Chapter Seven

Lexie was stirring a tin of tomatoes into some browned mince when her phone rang. She made a grab for it, splattering Bolognese sauce on the stove as she did so. She swore under her breath, then glanced over at the living room to check the girls hadn't heard. Neither of them were paying her the slightest bit of attention, Bree watching Encanto for the hundredth time and Bella on her iPad. It was nice, though, to have someone to cook for. Despite the worry that she'd do something wrong, she definitely preferred it when the girls were around. But they were only going to be here another five days, and then they were going back to London.

She looked down at her phone, stirring with one hand. It was an unknown number calling, but she recognized the Bath area code. It could be Theo. Her stomach squirmed unpleasantly. She didn't want to answer if it was. So she let it ring out. He could email her if he needed to. But seconds after it stopped ringing, it started up again—the same number. She bit her lip. It might not be Theo. And surely it must have been something important for whoever it was to be this insistent.

"Hello, Lexie speaking." She kept her voice formal, businesslike.

"Lexie, love, it's Ange. I'm calling from your dad's office. Your office, I should say," she added pointedly.

"Ange!" Lexie almost dropped the wooden spoon in the sauce, picked it up again. "Hello! How are you?" Even as a warm rush of relief washed through her on hearing it wasn't Theo, she felt heat around the base of her neck, knew her voice was too high, too enthusiastic. She should have called Ange before now—at least to say thank you. Ange had been kind to her, defended her—and she'd scarpered without a word.

"I'm fine, though we could do with some brighter weather here. I hear you're in the Alps?"

"Ah, yes."

"Well, good."

"Good?"

"Yes. You're not too far from France, then?"

Lexie frowned. This was really not where she'd thought this conversation would go. Wasn't Ange just ringing to give her an update of some kind? Or even, potentially, to tell her she needed to come back and properly fulfill her side of the bargain? "Well no," Lexie said slowly. "I'm not too far away, I suppose."

"Excellent. The Fête du Citron starts at the end of this week. In Menton. Which is in France."

"Um, that's nice…" Lexie stuck a fork into the pasta—bows, because Bree only liked bows—to check if it was done. "That's one of the holidays you organize, right?"

"We organize, you mean."

"Right. Is there something going on with it? Something I should, er, know about?" Not that she had any idea what she should know about it. She had no idea what would constitute a "development" in all honesty—even if she had insisted Theo keep her up to date on those.

"It's the holiday you said you'd pick, isn't it?" Ange continued. "When Theo showed you around the office."

"I…Well, yes, I suppose so." Though she'd mainly said that to show she didn't need to read through the brochures. Had Ange overheard—or had Theo told her?

"Good. I've bought you a plane ticket from Zurich to Nice. You can get to Zurich pretty easily, I'm sure?"

"I—"

"And then from Nice it's around just over an hour bus journey. If you keep the receipt for the ticket the company can pay you back."

"Ange." Lexie tried to make her voice firm as she gave the Bolognese another stir. "What do you mean you've bought me a plane ticket? Why?"

"You said you wanted to go, didn't you? And the company can pay for it. So, consider it a nice little holiday."

Lexie let out an incredulous laugh; she could tell Ange was someone who could always get her way. "I can't just go to France next week!" Although actually, she could. She didn't have the girls, and the chalet would be fine left unattended if she wasn't away for too long. But that wasn't really the point.

"It's only for a couple of days. I thought you might like to see what the company does, and who doesn't like a free vacation? And Mike, the other director, will be there—he's said he can show you around so you can get the VIP experience."

"I don't know, Ange. Did Theo tell you…I mean, we've sort of agreed I should take a back seat for the year, and he might feel like this is stepping on his toes. I appreciate the offer, really, I do, but—"

"Your dad left the company to both of you, Lexie." Ange was good at the stern voice, you had to give her that. It was enough to make Lexie stop her protests. "Now, I know you have a life, and I know you have commitments in Austria, but the least you could do as an owner of the company is see what we're all about. I've booked you into the hotel and Mike has arranged the itinerary so you can join in."

"I—"

"The contract is very clear, from what I understand. You must both participate in the running of the business while you own it."

Lexie said nothing. Was Ange threatening her? Suggesting that she'd report Lexie if she didn't go on this trip? But she wouldn't go through with it, even if it was a threat; Lexie was sure of that. Almost sure.

The water covering the pasta started boiling over the pan, and Lexie turned the heat down quickly. "Look, Ange, I'm in the middle of something. I'll call you back, OK?" If in doubt, play for time.

"Wonderful. I've got your email address from Theo. I'll send everything over to you."

"That's not to say I—" But Ange had hung up.

—

Later, once the girls were in bed, Lexie called Fran.

"She just wants me to drop everything and head to France at the drop of a hat—I mean, can you believe that?"

"We-ll," Fran said, drawing out the word, "you said yourself that things were boring when the girls aren't there."

"Yes, but…" Lexie let out an impatient breath. "That's not the point, is it?" She leaned against one of the French doors. It was dark outside, but you could still just about make out the mountains in the glow of the nearby bar lights.

"As far as I can tell she's offering a free holiday—why not take it?"

"I doubt it'll really be free. She'll rope me into something, I'm sure of it. I'd admire her for the way she gets things done if she wasn't currently using that ability against me."

"Look, I know you don't want to get involved in the company, but she's right—shouldn't you at least find out more about it, before you sell it? The more informed you are, the more you can make sure you get what you deserve in a sale. And wasn't it partly that guy—?"

"Theo." She said his name like a growl.

"Right, Theo. Wasn't it him making life difficult that put you off in the first place?"

