It All Began in Monte Carlo (5 page)

Calling over the waiter she ordered another Red Bull, her third—she adored the caffeine high—and another bottle of red wine. Jimmy said she drank too much, but so what? What had she got to lose?

 

 

Just then, another woman swept into the bar, Indian, exotic in a pale gold sari that sparkled as she walked confidently to a table and ordered a bottle of good champagne.

Beautiful: sleek black hair pulled so severely back it left the pure profile of a goddess exposed; aquiline nose, short upper lip, full mouth, immense dark eyes fringed with thick black lashes—real ones. There was no artifice about this woman. Unlike the redhead, she didn't even have to try.

The Indian woman's quick glance took in Sunny then Kitty. She did not acknowledge them. The waiter brought her the bottle of La Grande Dame she had ordered, in a silver bucket misted with icy drops. She asked for a bowl of nuts. “Pistachios,” she said in a light clear singsong voice. “And two ounces of Beluga caviar.” She sat back in her gray suede club chair while the waiter poured champagne into a delicate crystal glass. It had taken only that one quick assessing glance for her to understand exactly where the two other women were at.

 

Though she could have played the role of the aristocrat in a Bollywood musical, Maha Mondragon had been raised in terrible
poverty, without any family, on the meanest, cruelest and most squalid streets of Mumbai. By the time she was seven, there was nothing Maha did not know about “real” life, and her one desire was to escape that reality, where violence was an everyday event, along with brutality and murder. Honed by those mean streets, Maha could smell evil like a second sense. She knew corruption firsthand. And she sensed it now, in the red-haired Kitty Ratte whose serpent's eyes met hers across the room.

Turning away Maha sipped her champagne, and checked out the beautiful woman sitting up at the bar, the one Kitty now had those hard eyes on. The intensity of the redhead's gaze was like an electrical current across the room, and looking at Sunny, Maha saw her innocence, and her vulnerability. She also sensed that she was troubled. A victim, if ever she saw one.

Maha's emerald-and-ruby-studded gold bangles jangled as she picked up her glass. She felt Kitty's eyes on her again, knew the woman was examining her expensive gold necklace, studded with cabochon emeralds. She refused to meet Kitty's eyes. She wanted nothing to do with her.

Maha was known for her particular type of jewelry made in Rajasthan by artisans who had perfected their craft over centuries, the necklaces of thick gold swirled around the emeralds for which the area was famous, as well as rubies, sapphires and lesser gemstones like topazes and tourmalines. They were a wonder of workmanship and artistry. She sold them to specialty boutiques and stores in Europe, and soon was to branch out in America. Maha was on the upward move, and would let nothing stand in her way.

She had come a long way from the poverty-stricken terrified seven-year-old, alone on Mumbai's sordid and most dangerous streets. But she never forgot her background, and the lessons she had learned.

Curious, Sunny tried not to stare at Maha. Now she wished she had ordered champagne. No point in ordering a bottle just for one, though.

Sudden anguish at being alone, of missing Mac, ripped through her. Desperate, she caught the barman's eye, asked for a bottle of champagne anyway. No caviar though. That used to be her and Mac's New Year's Eve treat: caviar and smoked salmon flown in from Harrods in London and lobster from Maine; more often than not eaten in bed with both dogs curled up on the blanket eagerly watching out for scraps. They never waited up for that ball to drop in Times Square though. They were too hot for each other to care about the rest of the world.

Oh God, her heart was breaking all over again. She should not be thinking of Mac. Her head suddenly felt empty as an air balloon, and she was the panicked balloonist. What was Mac doing right now? He must have found her note, perhaps he'd be searching for her, maybe he'd bought her a Christmas gift, something extravagant enough to bring her back into his arms . . . into those strong, welcoming arms that made her feel so safe, so loved when they enfolded her . . .

She kept back the tears with a huge effort. Tears were like rain, she thought. And it always seemed to rain in Malibu, at Christmas.

