Dan groaned and lay on his back, watching her walk, naked, across to the bathroom. “I hope you don’t expect me to concentrate on anything today.”

“Just on me,” she called over her shoulder before she shut the door and ran the bath.

Twenty-one

As Jess drove off in the jeep, Dan raised an eyebrow at her.

“You’re going the wrong way.”

“We have to make one stop,” she said.

“Okay,” he smiled. “I’m in your hands.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she said and he laughed.

His laugh turned to silence and she became aware of the tight clenching of his jaw when she pulled up outside Victorine’s school.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I saw her yesterday afternoon. I can come back and see her later.”

“I’m sure.” She didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain that she knew how much he missed the girl, that she knew he wrote to her twice a week and that he constantly questioned whether he’d done the right thing in putting her into boarding school so young. She didn’t say that she knew he would ordinarily be spending the day with Victorine and that, after the night they’d had, the joy they’d found in one another’s arms, it didn’t seem fair to keep that joy to themselves.

But she knew he understood when he leaned over and kissed her. “Thank you,” he said.

He jumped out of the jeep and returned a few minutes later with Victorine, who had her arms wrapped around his neck as if she would never let him go.

“Jess!” she cried, wriggling out of his arms and scampering over to the car to wrap her arms around Jess’s neck as well. “You both came!”

“We did,” Jess smiled and knew she’d done the right thing.

“A whole day with you and Papa!” Victorine beamed.

Jess’s throat hurt and Dan caught her eye. “She’s been calling me that since she came to Paris,” Dan said, voice husky. “The teachers say it’s because she’s with lots of other girls who talk about their papas.”

“And because you’re more like a father to her than anyone else,” Jess said, squeezing his hand and taking the opportunity, while Dan settled Victorine on his lap in the front of the jeep, to wipe her eyes.

There were few vehicles on the road and it took only a couple of hours to reach the chateau. They never once ran out of things to say, especially Victorine, who filled them in on every minute detail of each day that had passed since she’d started at school.

“With a memory like that and such attention to the particulars, she’ll be following in your footsteps before you know it,” Dan said to Jess. “Then I’ll have two reporters to contend with.”

“And you’ll love every minute of it,” Jess said with a grin and if Victorine hadn’t been in the car, she would have pulled over and kissed him, such was the way he looked at her.

At Lieu de Rêves, they bumped along the once sweeping drive. It was overgrown, as it had been last year, with angelica and soapwort, wild pansies and wild orchids painting color into the landscape. The typical formality of a chateau garden had been lost through wartime misuse and neglect but Jess liked it all the more for the profusion of wildflowers and the wild plum and white mulberry trees, the oaks and sweet chestnuts that had been allowed to flourish untamed.