The Hotel Riviera(35)

“Yes, sir.” Dumas stepped toward me and handed me a copy of the contract pledging the property and land known as the Hotel Riviera to the Consortium Solis. It was dated six months before my marriage and signed clearly by Patrick.

I handed it to Jack. “I presume it’s Patrick’s signature?” Jack said. I nodded.

I was glad I hadn’t taken so much as a sip of Solis’s damned ice water.

“And so now you hate me, Madame Laforêt,” Solis said, “for a business transaction that turned out in my favor. Let me remind you all, it could have gone the other way. Patrick gambled, he could have won money, paid back the loan, and all would have been forgiven. Surely, it’s Patrick you should be blaming, Madame Laforêt, not me? And the only reason I lent Patrick the money and saved his skin was because of his grandmother. The woman who helped a young boy on the streets, so many years ago.”

I struggled out of the depths of the sofa and smoothed down my now-wrinkled white cotton skirt. Jack and Miss N stood by me as I said, “I will have my attorneys look at this document, Monsieur Solis.”

“I can assure you they will find it in order.”

Miss Nightingale clutched her handbag firmly and pushed her glasses farther up on her nose. She looked, I thought, solid as a rock, a bastion of decency. She cast a glance at the sulky beauty. “And Madame Solis, what does she think of all this?” she said.

Evgenia jerked her eyes from the view of Monte Carlo and fixed them soulfully on Miss N.

“It’s very simple,” Solis said. “I’m giving Evgenia the Hotel Riviera as a little present. She can do whatever she wishes with it.”

Evgenia flashed him a heartbreaker of a smile, then leaned her back against the window and folded her arms, gazing silently up at the ceiling.

Again, Manolo appeared from nowhere, as everybody seemed to on this ship. Our audience with Laurent Solis was obviously over. He did not get up, nor did he bid us goodbye.

I turned for one last look at him. He was still sitting where we had left him, but he was looking at Evgenia. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw the look on hers. I thought it could be described as happiness.





Chapter 31




We were sitting on the sidewalk terrace of a little café in Antibes, contemplating ice-cold drinks that seemed unable to slake our thirst, and mulling over the conversation on the Agamemnon with Laurent Solis.

“My dear, you know what’s at the heart of all this, don’t you?” Miss N said.

I looked up at her. “What?”

“Why, sex, of course. Cherchez la femme, they always say, and in this case I believe we have found her.”

“Evgenia,” Jack said. His brow cleared as something dawned on him. “My God, now I remember where I saw Falcon. It was in the Caves du Roy. He was Evgenia Solis’s bodyguard. He kept everybody at arm’s length, even the waiters had a tough time getting through.”

“You noticed her then,” I said.

“Of course I noticed her. She’s unmissable just walking down the street, let alone in a nightclub when she’s dancing on the table and flaunting it.”

“In front of her husband,” Miss N said thoughtfully. “How interesting.”

“She must be mad,” I added.

“No, not mad,” Miss N said, “she just has her husband exactly where she wants him and she’s a woman who knows how to play the game. Beauty is her asset—money his.”

“She wants my home,” I said bitterly. “And what’s more, she’s got it. She’s probably going to pull it down and build herself a splendid forty-room villa with a helicopter pad and twenty servants and throw wild parties where she’ll dance on the table so her hangers-on can admire her style.”

“Spoken like a true woman,” Jack said.

“It’s the truth, I’m sure of it.”

“I’m sure of it too,” Miss N said thoughtfully. “But there’s more to this than meets the eye, I’m sure of that also.”

“What I’m sure of is that Lola is in trouble,” Jack said.

I stared at my iced drink, knowing I had lost my little hotel, my true “home,” and all because of Patrick and his gambling.

“We must contact young Oldroyd’s lawyer father in Avignon,” Miss N said, sounding very efficient and in charge. “We’ll get legal advice on this.”

Jack reached over and took my hand. It was wet from clutching my icy glass of citron pressé, but he didn’t seem to notice. “One thing I do know,” he said, “is that legal matters take a long time to unfold herein France, especially property matters. The old Napoleonic code takes care of that. There’ll be years of bureaucratic haggling, everything has to go through the proper channels, and even with big money, those channels can be hard to cross. In fact, sometimes it can stall things even longer. So we’ll have time to sort things out.”

I noticed his use of the word we, and instinctively I squeezed his hand. He wanted to make me feel better but I wasn’t sure I was buying his explanation.

Jack paid the addition and we drove silently back to the hotel. All was quiet, there was no one around, not even Nadine in the kitchen. Miss N said she thought she would go to her room for a rest and to think things over, Jack was going back to his boat, and I was going to my cottage to try to brood over what I could do to save my home.