The Hotel Riviera(11)

I inspected myself anxiously in the mirror, adjusting the slipping shoulder and tugging at the low neckline, realizing how foolish I’d been to spend so much, because there was no one at all to look sexily romantic for. Still, it was my day and I was determined to go out. I wafted mascara onto my ginger lashes and brushed my long, straight hair. I shoved my aching feet into black suede heels, grabbed my purse, and headed for the Bellagio casino.

I lingered near the tables of high rollers playing blackjack and pai gow, cocooned from the real world in their own sumptuous softly lit area, marveling at the coolness of the dealers and the tense silence of the players. I wondered if they were betting their futures and entire fortunes on one last chance. Poor fools, I thought, little knowing that my own gamble with fate was about to take place.

Fatigue swept over me. I’d been on my feet for hours and my shoes were killing me. This had been a mistake. I didn’t want to be here alone, all dressed up with nowhere really to go. I wanted to go home and get into bed with a good book. Right now! I spun round and literally fell over him.

“Pardon, mademoiselle, pardon…,” he said, and “Excuse me, I’m so sorry…,” I said. Then his arms were around me, steadying me, and I was staring into his eyes.

He was without doubt the best-looking man ever to hold me in his arms. In fact, he was all the clichés: tall, dark, handsome, and added to that he was French. What chance did I stand?

“Are you all right?” he asked in a devastatingly romantic French accent. “You look a little shaken.”

Befuddled, I was unable to think of anything to say. My shoe had come off in the scuffle and now he retrieved it. “Cinderella?” he said, looking at me. Then kneeling at my feet, he took hold of my ankle and gently slid my shoe back on.

It was just so sexy, I almost couldn’t breathe, “Oh! Oh! Thank you,” I said, groaning inwardly because this was not exactly scintillating dialogue. “I’m sorry,” I added, still sounding breathless.

“I am the one who should be sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Please, won’t you allow me to buy you a drink? Just to make sure you’re all right?”

I hesitated, though God knows why—maybe it was a premonition of disaster to come—but then I said yes anyway. His hand was cool under my chiffon elbow as he guided me to the softly lit bar off the lobby.

“Champagne?” he said.

I smiled back. “Why not? After all, it’s my birthday.”

One dark brow rose, and I felt foolish and na?ve and wished I hadn’t shared that with him.

He signaled the waiter. “In that case, chérie, we must also have caviar.”

I perched on the edge of my chair trying to look ‘cool,’ while he discussed caviar with the waiter. He was even better at second look, in an impeccably cut dark suit, a shirt of fine cotton in that wonderful marine-blue, and an expensive silk tie. There was a spattering of dark hair on the backs of his bronzed hand and a fashionable bluish stubble on his firm jaw. I felt that familiar clenching in the pit of my stomach.

He turned and gave me a searching look. “Hello,” he said, “I’m Patrick Laforêt, from France.”

“And I’m Lola March, from Los Angeles. Well, from Encino to be precise, in the San Fernando Valley.”

“Enchanté de faire votre connaissance, Lola March,” he said and we clinked glasses and toasted my birthday with Dom Pérignon, very pleased with ourselves. Then he leaned forward, looked deeply into my eyes, and said, “But who are you really, Lola March? Tell me about yourself.”

Now, it’s not often a woman gets this sort of opportunity, so of course I took it. I told him how I’d dropped out of college (not my best move but then, as you will see, I’m prone to moves like that) and instead had opted for culinary school, where somehow I knew I would show more talent. I told him how I had worked in lowly positions at great restaurants, and boasted of how I had progressed until now my dessert confections were considered by those in the know to be an edible art form.

“But I still make the best brownies in Vegas,” I added finally, not wanting him to think I was all spun-sugar flash and no content. And he laughed and said he adored brownies.

“Not as much as I adore this caviar,” I said, spooning more beluga onto wafer-thin toast points, and I saw he was amused by my round-eyed enjoyment.

Then it was Patrick’s turn. He leaned closer, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, as he told me that for generations his family had been fishermen in Marseilles. Now they were gone and he was the last in the line of Laforêts. His father had left him some land outside of Saint-Tropez with a small hotel. He said he was sentimental about it, that he would never sell it “for family reasons,” and that he always spent his summers there. The rest of the year he lived like a nomad, roaming the world.

Later, when I thought about it, I realized he never did get around to telling me exactly how he could afford this rich nomadic lifestyle, but it didn’t seem to matter then, and I just assumed his family had left him money.

He told me about the C?te d’Azur and about the many different colors of blue in the sea; about the scent of jasmine on crystal air, and how he loved the long, languorous summer nights when the moon flooded the sea with silver light. He told me about the small vineyard he owned on a sandy hill, and about how it felt to be there in the early autumn mornings when the grapes hung, moon-dusted and heavy on the vines, ready for picking. He told me about the long hot afternoons of summer “best spent in a cool bed with the shutters closed, and of course, not alone.” And I just sat there silently, eyes wide, like a child listening to a fairy tale, totally enthralled.