“Ouch!” he said, lifting his head up. ”You’ll pay for that, Dr Latour.”
He took hold of her hands and imprisoned them once again within his own.
“Don’t call me Doctor –”
She didn’t get to finish; Jean-Luc’s lips came down hard on hers and took her words and her breath away. His tongue ravaged her mouth, taunting her to give back in equal measure and when she answered, he withdrew to duck his head under the quilt and kiss and nip his way down to her swollen lips. His tongue delved between them, his evening shadow grazing her tender skin and Sylvie yielded herself up to the building sensation, all second thoughts gone.
He knelt back up to sheath himself and their cover slid onto the floor but he let it lie. At last, his cock was inside her and Sylvie flexed and arched her back to draw him in deeper, down into the very core of her being. It was wonderful to rediscover her sensual self after the weeks of self-protective celibacy. She was still self-aware enough to realize Jean-Luc was a considerate and accomplished lover. He paced his strokes and thrusts to match her level of arousal, bringing them to a mutual climax – something that Sylvie had never experienced before.
As Jean-Luc fell back, Sylvie kissed his cheek and said, “Thank you for bringing me back to life, Jean-Luc.”
Jean-Luc gave a wry smile, “You’re not so bad in the sack yourself, Doctor.”
Sylvie punched him, “Don’t call me Doctor, and pick up the cover before we freeze.”
Jean-Luc bent down and grabbed the sleeping bag. He spooned himself round Sylvie and covered them both.
He kissed her ear saying, “Go to sleep. We have a busy day tomorrow.”
Just before Sylvie dropped off to sleep, she thought she heard him say something to himself about morning regrets but she could have imagined it.
14 : Life is awkward
Next morning was uncomfortable and embarrassing. They awoke to find themselves cuddled up together, naked. It wasn’t that Sylvie didn’t remember what had happened. She did – all too clearly; her body thrummed with the muscle and nerve memory of Jean-Luc’s skill. Her sex moistened at the very thought of it. It wasn’t that she regretted having sex with him, but she was sensible enough to realize that they hadn’t been making love however tender and thoughtful they had both been with each other. It had been sex and sex with her boss and work colleague could make life awkward.
The question was how was he going to act towards her: friendly, amorous, concerned, triumphant? She scanned his face trying to pick up clues to his feelings but if he had any, he wasn’t showing them. He sat up and took a look around the cab to get his bearings.
“Time to get on the road,” he said with an impersonal abruptness, avoiding her eyes as he spoke.
That set the tone for the rest of their day. Sylvie guessed he was going to ignore everything that had happened between them. Jean-Luc was courteous, even friendly, but he did not let his professional face slip even for a moment, and that left Sylvie out in the cold with no choice but to copy his attitude.
They breakfasted, packed, checked on the wolf and made ready to depart in a state of exaggerated politeness, each being careful not to intrude on the other’s physical or emotional personal space. Conversation on the trip back was stilted and restricted to business. This unpleasant ‘morning-after’ experience was new to Sylvie and she couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel and to Lisa, and lick her wounds.
By the end of the following week, the female wolf was recovering well from her poisoning. The office records showed that her name was Bella, and that she was a three year old from a previous litter of the alpha couple of pack Number Three. Sylvie advised Jean-Luc not to set her free in the Park until the spring. She was now a solitary animal with no pack to help her hunt, and she needed extra time to get her health back completely to normal. Jean-Luc said he would arrange for her to be kept at a wolf sanctuary in the foothills and a few days later, they said goodbye to her until the snow melted off the mountains.
There was much talk in the office about the futility of trying to discover who had killed the wolves. There had been no clues at the site as far as Jean-Luc and Sylvie had been able to see and with the poison being so readily available that was a dead end. Sometimes they would receive an anonymous tip off, said Jean-Luc but no one called in. They just had to write it off to man’s ignorance and malice and be extra vigilant, as they now knew there was a serious wolf-killer operating in the Park.
