Champagne Romance (Romance Novel) (19 page)

There was never a question of divorce.
Generations of good catholic families never gave that a
consideration and they would be no different. So, Madeline and her
husband led a life of misery pretending to be happy to the rest of
the world. They had two children. Their lives would also mimic the
life of their parents.

Slater arrived with Lolita just before noon
as he knew that Swan would pick Quinn up from preschool at 11:30
A.M. and deliver him home for Maria to feed and put him down for a
nap. IF she were coming, she would be picking up a friend or her
lover and be at the bistro by noon. Should everything not go
according to plan, he would bring a different date for lunch every
day this week until he “accidentally” ran into Swan.

Swan drove to the restaurant with a chatty
Madeline all the way. It was a beautiful day and the lovely young
women were enjoying the bright sunshine with the top of the
convertible down. She soon pulled her Mercedes into the entrance of
the bistro and handed the keys to the valet. An unsuspecting Swan
and her friend walked into the French cafe and were soon seated a
few tables away from Slater and the brassy blond.

Slater made sure that he had a seat facing
the entrance of the bistro so that he could orchestrate his moves
accordingly. As luck would have it, Swan and a girlfriend walked in
the door ten minutes after he and Lolita had arrived and sat down a
few chairs away. When he sensed Swan looking from the corner of his
eye he reached over, took Lolita’s hand, and carried it to his
lips. It was all the encouragement that was needed to get Lolita
licking her chops. He soon was rewarded with bare toes creeping up
his leg.

Slater’s back was turned, but Swan recognized
him immediately. She was horrified by what she was witnessing! She
watched what was taking place between the couple in fascinatingly
slow motion. It wasn’t until her friend, Madeline, started fanning
her face with the menu that she came back to earth with a thud.

“
Are you going to be sick?” she asked
Swan.

Swan couldn’t seem to use her vocal cords;
she only shook her head up and down. She grabbed her purse and
immediately exited out the door from which they had just entered
with an alarmed Madeline following closely behind. It wasn’t until
they were in the car with Swan gasping for air in-between crying
and hiccupping did Madeline piece together the story and understand
the reason for their quick departure--the swine!

By the time Swan dropped a concerned Madeline
back at her doorstep; Swan had pulled herself together and was
beginning to regroup. The minute she entered the front door of her
home, she was back in control. The last thing she was going to do
was to mope around and hope any phone calls came from Slater. She
was going to get as far away from him as was physically
possible.

Things began flying the moment after she
booked a flight for two by phone to Europe. Almost as soon as she
replaced the phone receiver in its cradle, she was packed and out
the door with Quinn in tow. She was going to spend time with her
friend, Kat. Kat was vacationing outside Rome where there would be
no way that she would run into Slater---ever!!! So, she
thought.

CHAPTER 43

It was a grueling luncheon date for Slater.
Once Lolita had served her purpose and was no longer needed, he
could hardly wait for the meal to be over. There was an unusually
large crowd today and the waiters were swamped. As a result, it was
a miserable two hours before they got out of there and Slater was
back in his office.

It didn’t help that Lolita wasn’t about to
have the luncheon end any sooner than necessary. She took an
unusually long time eating, drinking two glasses of wine, and then
ordering dessert with coffee. He deserved to be punished for the
agonizing luncheon and he accepted that. He was more than a little
impatient, however, with her pouted red lips as her hopes were
dashed when she found out that they would not be going back to his
place for an afternoon romp that she had hoped to last the rest of
the day and night.

When Slater got back to his office he was
could still smell the clinging musky smell of Lolita’s perfume. He
felt like she was all over him and he couldn’t wait to get home and
take a shower, which would wash all traces of her away from his
mind and body. All he wanted was Swan--her scent and only hers.

Slater was disgusted with himself. He saw the
way Swan looked when she ran out the door of the restaurant. He
wanted her to be upset, but not to the point of being sick. He went
back to his apartment, took a shower, and contemplated his next
move.

