The Hotel Riviera (21 page)

It was more than just the feeling of “Coming Home” when Jack put his arms around me at Nice Airport the following evening; it was more like I “belonged.” I buried my head in his chest, feeling the muscles in his arms tighten as he held me close, and for a few seconds we clung together. Miss N busied herself discreetly with the luggage while Jack whispered in my ear.

“You look like strawberries and cream, very English,” he said, perhaps because I had my new English pink cashmere sweater tossed around my shoulders and my hair pulled back, preppy style, and neat for once.

“And you look good enough to eat too,” I said, with a goofy grin on my face. Then he went to help Miss N with the luggage, giving her a kiss too, on the cheek, and hefting the bags as though they were feathers.

Miss N gave a pleased little sigh, and said it was so good to have a man around to take care of these things, then we walked together out into the sunshine to find the car. Only it wasn't a car. Instead we took a taxi to the port where the dinghy was waiting, then sailed home on the sloop, with Bad Dog the mutt taking the place of the aristocratic Little Nell. With his head in Miss N's lap and the wind in our sails as we headed for Saint-Tropez.

I was almost beginning to like boats.

 

Jack and I were sitting on the deck of the sloop, looking across the water at the ruin of my hotel. The entire right side where the kitchen had been was a mass of charred beams and twisted steel. What had been left of the roof on that side had been demolished because it was dangerous. The terrace was piled with debris and the rose-colored walls were blackened with smoke. But the bougainvillea struggled bravely on, even though it was the end of November, and the garden still rampaged, wild as ever under the autumn sun.

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.

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.

I heard voices and jolted upright, clutching the blanket to my T-shirted chest. A glance at my watch told me it was ten o'clock. I'd overslept.

I ran to the window. Jack was talking to a small man in a brown suit, carrying a briefcase and looking very official. At least he didn't look like a cop, I thought, pulling on my sweat pants.

“Good morning,” I said, trying to look as though I'd been up for hours. I caught Jack's grin and bit my lip to stop from smiling. “Can I help you?”

The man was sizing me up, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. I guess I looked as though I'd just stepped out of bed. “Madame Laforêt?”

“That's me.” I smiled at him. He seemed harmless enough, but he might be another of Solis's minions here to slap me with another claim.

“I represent the insurance company, madame. I'm here to tell you that we are pleased to finally settle your claim in full. I have here the necessary papers for you to sign.”

My jaw dropped, then my eyes lit up. Grabbing his hand I led him inside. Embarrassed, he removed his hand and sat stiffly opposite me at the table.

“Please read through the papers, Madame Laforêt. I will need your signature, here and also here.”

I read them through, signed here and there, and he handed me a check.
A big fat Hotel Riviera check.
A check that meant a new roof and rose-pink walls and shutters that would hang evenly. It meant more auctions and old rugs and silver jugs and gilded beds, and Provençal fabrics fresh from the market. It meant apple logs in baskets again, it meant flowers blooming and windows flung open to the sunshine, the sound of happy voices on the terrace and small children running in and out of lacy wavelets. It meant a new kitchen with a rosemary hedge outside the door. It meant the smell of good things cooking and cold rosé wine on a warm summer night. It meant everything. It meant freedom. It meant “home.”

To celebrate, we dined that night at the Moulin de Mougins, a favorite of mine for many years, and where, though he was no longer the chef, Roger Vergé's touch was still to be felt in every dish.

Dressed to kill and looking good, we sailed into the restaurant. I ordered champagne and told my guests they must have whatever they wanted.

Miss N looked delightful and very queenly in navy silk with her beautiful pearls, which I now knew were the real thing. She said she was sure the food wasn't going to be as good as mine, but she did fancy the wild mushroom soup, and the dorade sounded awfully good.

And Jack,
my
Jack, I thought fondly, squeezing his hand under the table, because he was mine. For tonight at least.
My
Jack was wearing cream linen pants, wrinkled it's true, but at least they weren't shorts; a nice blue shirt he'd bought specially that morning in Saint-Tropez; and a dark linen jacket that, though it had seen better days, somehow on him looked elegant.

As for me, I'd splurged on a raspberry-colored dress, simple as only good money can buy. It clashed wonderfully with my ginger hair, which I wore flowing round my shoulders in a long shiny fall. I'd tucked back my bangs and put on dangly amber earrings, adding to the color mix, plus I wore three-inch heels with pointy toes that would kill me but what did I care. I wore mascara and blusher and lip gloss and a big smile, and the insurance check was already doing wonders for my morale.