Sylvie and Jean-Luc tiptoed around each other every day at the office, each being careful not to brush against the other accidentally in the small space. All conversation between them was strictly work related. Sylvie hadn’t confided in Lisa, but one would have to be blind and deaf not to realize that there had been an awkward shift in their relationship. Where once a friendship had started to blossom there were now only clipped sentences and absence of eye contact.
They had to make two more trips before the Christmas holiday but Jean-Luc stuck to the lower valleys and they were lucky with the weather: no more freak storm fronts. The two of them succeeded in maintaining their business partnership.
About ten days before Christmas, Sylvie and Lisa were in the office early when Jean-Luc arrived. He told them that he was going home to his uncle’s place in Pomerol for the Christmas fortnight. It was his turn to take Christmas off and Robert’s to stay on duty in case there was an emergency with the wolves. His Uncle Raoul had insisted that he invite Sylvie and Lisa. His wife was American and would like the chance to spend some time with her compatriots. She had had her first baby at the end of September, and was a little homesick, he had said. It would be her first Christmas in France and he thought she would enjoy a touch of her homeland. They would leave a week before Christmas and return the day after New Year.
The invitation was a surprise after the strained atmosphere in the office for the past couple of weeks. The two girls looked at each other but Sylvie couldn’t come up with a reason to turn down the invitation without appearing rude or ungrateful.
“That’s thoughtful of your uncle,” she said. “I, for one, would love to visit a French vineyard and I am sure Lisa wouldn’t want to stay here on her own. Thank you, I look forward to it.”
Instead of accepting the invitation as Sylvie expected her to do, Lisa said she had already planned to spend Christmas with Robert and his mother in Nice and couldn’t let Robert down however much she would like to join Sylvie and Jean-Luc.
Sylvie turned round to Lisa, rolled her eyes and mouthed What? Aloud, she asked, “Are you sure, Lisa?”
“’Fraid so, Sylvie. So sorry Jean-Luc. Maybe I can visit some other time but I shall have to take a rain check this time.”
“Guess it’ll be just the two of us then, Sylvie,” said Jean-Luc.
Jean-Luc had told Sylvie about his family during their time in the Park but she couldn’t remember all the details. She asked him to write out a list of names with their relationship to him so that she could buy appropriate Christmas gifts. He suggested that as the next day was Saturday, they should go shopping together and pool their resources. He said that like many men he was hopeless when it came to choosing presents and could really do with some help. They arranged to meet the next morning at one of the large shopping malls in the town center. The rest of the day, they spent tidying up loose ends in the office and making ready for the holidays.
The Christmas shopping expedition went efficiently if joylessly, the constraint between them making their behavior towards each other somewhat robotic. Sylvie added a present for Lisa, Robert, Madame Bonjean and Marcel to her swag. Jean-Luc suggested she do all the gift-wrapping and so they carried the loot back to Les Mimosas before popping round the corner to join Robert and Lisa for a quick lunch. Sylvie returned to the hotel to do her packing and make up the gift parcels. Jean-Luc would pick her up at nine the next morning for the drive up north to Pomerol.
Lisa and Robert returned to the hotel long after Sylvie, their cheeks rosy and their spirits high. They t
umbled against the bedroom door in a giggling tangle like a couple of school kids. The door burst open and Lisa’s hand slipped off the doorknob. She almost fell into the room. She stood swaying in the doorway on her broken leg and only Robert’s fast action in grabbing hold of her saved her from landing on her face. Sylvie was sitting on her bed surrounded by gift-wrap and ribbon. She looked up at their childish antics with a look of disapproval on her face.
“Oh, Sylvie,” said Lisa. “You should see yourself. You look like a grumpy old maid.”
Sylvie pouted and bent down to her work again.
Robert steered Lisa to her bed and sat her down, dumped her shopping beside her, gave her a roisterous kiss and left leaving the door to slam behind him.
“You look as if you’re having a good time,” Sylvie said, sending Lisa a challenging look. “It’s all right for you. You get to stay here in Nice with Robert and have fun. I have to pay a social visit to Jean-Luc’s stuffy family. I would never have accepted if I’d known you wouldn’t be coming.”