Slater went out on the balcony and lit a
cigarette as he gazed out over the Pacific and considered the day’s
event. Swan didn’t bring in her lover boy for lunch, but that
didn’t mean anything. She hadn’t reacted to his date like someone
who had another lover, but then again she never did react the way
that he expected. That caused him to frown as he stared out at
Catalina. His whole plan was to make her so jealous that she would
come running back into his waiting arms.

Slater’s eyebrows drew together in a frown as
he rubbed his chin and thought of the foolishness of that line of
thinking. It suddenly occurred to him that she wasn’t experienced
enough to play games. Smashing out his cigarette with the heel of
his shoe he needed to drive past her place and prove his thinking
incorrect. He had a premonition that he had made the wrong move.
Slater usually shot from the hip and met things head on when he
needed to solved a problem, but Swan solved her problems
differently--she ran. Son of a bitch, how could he be so
stupid!

Slater knew that he was right before he ever
got to Swan’s condo. He entered by the side door with the slip of a
credit card as he usually did and took the back steps two at a
time. Seconds later, he was pounding on the French door entrance of
Swan’s condo. A sober Maria opened the door.

Slater got very little information from Maria
as she knew very little, but with much reluctance she gave him
enough knowledge to serve as a starting point. Swan was headed for
Europe, damn her! She had an hour jump on him, but he could easily
close that gap difference once he got his private jet fired up.
Sitting down at his computer he hacked into LAX terminals flight
plan for all airlines. It wasn’t long before he verified the two
tickets of Swan and Quinn on an American Airliner bound for Rome.
It left in twenty minutes. Slater looked at his watch and realized
that they would probably just be boarding at approximately this
very moment.

Slater alerted his staff for an overseas
flight in his small private jet. They were used to last minute
instructions and were paid well to be ready to go anywhere at a
moment’s notice. One hour later, they were in the air and headed to
Tuscany country. They would be flying at night and would be
arriving before dawn. With any luck at all, they would be at their
gate about the moment the American Airliner was pulling up to
theirs. By the time Swan got her luggage and went through customs,
he would be greeting them on the other side. --- It should have
worked that way, but it didn’t.

Swan and Quinn boarded the international
flight to Europe within two hours after she saw Slater at the
bistro. Quinn was terribly excited about flying on the big silver
bird of the sky. It was like he had been given an energizing
battery pill. It wasn’t until they had taken off and they were in
the air over the feathery white clouds for over two hours that her
little energizing bunny began to wind down and nod off.

After raising the arm of the plane seat,
Quinn was able to stretch out in the plane seat quite comfortable
for the entire flight. He snuggled beneath his “blankie” with his
favorite toy doggy under his arm and was soon fast asleep. It was
then that Swan had time to reflect on her day and Slater’s conduct
with the blond.

Replaying the restaurant scene like a DVD in
her tired mind, she found herself becoming more and more miserable.
How could she have believed all of Slater’s words and romance? How
could she have been sooo stupid?! After a three-hour pity party and
a bottle of wine, she tried to make a real effort to sleep. Trying
to keep a blank mind so that she wouldn’t think of Slater making
love to the blond from the restaurant, she punched her pillow
pretending it was his head. Finally, she fell into a short shallow
sleep of liquored bliss.

They arrived in Rome late afternoon. Swan had
packed light and brought only one carry-on for her and Quinn. She
didn’t want to be waiting in the luggage line with a squirming
three-year-old and a hangover. Besides, she could always buy
anything that they needed. So, she had a short wait at customs and
was soon spotted by her friend, Kat.

It was a big relief to see Kat’s waving hand
among the crowd of traveling people. After battling the airport
mob, they were soon settled into Kat’s beamer and headed for her
European castle in the coastal region of southern Italy compliments
of Kat’s last husband, The Baron.

A smug Slater arrived about fifteen minutes
after the commercial airliner landed. He was soon through customs
and on the other side of the gate scanning the horde of people for
Swan and Quinn. An hour later, a frustrated Slater was not so
smug.

