“Do you think you’ll take over for your father one day?” he asked with interest. He got the feeling that she was capable of it, or would be in time.
“I don’t know. I want him to run it forever. I’d rather be number two under him. I can’t imagine the Vendome without him. He put it all together himself, and it’s just a perfect little hotel. We offer all the same services the big hotels do, just to better clients and with fewer rooms.” He could see how proud she was of her father’s hotel, and how loyal she was to him. She talked about her mother a little bit, but only superficially. She said her parents had divorced when she was four, and her mother was married to Greg Bones, the rock star, which sounded interesting to Brad. Everything about her interested him, and he was powerfully attracted to her. She was American, but she looked very European, and he liked the way she dressed. She managed to look young, sexy, and chic all at the same time. She was much more exciting than any of the girls he’d met.
He invited her out again the following weekend. He took her downtown to the Cafe Cluny, and she invited him to watch movies and have room service in her new apartment on Sunday night. They saw each other again twice the following week, and by then he kissed her, and they were falling all over each other like two puppies.
By the time Hugues and Natalie came home from their two-week honeymoon at Palmilla, Brad and Heloise were definitely an item, and he was becoming a familiar sight at the hotel. Everyone thought they looked cute together, and they liked Brad a lot. And so did Heloise.
She was thrilled to see her father and Natalie when they got home, suntanned, happy, and rested, and she mentioned Brad casually when she had dinner with them on their first night back. Her father noticed that she had moved most of her things downstairs.
“It would have been too lonely up here without you,” she said simply. “Besides, you guys need some privacy, and so do I.” He thought it was a powerful statement and wondered what she’d been up to while they were gone, other than working. And then she mentioned Brad in an offhanded way, and her stepmother smiled.
“So is this a big deal?” Natalie asked her, and Heloise shrugged with a mysterious smile. Her father was startled to see it. They had been gone for two weeks, and suddenly she had a new romance. But she was twenty-one after all, and Natalie had told him before that her nephew was a great guy and she wanted him to meet her. Heloise hadn’t dated anyone seriously since Francois, in nearly a year.
“I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell. It might be,” she said cryptically. She hadn’t slept with him yet and wasn’t ready to. But Natalie had the feeling it wasn’t far off.
“Well, that sounds interesting.” Natalie smiled at her and was happy for her. She needed more than just work in her life, and she was so dedicated to the hotel. Everyone had told Hugues that she’d done a great job while he was away, and did much more than just her internship duties at the front desk. She had been all over the hotel checking on things a dozen times a day. And he was pleased by how responsible and diligent she was.
And the honeymooners looked happy and rested and more in love than ever. They were planning to spend August settling into married life. Natalie was giving up her apartment, and moving in the rest of her things, and putting some of it in the hotel storerooms. And in September she was planning to tackle new projects, and a few more rooms to renovate in the hotel. And he still wanted to give her the presidential suite to do when there was room for it in their budget.
She was coming back from her apartment one afternoon a week later, with more of her decorating accessories and belongings, when Natalie got into the elevator and found herself looking at Heloise and Brad. They were on their way up to her apartment. Brad kissed his aunt and looked surprisingly comfortable, as though both the hotel and Heloise were familiar to him now. It was Heloise’s day off. Now that her father was back, she had a little more time to herself.
“What have you two been up to?” Natalie asked, intrigued to see them so happy together. They’d been holding hands when she got in.
“We just went to a street fair downtown,” Heloise said, looking radiant. Brad put an arm around her shoulders, and a minute later they got out on the fifth floor. Natalie asked if they wanted to come up later for dinner, but Heloise was quick to say that they were going out again. And she didn’t know why, but after they got out, Natalie didn’t think she believed her. Obviously they wanted to be alone. She smiled to herself as she got off on her floor and let herself into their apartment. Hugues was working out at the gym as she put her things away, and she mentioned to him later that she had seen Heloise and Brad.
“Do you suppose that’s serious?” he asked, glancing up at her, and she smiled as she shrugged.
“As much as it can be at that age. But it’s sweet anyway. They’re both good kids with good values and their eyes on serious careers. She could do a lot worse.”
“Okay,” he nodded, reassured. He trusted her judgment, even about his daughter. He missed having Heloise in the apartment, but he knew it had been the right time for her to move downstairs. And he liked being alone with his wife. It gave them a lot of privacy and freedom they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
September was extremely hectic at the hotel. It was always a busy month as people got back after the summer or came to New York on business or for social events. And most of their regular guests showed up in September. And to complicate matters, they had a terrorist threat that forced them to empty the hotel. Hotel management had been told that a bomb would go off within the hour. Hugues assessed the threat with the police, and they had called for the bomb squad and evacuated the hotel immediately. The police suspected that it was a false threat, but they couldn’t take the chance.
Employees knocked on doors on every floor, security manned the stairways, and Heloise was racing from floor to floor with her father, to check that all was orderly and to reassure people as they left their rooms with some concern. Jennifer, Bruce, and the doorman were directing people outside, and in twenty minutes they had everyone out and corralled safely two blocks away behind police lines, while hotel employees handed out coffee and tea from rolling carts. It happened in the early evening, when many people had come back from their day and hadn’t yet gone out to dinner. Natalie arrived from her office just as the guests were pouring out of the hotel. And once they got them all out and at a safe distance, Heloise called Brad on her cell phone and told him all about it. They talked to each other constantly now, and sent texts all day.
“Do you want me to come and help?” he offered, and she liked that idea.
“Sure, if you want to.” He arrived half an hour later, having come down from Columbia by subway. He was amazed at the huge crowd of hotel guests standing in the street. It looked very orderly, although some of them were visibly upset. And they all wanted to know how soon they could go back to their rooms. Bruce and his security men were walking among them, reassuring people, while room service waiters served tea, coffee, and bottled water. Many of the guests had evening plans and were standing there in bathrobes. And SWAT teams were sweeping the hotel for bombs, floor by floor.
