There's Something About St. Tropez (4 page)

She was drinking coffee—the can of Nescafé instant was on the table—and making a face as though she didn't like it. She looked wary but not afraid, and seemed quite calm for a woman possibly taken captive. Bertrand drew in a shocked breath though, when he saw that the palms of her hands were bleeding. The little dog on her lap sniffed the blood then turned away with a yelp so loud Bertrand could hear it through the closed windows. Bertrand's mother was English and he spoke that language and now he wished he could also hear what they were saying.

 

Sunny couldn't believe she was having a coffee with a man who, minutes ago she'd thought was about to kill her. They were sitting opposite each other at a large wooden table in a big dusty kitchen that seemed to belong to another century.

“I'd better introduce myself,” the stranger said. “My name's Nate Masterson. From New York.”

Sunny didn't like the way he was looking at her, with a half-amused smile on his lips. She knew she must look weary and wet and bedraggled but that was partly his fault. A New Yorker, huh? She might have known it. She took a sip of the coffee. No milk, no sugar. It tasted like hell but at least it was hot.

“Sonora Sky Coto de Alvarez,” she introduced herself, giving him the full works. “From L.A. Usually known as Sunny. The only person who ever calls me Sonora is my mother.”

Nate Masterson grinned. “May God forgive her.”

Sunny suddenly realized she was looking at a very attractive man, maybe in his late thirties, brown hair cropped short, dark eyes over which he was now putting a pair of heavy tortoiseshell glasses that gave him an experienced, worldly look. He was tall with a muscular physique; obviously he worked out. The memory of him standing at the top of the stairs, menacing, powerful, holding the sword, made her shiver at the thought of what might have been.

Nate noticed the shiver. He said, “Look, you're freezing. Why don't you get out of those wet things? I have a bathrobe you can use.”

Sunny threw him a wary glance, Oh, yeah, sure. She was not taking off her clothes even if she froze to death.

Nate smiled. “Trust me, rape is not on my mind. I simply don't want you to catch pneumonia on my watch.”

She hugged Tesoro closer. The dog whined, not liking being pressed to her cold wet bosom. She said reluctantly, “I guess I can't just sit here all night dripping water all over your floor.”

“
Our
floor.”

“What?”

“Seems like this house may be yours
and
mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm willing to bet the rental agent has made a mistake and she's rented the property twice for the same month.”

Sunny fished in her red bag until she found Mac's signed contract. She handed it over. “Doesn't that say ‘for the month of June'?”

Nate read it, then got up, went to the sideboard and took out his own contract. “Ditto,” he said, handing it to Sunny.

She read it, then read it again, stunned. She shoved her wet hair out of her eyes and glanced wearily up at him. “Now what?”

Nate checked his watch. “In the morning, which is only a few hours away, I think we should pay a visit to Madame Lariot in Cannes and ask her what she's going to do about it.”

Sunny groaned.
Mac
should have been here to deal with this. What if Madame Lariot gave Nate Masterson custody of Chez La Violette? That would mean she and Mac—whenever he appeared that is—would be stuck in St. Tropez without a villa for a whole month. And this late in the Riviera summer-vacation game who knew what might be available. If anything. They would probably end up back in Malibu, with no vacation, no holiday romance, and no wedding.

Nate was still wishing she would change out of her wet clothes. She looked like a demented mermaid with her trails of long wet hair. Besides he didn't want a sick woman on his hands along with everything else. He said, “What are you doing here alone, anyway?”

Sunny twirled the pink diamond ring around her finger. “My fiancé was supposed to be here. He got delayed so I came on alone. He'll be joining me in a couple of days. I think,” she added gloomily. Right now she was decidedly off Mac Reilly.

“Look here, Sunny Alvarez,” Nate said, “you really have to change out of those wet clothes. For God's sake, what do I have to do to convince you I'm not about to attack you?”

Their eyes met across the table, his impatient, hers defensive. Then Sunny began to laugh. “All I need to do is take a look in the mirror, I guess.”

