(12 page)

Mcintyre’s own smile faded. “Hey, come on. You know I can’t take that. You don’t want to get me in trouble, do you?”

She suddenly felt hot, ashamed, as if she’d been caught by her favorite teacher cheating on a test. But what good would it do to back down? Show him your stuff, she told herself. You’re an actress, aren’t you? She forced a brilliant smile, exclaiming, “Why, Mr. Mcintyre, what a thought!”

“Because the plain fact is, Dolly”-he held up the papers-“I’m afraid you’ve come all the way out here for nothing. Approval on your shipment is being held up until the lab results come back. “

“Lab results?”

“Standard procedure. We do a random check every so often to make sure the alcohol level doesn’t exceed point zero zero five per chocolate. Any more than that, and you’re against regulations.”

Dolly felt her neck muscles knot with frustration. Hell’s bells, what did he think she was, some know-nothing moron? She knew the law, and so did Henri. Why, there wasn’t enough liquor in Girod’s chocolates to inebriate a kitten!

What now? It was Mcintyre’s rubber stamp and his alone that would release her shipment. And she needed that now … not a week from now.

Dolly felt sick; she was going to fail. And if she couldn’t pull off even a simple little thing like this, what hope could she have of finding her nieces?

Then it struck her. Why wait around for lab results? Why couldn’t they have the damn test right here and now?

“Julio I’m going to ask you to do yourself and me a small and perfectly legal favor. Try one,” she said, pointing to the jar on his desk. “Go ahead, one itty-bitty one, just to taste. No one in the history of the United States ever lost their job for eating one chocolate bonbon.”

“Now, come on, Dolly, I run a serious operation here.”

92

EILEEN GOUDCE

“I’m serious too. I want your honest opinion. It’s this new flavor we cooked up.” She lifted the cookie jar’s apple-stem lid, and gently extracted one of the dark Rhum Caramels. “Taste it, and tell me what you think.”

As the weary official was opening his mouth to protest, she popped the bonbon in.

A look of annoyance creased his face. But he was chewing it, not swallowing it in a hurry or spitting it into the ashtray. She was on pins and needles, like watching a producer’s face at an audition. But he kept on chewing, his eyes drifting shut, his face smoothing, as contented as a cow with its cud. And now—praise the Lord!—he was smiling.

Mclntyre swallowed, and then reached for another.

“No alcohol in these,” he said, grinning. “But, damn, they ought to be outlawed.”

Dolly felt a rush of triumph that left her a little dizzy.

Five minutes later, clutching a duly stamped CF 7501 form, she was back in the Lincoln, heading out to Air France cargo to pick up her shipment.

After that, Henri.

Then, remembering her nieces, the heady anticipation she’d felt abruptly dissolved. Back there, with Mcintyre, she’d felt so strong and smart. By hook or by crook, she was somebody who could get things done. But it would take more than a little brass to find Annie and Laurel.

She’d need some kind of miracle.

Dolly?” Henri called softly in the darkness.

Dolly looked up from the television she’d been staring at, but not really watching. One of those old Lana Turner tearjerkers, the kind that makes you wonder, Were they always this bad or is it just the mood I’m in?

Henri stood at the entrance to the den, a stocky figure wrapped in a silk dressing gown, his thick pewtercolored hair mussed with sleep. A present from her, she recalled, that robe-a rich burgundy satin, with quilted lapels and a tasselled belt, a little fancy for Henri, who was more the plain terry type. Still, he wore it to please

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS 93

her. He kept it here along with a spare razor and toothbrush and a few shirts. When he was three thousand miles away, which was most of the time, Dolly would wear it to remind her of him, with its faint acrid smell of the bedtime Gauloises he smoked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Dolly told him. She’d been worrying about Laurel and Annie.

But now she had to think what to do about Henri.

On the way from the airport, Henri had told her as matter-of-factly as he could that he had come across the most charming flat, with a garden view, near Place des Ternes, a stone’s throw from Girod’s, perfect for her, and the price was more than reasonable. Henri had even left a deposit to hold it for a week. Of course, she didn’t have to take it, he’d hastened to add. But he’d thought perhaps if she came over and looked at it …

What should I tell him? The thought of being with Henri, and not just here and there, squeezed in between transatlantic appointments, shimmered in her head like a green oasis in a desert.

