Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes)

Thirteen

SNOW

We have breakfast at a rickety wooden table under the shade of a massive old oak tree. There are croissants, pastries, cold country butter, homemade jams, and slices of watermelon. An unsmiling Madam Chevalier pours thick, strong coffee into small cups for us. It is too bitter for me, but Shane has no trouble downing his. I decide to stick with orange juice. When she goes back into the house, I whisper to Shane, ‘Is she in a bad mood?’

‘Nope. She’s always like that,’ he says unconcernedly, and bites cleanly into a croissant.

‘Really? Why?’

He shrugs. ‘Fuck knows. Probably disapproves of what I’m doing to the grounds.’

I stare at him. ‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Snow,’ he explains patiently, ‘this woman cooks using a recipe book that is one hundred years old. As far as I’m concerned, she can be as sour as she likes. Don’t judge until you try her Soupe à l’Oignon Gratinée.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t care how good a cook she is; I don’t think I could ever live with disapproving staff.’

He grins roguishly. ‘Here’s something you might not yet have picked up: Madam secretly likes me.’

‘Shane Eden, you are incorrigible.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he says with a low chuckle.

After breakfast, the elderly man I had seen pruning the bushes ambles toward us with a hearty smile plastered to his ruddy face. Shane introduces us, then tells me that Monsieur Chevalier is taking us to Cannes’ indoor market. He is a much friendlier chap than his wife, and, because he doesn’t speak a word of English and Shane’s French seems to be pretty basic, he compensates with a lot of nodding and grinning. We get into his beat-up truck and he drives us to Forville Market.

It is a large red-brown building that oddly reminds me of the Red Fort in Delhi. Inside, it is vast and cool. Vibrant with shoppers and a seemingly inexhaustible array of produce, it is a treat for the senses. There are stalls dedicated just to mushrooms! All kinds, shapes, colors, and scents. Other stalls specialize in dried meats, fruit, flowers, vegetables, cheese, wine, olives, pastries, bread, spices, honey. And everything looks so fresh and clearly locally produced. It is the opposite of the sterile environment of the supermarket where everything is sanitized, homogenized, and sold under a plastic covering.

Shane buys the ingredients for our dinner: a rack of lamb, baguette sticks, onions, vegetables, pineapple. The sellers all seem to know and like him. One asks about the

fireflies and says he wants to bring his son to see them during the week. He tells Shane mournfully that the fireflies have stopped coming to his land. He blames the pesticides.

When we get outside, Monsieur Chevalier packs everything into the back of his truck. The plan is for him to drop us off at Le Suquet, a quirky, hilly town overlooking a harbor, before setting off to Saumur to deposit the market produce with his wife.

Le Suquet is the old part of the city so it is full of quaint, narrow streets full of old-fashioned shops. It is charming, and I fall in love with it, but it is here that I notice that women simply can’t stop staring at Shane. Everywhere we go, he gets ogled at. And I mean really ogled at. When we stop at a little café with tables spilling out into the sideway and order pissaladière, a beautifully simple and delicious pizza with onion, olives, and anchovies, the waitress actually totally ignores me, and flirts outrageously with Shane.

‘Are you a model?’ she asks him in English.

He says something to her in French, which makes her glance at me, shrug, and start taking the order.

‘Well,’ I say when she walks away, ‘she certainly thinks you’re God’s gift.’

He crosses his arms. ‘Says the woman who’s got most of the population of Le Suquet staring at her like zombies with working dicks.’

I snort. ‘Zombies with working dicks? Excuse me? There were girls walking backwards after they passed us just to keep admiring the other side of you.’

‘Well, darling, while you were looking at the women walking backwards, I’ve had to endure the painful sight of men blatantly stripping you with their fucking eyes.’

I lean back. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Damn right I am. It’s fucking annoying.’

My eyes widen. Can it really be that Shane Eden is jealous? The thought is like a bolt of lightning in my heart. ‘Are you jealous?’ I ask incredulously.

‘Yes,’ he admits gloomily.

‘I love it when you look all brooding and moody. It’s kinda sexy.’

He perks up. ‘Did I just hear you describe me as sexy?’