Free Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels by Sara Downing Page A

own.’  She smiled across at him, and stroked the hand that gripped the gear stick.
    It was only natural for him to have doubts. Grace had been on plenty of girls’ weekends away with Evie, but spending all that time together, and with partners too, changed the dynamics completely.  Tom and James had known each other for years, but they were very different people.  James was incredibly ‘corporate’, and the complete opposite from her own husband, who was so laid back, sometimes he was almost horizontal.  Underneath James’ brash and business-like exterior, Grace knew there was a warm and gentle man, who adored his wife and daughters, and was without exception extremely generous to friends and family alike.  But you had to crack that outer shell first, and although Tom had had the time over the years to do this, sometimes even now he found James hard work.  Grace knew there had been an incident during their teenage years involving a girl – wasn’t it always? – which had left a rift for a while.  The two men just had very different personalities, and shared history wasn’t always enough to overcome those differences.  This was compounded by the events of the previous year, which sometimes left Tom wondering exactly how he did feel about his friend. Grace was slowly coming to terms with what had happened, now that Evie was starting to get her life back together, but Tom still hadn’t quite forgiven James for hurting Evie so badly.
    ‘How far down are we on the map?’ Tom asked.  He was a technophobe at heart, and more than a little reluctant to put all his trust in the Sat-Nav alone, even though the car possessed a perfectly serviceable one.  At frequent intervals he would get Grace to put two fingers on the map – which by now was well thumbed and had biscuit crumbs jammed into the spine – one finger to show where they were now, and another to mark their destination.  This was a little tricky at the moment as they still had three pages of map distance to cover before they were anywhere near to the chateau.  Grace thought her darling husband might just self-combust with joy when the two fingers eventually ended up on the same page, hopefully some time later that afternoon, if all went to plan. 
    ‘We are here,’ Grace said, humouring him and pointing to a spot somewhere on Page 148, ‘and the chateau is here.’  She put her right hand into Page 155, and smiled at him indulgently.  ‘That make you feel better?’
    ‘Oh, infinitely,’ he laughed.  At least his little foible gave him regular reassurance, other than the road signs, that they were headed in the right direction.  The number of pages between Grace’s fingers was definitely getting fewer, so that must be good.  French roads were weird sometimes; it could be impossible to find a sign for the place you needed, which might only be a few miles down the road, but every so often a huge sign would pop up from nowhere with a big arrow pointing to ‘L’Espagne.’  He just hoped they came off this endless motorway some time before they did actually end up in Spain.
    ‘Shitting hell, bloody idiot!’ Tom yelled, slamming on both breaks and horn and checking the mirror quickly to make sure no one was about to shunt them from behind.  He gave two fingers of a different sort to the driver of an ancient Citroen which had come up behind them from nowhere in the outside lane, pulled into a space which wasn’t really there right in front of them, and then slowed down suddenly.  Grace glanced round at the twins; phew, one still sleeping and one plugged in.  No worries then that Jack might have added some interesting vocabulary to his repertoire.  Although knowing her son, he’d probably heard it, stored it up and was saving it for a quiet moment in polite company, when he’d quite innocently and very loudly ask Daddy what ‘Shitting hell’ actually meant.
    ‘You need to be in that lane, by the way.’  Grace jabbed a finger once