But the truth was that things had changed since she’d promised him she’d think about moving to Paris. How could she leave now? She couldn’t. Not until Annie and Laurel had been found. And even after that, there were still, let’s face it, Henri’s wife and children …

Whichever way she turned, she’d still wind up shortsheeted.

Henri sank down beside her on the deep sofa, tucking an arm about her. He kissed her shoulder, the ends of his mustache pleasantly scratchy. Oh, was that nice! After Dale, she’d thought she would never again know that sweet tug a woman feels in her belly when her man kisses her.

“What are you doing up?” she asked him.

“I dreamed about you,” he murmured, nibbling her earlobe, “a marvelous dream. Then I woke up, and you were gone. Can it be that you are tired of me so soon?”

Dolly smiled, remembering their first time together, two years ago in Paris. Afterwards, as soon as she got back to New York, she’d gone to the lingerie department at Bergdorf’s and startled the elderly saleslady by blurting:

94

EILEEN COUDGE

“Show me everything you’ve got in shameless.” She’d bought at least a thousand dollars’ worth, including a hightoned tart’s getup-a luscious Harlow-esque satin nightgown the color of a White Russian with matching maraboutrimmed slippers she wore only with Henri-which was not often enough.

Dolly looked around her. If she moved to Paris, she wouldn’t miss this place, with its rooms the size of roller rinks. Park Avenue had been Dale’s idea; she’d have been happier with one of those cozy row houses in the West Village. But once he made up his mind to buy Matson Shipping (There’s more money to be made in shipping than in drilling, Dolly-pop), and move to New York, where Matson was headquartered, it was a penthouse on Park Avenue or nothing. She remembered how dark and stuffy it had seemed at first, with its walnut wainscoting, yellowing wallpaper, and floors that hadn’t been refirbished since before World War Two. The former owners had been old money … and real old money downplayed itself, she’d learned. But what was the point of even having money, she wondered, unless you spent it?

It was Dale’s idea, hiring that satyr-faced decorator, Aldo, who had bleached the dreary wainscoting the color of driftwood and covered the walls in nubby beige linen. Wall-to-wall taupe carpeting went down over every inch of the parquet, and modern cone-shaped light fixtures replaced the old haunted-castle chandeliers.

Her gaze now fell on the free-standing sculpture atop the hi-fi cabinet, which Dale had paid a fortune for, but which looked to Dolly exactly like a bent coat hanger stuck in a block of cement.

“A fairy decorator’s wet dream,” Dale had jokingly dubbed the penthouse when it was finally finished. But he’d been so proud of it. For Dale, it had meant being able to show his business buddies and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft lawyers that despite his eighth-grade education and his Red Man chewing tobacco, he was somebody who could distinguish high-class art from a twisted coat hanger any day of the week.

In some ways, Henri was a lot like Dale-he had

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS 95

that same restless energy. Henri wouldn’t abide sitting still when he could be doing something; and he never settled for second best.

She thought of the first time she’d laid eyes on him, in the basement confectioner’s kitchen of his shop, bent over a steaming copper cauldron, holding a wooden spoon to his lips. Dolly, surrounded for the first time in her life by chocolate-ten-pound blocks of couverture wrapped in silicone paper, sheets of chocolate cooling on racks, tray after tray of bite-sized dollops of ganache, the truffle’s soft chocolate center, en route to the enrober-felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven. And incredibly, here was this man shaking his head, scowling, wagging a fist at the ceiling as he growled in French, and then gallantly translating for her: “Who do those fools think they are dealing with, sending me cream from underfed cows?”

Now, snuggled against her, Henri whispered, “Without you, the bed is cold. And I miss your snoring.”

“Like hell I snore!”

Henri grinned. “Exactement.”

“My grandpa used to say, ‘You can dress a frog in silk drawers but that don’t stop him from croakin’.” She elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “Hey, you ever been west of the Mississippi?”

“When I was very young, my parents took me to Yellowstone Park to see-how do you say, Old Reliable?”

She giggled. “Old Reliable? Sounds like the stuff Mama-Jo used to swallow before bedtime, to keep her bowels moving. You mean Old Faithful, don’t you?”

He rolled his eyes, and chuckled.