 

Rain fell on Mac's head, large drops, coming down in sharp gusty spatters. Pirate looked pathetically up at him. Pirate did not like to get wet and Mac picked him up; he was not a big dog but he hefted in at more than one might expect. Still he was so happy, cuddled under the jacket, Mac didn't mind.

Though it was evening in Monte Carlo, it was still Christmas Day morning in Malibu and he was walking the beach in the rain, thinking about Sunny, wondering where she was, who she was with; if she was wearing the beautiful red dress and the sexy boots. He was going crazy without her. He'd called everyone, tried everywhere.
Nobody knew anything, or if they did, they were not telling. And anyhow, shouldn't he, the famous Private Detective, be able to find the woman who'd run away from him?

Rain.
If Sunny were here they would have thrown another log on the fire, had a festive drink, the delicious smell of turkey would be coming from the oven. Now, though, that turkey was still in the market, and there was no great smell of cooking, no blazing fire to lounge in front of, no festive drinks. Life, as Mac Reilly knew it, was over.

With Pirate cradled in his arms he walked back to his cottage, a thirties wooden shack tacked oddly onto the very end of the row of smart Malibu beach houses. He climbed the wooden steps to the deck, stood for a long moment staring out to sea.

Finally, he turned and went inside. He fed Pirate, poured himself a bourbon on the rocks and took a seat on the dog-hairy blanket on the old sofa that was the most comfortable piece of furniture he'd ever owned, and that, despite Sunny's complaints, he refused to get rid of.

Pirate went to sit next to him. The dog gave an anxious whine and automatically Mac reached out and rubbed a hand through his rough fur. He stared straight ahead at the empty fireplace. At his suddenly empty life.

 

 

A man in a white dinner jacket was playing cocktail piano, nothing “festive” thank God, Sunny thought, just good old Cole Porter and Jerome Kern, with a bit of Brazilian bossa nova. The music drifted softly into the silence. In the red dress and furry boots Sunny had never felt less like The Girl from Ipanema. Maybe she should have gotten on a plane to Rio instead of Paris. Wasn't it hot there at this time of year? Here in the South of France, a cold wind was fluttering the palm trees along the seafront, lifting women's skirts, ruffling their hair.

The barman poured her champagne so perfectly there was barely a froth to rim the flute, only those precious bubbles that usually so delighted her. Gloomily, she regretted ordering it. She wondered if a broken heart could turn a woman into an alcoholic.

A waiter arrived with a platter of
amuse-bouche,
small bites to take the edge off hunger and ease down the champagne. Was she hungry? Would she care if she ever ate again?

She noticed that the redhead in the corner, skirt sliding up over her plump thighs, her cheeks clashing pink with her metallic red hair, seemed to be hefting the drink back too.
And
she was alone. She had called the waiter, flicking her skirt carelessly over bare knees and ordered a bottle of wine and also a Red Bull. Sunny wondered
what her story was. Because, as Mac always said, everybody had a story.

She switched her gaze to the beautiful Indian woman. The three of them were still the only customers in the bar on this Christmas Day night.

The Indian woman's heavy gold necklace was set with large cabochon emeralds, plus she wore a dozen or more jangling gold and bejeweled bracelets. Sunny would bet they were real. She watched her spoon the gray-black beads of expensive caviar onto tiny blinis, saw her eyes close with pleasure as she tasted.

The piano player switched to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” singing of love lost and of tears disguised behind the excuse of cigarette smoke.

Quite suddenly the air seemed to tremble as another young woman stormed into the bar. She was wearing a wedding dress, a short satin sheath, a shimmer of crystals. No veil, a bouquet of lily of the valley, a droop of jasmine pinned behind one ear with a diamond star. Anger vibrated from her. Tears slid down her pretty, uncaring face. Sunny could smell the lilies and the jasmine from where she sat.

The three women and the waiters watched, alarmed.

The bride hitched herself onto a barstool, slammed the lilies on the counter. “Martini. On the rocks,” she snarled. Then added, humbly,
“S'il vous plaît, monsieur.”
Tears fell off the cliff of her cheekbones. She sat, staring straight ahead while the barman shook the martini.

