Read Chapter 33: The Decision

The words were already out of her mouth before she could second-guess them, and they landed on the dusty floor of the barn like stones dropped into still water.

“I’m not going to Paris.”

Julien stopped mid-stride, a coil of lavender rope in his hands from where he’d been tying bundles for tomorrow’s market stall. The late afternoon sun cut through the slats of the barn, striping his face in gold and shadow. He didn’t move for a long moment, and then he set the rope down with deliberate care.

“Say that again,” he said quietly.

Camille crossed the space between them. Her boots crunched on the dried herbs scattered across the ground—thyme, rosemary, the ghosts of a hundred bouquets. She stopped an arm’s length away, close enough to see the tension in his jaw, the way his hands hung loose at his sides as if he was bracing himself for something.

“I sent the reply this morning before I drove back,” she said. “Before the bridge, before all of it. I wrote the email in Grasse, and I couldn’t bring myself to hit send. So I sat with it all night. I watched the sun come up over the hills, and I realized I was waiting for someone to tell me what I wanted.”

“And what do you want?”

She reached for his hand. He let her take it, his palm warm and calloused, and she felt the slight tremor there—the tell he always tried to hide.

“I want to stay. I want to build something here. With you.” She squeezed his fingers. “I hit send on the decline at six a.m. before I got in the car. Le Verre Galant can find someone else.”

Julien exhaled, a long shuddering breath that seemed to carry three years of weight with it. He pulled her into his arms, his face pressed against her hair, and she felt the dampness of his shirt where it pressed against her cheek.

“I was so afraid,” he murmured into her hair. “When you drove off yesterday, I thought—I thought maybe that was it. Maybe you’d realize Paris was where you belonged, and I’d be here alone again, watching you leave.”

She pulled back just enough to look at him. “I told you before. The bridge changed everything. It wasn’t about running away anymore. It was about choosing where I wanted to land.”

He laughed, a wet sound that wasn’t quite joy and wasn’t quite relief. “You’re really staying.”

“I’m really staying.”

He kissed her then, a hard, fierce kiss that tasted like dust and lavender and the kind of hope she hadn’t let herself feel in years. When he pulled away, his hands framed her face.

“Then let’s make this place something extraordinary,” he said. “Not just a B&B. A destination. You said you wanted your own kitchen—what if it’s here? What if we turn the old stone building behind the house into a proper restaurant? A tasting menu built around the lavender, the honey, the lamb from the valley. A place people travel across France to find.”

Camille’s heart hammered. She’d dreamed of it—of course she had, late at night when the house was quiet and the future felt possible. But hearing him say it, seeing the fire in his eyes, made it real in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to believe.

“You’d really do that? With me?”

“I already told you I would. At the house in Grasse, I meant it. I meant every word. I want to build a future with you, Camille. Here, on this land, in this valley. I’m not afraid of the work. I’m only afraid of losing you.”

She kissed him again, lighter this time, a promise pressed into his lips. “Then we’ll do it. We’ll build it together.”

His phone buzzed on the workbench behind him. He ignored it, but it buzzed again, and then a third time, insistent.

“It can wait,” he said.

“It’s buzzing like it can’t,” she said. “Take it.”

He sighed and reached for the phone, his expression shifting as he read the screen. His face went pale, the color draining like water from a cracked pitcher.

“Julien?” She stepped closer. “What is it?”

He didn’t answer. He scrolled, his thumb moving jerkily, then stopped. When he looked up at her, his eyes were hollow.

“The bank,” he said. His voice was flat, as if the words were being spoken by someone else. “They called in the loan.”

“I know. You told me. We have a week.”

“No, Camille. They don’t want the seven days. They’ve accelerated the timeline. The notification I got this morning—it’s not a warning anymore. It’s a demand for immediate payment. Full balance. Due by Friday.”

The world tilted. “Friday? That’s four days from now. You said we had a week.”

“I was wrong.” He ran a hand through his hair, pacing across the barn floor. “The complaint about the ownership paperwork—it triggered a full audit. They’ve determined there’s a cloud on the title, which means they can call the entire note. And because the paperwork dispute is unresolved, they’re claiming the property is at risk. They don’t want the payments. They want the whole sum, or they foreclose.”

Camille’s mind raced. “How much?”

He told her. The number was big enough to steal the breath from her lungs.

“That’s—” She stopped. “That’s everything. The equity we’ve built, the renovations, the festival, all of it. You can’t raise that in four days. No one can.”

“I know.”

“What about the insurance settlement from the storm two years ago? The loan from your aunt?”

“Gone. Used it all to keep the doors open after my father died. The lavender fields were failing, the roof needed replacing, the B&B wasn’t generating enough income to cover the basic repairs.” He laughed bitterly. “I’ve been patching holes in a sinking ship, Camille. I just didn’t want to admit how deep the water was running.”

Camille stood in the middle of the barn, dust motes swirling in the shaft of dying light, and felt the fragile foundation she’d just built shift beneath her feet. She’d chosen this place. She’d finally, truly chosen it. And now it was being ripped away before she even had a chance to plant her roots.

“There has to be something,” she said. “Some way to fight it.”

“The complaint is the key.” Julien stopped pacing, his voice turning hard. “Someone filed a claim against the property’s title. If we can prove the ownership is legitimate—if we can show the paperwork is clean and the claim is baseless—the bank has to back off. They’re calling the loan because the title is in question, not because they actually want to foreclose. They’d rather keep collecting payments than own a lavender farm in the middle of nowhere.”

“Who filed the complaint?”

“I don’t know. The bank won’t tell me. But it has to be someone who knows the property laws, someone who knew exactly how to trigger a call on the loan.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “And someone who wanted to hurt us.”

A cold finger traced down Camille’s spine. She thought of the lawyer’s file in Grasse, still unopened in her bag. She thought of the key her father had left her, hidden in a box of memories.

“Maybe it’s not about the property at all,” she said slowly. “Maybe it’s about me.”

Julien looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“My father left me something. A key. A file from a Swiss lawyer. I didn’t understand it before, but now—” She pulled out her phone, scrolling to the photo she’d taken of the paperwork. “The lawyer’s name. He handles estate disputes. Property claims. I was going to open the file in Grasse, but the letters—I needed time. But what if the complaint that triggered the bank call is part of the same thing? What if someone is trying to stake a claim on my father’s property, and they’re using the B&B—using you—to get to me?”

Julien’s face went still. “Camille. Who would want to hurt you like this?”

She looked at him, and the answer surfaced in her mind like a dark fish breaking the water. She’d been running from one man for so long she’d almost forgotten the other one was still out there. Still watching. Still waiting for the moment she was foolish enough to give him a target.

“My ex-husband,” she said. “Antoine. He knows the property laws. He knows French finance. And he knows exactly how to use legal paperwork to destroy something he can’t control.”

The silence between them was heavy with the weight of coming war. Outside, the lavender fields swayed in the evening breeze, fragrant and beautiful and utterly blind to the storm gathering at their edges.

“Then we go to Grasse,” Julien said. “Tomorrow. We open that file, we see what your father left you, and we find out exactly what Antoine is trying to hide.”

Camille nodded, the decision settling into her bones like iron. “He’s been sabotaging me from the shadows. He thought he could destroy me after the divorce, and when I rebuilt myself here, he must have assumed I’d crumble.” She set her jaw. “He was wrong then, and he’s wrong now. Let’s give him exactly what he deserves.”