Vans brought food out for all the guests, and Brad helped Heloise and the room service waiters hand out sandwiches and cookies. He was extremely pleasant to everyone, and very helpful, calming people down when he could. No one appeared to be angry, but many were justifiably concerned. And Hugues was extremely grateful that it had happened in good weather and not in the dead of winter, which had happened once before. All hotels were vulnerable to that kind of threat these days.
And three hours later, the police declared the hotel safe and let everyone back in. Much to everyone’s relief and annoyance, it had been a false alarm. And once they were all back inside and had gone up to their rooms, Brad went up to Heloise’s apartment with her. They were among the last to leave the street. Brad had been impressed by how well she handled herself, how poised she was, and how cool in a crisis. She was definitely in the right business. And she had thought the same thing about him. He had been calm and helpful throughout and handled the guests well.
“That was fun,” he admitted sheepishly. He liked the excitement and helping her. He had chatted quite a bit with the police.
“Don’t say that to my father,” she said with a grin. “He hates that stuff. It upsets people. It takes a lot of effort to make it up to them later. He probably won’t charge for any of the rooms tonight. You pretty much have to do that, even though it’s not our fault.” She had finally collapsed on the couch next to him and looked tired as she took her shoes off. She’d been out there in her navy suit and high heels all night, looking very competent and official and older than her years. It was hard for Brad to believe sometimes that she was only twenty-one, but she looked it now with her jacket off, as she loosened her long hair from the bun, and it cascaded past her shoulders. And suddenly the dusting of freckles on her face looked more apparent too. She had gone from woman to kid in two minutes. And as he smiled at her, he leaned over and kissed her, and she melted into his arms.
“You look so sexy when you let your hair down,” he whispered, and suddenly after all they’d done that night, they were both over-come with desire for each other. It had been a busy evening, and instead of tired, both of them were wound up, and it found expression in a suddenly insatiable hunger and passion, more than ever before. Their excitement had been building for two months. And before either of them could stop or wanted to, they were making love on the floor. They had waited a long time for this, by mutual agreement, and now nothing could stop it. They were breathless and spent afterward and laughed as they held each other.
“Ohmygod, what happened?” he said as he looked at her. He had been hit with a tidal wave of longing for her so powerful that nothing could have stopped it. And he felt it mounting in him again.
“I’ve been wanting you so much,” she admitted to him, as they both got up, and then laughing again, he raced her to the bedroom, where they both dove into the bed, still giggling. Being with him was fun. It had none of the intensity and eventual boredom and dishonesty she had experienced with Francois in Paris. This felt so right, and they seemed so well matched. She liked hearing about his experiences at law school. And he was fascinated by the hotel and most of all by her.
They made love twice more that night, and he spent the night with her for the first time. He had to get up early the next morning for a class, and she ordered breakfast for him, and then put on running clothes, and walked him to the subway when he left. She was on her way back when she ran into her father and Natalie coming out of the elevator, dressed to leave the hotel in comfortable clothes. It was seven A.M.
“What are you two doing going out at this hour?” Heloise asked them without thinking, as her father avoided her eyes, and Natalie looked vague.
“I have an early morning meeting,” she said after a strange pause, but she wasn’t dressed for it. She always dressed impeccably for her meetings, and she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and sandals, which was totally unlike her. And they were obviously in a hurry to leave. Natalie said she’d call her later, Hugues was already outside, and Heloise went upstairs to take a shower. She’d had an incredible night with Brad. He texted her from his class a little while later and told her that he loved her and she was the sexiest woman in the world. It wasn’t the first time he had told her he loved her, but it was the first time they had made love. And it had been unbelievable. All she wanted now was more.
When Natalie got into the taxi, she looked nervously at Hugues. “Do you think she knew something?”
“No,” he said, putting an arm around her to calm her. “I don’t think she’d ever imagine it. And we’re not doing anything wrong.” She had waited a lifetime for this, without even knowing that she had. Hugues had been giving her hormone shots for three months, which were making her seriously jumpy, and they were on their way to the fertility clinic they’d been going to, for the implantation of four fertilized embryos. They had retrieved her eggs and were putting them back, fertilized by Hugues’s sperm, today. The egg retrieval had been a painful process, today was going to be much easier for her. And then they’d have to wait to see what happened, and if the fertilized embryos would stay. They had wanted to try and get pregnant naturally, but at her age, with weak hormone levels, they’d discovered, her doctor had recommended IVF.
She was so anxious, all she wanted to do was cry, which she did the moment she got to the clinic. As soon as they led her into the room, she burst into tears, not because she was frightened but because she wanted so much for this to work. At her age, statistically they had a six to ten percent chance of success, which wasn’t high. But it was worth a try. They had discussed it for several months after Hugues proposed, and he had agreed since it meant so much to her. She had never wanted babies before, but now that she was in love with him, and married, it was all she could think about. He would have been perfectly happy not to have children with her, but he felt an obligation to her, since she had never had any of her own. He had Heloise, and that was enough for him. And it was a little odd now thinking about starting over again, with a baby or even several of them if she had a multiple birth. He was fifty-four, she was almost forty-two, and they were implanting four embryos that morning. They had decided that four embryos were the right number. More than that would have been dangerous for her and the eventual babies. She didn’t want a litter, and she would have been satisfied with one baby, as long as it was Hugues’s. They had agreed to say nothing to Heloise, not to upset her again. It had taken her six months to adjust to their marriage, and they didn’t want to rock the boat again so soon, and particularly if their efforts never worked. They were going to tell her only if it did.
Natalie had been praying for this and had even lit candles at church.