Annie West - Rags To Riches - His Wish, Her Command - The Last Summer of Being Single / An Enticing Debt to Pay / A Navy SEAL's Surprise Baby

‘Oh, I promise,’ Seb replied earnestly, and Dan looked at him, nodded once and passed him the mouse so that he could concentrate on holding his beaker of milk with both hands.

It had been a very long time since Seb had seen such a decrepit piece of equipment with the processing speed of a small slug. In fact his mobile phone had better connections.

Just as Ella was bringing the pan of eggs towards the table, Seb pushed back his chair. ‘Back in a moment, please start without me.’

In fact it took him a good few minutes to jog up to his room, slip back to the kitchen with his laptop and forward the email to himself so that Dan could read the message on the laptop instead of the TV screen.

‘Here you are, Dan.’

‘Where’s the clicky mouse? ‘

‘Inside. You press on here instead. And that little box sticking out of the side means that I can connect to the Internet wherever I go in the world.’

Dan’s eyes widened in delight. And he yelled out loud and clapped his hands together as a brightly coloured photo of a woman smiled back at him with a dramatic backdrop of ice and mountains.

‘Look, Mum—it’s Aunty Nicole.’

Ella took a second to spoon the creamy scrambled eggs onto ham and toasted sourdough bread on Seb’s breakfast plate, then lifted the hot pan away from Dan’s head and peered over his shoulder.

‘It certainly is. Look at that lovely hat she is wearing! Thank you, Seb. That was very thoughtful. Please. Feel free to read the message. It’s not private.’

Dan nodded several times as he chewed and mumbled his thanks through a full mouth.

Seb smiled back. ‘You are most welcome.’ And then his smile faded. ‘She’s not due back in Paris until Monday evening, and then plans to fly south late Tuesday.’

He sat back and pursed his lips. ‘Well, that’s a shame. I was hoping to see Nicole but I have to fly home late Monday.’

Seb glanced up at Ella. ‘My apologies, Mrs Martinez, but in that case there is no reason to stay here any longer. I’ll drive back to Montpellier later this morning.’

Dan’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘You have to leave? Already?’

Ella kissed the top of Dan’s head, her hands on his shoulders, but the smile had faded from her mouth. ‘Don’t you remember what Aunty Nicole said? This is Seb’s work. He lives in Australia and that is a long way from here. Now. Time to check on Milou and get ready for school. Okay?’

Dan nodded furiously while sliding off his chair, a pancake clutched in one hand, but stopped to pat Seb on the arm.

‘Can I send you a mailey message on the

‘puter? Please? Can I?’

‘Sure,’ Seb replied, between mouthfuls, and then shot a glance towards Ella. ‘If it’s okay with your mum.’

Ella looked from Seb to Dan, then grinned. ‘Maybe later.’

Ella sat down opposite Seb as soon as Dan had skipped up the staircase and exhaled loudly before she poured two cups of fragrant coffee.

‘I am so sorry about that,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Dan seems to love anything to do with computers and technology. I have no idea where he gets that from.’

Then she looked up at him with a faint smile. ‘I am sorry that you have to leave so soon. I know Nicole will be very disappointed to have missed you. She was so looking forward to having you here.’

Seb took a long sip of the delicious coffee, and savoured the aroma and flavour with a satisfied sigh.

‘As am I, but I do have a question. You are clearly an excellent cook, Ella, but you are also a busy mum. I’m surprised that Nicole asked you to organise her birthday party. That’s a lot of work for one person.’

Seb reached into a pocket and pulled out his personal organiser. ‘If it helps, I could make amends for my absence by arranging for an events management company to take care of the party. I would be happy to do it.’

Ella replied with several quick shakes of the head.

‘Thank you, but no, Seb. Nicole didn’t ask me to organise her birthday. I volunteered. I asked her to give me the chance to do it.’

Just as Ella was about to tell him the long list of reasons there was a sharp knock on the kitchen door and a small dark-haired older woman with bow knees sauntered in, nodded at Seb, deposited a basket of what looked like apricots on the kitchen floor, then kissed Ella on each cheek before heading back to the breakfast table.

Ella’s friend was wearing blue dungarees and old boots set off with a jaunty wool scarf. She leant against the sink and slurped down the coffee as Ella dived into the box.

‘Oh, these are fantastic!’ Ella squealed in perfect French with enough of the local accent that Seb could not help but be impressed. Unless you had been born and raised in this area, most people did not notice the subtle differences between the dialects in the different towns of the Languedoc. But Ella seemed to have picked it up perfectly.

Then she looked up and remembered that Seb had no clue as to who their visitor was.

‘Oh, sorry. Introductions. Yvette. Do you remember the Castellano family who used to live here? This is Sebastien Castellano visiting from Sydney.’

‘Of course I remember,’ Yvette replied and nodded once. ‘You’re Helene’s son. Used to play football with my boys after school when we had the farm.’ She scanned his business clothing for a few seconds before adding, ‘I heard that you’ve done well for yourself.’ Then she slurped down what was left of the coffee, grabbed another pancake and waved one hand in the air with a friendly goodbye and was gone before Seb had a chance to reply.

‘What was that all about?’ Seb asked in a dazed voice.

‘Actually that was quite a speech for Yvette,’ Ella replied. ‘The forecast is for a mistral storm over the weekend and I need to bring in the cherries today or risk losing them.’

She stopped rummaging around inside the basket and glanced back towards the kitchen door before whispering in English, ‘Yvette is a wonderful babysitter and totally brilliant with the garden, but I am a bit worried that she’ll try to help me out from the top of a wobbly ladder in the orchard, so, would you mind doing me a huge favour?’

Ella licked her lips a couple of times. ‘Could you keep Yvette talking and away from ladders until I get back from the school run? I don’t want any accidents, but I promise that I won’t be long and you can get on your way the minute I get back.’

Then she gave him a lopsided grin. ‘I was forgetting! This is your chance to catch up with all of the gossip. Won’t that be the best fun?’

BEING interrogated by Yvette for almost an hour about every detail of where he had been, what he had studied, what he had done and where he had travelled in the past eighteen years had not been what Seb called fun.

And she had made him work. By the time Ella wheeled her bicycle around the corner of the house, he had emptied three wheelbarrows of plant clippings, heard potted histories of most of his old schoolmates and made rash promises to welcome assorted members of Yvette’s extended family to Sydney.

So he was more than happy to hand over the reins to Ella, who vanished into the kitchen with Yvette the minute she got back, leaving him trapped outside on the patio.

At last! It was finally time to get packed and on his way back to the business world he understood.

So he had to find a way into the house that did not involve going through the kitchen. The fastest way would be to sneak in through the sitting room and what had been his mother’s salon.

Sebastien glanced through the open patio windows of the long wide room and stopped dead in his tracks—his feet frozen to the floor.