Invitation to Provence(48)

“Maman, you really must teach your staff better manners,” Alain said with that irritating grin that had Jake tight-lipped. “And now, who else do we have here? Well, Juliette of course.” He strode to the end of the table and stood behind her chair. He put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing them. “Still missing Rufus, I’ll bet.”

She shrugged him away. “You haven’t changed much, Alain. Still the great games player, I see.”

“What? No ‘welcome home, Alain’? Come on now, Juliette, you were always my friend.”

“I was your mother’s friend. I saw what she had to put up with from you.”

“And here’s the new winemaker,” he said, offering Scott his hand. Not knowing what was going on, Scott shook it. “Now that I’m back, we’ll have to make a few changes,” Alain said to him. “I’ve become quite a connoisseur, you know. I think you’ll find out that I know exactly what I’m doing, Scott, when I’m in charge of the winery again.”

His gaze fastened appreciatively on Franny. “Ah, and you must be the long-lost family member,” he said, his voice silky. “Franny, isn’t it?” He looked deep into her mesmerized eyes, then he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it lingeringly.

Franny wondered, Why all the tension? Why was Jake watching Alain through narrowed hawk eyes? Why was Haigh’s glance laser-sharp?

“Franny, you’re beautiful.” Alain was still holding onto her hand. “As all the Marten women were. Why bother working as a mere vet when you could easily catch a rich man, someone to lavish you with jewels and furs, grand apartments, and private planes.”

“I prefer my work,” she said coldly as he walked around the table to Clare.

Clare watched him warily. He put a hand under her chin, tilted her face up to him. “Clare,” he said softly, “I know you. We must talk later.” She stared at him, surprised.

Next Alain turned to the child, who seemed frozen in place, watching him through frightened blue saucer-eyes, the chopsticks still gripped in her fingers.

He turned her chair to face him, and with his face just inches away, studied her carefully. There was something unpleasant about the way he ran his finger over her small nose, the curve of her short upper lip, the length of her slender neck, in the way he traced the outline of her closed eyes, touched her blackbird’s-wing hair.

Then he laughed. “Maman,” he called, “I want you to meet my daughter. Oh yes, she’s mine all right. See how proud I am of her? And I’ll make you proud of the Martens again, too. I promise you that, maman, on my honor.”

Jake wasn’t the only one there who knew that honor was an asset Alain had never possessed. But Alain was her son, and Rafaella still loved him. She still wanted to believe him, and now she put her arms around him and welcomed him home again.





38





AFTER THAT, the party came to an abrupt end. Everyone went quickly to bed—except Rafaella, who was sitting on the sofa in the old library, talking to her son. In the candlelight Alain looked young and very handsome, and very much like Felix, but there were lines on his face now and a bitterness in his eyes that had not been there the last time she had seen him.

“I’m glad you finally came home, Alain,” she said, remembering that Felix had come home in his coffin. “I needed to see you …”

“Before you die.” Alain finished the sentence for her. “And are you planning on doing that sometime soon?” He laughed, making a joke of it, but he wasn’t joking and she did not smile.

“I hope not, now that I’ve discovered I have a family again.”

“My daughter.”

“And a niece.”

“Ah yes, the niece. I always liked a pretty woman.”

“I remember,” she said dryly.

He leaned back against the chintz cushions, as at home as if he’d never left.

“Actually, it wasn’t that I wanted to see you before I died.” Rafaella’s voice was so unexpectedly firm that he turned, brows raised, to look at her. “I needed to see you once again to make sure I had done the right thing when I threw you out. Where have you been all these years, Alain? And what have you been doing? Where did you make the money you claim to have?”

She looked hard at him, but Alain had been interrogated before and he was an expert at avoiding issues. “Where have I been? Oh, not so far away from Felix, running around Asia, like him. We saw each other from time to time, you know.”

Jake had come into the room unnoticed. He leaned against the door, arms folded, watching, listening. Now he said, “And when exactly was the last time you saw Felix?”

Alain glanced up at him and sighed. “I might have known you’d still be around.”

“Did you really think I’d leave you alone with your mother? You’re the crazy one, Alain, not me.”

“Why is this any of your business anyway?”

“Because I asked Jake to make it his business,” Rafaella said sharply. “I asked him to find out what he could about you.”

Alain glanced up at Jake. “And did you?”

“Enough to know that you are under suspicion for drug dealing, that you were in league with some of the toughest cartels in Asia, that you left a trail of debts and violence behind you … that you were in Hong Kong the night Felix died.”