Lisa bunched up her pillows and lay back watching Sylvie torture the gift-wrap. “Don’t blame me for your mood, Sylvie. I don’t know what’s gone on between you and Jean-Luc as you haven’t told me anything. One minute you’re friends, and then when you return from your trip everything’s changed.”
“I just wish you were coming, too, Lisa. How am I going to make it through a fortnight cooped up with him in a strange house with people I don’t know?”
“From what I’ve heard from Robert, there’ll be quite a young crowd there. You won’t have to spend all your time with Jean-Luc. Why don’t you want to, anyway? What has he done? … Or what have you done?”
Sylvie shrugged and fiddled with the ribbon, curling the same piece with the scissors and then uncurling it, over and over again.
Lisa waited, giving her friend time to decide whether to confide in her or not. Bosom pals since primary school they had always told each other everything, but Sylvie had shut herself away since the poisoned wolf incident. Lisa didn’t know whether she was sorrowing over the killings or whether it was something to do with her changed relationship with Jean-Luc, possibly a combination of the two.
Sylvie dropped the scissors on the bed and twisted the overworked ribbon round her fingers.
“Lisa, we screwed up. Made the classic mistake and it spoiled everything.”
“Oh no? Don’t tell me you slept together!”
“I never intended to. And I guess from his attitude to me since, he didn’t want to either. But –”
“But? Why is it such a catastrophe? You fancy him and you’ve been getting on well together.”
“We had a working truce, Lisa, and now the sex has broken that. We can’t go back to where we were and we can’t go forward because there doesn’t seem to be any mileage in it.”
“Was the sex good?”
“Fantastic. But it was sex and I’m not good at casual sex. I like the guy and felt a connection to him but he has so much baggage –”
“So do you.”
“There you are. I’m afraid to tip my hand and risk emotional involvement and perhaps he is, too. You should have seen us the next morning. Talk about embarrassment.”
Sylvie cringed, covering her face with her hands, and shook her head slowly from side to side.
Lisa glanced at her friend. “Sylvie, I don’t suppose there are many girls who haven’t been there at some point in their lives; I know I have. It’s not the end of the world.”
Sylvie stopped rocking and took a deep breath, letting it out with a sigh. She opened her fingers and peeped through them at Lisa.
“Do you think I’ll survive the shame, the awful degradation, the loss of self-esteem, the feeling of being used?” she asked in a self-mocking tone.
“Now you’re just being wicked,” said Lisa, swinging her stiff leg off the bed and shambling over to Sylvie’s. She pushed Sylvie back and tickled her until she burst into laughter whereupon Lisa sat down on the bed beside her. When Sylvie recovered her breath, she tickled Lisa back and the two girls collapsed in a fit of giggles.
When they calmed down, Sylvie said, “Seriously, the trouble is that we have to go on seeing each other at work. We couldn’t walk away the morning after and never see each other again. And now I have to spend Christmas with him. It’s going to be so awkward.”
“Stop looking at everything with the glass half empty, Sylvie. That’s not like you. Where’s the adventurous life-loving girl I know, who would jump at the chance of a new experience? You might even come back with a decent French accent.”
“Right, that’s it. Off my bed before I push you off, sore leg or not. I have to finish the wrapping and get my packing done or I’ll be in trouble tomorrow morning with Monsieur Jean-Luc du Lamond.”
Next morning, Jean-Luc drew up in his Range Rover as planned. After helping Sylvie with her luggage and the big sack of Christmas presents, he was about to drive off when he put the stick back into neutral and switched off the engine. Sylvie glanced at him to see what was wrong. He had fallen forward onto the wheel with his head propped on his hands, his open fingers rubbing his scalp.
Sylvie waited in silence, not wanting to intrude on his thoughts. He let his hands fall onto his lap and flopped back against the seat, his head tipping back while he stared at the roof of the car and his fingers tapped on his thighs.
“Jean-Luc, are you all right?”