Uncomfortable, Sunny glanced away. She caught the eye of the Indian woman, who raised a shoulder and sighed.

The bride downed her martini in two gulps, grabbed her posy, slid from the barstool, smoothed her silk-satin shift and stalked, head up, chin determinedly jutted, from the bar.

Their eyes followed her.

“Poor girl.”

The comment came, unexpectedly, from Kitty Ratte. “It's sad to be so deeply involved with a man who makes your life such hell.”

Maha's large dark eyes took her in first, then Sunny. “That girl has probably found out the truth about her fiancé, but it's too late to back out. She has to go through with the marriage. She is looking at a lifetime of misery.”

“Or a quick divorce,” Sunny said, not wanting to think about erring fiancés.

“She could always take a lover.” Kitty's prominent buckteeth stuck out as her jaw dropped in a giggle. She flicked her hand to summon the waiter again. “You know, to lighten her burden.” She ordered another Red Bull, downed it quickly, then returned to the bottle of red wine.

Sunny watched her glug the Red Bull. Perhaps she was drowning her sorrows too. Somehow though, the redhead didn't look the type to be indulging in sorrow.

Maha sat back in her elegant gray suede club chair, looking at Kitty. “I'm assuming you speak from experience?”

Kitty lowered her chin, glancing demurely up from under her lashes. “Oh . . . not really . . . I mean I've heard it's the best thing to do, the best way to catch a man.” Her small blue eyes disappeared in her cheeks as she laughed and said to Sunny, “Anyhow, it doesn't leave me looking as sad as you do.”

Shocked, Sunny sat up straighter. She was damned if she was going to show the world—well anyway, these women—that she was devastated. Her attention shifted as three more people came into the bar, two men and a tall woman with cropped dark hair, and winging brows over eyes so green Sunny noticed their color from across the room. She wore a simple black suit with a skirt just at the knee, obviously designer, and her only jewelry was a pair of large diamond studs.

The two men with her were also very well dressed and to Sunny,
used to “casually chic” California, very European in their pin-striped business suits, obviously custom-tailored.

Sunny had been known to be a bit of a clotheshorse herself, when the mood struck, and she knew good shoes. The woman's were Jimmy Choos, black satin laced around the ankle. Sunny had tried them on herself at Neiman's. She also knew the men's were handmade and, she would bet, Berluti. Standing at the entrance to the bar, the three emanated an air of money-no-object expensiveness. Confident. Cool. And kind of attractive in that very European way.

They waved at the Indian woman, walked over and took seats at her table. Maha signaled the waiter for more champagne, more caviar. It came quickly and they raised their glasses in a toast. She glanced over at Sunny. “
Bon Noël,
Happy Christmas,” she said, smiling.

“The happiest,” the woman with the beautiful green eyes replied, in English. “For all of us.”

 

Sunny couldn't stand it any longer, being here in a bar. Alone. It came to her in a flash. Her friend Allie Ray Perrin lived here in France. Miles away from the south, but still, she was here. In fact she and her husband Ron were good friends of both Sunny and Mac; they had been through a lot together, too much ever to forget.

She dialed Allie's number on her global BlackBerry and heard the odd beeping sound that was the French telephone “ring.” It beeped on and on. Could they have gone away for Christmas, perhaps to the mountains? Allie was an avid skier. She couldn't bear it if she couldn't talk to her.

At last the ringing stopped and Allie's familiar voice said they were unable to answer the phone right now but please leave a message and they would get right back.

Sunny spoke quietly so no one would hear. “Allie, it's Sunny. I'm desperate. I've left Mac. It's over, there will never be a wedding. Oh,
Allie, I'm dying inside. Where
are
you? I need to talk to you, my beautiful friend. I'm in Monte Carlo. Mac doesn't know where I am and please,
please,
if he should call looking for me, do not tell him.
Please,
Allie, it's important. You have my cell phone number. I love you.”