When Alain brought the children back inside and poured us both a glass of wine, I didn’t dare confess that I’d already helped myself.

‘You’re definitely tied up at La Cour des Roses tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. We have guests leaving and new arrivals due, I need to catch up with my own business, I have my dress fitting, and we have a guest meal. Sorry.’ I sipped my wine. ‘What are you planning to do?’

He hesitated. ‘I promised the kids I’d take them to the zoo.’

I stared at him. ‘Without me?’

I loved that place, ever since he’d taken me there when I was first getting to know him. It was where we’d shared our first kiss, and I could still remember every detail.

He winced. ‘Sorry, but it’s the easiest thing for me to do on my own with them. We’ll do it again all together some other time, I promise.’

Damping down disappointment, I said, ‘I’ll hold you to that, Alain Granger. Give my love to the gibbons.’

That extra glass of wine meant I spent the evening rather tipsy, and it was hard to say whether the warm glow I got from watching Alain engage with the children at supper and supervise their baths came from alcohol or emotion.

Alain was kind but firm; fun but drew a line when things got too giddy. When they were clean (unlike the sopping bathroom) and in nightclothes, they snuggled up to him on the sofa, Chloe insisting I sit beside her so she could hold my hand. Both heads flopped on Alain’s chest, sleepy as they listened to the book he read in French, Chloe’s little fingers pointing at her favourite pictures.

The idea that Alain would make a wonderful father entered my lightly intoxicated brain and wouldn’t leave. We’d spoken about starting a family sometime, but in vague terms. With such a swift engagement, both of us had perhaps been tentative about making solid plans so soon.

But the feeling I got now, watching him with Gabriel and Chloe, was so strong, it took my breath away. Maybe it was time to discuss it more seriously.

Alain led the half-asleep children up to the twin beds in his spare room. By the time he came back down, I was half-asleep myself, lost in a dream world of maternal brooding.

‘Move over, sleepyhead.’ He lifted my feet, eased himself onto the sofa and put them back across his lap. ‘What are you dreaming about?’

I gathered my courage. ‘I was thinking what a great father you’ll be.’

‘You were?’ A smile spread across his face. ‘Really?’

‘Really. You’re great with those two.’

He gave a modest shrug. ‘It’s easy for a couple of days. What it’d be like twenty-four seven …’

I snuggled closer. ‘Would you like to find out?’

‘Are you propositioning me?’ he joked, then gave me a long, considered look. ‘Are you saying you’d like to find out?’

‘Yes.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I know we haven’t discussed it much, what with the wedding and everything, but maybe it’s time we did.’

He bent his head to touch his lips to mine. ‘I didn’t want to pressure you into anything. I felt like I’d already rushed you into getting married.’ His thumb played with my engagement ring. ‘You’re still building up your business. Busy at Rupert’s.’

‘That’s all true. But?’

‘You’re only thirty-two, Emmy, but I’m thirty-seven now. Call it vanity, but I’d like to become a dad before I go grey.’

I gave him a wicked smile and stroked one of the very few silvering strands in his brown hair. ‘Too late. And?’

He kissed me again. ‘You and I are so right together. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to have children with you. So why wait?’ When my eyes widened, he laughed. ‘I don’t mean now, this minute. We have a wedding and a honeymoon to get through. You need to move into this place. But I do mean in the near future.’ He stroked my cheek. ‘What do you think?’

With the serious turn the conversation had taken, suddenly I was stone-cold sober. And I was pleased to note that it didn’t make a blind bit of difference to how I felt.

‘I think we should get started soon,’ I agreed.

His smile and the love in his eyes were the only reply I got, but they told me everything I needed to know.

After a few moments, I elbowed him in the ribs and eyed him quizzically.

‘What was that for?’

‘I’ve been waiting for some cheesy chat-up line about how we’d better start practising.’

His lips twitched. ‘Do you need a chat-up line? I assumed that extra glass of wine you snuck before supper would do the trick.’

