Chapter Forty-Five
Ashleigh – The Everdene Hotel, Loganbury
Ashleigh was in a complete daze. Olivier was here. He washere. In England and at the wedding. Had he got her message last night and come back?
She tried to look back over her shoulder, but it felt like half the guests at the wedding were now standing directly behind her. Beth had climbed up onto the stage, waving her beautiful bouquet of poinsettias in the air, so that the crowd whooped in anticipation. Ashleigh wanted to fight her way out but that would have spoiled the moment. She could wait two more minutes.
If he’d really come all the way from France to see her, he wasn’t going to disappear now.
This couldn’t really be happening, could it?
There was a solo drum roll and voices listed together to countdown: ‘Three, two, one.’
Beth threw the bouquet backwards over her head from the stage and there was a collective breath drawn in as it arced through the air. Ashleigh reached up automatically as it came towards her and all the women around her lifted their arms up too.
But it was netball class all over again as Ash, taller than the othersandin her heels, caught it easily.
Beth turned around and saw it was her, catching her eye and giving a shout of glee, clapping. Everyone else was turning towards Ash too, cheering and congratulating her. A sea of faces smiled at her and she gave the bouquet a little wave in the air and did an awkward bow, unsure what they were expecting her to do now.
And then people were shuffling out of the way, glancing behind them as someone cut through the crowd towards her. Ashleigh lowered her arm, her fingers aching as she gripped the stems tightly.
There he was.
Olivier came into view, tall and gloriously handsome in a dark suit, with an expression she seldom saw on his face: determination.
He moved past the final woman standing between them, Ashleigh thought it might be Lisa but she honestly couldn’t see anything but the way he was still moving towards her, his stride swift and purposeful, until there were no more steps to take. No more floor to cross. And yet he was still moving closer.
His hands came up to frame her face and his lips met hers, soft and warm, and it was all the gentleness she’d always expected from him. The tenderness of hundreds of kisses she’d dreamed about since that first time she saw him when they were barely teenagers.
Until they began melting and flowing into something new as the shock receded. All the years of yearning unleashed and bundled up into something more. She dropped the bouquet, reached out and slid her hands inside his jacket and tightened her fists around his shirt, his back beneath strong and so solid. His hands travelled down to her shoulders and he pressed closer; their mouths opened and it was less teenage fantasy and more adult desire sweeping through her, making her feel like this was a part of her she’d never discovered before; this vibrant ache and satisfaction and thundering, jubilant heart, all rolled into one.
He seemed to be falling as hard into it as she was, fingers tightening as they moved to her waist, searching deeper as sensation rushed through her, heady and making her temperature rise. His tongue touched hers and they were caught up, her senses full of him, their mouths dancing as their bodies had been that night at the club. Instinctive and full of hunger. Her nose was full of his scent, the dark and the sweet, and her mouth full of his taste. She was burning like a star, bright, full of fire.
They were never going to stop doing this. That’s what it felt like. Their rhythms were so in sync, they swayed back and forth, clinging harder and tighter, the kiss going deeper and deeper and still so sweet – he was so sweet and tender, even as it grew blurry and time thinned out.
‘Do it now,’ she heard Beth’s voice call out from somewhere at the edges of her consciousness.
‘But wasn’t it meant for later—’
‘No, do it now!’
And then there was a cheer going up around them and Ash really couldn’t ignore the reality of where they were anymore. In the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by wedding guests.
They both pulled back, just barely. She could see his eyes, so close, the glint of green in the hazel as he looked at her, even with his pupils blown up wide. And something soft and white drifted down and landed on the silky edge of his hair. She blinked as more appeared and they both tipped their heads back at the same moment to see it was snowing. Everyone around them was laughing and holding their hands out to catch the floating white flakes as they swirled all around them.
But…weren’t they under a marquee?
Olivier reached up and brushed a snowflake away from her eyelash, holding his finger out for her to see. ‘It’s foam.’ He laughed.
Ashleigh glanced to the edges and saw two special cannons spraying the fake foam snow over the crowd and laughed too, until she looked back at Olivier and even though they were in the middle of a faux snowstorm and a dance floor full of drunk, giggling people, it was like they were the only ones there.
‘You’re here. You’re really here.’ She put her hands up to his face, framing it like he’d framed hers and staring at him because, let’s face it, things were getting a little surreal.
‘I am. And I’m staying.’
‘You’restaying? You mean here at the wedding with me, or…?’
‘I’m moving to England. I have to work my notice for my papa back in Paris after Christmas, but then I’m moving here.’
