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For what? Being too busy with her own problems, her own life to recognise what was happening to him? He was not a child now; Eleanor was not his mother; she was not responsible for his feelings and the way he reacted to them; he was.
Watching Vanessa before he left, he was aware of the way her body was changing, of the way she was changing, turning from a child into a woman.
He and Julia had not planned to have children, she because of her career and he because of his own ambivalent feelings towards his own childhood and the problems he felt he had still not resolved, but once Vanessa was born he had been determined to be as good a father to her as he could be.
He had never felt physically entirely at ease with her, though, had never shared the easy closeness he had witnessed and envied in other fathers.
Now, witnessing the way she had been behaving towards Eleanor, seeing her surly deliberate aggression and recognising her deliberate attempts to humiliate and upset his second wife, he wondered how much he himself was responsible for her behaviour.
Very few children could ever happily accept their parents’ divorce, he knew and accepted that; teenagers were notoriously difficult to deal with even for their natural parents, and the anecdotal tales told of the horrors of stepmotherhood were legendary, but that didn’t stop him from feeling guilty when he saw the way Eleanor was struggling to establish a better relationship with Vanessa. Nor did it help knowing that he found it easier to deal with Eleanor’s sons than he did his own daughter. It was not that he didn’t love Vanessa; he did, but at times he also resented her for the problems she was causing between Eleanor and himself. And Eleanor for letting her?
Well, she seemed to have taken well enough to Sondra, and the American girl was tough enough to be able to handle her. She, unlike Eleanor, would not be hurt if Vanessa chose to reject her. She was far too tough for that.
* * *
Eleanor dressed carefully for her dinner date with Pierre Colbert, putting on a silk jersey Donna Karan wrap dress which she had had for several years, but which was still one of her favourites. The rich colour suited her skin, the cut emphasising with subtle elegance the feminine slenderness of her body; it was a dress which made her feel confident of herself as a woman, without being too overtly sexual. It was also, she admitted, a dress which discreetly flattered the ego of the man accompanying any woman who wore it, because it said so eloquently that she wanted to look good for him.
Not that she wanted to look good for Monsieur Colbert in any sexual sense; but, meeting him now on his own home ground, she had quickly discovered that he was a man to whom the opinion of others was very important; his home, a small, almost starkly elegant villa in what she had learned was one of the most sought-after areas locally, bore out that opinion.
As did his wife, whom she had met the first time she had visited their home. A small
, dark, extremely chic ex-Parisienne, she had been dressed in clothes which had undoubtedly come from one of the major couturiers; Jade would no doubt have been able to tell her exactly which one. The house, she had explained to Eleanor as she showed her around it, had been designed by a top French architect, the décor by an Italian interior designer, and although Eleanor had admired it she had admitted to herself that its cool starkness did not appeal to her anything like as much as the older, less elegant homes she had seen, with their sunlight-faded stuccoed walls, the open doors hinting invitingly at quiet, secluded patios filled with terracotta pots of tumbling geraniums, their shuttered windows concealing the cool dark rooms beyond them.
Arles itself and the surrounding countryside had entranced her, but Provence was a place for lovers, not for a solitary businesswoman.
Ideally too she would have much preferred to be staying at one of the small local hotels and not this luxurious but somehow unatmospheric place into which Monsieur Colbert had booked her.
Chiding herself for being ungrateful, she checked her make-up and hair. As André had subtly pointed out to her, it was the most expensive hotel in the area.
‘My uncle must think very highly of you indeed,’ he had told her, watching her. ‘And I am beginning to understand why. There is something very sexually provocative about a beautiful, intelligent woman,’ he had added softly.
There was also very definitely something provocative about a highly sophisticated and very good-looking flirtatious man, Eleanor had acknowledged wryly to herself, and if André had been merely a good-looking dilettante…
But he wasn’t. As she had quickly discovered, he had all of his uncle’s shrewdness and more, and she suspected that he was the one responsible for the carefully planned expansion of Monsieur Colbert’s originally quite small business.
Initially it had come as quite a shock to her when he had casually mentioned graduating from Harvard Business School.
‘My father is from a town on the French and Italian border,’ he had told her with a smile. ‘He has family in America. Where my uncle considers himself to be completely and solely French, I think of myself more as a citizen of the world.’
It was just as well that Monsieur Colbert had organised this final dinner to set the seal on their contract, Eleanor reflected as she picked up her bag. This afternoon, as she was walking with André, someone had backed into her, causing her to stumble slightly, and just for a moment, as André turned to steady her, just for a heartbeat of time while he looked down into her face and then very deliberately at her mouth…
She gave herself a small admonitory shake. Yes, it was perhaps just as well that she was not seeing André this evening.
Monsieur Colbert had told her that he would send a car and a driver to pick her up and take her to the restaurant, which was not situated in the town but in the hills beyond it, the favoured haunt of the very rich and famous who had made the area their home, he had informed her.
There was no doubt Monsieur Colbert considered that taking her to dinner there was a treat, but if Marcus were here with her he would have understood that she would much have preferred to dine somewhere less ostentatious, somewhere where both food and décor were simple and reflected the countryside.
As she walked into the foyer, the first person she saw was André. He came towards her, smiling lightly.
‘A surprise, non? But I hope a pleasant one. I managed to persuade my uncle to invite me to join you, and I am now to act as your chauffeur.’
As he was talking to her, André was looking at her, and suddenly Eleanor wished that she had worn something other than the Donna Karan dress. Worn for a business meeting with a man who placed a good deal of importance on creating the right image, it was one thing; worn in the company of a man who had already made it subtly obvious that he was sexually interested in her, it was another.
Nothing was said, André was far too sophisticated and subtle for that, but the way he looked at her, the proximity of his body to hers as he escorted her out to his car, the way his touch lingered on her arm as he helped her into it, all carried a message that he was well aware of the discreet sensuality of her appearance and that he was responsive to it.
* * *
The restaurant was everything Eleanor had expected and a little bit more; surprisingly, the food did have a very local flavour, the chef Paris-trained but originally a local boy who had returned to his home to adapt the skills he had learned in Paris to reflect the best of the local cuisine.