My mouth opened in a caught-out ‘oh’, making him laugh. And then his mouth was on mine, making it clear that no further verbal persuasion would be forthcoming.

‘What about the children?’ I gasped when I came up for air. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t.’

That made him pause. ‘I’ll check they’re fast asleep. We’ll have to stay under the sheets. We’ll have to stop if we hear anything. And you can’t make any noise whatsoever.’

My face must have been a picture.

‘Emmy, if we do start a family, we can’t not have sex for the next eighteen years. And you heard what Mum said – that it would be good practice for when we have our own.’

‘Oh, well, if your mother gave us permission …’

The following day was a long one, made worse by the knowledge that Alain was taking Gabriel and Chloe to the zoo without me.

At least my dress fitting went well. No alterations would be needed, and the ladies were ecstatic as they put the whole ensemble together. As I gazed in the mirror, I was pretty ecstatic myself, and I texted my mother to tell her so.

Driving back to La Cour des Roses, I couldn’t stop smiling. I had absolutely chosen the right dress. And the four-year-old little girl within me could connect with Chloe’s sentiments – for one day, I would look and feel like a princess.

I worked like a whirlwind until, mid-afternoon, Rupert forcibly sat me down at the kitchen table and brought me a glass of iced tea.

‘Emmy. Slow down. You’re doing too much.’

‘But we already lost some of the weekend to my parents, and I wasn’t here yesterday afternoon, and tomorrow I want to …’

‘I know. You want to spend time with the kids. I’d sympathise if you worked for some corporate dickhead who’d demote you with a single look. But you work for a kindly if occasionally grumpy boss who has more than a sneaking suspicion that you put in a darned sight more hours than he pays you for. As long as the paperwork’s up-to-date and the guest rooms are ready for new arrivals, he’ll be satisfied. Understood?’

I took a long drink to cool my parched throat and brushed stray hair from my eyes. ‘Yeah. Understood.’

‘Take a leaf out of Ryan’s book.’ He waved a hand towards the patio doors. Ryan was on his knees in the shade, tugging at weeds. ‘He works hard, but he paces himself. He stops for regular refreshments. He plans his work, so he’s in the shade when it’s too hot. Why don’t you do the same? Go to the den where it’s cooler. Get some work done on your own business. I don’t want you letting your own affairs get behind.’

I had to admit the idea appealed. With its leather-topped desk and captain’s chair, the leather two-seater sofa and its bookshelves piled high, ‘den’ was an appropriate word. I liked working in my own room at the upholstered chaise longue by the window, too, but it would be too warm there right now.

Rupert’s mobile rang and he glanced at the screen with a sigh. ‘Back in a mo.’

He scuttled off to his rooms, while I allowed myself three minutes with my cool drink.

‘Gloria,’ he explained when he came back, kneading his temples. His ex-wife’s verbal reaching out across the Channel always left him in need of headache medication.

I fetched him water and painkillers. ‘What did she want this time?’

‘More money, preferably. And less lawyer time, because it’s racking up quite a bill and digging into her spoils.’

‘What does she imagine you can do about that?’

‘Duh, Emmy. Give her exactly what she wants without going through the solicitors, obviously.’

‘Yeah, right.’ I stared at him in panic. ‘You won’t, will you?’

‘Not a matter of won’t. More a matter of can’t. My solicitor needs an extension on his mother-in-law’s bungalow, and apparently my fees are paying for it.’

I knew I should have thumped Rupert for telling Jonathan that our guests needed livening up a bit.

New arrival Greg was certainly going to do that. An overly jovial sort, he laughed at … well, at everything. As I drove to Alain’s the next day for our afternoon outing with the children, I winced as I remembered the way Greg’s raucous laughter had arrived in the kitchen for dinner before he did. And Greg didn’t half pack it away. Last night was the first night in a long time that Rupert had had to raid his wine rack for an extra bottle. And the more Greg had, the more hilarious he found everything. We were going to have to keep an eye on him, that was for sure.