“You know what I love about you, ma poup้e?” he said. “You make me laugh. It is rare in a woman, the ability to make a man laugh. Also,” he kissed her nose, “I adore you because you are adorable and sweet with the big heart . . and you have the breasts which are formidable. “

Dolly laughed. “Know what Dale called them? The Knockers That Ate Cleveland.’”

“Well, then, I shall have to visit Cleveland one day … very soon, I think.” Through the thin fabric of her

96

EILEEN GO V DGE

nightgown, she could feel the warmth of his hand cupping her breast.

Dolly wriggled closer, and they kissed. She felt an almost electric sensation shoot from her lips to her lower belly. She heard herself groan. This would be the third time tonight. Already she was a little sore down there. By morning, she’d feel as if she’d ridden bareback over the Rockies.

“No,” she murmured, pulling away. “Henri, we need to talk.”

His slate-colored eyes regarded her from beneath his bushy brows with-could that be fear? “But of course,” he said, nodding gravely.

It came straight to her then, the decision she’d been holding at arm’s length ail evening. And she realized that all along she must have known it would be this way. What surprised her was the pain she felt, the sharpness of the ache gripping her chest.

Dolly took a breath. “I’m not moving to Paris,” she told him. “Not now, anyway. It wouldn’t be right, not with … with the way things are. Your wife …” She gulped, feeling the tickle of tears in her throat. Henri started to speak, and she held up her hand to stop him. “Oh, I know you don’t love Francine. And I know all your reasons for not divorcing her-your children, your religion, Francine’s father …”

Henri’s face sagged; his skin looked gray as his hair. He seemed suddenly a decade older than forty-seven. “What you don’t know,” he finally said, “is how she despises me. If not for her father, she says, I would still be an assistant chef at Fouquet’s. It is not true, of course, but …” He gave a Gallic shrug. “But the fact is, until the old goat takes his retirement, I remain, as you say, under his thumb.”

Once, while in Paris on business, Dolly had met Henri’s wife, a grim woman who looked as if she’d devoted her forty-odd years to mastering the art of smiling without moving her lips. A lift of a brow, a flicker of an eyelid, seemed as close as she got. No denying she was goodlooking-or had been, at some point, with her blade-thin

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS 97

figure and chic clothes, her perfect skin the color of vichyssoise, and the heavy dark hair she wore up in a twist, skewered in place with four tortoiseshell hairpins (Dolly had counted). But now, twenty years into their marriage, Francine was like some spindly chair in a museum on which one wouldn’t dare sit.

Dolly felt a toad of resentment growing in her belly, a great, nasty thumping thing all covered with warts. How can he stay with Francine when it’s me he loves? Why didn’t he just go ahead and divorce his wife, Papa Girod and the pope be damned?

But Dolly knew full well it wasn’t that simple. If Henri walked away from Francine, he’d have to leave Girod’s. And Girod’s was more than a business to him; it was his whole life. His son was pretty much grown, already at the Sorbonne, but he absolutely doted on his elevenyear-old Gabrielle. And of course, they were Catholic. Francine, he’d told her, never missed a Sunday or First Friday mass, and often attended vespers as well. Once a month like clockwork, she confessed her sins to Father Bonard; she’d no doubt prefer being widowed over the sacrilege of a divorce.

Okay, maybe not a divorce, not right away. If they could just stop all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, stop sneaking around and be together right out in the open.

But no point in beating a dead horse. For months, they’d been over and over it.

“It’s not just your … situation,” Dolly said. Quickly, she told him about Annie and Laurel. Dolly gripped Henri’s arm. “So you see, I have to stay here. They’re out there somewhere, and they need me. Other than Val, I guess I’m their only living relative. I’ve got to find them. You see that, don’t you?”

Henri wowned, as if fighting back his own selfish need to persuade her to come to Paris. His face seemed to sag with the effort, but then at last he gained control of himself.

“Of course I do. And you will, ma poup้e,” he conceded sadly. Then after a moment, he ventured, “But

98

EILEEN GOUDGE

instead of looking everywhere and not finding them, could you not perhaps bring them to you instead?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking … perhaps an advertisement in the newspaper?”

Dolly thought for a moment, feeling herself growing excited. The personals? Yeah, it could just work. If Annie knew she was in New York and wanted to reach her, this way, since Dolly’s home phone was unlisted, she’d know where to find her.