“You look different,” Jack said, checking me out.

“Hope so,” I said smugly. “It cost enough.”

He laughed. “Money talks, honey, you can always tell.”

“Yeah, well, let it talk some more. Tonight we'll wine and dine like kings,” I said, enjoying myself more than I had in months. Except for the times when I was making love to Jack, that is.

The night was memorable, three friends, two lovers. We forgot Patrick and all the fears and problems, and just had a good time. Tomorrow would be soon enough for reality, and the rebuilding of the Hotel Riviera and my life.

 

Patrick seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, or at least the parts of it that Jack searched. Meanwhile, I got on with the work. It was back to long discussions with the contractor, back to cranes and containers full of debris; back to the sound of walls being demolished and the screech of drills and the thump of a jackhammer. Rebuilding must be almost as painful as giving birth, but like childbirth, it was worth it.

The part of the hotel that fronted onto the parking lot was intact, so Miss Nightingale was able to move back into the Marie-Antoinette, while Jack pretty much moved into my own house. He'd hired a security guard who patrolled the property from dusk to dawn, and Bad Dog was around to growl and snap at any stranger. I felt safe again.

Days slid by in a frenzy of activity; constant decisions to be made, always something going wrong, workmen not showing up, materials not delivered. When finally the roof went on, we celebrated with the traditional French party, setting up a table in the garden laden with goodies for the workmen and their wives and families. Many beers were drunk and many toasts were made to the success of the new Hotel Riviera. Then it began to rain. The cheering stopped and we stared dismayed at the lowering gray sky, and at each other. Then I remembered. “I have a roof,” I said, and we began to laugh. Oh, what a difference a roof can make.

I was so happy that night. Everything was going right. Who knew, I might even get to keep my hotel after all. I was up, optimistic, happy.

But this was just the lull before the storm.

Patrick

Patrick Laforêt was broke. He had exactly enough in his pocket to buy a cup of coffee for his breakfast, a sandwich for his lunch, and a drink and a bite in the evening. Evgenia had cut off the funds, angry at his gambling. He'd lost most of the money she had ferried to him, via the FedEx in Menton, including the pearl and diamond earrings, the sum total of which Patrick didn't even like to think about. It was far more than he'd thought, that was certain.

Now Evgenia was keeping him on a tight rein. He lived alone in the sordid little villa in the hills that had been their love nest, though Evgenia would no longer visit him there. She hadn't let him near her in weeks and he was going crazy. His metallic-blue Mercedes was gone; his grand hotel life in San Remo was gone; only the Ducati remained. He was not a happy man.

And neither was Evgenia Solis a happy woman. She was angry, bitter, driven, and dangerous. They had spent the afternoon together, lunching at a small place in the village of La Turbie, high in the mountains above Monte Carlo.

She'd sat opposite him, calm and cool in a yellow sweater, because it was chilly up there, and a string of diamonds threaded along a platinum chain that dangled on her breast, picking at a plate of ravioli and barely looking at him.

He reached for her hand and she pushed him away. “Don't bother me, Patrick. I'm thinking,” she said.

He took another gulp of red wine and said, “So what are you thinking about this time?” Wondering if she were going to tell him goodbye, and if she were he didn't know what he would do. He couldn't live without this woman. She was like a virus you couldn't shake, bad for you but you didn't want to take the medicine because you loved the way the illness made you feel.

“We can't go on like this,” Evgenia said, and he nodded humbly, for he knew they could not. “It's time for action,” she said briskly. “Our plan is ready, now all we have to do is carry it out.”

He poured more wine, looked at her across the table: so beautiful, so malignant…he no longer knew whether he loved her or hated her.

“Falcon will make the calls,” she said. “The man, Farrar, will be out of the way. Lola will come alone.”

“You really think she'll come?”

Evgenia smiled. “I know she will, Patrick,” she said, “after all, she's coming to see you.”

Patrick stared sadly into his glass. It had all gone too far, there was no way out. Except he couldn't do it. “I will not drive the car,” he said, staring stubbornly into his glass.

Evgenia sighed. Patrick was weak, she had always known it. “Don't worry, it will be taken care of,” she said. “This time tomorrow, you will be a free man.”