"It wasn't only about him." Richard's name hung in the balance—but Fran had been tactfully avoiding talking about him, no doubt waiting for Lexie to be the one to bring it up. Something that Lexie appreciated.

"Still. He won't be there, will he?"

"No," Lexie said slowly. "Ange said Mike would show me around. He's another director, but I haven't met him yet."

Lexie let the curtains fall over the French doors. Inside, the fire was crackling in the corner and Lexie was warm enough to be walking around on the wooden floors barefoot. And she needed to walk right now. There was a curdling in her stomach making her jittery, and she wasn't totally sure where it was coming from.

"I'm just saying, it's a free trip to France. I'd take it."

Lexie walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge. There was still half a bottle of that fancy white wine Nicole liked to drink sitting there, open. Nicole had offered her a glass last night—would she mind if Lexie poured herself one now?

Fuck it. She got down a glass, unstoppered the wine. She could always replace it, if need be. It would only cost a week's worth of wages.

It was the idea of going on one of her dad's trips, she realized. That's where the jittery feeling was coming from. She'd spent a lot of time stewing over being left with half a company to run and feeling like she was set up to fail, and a lot of time being pissed at Theo, but she had tried not to think too much about her dad, and what he'd built. Tried to push away the fact that it all came from a tradition he'd started with her when she was a kid, only to drop her when he found something better. And she'd done a pretty good job of that, so far—staying focused on the practicalities of it all. So she wasn't sure she wanted to be confronted with it face on like this. She didn't want to condone what he had done by going on this trip.

"Maybe you should make a list of pros and cons," Fran was saying. "For going to France, I mean."

"Sure, I'll get right on that." She poured herself a glass of the wine, took a sip. And yes, it was nice—but she honestly couldn't tell the difference between this and a good supermarket Sauvignon. "Anyway, tell me how you are. How's work?"

"Urgh, work is work, let's not talk about it. I don't think I realized how boring being a solicitor would actually be. And I convinced myself it would get better once I moved up the levels a bit, but here I am, up the levels, and it's still just as bad."

"Yes, must be terrible earning all that money."

"The other day this woman came in crying because her marriage was over and she didn't know what to do, and I had to sit down and talk her through the legal options and I just felt evil. Evil, Lexie. I am one of those evil lawyers now—how did that happen?"

"You're not evil. Besides, this is what you've been working for, for literal years." Lexie could remember Fran declaring she'd be a lawyer when they were only sixteen, and she had been absolutely set on it since then, complete conviction all the way—until the last six months or so.

"What? Listening to couples arguing? Feeling powerless in the face of custody battles? Or listening to people cry at my desk as they wonder how things ended up like this and then telling them exactly how much worse it can get before I charge them for preventing that?"

Lexie's stomach squirmed. Fran didn't talk much about specific cases—client confidentiality or whatever—but occasionally she'd say something that made Lexie think of her parents' divorce. And right now, she supposed, she was thinking of her parents more than usual. They must have gotten a lawyer to at least draw up the paperwork, but there had been no big court battles, no arguments over who got what. It was a good thing—Fran had told her that once, over wine, and Lexie knew it was—she wouldn't have wanted her mum to go through what Fran's clients did. But the fact that her dad had walked away without looking back sometimes made Lexie wonder how much he'd ever cared about any of it. How much he'd ever cared about her.

She took another sip of wine. "Why don't you change specialty or whatever—can't you do that?"

"What and go into property law or something equally boring? No thanks. I think when I imagined myself as a lawyer I had images of standing up in court fighting for justice, but I sort of got sidetracked. I blame American TV. That and a ton of university debt I now need to justify."

Lexie laughed. She missed Fran. Yes, she had friends here, but it wasn't the same as friends you knew in and out. "OK, so work's shit."

Fran snorted out a laugh too. "Yes. Work's shit. But…"

"But what?"

"I may have met a guy…"

"Ooh, do tell." Which was all Fran needed to start gushing about a man she'd met on a dating app. But the thing was, as much as Lexie hated to be skeptical, Fran did this quite a lot. It often baffled Lexie how much hope Fran routinely had about relationships, considering she was a divorce lawyer. She had a tendency to fall head over heels very quickly, then inevitably he would break it off and she was left brokenhearted. The fact that she was able to pick herself up and try again and again was something that both flummoxed and impressed Lexie.

"What about you?" Fran asked. "How's your guy?"

"Mikkel? He's not my guy."

"No, of course not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, nothing."

"Free and single is what I need right now," Lexie said firmly.

"Right, as opposed to all those other times you've been in serious, bogged-down relationships."

Lexie huffed out a breath. "It's better this way round than overly clingy. Remember Ben?"

"I thought Ben was sweet."

"Ben cried when I broke up with him," Lexie said, deadpan. "After we'd only been on about six dates."

"Well, maybe he just really liked you. Anyway, he wasn't as bad as Toby. Remember Toby? He was the one who broke up with me because I wasn't good enough at role-play—after about the sixth date."

"And people ask me why I'm still single, what with all the catches out there." Then she sighed, thinking about her phone bill. "I better go. Are you still going to try to come out here?"

"Yes, if I can ever get time off from all the ruining of marriages I'm doing."

Lexie rolled her eyes. "Bye, Fran." She hung up, then padded to the living room, cocking her head down at Bella.

After checking they were at least trying to get to sleep, Lexie checked her emails. Ange had sent a plane ticket, hotel information, and instructions on how to get to Menton from Nice. According to this, Lexie was supposed to leave next Friday.

She drummed her fingers against the granite countertop in the kitchen as she finished her wine. Maybe Fran was right. Maybe she was overthinking it. So what if Ange had some grand plan here? She could still say no to whatever it was.

So she sent Ange a quick email back.

Thanks, Ange. I'll be there.