When I arrived at Alain’s, Gabriel and Chloe had been wound into an excited frenzy, due to Alain keeping our destination a secret.

As he drove, the children clamoured to tell me about their day at the zoo.

‘I liked the monkeys best,’ Chloe announced decisively.

‘I liked the lions best,’ Gabriel said. ‘The boy lion roared really loudly while we were watching.’

I could have told him that it was outside the lions’ enclosure that his uncle had first kissed me, but I didn’t think I should. Oh, what the heck.

‘Shall I tell you a secret about the lions, Gabriel?’

‘Yeah. What?’

‘It was near there that Uncle Alain first kissed me.’

Alain snorted with surprised laughter, while I got a resounding ‘Eeugh!’ from Gabriel and an immediately copied one from Chloe.

‘Good job we didn’t take Aunt Emmy to the zoo with us yesterday, kids, eh?’ Alain said. ‘I might have had to do it all over again!’

With the children giggling, Alain parked up, and I recognised where we were. He’d brought me here a few months ago – a village of cave dwellings open to tourists.

‘Good choice,’ I murmured. ‘It’ll be quite a novelty for the children.’

That proved to be right on the button. Chloe and Gabriel gaped in awe as we began to explore, Alain explaining to them that the underground dwellings had been hewn from sandstone to shelter the people and their animals, while they farmed the land above.

As we walked around the place, brushing past ivy clambering down over the stone walls from above, rubbing our arms because of the chill away from the sun, Alain pitched his spiel just right, not complicating it with too many facts and figures. Simply to know that this place had been here for hundreds of years, that people had lived and worked here, some until just over a hundred years ago, was enough to get the children’s imaginations going.

The tools, furniture and photos of the last inhabitants helped those imaginations along as we wandered through barns, wine cellars (it was France, after all), bedrooms and living rooms with their ovens and fireplaces.

‘But what did they do here?’ Gabriel asked as we looked into a sparsely furnished room.

‘They had a hard working day,’ Alain explained. ‘At the end of it, they would be grateful to just eat and sleep.’

Gabriel nodded, but it was obvious that the concept of an evening without television and other distractions was quite beyond him.

‘Do you do other things after school, like a sport?’ I asked him.

‘I play football on Saturdays. I got really muddy once.’ He gestured from head to toe. ‘Mum wouldn’t let me in the house until Dad used the hose to get all the mud off me.’

Alain laughed. ‘Was it a warm day, at least?’

‘No, it was freezing!’ Gabriel shivered with the memory.

‘I do ballet,’ Chloe piped up, performing a pirouette to illustrate. ‘But when we do shows, we have to tie our hair in a bun, and mine won’t.’ She pulled at her corkscrew curls. ‘Mummy says it’s the knot fairy’s fault.’

‘The knot fairy?’

Chloe looked astonished at my ignorance. ‘Of course! She comes in the night and puts knots in my hair and Mummy can’t get them out in the morning and it hurts when she brushes it. Doesn’t she come to you in the night?’

I tugged at my straight hair. ‘Maybe she only comes to girls with curls.’

Chloe giggled at the accidental rhyme. ‘Do you think they had knot fairies here, hundreds of tears ago?’

‘I should imagine the knot fairies were much naughtier back then,’ I assured her. Along with the lice fairies and goodness knew what else, probably.

After we’d inspected the village hall and the chapel with its arches, we called it a day and headed for home, the children chattering away in the car about what they’d seen and planning a game of pretending-to-live-in-caves for a rainy day.

Back at Alain’s, I shoved pizza in the oven, then sat on the floor with Chloe to help with a wooden farm jigsaw she’d brought. Each animal had to be correctly named, and we had fun making all the different noises.

‘Did you know there are chickens at La Cour des Roses, where I live?’ I asked her when we’d finished clucking.

‘How many?’

I held up the correct number of fingers. ‘Six.’

‘Can I see them?’

‘You’ll be staying at La Cour des Roses with your mum and dad for the wedding, so I’ll show you them then. How’s that?’

