production director, actually, I kind of do. And I think you’re acting like an asshole right now. Unprofessional. Hostile. And a little unhinged.”
“Va te faire foutre!” Bastien spat back. I wasn’t exactly sure what that translated to, but if the vein popping out of his neck was any indication, I had a feeling I knew the meaning.
Elliott grabbed for my hand and started pulling me toward the door. “C’mon, Plum, Gervais is waiting out front. Let’s head back to the inn, and we can sort this out with Kate tomorrow.”
I was pinned, trapped between the two of them, and the metaphor of the whole situation was not lost on me. Who the hell was this guy throwing rocks through walls and screeching like a banshee? This wasn’t the Bastien I had come to know and fall for over these past several weeks. I stood there suspended in indecision and saddled with confusion over the utter mess in front of me. The château was in disarray. My beau was acting like a horse’s ass while also possibly carrying out a torrid love affair behind my back.
And all I knew for certain was that my sanity was hanging on by one very rapidly fraying thread.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gervais had barely pulled the van in to park in front of the inn when Elliott, still fuming from his fight back at the château with Bastien, threw the door open and beelined inside, his heavy footfall as he stomped up the stairs practically shaking the inn’s already unsteady foundation. Odette’s head snapped up from some papers she was holding behind the front desk, her eyebrows slumped with concern as her gaze trailed Elliott up the steps. Agnès, startled by the sound, hurried into the salon from the dining room clutching a pot of tea with the edge of her apron to see what all the noise was about.
“Ah, Prune, it is you,” she sighed with relief as she eyed the now-empty staircase. “I thought perhaps a stampede of truffle hogs had broken loose and made their way into the inn,” she joked.
“Not so much a hog . . . more like a bull in a china shop. But it was just Monsieur Schaffer. He’s um . . . not in a great mood.”
“Really? But M. Schaffer is usually so bubbly and full of smiles,” Agnès teased again. “Not to worry, he just needs a bit of tea and some cookies, I believe. That always seems to do the trick.”
I nodded and moved to make my way up the stairs as well, but Agnès placed the teapot on the desk and said, “I wasn’t expecting you until later tonight. I haven’t quite fixed anything for our dinner yet.”
