Royally Seduced - By Marie Donovan Page 0,17
spoken for, but there are several fields available that would be perfect for her project. Madame Simone Laurent is the master perfumer of the House of Laurent. She would be thrilled to work with your sister. I will inform the farm manager about the lavender.”
“Ah, is that still Jean-Claude?”
“Of course.” Jean-Claude had worked for his father and had even been a young worker when Jack’s grandfather had been alive.
“Stevie will be sure to come to Provence herself. She adores Jean-Claude and his wife.”
“Yes, Marthe-Louise is still housekeeper there. She loves having young women around whom she can teach how to cook all the Provençal favorites.”
“Well, you’ll have to get on the ball and bring her a young woman to teach.”
Jack gave a wry smile. Standing in the crowded bar of the Paris-Avignon TGV wasn’t the place to explain that he was indeed taking a young woman to Provence. Frank and George wouldn’t understand a brief explanation. “When would I have the chance to meet a nice girl? I don’t work as fast as you, George,” he joked. George had met his fiancée one day and invited her to Italy the next.
Jack realized with a jolt that he had met Lily yesterday morning and invited her to Provence yesterday afternoon. That put him one up on George.
And he realized he wanted to get back to Lily. “Thank you for checking up on me, mes amis. I will be in touch over the lavender.”
They said their goodbyes and Jack hung up. He dumped his empty orangeade bottle in the trash and carried a full one back to Lily. She was staring at her laptop, her honey-blond hair escaping her ponytail. Although she was typing with both hands, she clenched a pen between her teeth.
When she saw him, she looked up and smiled at him around the pen. She quickly spit it out and gave him a wry grin. “Old habit. I was an inveterate pencil chewer until I gave that up—too many splinters. But I still seem to write better this way. Strange, huh?”
He sat down across from her, charmed at her little quirk. “What are you writing?”
“My impressions of the TGV, a couple video clips I took with my phone. I hope to get some travel articles published from this trip. I’ve been publishing a few entries and photos on a blog.”
“You’re blogging?” Still leery of his run-in with the press, Jack was reluctant to be a feature.
She must have read his demeanor. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m only publishing photos of the attractions and a couple of myself when I was able to find somebody to take my photo.”
Lily would be a huge attraction for any blog, especially one with male readers. “I would like if you don’t show me in those photos. The organization I work for does not like its workers to have online photo presences. It makes us more attractive to would-be kidnappers.” It was true. As a French nobleman, he would be the jackpot for any ragtag band of outlaws who’d scraped up an automatic weapon.
He’d dodged the bullet so far but would have to see if his foray onto the social pages would make the aid directors nervous.
Her eyes widened. “My gosh, I never thought of how dangerous that would be. Don’t worry, I won’t show you. And I mentioned you briefly once but called you Pierre as a pseudonym.”
“Pierre?” He chuckled. That actually wasn’t one of his names. “That was my great-uncle’s name. He lived down the road from us and was a true Provençal character.”
“Really?”
“But of course. He had his own vineyard and made vats of incredibly strong wine. He also had several mangy-looking hound dogs and would go into the hills in the winter to look for truffles—not the chocolate kind, but the real truffle. A special, underground fungus that only dogs and pigs can sniff.”
Lily nodded. “They are quite good shaved over pasta. I’ve always wanted to try the Italian white truffle, but those are terribly expensive, even more than the black.”
Now, how did she know so much about truffles? Most thought truffles were chocolate bonbons. And many did not care for their earthy, fungal scent and taste. “I’ve never tried the white truffle myself.”
She grinned at him. “We’ll save our money and chip in. Last I saw, they were about $10,000 per kilo.”
He winced. “Ah, so expensive.”
“I know.” She tapped the back of his hand with the dry part of her pen. “Between me, a writer, and you, an aid worker,