The Hotel Riviera (12 page)

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.

“Thanks anyway,” I said to Jack as we walked down the path together. He glanced at me, his eyes narrowed.

“For what? So far, I haven't helped one bit.”

“You tried. That's what counts.”

He turned me to face him. I could feel the heat of his hands through my shirt. “Look, I really wanted to help you. A man shouldn't leave his wife in this situation, it's not right.”

“Nothing was right between me and Patrick for a long time.” I shrugged. “That's just the way it was.”

We stood there, his hands on my shoulders, looking at each other.

He said, “It's true what I told you, bureaucracy will hold this up forever. You're not going to be kicked out tomorrow or anything like that.”

I nodded, still holding his eyes with mine. “Yes,” I said. And then he bent his head and kissed me.

His lips were warm, firm, his breath sweet. It was not a passionate kiss, it was just a kiss between two people who suddenly might care for each other. A preliminary, you might say, in the game of romance. Why I cared for him, or he for me, I didn't bother to analyze. It was just there, that spark between us.

“Get some rest,” he said. “I'll see you later, on the terrace for dinner.”

I nodded, watching him walk over the rocks to the jetty and his dinghy. He didn't look back as he sped across the calm turquoise cove.

 

We told my guests the bad news, over drinks on the terrace later, and also that Falcon was Evgenia's bodyguard and obviously working for Solis.

“So why is he staying here?” Red asked.

“Checking on me, I suppose,” I said gloomily. “Or more likely checking on Evgenia's property. You saw him walking around, making notes.”

“Mr. Falcon left this afternoon,” Miss N said. “I was on my balcony and saw him go. He had his bag and he just roared off on the bike. I assume he paid his bill?”

I gaped at her. I hadn't known anything about Falcon leaving. “Nadine must have taken care of it,” I said.

“Did it occur to you that Falcon might have been checking on Patrick?” Jack said, and I turned and gaped at him, as did everyone else. “He might have thought you knew where Patrick was,” Jack added. “I found out today it's very difficult to complete a real estate transaction in France without the presence of all the parties concerned. Also, herein France, a man cannot be presumed dead until ten years have elapsed since the time he went missing. That might just throw a bit of a wrench in Solis's works.”

“Ten years,” I said, thinking of Patrick, dead. It didn't seem possible.

“Ten years in which you're better off without him,” Red said firmly, making me laugh. Dammit, I knew it was true.

I poured more wine, my own rosé from that vineyard up on the hill where the moon-dusted grapes hung ripe and heavy in the crisp autumn mornings, and which tasted like the essence of summer. My eye caught Jack's as I filled his glass; there was a hint of a smile in his.

“I'll call my father right now.” Mr. Honeymoon removed his arm from Mrs. Honeymoon's golden shoulders. She smoothed back her short blond hair, gazing lovingly up at him, and my heart melted, as it always did when I saw them together. Oh, to be young as they were, and so in love, to be newly married with all of life in front of you, without any of the mistakes I seemed to have made.

“So,” I said briskly, taking out my order pad, “I can recommend the fried zucchini flowers stuffed with tiny shrimp in a basil sauce, the
soupe au pistou,
or there's the vegetable terrine with a spinach cream sauce. Then there's the homemade pasta with a fricassée of pintade, guinea fowl; or there's simple grilled lamb with rosemary and garlic served with a crisp gratin of wafer-thin potatoes. The fish today is rouget, the small ones, grilled with fresh herbs. Oh, and there's mussels, moules marinière. And for dessert, as well as the usual sorbets, we have a nougat glacé au coulis de framboises, a frozen fruit-and-nut-filled creamy nougat with raspberry sauce. Plus a chocolate cake I made this afternoon.”

Cheers greeted this recital, just as Mr. Honeymoon came back with the news that his father would help and wanted to know all the details. Mr. Honeymoon said he'd already told him “all the details,” but anyhow his dad would call me tomorrow.

I thanked him again, took the orders, and disappeared into my kitchen. Scramble was already in her hibiscus pot, head tucked under her wing, oblivious to the fact that she might soon be homeless.

And speaking of homes, all my guests were due to leave this weekend. In just a few more days, I would be alone here in my personal little paradise that was mine no longer.

It was midnight when, like Cinderella leaving the ball, I finally left the terrace and walked home. I'd said good night to my guests about an hour ago, but then I'd lingered, cleaning up the kitchen with Jean-Paul and going over food plans for the next day with Marit. The truth was, though, I didn't want to be alone.

I looked across the dark water at the lights of
Bad Dog,
wondering about Jack Farrar, then I noticed that his dinghy was still moored at the jetty.