He turned to face her. “Sylvie, there’s something we need to get out in the open before we leave. The last few days have been difficult and uncomfortable for me, and I’m sure for you?”
She nodded.
“Can we agree that what happened between us that night in the snow was unfortunate? I say, unfortunate, not unpleasant. I for one enjoyed it very much. However, I know how much you value your professional integrity and I should never have allowed myself to persuade you to cross the line from work colleague to lover –”
He took a deep breath and held it. Sylvie’s stomach turned over in response and she clasped her hands in her lap. He was excusing himself in order to save her feelings.
“Jean-Luc, it wasn’t just you. It took two of us, and I was as guilty as you. I’m just as happy as you to forget the whole thing and carry on as before, if it would make you feel better.”
He let out his breath and the tension fell away from him. He stretched out a hand to cover Sylvie’s. “Bien. Friends again?”
Sylvie gave his hand a swift stroke with her thumb and smiled her agreement. “Friends.”
15 : Pomerol, the du Lamond family home
Now that the air had cleared between them, at least on the surface, they settled back into their old companionship and the journey passed pleasantly. The roads were busy with pre-Christmas traffic and the weather was dismal with low visibility. Jean-Luc had to concentrate and so they didn’t talk much. At midday, Jean-Luc drove off the motorway and found a restaurant in the nearest town. They had a good lunch and were soon back on the road up to Bordeaux and Pomerol.
As they neared Bordeaux, they drove through miles and miles of vineyards, stretching out in perfect parallel lines to the horizon. The vines were bare and pruned ready for the spring. Nearing Bordeaux, they joined the ring road, which skirted the west side of the city and crossed over the mighty Garonne. North of the city, they sped on to Libourne where the road bridged the Dordogne. The village of Pomerol was not much further on. Jean-Luc turned off at a sign for Église St. Michel. The long drive cleaved its way through yet more rows of vines, Raoul’s this time said Jean-Luc, until it passed through gates and down a long avenue of pollarded lindens.
It was nearly six by the time they pulled into the large graveled parking area, in front of a traditional Périgordine country house of three stories, with a mansard roof and limestone quoins. Sylvie hung back in the car waiting for Jean-Luc to show the way. Normally a confident self-assured young woman, she felt a little awed by the grandeur and history of the house, and the surrounding esta
te.
While she hesitated, a tall elegant woman with a chin-length pageboy bob of silver gray glided down the stairs accompanied by a couple of large russet-colored dogs. Jean-Luc let go of the car door he was holding open for Sylvie, and strode to meet her, picking her up in his arms and swinging her around before lowering her gently to the ground again. She reached up to take his face in her hands, searched his face and gave him a double bise.
The dogs snuffled round him, trying to attract his attention. He made a big fuss of them and turned to Sylvie. “This is Solomon and Sheba. Aren’t they lovely?”
Sylvie gave herself a mental shake, squared her shoulders, brushed a smile on her face and stepped out of the car to accept the welcome offered by a woman who could only be Jean-Luc’s grandmother. After all, it was not as if she was a prospective partner, bride or even a girlfriend; she was Jean-Luc’s work colleague invited to share the Christmas festivities with his family.
“Grand-mère, this is Sylvie Latour, my American colleague. Sylvie, my grandmother, Diane du Lamond.”
“Bonjour, Sylvie. Any friend of Jean-Luc’s is always welcome in our house. Viens, let me give you a kiss. We’ll leave Jean-Luc to sort out the luggage; that’s what strong young men are for … amongst other things.”
She took Sylvie by the arm and led her up the steps into the house, the dogs following along behind in a well-mannered fashion.
“Let me take you to your room where you can freshen up.” She preceded Sylvie up a wide oak staircase that wound round the interior of the house. Stopping at the first floor, she walked down to the end of an oak-floored passageway and opened a door on the right.
“Voilà, chérie. Here you are, my dear. You have a quiet room at the back. It has an adjoining door to Jean-Luc’s,” she added with a slow wink.
Waking the Wolf (Coup de Foudre) Page 11