The worldly part of Slater, however, did not
take long to obtain the information he wanted. When a few palms
were greased with the America dollar, a taxi driver suddenly
remembered two women and a toddler. Slater knew he could depend on
the Italian men to notice gorgeous women and he was not
disappointed by their observation. He had been counting on their
appreciation of the feminine beauty. When he finally found the taxi
driver that remembered Swan with a small child and another woman,
he was able to give a description of their get-a-way car. Then,
however, he started to flamboyantly describe the attributes of the
redhead woman’s figure. Slater put his hand up in a gesture to
stop. It was not, however, the universal gesture that he desired to
give to this male Italian with way too much testosterone.

Slater opened his laptop. With a little help
from a satellite dish, Slater was able to track fifteen light-gray
BMWs headed south from the airport. He soon obtained satellite
pictures, which enabled him to narrow the possibilities down to
three. A quick check of the license plate zeroed them down again to
an American name, Katherine Tortillini, which in all probabilities
was her friend, Kat. He went with the gut feeling that he had found
the trio. Hailing the nearest cab, he guided the taxi through the
traffic following each turn of the gray beamer. They were soon
whizzing down the coastal highway at 95 mph approximately an hour
behind the equally speeding vehicle of Kat’s.

CHAPTER 44

An exhausted Swan and Quinn immediately went
upstairs to the spacious bedrooms of Kat’s seasonal second home
that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. Quinn was seeing ZZZs before
the lights were out in his bedroom and Swan wasn’t far behind in
her roomy king-sized bed. She was too tired to dig through her bag
for an overnight gown. So, her clothes fell in a pile beside the
bed along with her bra and panties. She then slipped between the
luxurious silk sheets totally nude.

Kat was wide-awake. She managed six hours of
sleep before she had made the run to the airport. Setting the
alarm, she went to the refrigerator and sliced some meat off the
hunk of roast beef for a sandwich. Pouring herself a glass of
relaxing prime Italian wine, she sat down to thumb through a
magazine that she picked up at the airport. An hour later she
closed the magazine with a big yawn.

Just as Kat was about to turn out the lights
and go upstairs, the doorbell rang. Startled that someone would be
ringing the doorbell at this time of night, she apprehensively
looked out the peephole. What she saw was a very handsome man
standing on the other side of the door. He didn’t look Italian but
he did look somewhat familiar. Hoping that it was just someone who
had a flat tire and not an ax murderer, she cautiously used her
intercom.

Slater knew that he wouldn’t have any problem
scaling the walls of the three story luxury home, but he preferred
to enter the old-fashion way. As he stood on the front porch, a
female voice asked in Italian his reason for him being on her
doorstep at this time of night. He replied back in fluent Italian
that he had been chasing Swan and Quinn half-way across the
universe and he would appreciate it if she would open the door. To
his surprise, she accommodated.

Kat immediately recognized Slater from some
Disneyland pictures that Swan had shown her, the minute he asked to
see her friend. She, however, was not quite ready to throw open the
door in invitation to enter until she had some sort of an
explanation. She intended to protect her friend from this gigolo
whom Swan had flown around the world in the middle of the night to
avoid. So, if he wanted to gain entrance he better have a darn good
story as to why he followed Swan and how he found her here.

Kat’s body language told Slater that he
better be on top of his game and up to some pretty fast smooth
talking if he didn’t want to still be standing on the front step
when the morning sun popped over the horizon. He took his cues from
Kat. He was well aware of the way her eyes glanced over him in
appreciation of his male attributes. He immediately and accurately
pegged her as a female piranha. It did not take her long to guess
she liked what she saw and he intended to use it to his full
advantage. He would almost bet his last buck that she even had a
pretty good idea on how long his pecker was.

Oozing with charm, he soon found himself
sitting on the living room couch with a scotch in his hand. Thirty
minutes later after a declaration of his love for Swan, he was
being led to the bedroom door of the sleeping beauty. Stripping to
his briefs, he immediately crawled in beside her. He was pleasantly
surprised to find her almost as naked as he pulled her next to him.
Those luscious breasts with their pointy nipples bore into his
chest like a steel drill. It was a bitter sweet feeling of male
sacrifice just to have those soft breasts pressed against him, but
he would happily endure it. With a deep breath he was soon sound
asleep beside her.