The Hotel Riviera(64)

The hotel had been my reason for living. Without it I was nobody. I had no guests to take care of, no one to cook for, no one to complain to at the end of a long day that my feet ached and what was I going to do about Jean-Paul who hadn’t showed up for work. How I longed to have it all back again, every grumble, every complaint, every bit of the hard work I loved.

“It looks sad,” I said, “so neglected and gray. Where did all the charm go?”

“It’s still here,” Jack said. “You made the Hotel Riviera what it was. You did it once, you can do it again. All it needs is a little TLC.”

“Hah, and money. A lot of money.”

“The insurance company will pay up. Mr. Honeymoon’s father in Avignon is onto them every day. You’ll see, you’ll be getting a check soon.”

I thought about all the time that had gone into the creating of the hotel. I remembered the construction workers tramping in and out for months; the struggle to get the plans approved by the local authorities; the bureaucracy I’d battled; all the love and pleasure that had gone into putting together rooms from the miscellaneous grab bag of auction finds that somehow had all fitted together like a pretty jigsaw puzzle. I thought about my lovely kitchen and how it could never be re-created. I remembered the love that had gone into the Hotel Riviera, and the “love” it had given back to me, and I despaired. Something that was “me” had gone up in the flames, and I doubted I could ever find it again.

“I can’t do it,” I said. “I just can’t do it, all over again.”

I felt Jack’s eyes on me in a long assessing look. He said, “I’m sorry that’s the way you feel. The hotel was so much a part of your life.”

“I don’t even know if I own it anymore,” I said bitterly.

“You own it until the courts say you don’t, if they ever do, which I doubt now we’re on Patrick’s trail. And anyhow that process could take years.”

“And I’ll just build it up again so Evgenia can live here happily ever after.”

I turned to look at him, sitting on the deck next to me, knees hunched, arms folded across his chest. He looked like the salt of the earth, strong, reliable, too darn good to be true…but not for me, that was for sure.

“I’m afraid,” I said. “I’m scared to go back to my own house. I’m scared of Patrick.”

“You don’t have to go back, you can stay here on the boat.”

He wasn’t coming on to me, he was just being nice. “Thank you,” I muttered, “but I hate boats. Anyhow, I guess I’ll be okay. Miss Nightingale is staying with me.” I laughed. “We’ve become like a couple of old maids, we know each other so well now, with our cups of tea before bed and ‘good night, sleep tight.’” I looked at him. “I do love her. She’s the kind of friend every woman should have.” I reached out and took his hand. “And so are you, Jack Farrar. A good friend, zipping back and forth from the U.S. to help me, when I know you should be home fixing up your boat and making plans for your next trip.”

“I came back because I wanted to see you again,” he said, gripping my hand tightly. “And because I want to help you get out of this mess. I’m also afraid of what Patrick might do.”

I was wondering which of those reasons I liked best, but I didn’t have much time to think, because he put his arms around me, and I was breathing the familiar male scent of him. The stubble on his chin roughed my cheek. “I missed you, Lola,” he said, and I smiled as I kissed him. Even though he hadn’t said he loved me, missing me would do for now.

We made love in that hard little bed tucked under the bow, with the squall of the seabirds overhead and the soft rustle of the sea in our ears. “You look different,” Jack said, sliding my arms out of my pink cashmere sweater. “Your hair is longer, your eyes are the color of good whisky, your skin is paler.”

“But don’t I feel the same?” My arms and legs were wrapped around him.

“Oh yes,” he said, “I remember the way you feel, I dreamed about it on those transatlantic flights, didn’t I tell you that?”

“Not exactly,” I murmured, nibbling on his earlobe while his hand did magical things to my inner thigh. He sat back, stroking my body, admiring me, linking his eyes with mine, linking our bodies together in a soft sensuous dance of love.

I’d never been loved like this before, never been with a man so gentle, so intense, so caring of me, so sure of what he was doing to my body and the pleasure I would take in it. When Jack entered me, it was the stars and the planets all over again. I shouted out my happiness and he gripped me to his chest so I could feel his heart thundering next to mine, as we lay slippery and still entwined. “Lost in France in Love,” as the old song goes.





Chapter 61




Falling in love. The words rippled through my sleeping brain like a neon-colored Slinky, crashing in cascades of pink and orange spirals. There was no getting away from it, even my subconscious was telling me I was in love.

I awoke to the dawn light coming in my French windows. I was on my own living room sofa covered with a blanket, while Miss Nightingale slept in my gold lamé bed; she said she had never seen anything quite like it, except at the cinema.

We hadn’t wanted to leave Miss N alone, and besides, Jack said he wanted to keep an eye on things. So he kept guard outside the front door, sleeping on the white wicker sofa with his legs hanging over the end, with Bad Dog next to him.