‘Great! Do they lay eggs?’

‘Yes. That’s why my friend Rupert keeps them. He cooks the eggs for the guests who come to stay.’ I leaned in close and whispered, ‘But I’m not allowed to cook them, because I make a horrible mess and they taste like yellow rubber.’

Chloe wrinkled her nose, rolled over onto her back and giggled. It was too much of a temptation for Alain. From where he was sitting on the sofa, he reached out a foot and began to tickle her with his toes until she squealed and Gabriel threw himself on his back for the same treatment.

After pizza, I suggested hot chocolate in the animal mugs Alain had bought them at the zoo, and we curled up on the sofa while he read stories. They were soon sleepy little bunnies that made my heart melt.

It melted even more when Gabriel murmured, ‘Thanks for the hot chocolate, Aunt Emmy. You make it yummier than Uncle Alain.’

‘Yeah, thanks, Aunt Emmy,’ Chloe echoed.

That was the first time they’d called me that. Perhaps the time I’d spent with them this past couple of days and the impending wedding meant they saw me as a permanent fixture now. That was a nice thought.

We carried them to bed and tucked them in.

‘Can you tell us a story, Aunt Emmy?’ Gabriel asked as he snuggled under his duvet.

‘Yes, tell us a story, Aunt Emmy,’ Chloe echoed.

Alain grinned. ‘I’ll leave you to it, Aunt Emmy.’ He went downstairs.

‘Er. What kind of story?’ This wasn’t something I’d done since I told my little brother stories when we were young.

‘Something about animals,’ Chloe suggested. ‘Farm animals. Like in my jigsaw.’

I dredged my memory banks. ‘How about a story about three little pigs? Will that do?’

‘Yay!’

It was surprising how quickly it came back to me, although I sanitised it as best I could: none of the pigs got eaten like they had in the version I used to own, although there seemed no option but to give the wolf the sticky end he deserved.

They loved it, but by the time we’d done all the sound effects of the pigs building and the wolf huffing and puffing, it had made them more excitable than sleepy. Apparently, I still had a lot to learn about small children.

‘How many sleeps till your wedding?’ Gabriel asked as I tucked them in.

I had to think about that one. ‘Er. Including tonight? Twenty-two.’ Crumbs.

‘Are you excited? Like waiting for Christmas?’

I smiled. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Me too. ’Night.’

‘’Night.’

I kissed them both and went downstairs to curl up on the sofa with their uncle and listen to music.

‘Only twenty-two sleeps till the wedding,’ I informed him.

Alain rolled his eyes. ‘Your mother’s not started a countdown by the night, now, has she?’

‘Not Mum. Gabriel.’

‘Oh. That’s sweet.’

‘Yeah.’ My eyes drooped as the slow jazz washed over me. Hmm. Maybe I should have tried the jazz on the kids.

‘Do you think they’re asleep yet?’ Alain asked after a while.

‘I’ll go check.’

He chuckled. ‘Any excuse to look in on them.’

‘Yeah. But they’re sweet kids.’

‘That they are.’

I crept upstairs and peeped into their room. Chloe was curled up in a foetal position, her curls flopped across her face, fast asleep. Gabriel hadn’t quite gone, but he was on the way.

‘Aunt Emmy?’

My heart skipped a beat at my new moniker. ‘Yes?’

But he was too sleepy to think of anything to say. ‘’Night.’

‘’Night, Gabriel.’

‘Chloe’s asleep. Gabriel almost,’ I told Alain downstairs, leaning in for a kiss.

He pulled me across his lap to deepen it. We were getting into it, like a couple of teenagers necking on babysitting duty, but then he pulled back.

‘Actually, can we do this in bed? I’m knackered.’

‘Awww.’ I laughed and led him upstairs. ‘Does that mean that once we have our own kids, you’re going to be tired all the time?’

‘Not too tired for this.’ He pulled me close. ‘Never too tired for this.’