The Hotel Riviera(44)

“But I just got here.”

“Hah.” I snorted.

“Hey, what’s up, honey?” he said.

I opened my eyes to narrow slits. He’d never called me honey before. He looked about the same: way too attractive.

He said, “I just got back from the States.”

“Hah. A likely story.” I’d bet he’d been hanging out with his cronies in the ports along the coast.

He lifted my feet off the sofa, sat down next to me, and rearranged my legs across his knees.

“There was an accident in Newport,” he said. “Carlos was out with the rest of the crew on the big sloop, the one we planned to sail to South Africa. For some unknown reason the rudder came loose, in fact it parted company with the boat, leaving a gigantic hole. They tried the pumps but the hole was too big, the water was coming in too fast. The boat sank in fifty feet of water. I had to get back. I took the first flight out from Nice to Paris, and then on to Boston.”

“Was he all right, Carlos? And the rest of the crew?” We had eye contact now, though still cautious on my part.

“They’d Maydayed, the rescue boats had them out of the water almost before they had time to get wet.”

“That’s all right then.”

“Yeah, that’s the good news. I had to get back quick to organize divers to check the damage, get the cranes to pull her up. It wasn’t a small job. And my beautiful boat is a wreck.”

I heard the sadness in his voice and I said, “I’m sorry.”

He caught my chin in his hard warm hand. “Lola, I’m sorry you’re angry and hurt. I tried to call you but you weren’t there. I left a message with Jean-Paul, I told him there was an emergency and I’d be back in a week.”

I gave a wry smile. My ex-youth-of-all-work had run true to form. “It’s in one ear, out the other with Jean-Paul,” I said.

“Apparently. But you were not in my life one day, and out of it the next,” Jack said. “I promise that wasn’t the way it was. You were on my mind all the way across the Atlantic on that flight from Paris. And back again.”

“I was?” I could feel myself softening. “Melting” was actually a better word. His face hovered over mine, then his lips closed in the gentlest of kisses, like the first kiss ever, tender as butterfly wings.

“You were, and you are,” he murmured. He was stroking my legs, propped across his knees, not sexy, just gentle, nice. “What can I do to make you forgive me?” he said.

I swung my legs down and sat up quickly. “I know what you can do,” I said, with a desperate sparkle in my eye. “Everybody’s left, even Miss Nightingale is away on a trip. I need to get away from here. Why don’t you take this chef out to lunch?”

“You got it.” Jack grinned at me in that way that could melt a woman in Antarctica. I was picking up the pieces again, and not looking to the future the way I knew I should have been. But somehow, right now, I didn’t care.





Chapter 41




We drove into Saint-Tropez—that is, Jack drove my car, complaining about the gearshift all the way. First we went to Le Bar Stube, a sailors’ hangout in a little hotel on the Quai Suffren. It’s on the second floor and crammed with locals and clubby leather armchairs and dozens of model sailboats.

“Home away from home for you,” I said, settling at a table out on the balcony overlooking the yachts lined up in the marina.

“Not as snazzy as your terrace.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “But I’m beginning to have doubts about its snazziness.” He gave me a quizzical look so I told him of Giselle Castille’s second visit, and how her cutting glance had made me look at my little hotel with new eyes.

“I never thought about it before,” I said. “I just put the hotel together as though it were my own home. There was so little money and most of that went on structural repairs. I wanted to put in a pool down by the cove, the kind that looks as though it’s spilling over the edge into infinity. It was going to be a deep marine-blue.” I shrugged. “But there was no money left over for that. And now, of course, I know why.”

“Patrick,” he said. “Any news on that front?”

I shrugged again. “None.” I looked at him across the table as the waiter poured flutes of champagne. “I missed you,” I said honestly, even though it was probably not the right thing to say to a man who a short while ago you thought had left you in the lurch after your one and only night of passion.

“I missed you too.” He gripped my hand tightly, sending rivers of delight through me. When he finally let go, he lifted his glass in salute. “To you, Lola March,” he said, “‘a woman with a big heart.’”

“That heart is beating at twice the speed of sound,” I said. “It must be the champagne.”

“I hope not,” he said, and we smiled, delighted with each other.

I told him more about Giselle’s visit and that Scramble had attacked her, and that I was worried she’d be back, and he said obviously Scramble knew the woman was up to no good, and he might have done it himself had he been there.

Hand in hand, we ambled back to the car, on to Tahiti Beach and Millesim, a zen-peaceful beach club, wonderfully free of Saint-Tropez glitz, especially now, at the tail end of the season. Soon all the beach clubs would close, as would most of the hotels and restaurants. Soon, the mistral would be blowing and the Alpes-Maritimes would be capped with snow, and the sky would be misty-gray, or that hard winter blue. Soon, Jack would have the In a Minute back in the water, then he’d be on his way to South Africa with his friend Carlos. Soon, I would be alone again. And too soon, I might no longer have my home.