He was waiting for me at the cottage, sitting on the rattan porch sofa, one leg hitched comfortably over the other.

“I knew you'd have to come home sometime,” he said.

I caught the gleam of his smile in the midnight-blue darkness and felt my heart do that little flip that always means trouble. Stop it, I told myself sternly, this man means nothing to you, you mean nothing to him. He's just a friend, a new friend, who's trying to help you out, that's all.

“Well, I'm here,” I said, plumping down next to him.

“Yeah.”

I could feel him looking at me.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I think so. Thank you for asking, though.”

“That's okay.”

We listened to the soft slurp of the Mediterranean washing the shore.

“I spoke to my detective friend in Marseilles,” he said. “Forensics found nothing in the Porsche. Just fingerprints. They were all Patrick's.”

I nodded. “Thanks.” I was just glad it wasn't blood.

“You're a terrific cook, y'know that?” Jack changed the subject.

“That's my job.”

“Yeah, but some cooks hate what they do. You cook with love.”

“Gotta spread that love around somewhere,” I said flippantly, but he didn't laugh. “So, if you think I'm such a good cook—and by the way the word is
chef
—why not come to dinner tomorrow night?” I said out of the blue. “It's my night off, we could dine here.” I didn't add
alone,
a word which was cropping up in my vocabulary a lot tonight, but he knew what I meant.

“Thank you, I'd like that.” He got to his feet and stood, looking down at me. “You sure you'll be okay tonight?”

I nodded. “I'm sure.”

“So what time?”

“How about nine?” I said. We dine late here in the south of France and nine was early enough so as not to look as though I were asking him to spend the night.

“I'll be here.”

We stood, looking at each other.

“Lovely night,” he said, scanning the stars.

“Do they look the same from your boat?” I asked and he smiled.

“Better.”

“Everything's better on a boat, I suppose.”

“Not everything,” he said, reaching out for my hand.

Those little electric tingles filtered from our clasped fingers as we stood, looking up at the stars. I felt him turn slightly, sensed he was looking at me. I met his eyes.

“Lola?” he said, and then he bent his head and kissed my hand.

It was the sweetest gesture, so gentlemanly, but in a way, sooo sexy, I turned to liquid gold. He ran his hands up my bare arms, lifted my heavy hair from my nape, grasped my head, pulled it toward his. Then we were kissing.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but lips are the first wonderful link in the game of love, that first gentle kiss, hesitant, seeking each other, searching for that moment when, eyes wide open, you link body with soul.

My first kiss from Jack Farrar was like nothing I'd experienced before. I wanted to melt into his body, to become part of him. All my ladylike pretensions were swept away in one tiny moment, and I was no longer Patrick's abandoned wife. I was a woman again and, even though it was for this night only, Jack Farrar was my man.

After a long while he lifted his mouth from mine and we stood wrapped in each other's arms, weak-kneed with longing.

“More,” I said, running my tongue across his lips and he laughed and said he was just about to say that himself. Then, to my astonishment, he picked me up and carried me through my own front door, straight to the bedroom.

“No messing about with you,” I said, smiling back at him, because this was a truly happy occasion. In fact, it was one of the happiest moments of my entire life.

“Come here,” I said, flinging off my shirt and reclining on the bed like a true Jezebel. And he laughed, flinging off his own shirt, and then his pants, his underwear. I couldn't take my eyes off him. Up close and getting closer my Naked Man was even more perfect than through the binoculars.

“Nothing you haven't seen before,” he said, laughing, “but all
your
secrets are intact.”

“I want to share them with you,” I whispered, licking his ear, shivering with delight at the touch of his hands.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, “so beautiful, Lola, here, let me touch you, let me find you…”

His lips searched my body, sending ripples of pleaure through me, and I smiled. “Delicious,” I said, tasting him, “you are the most delicious man…”

And my old four-poster rocked to our rhythm as we made love through the night.

“Never,” I said to him softly, “it was never like this before…” And he sealed my mouth with kisses and entered me again, and again, until I was one delicious dish of pleasure myself. And nothing else mattered.

We woke to the dawn and the sound of Big Dog whining and snuffling along the crack under the bedroom door. We lay on our backs, his arm under my shoulders. I turned and smiled at him.
“Bonjour,”
I said softly.

“How're y'doing?” he replied with a grin.

And then we were laughing and kissing, and I had to dash into the shower and get ready for my day and he had to rescue Bad Dog from near-abandonment, and get out before any early guests wandered down the path to the beach.

He caught my chin and planted a kiss firmly on my bruised mouth. And then he was gone.

And I had a big smile on my face.