He grabbed her two suitcases and led her across the hall into a large bedroom suite that made up the entire east wing.

“Violette's own boudoir,” he said. “I preferred the gallery room at the top of the stairs.”

He turned on a lamp then walked to the French doors and closed the curtains. Sunny took a look around.

It was a Hollywood movie set from the thirties, Busby Berkeley gone wild, all pale paneled walls, white-on-white silk and dove gray velvet, glimmering with chrome tables and mirrors and silver sconces. It evoked images of slender elegant women in bias-cut satin evening dresses, holding long cigarette holders and flirting with handsome tuxedoed men.

An enormous four-poster was made of a mosaic of tiny pieces of mirror glass, like an Indian maharaja's, so high, a set of wooden steps had been made to climb up to it, and the shredding silk coverlet was monogrammed with an oversized white
V
, for
Violette
.

An old desk in one corner was the only piece that looked real, as though someone, probably Violette herself, had designed it, or perhaps she had even made it, because all it was, was old planks, driftwood probably, weathered to a pale gray like the velvet sofas. It still held a white leather blotter and a letter stand with writing paper in that same pale gray stamped in white with the address, Chez La Violette, St. Tropez.

But a layer of dust lay over everything, the silver was tarnished, the once-elegant silk drapes fragmenting with age and the room smelled musty, as though the windows had not been opened in decades. In the rose-marble bathroom, there were rust stains in the black and silver claw-foot tub, and when the faucet was turned cold brown water gushed out. Heart sinking, Sunny realized this certainly wasn't the way Chez La Violette had looked in the brochure. Something was terribly wrong.

Putting aside any thoughts of a hot shower, she splashed her face with the rusty water, took a towel from the pile still stacked on the shelves and shook out the dust. Shivering, she dried her hair then ran her fingers through to untangle it.

She stood for a moment, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and the wind battering at the windows. Yet there was a stillness in Violette's room. A different kind of silence. Uneasy, Sunny looked at the dog, crouched on the white sheepskin rug emitting mournful little whines, the kind Mac said sounded like a police siren fitted with a suppressor. She bent to stroke her. “It's okay,” she said, sounding uncertain. “I promise it will be all right, you'll see.”

Quite suddenly a warm breeze filtered through the room, like a summer
wind, bringing with it a faint flowery scent. It hung in the air for a moment, then it was gone.

The hair at the back of Sunny's neck prickled. She flung off her wet clothes, put on the white terry bathrobe and thrust her feet into the comfy old pink furry slippers that she never traveled without. She grabbed the ham and cheese baguette still in its wax-paper wrapper, bought what seemed like aeons ago in Paris airport, then with a doubtful glance around, picked up Tesoro and hurried back to the safety of the kitchen, where Nate Masterson had fresh mugs of hot coffee waiting.

One thing was certain: she was not sleeping in Violette's room.

 

Outside the window, Bertrand Olivier got her in focus. She looked better now. Her hair was a beautiful blue-black and her eyes were amber, almost the color of her dog, who to Bertrand's delight gave the man another snarl as he placed a fresh cup of the Nescafé instant in front of the woman. Now the man was offering her something from a bottle. Bertrand focused on it. Brandy.

He guessed the man was suggesting a hot toddy. Wasn't that supposed to get the blood flowing again, bring color to the cheeks? That's what his mother had told him, when she indulged. But Bertrand didn't want to think about his mother right now

He watched frustrated. He wished they would open a window so he could hear what they were saying. It was a pity the man was here though. His job would have been so much easier if he were not.

 

“That's better,” Nate said with a grin Sunny felt must have charmed the pants off many a woman. It crossed her mind that, with Mac on the lam, perhaps she should be feeling lucky to be caught in a storm in a mysterious, neglected old villa in France, with a man as attractive as Nate Masterson.

He held up a large but half-empty bottle of Spanish Soberano brandy. “I found this in the cupboard. It tastes okay. How about a little in your coffee? Take the chill off things.”

“That's your best idea yet. And I have the perfect accompaniment.” She unwrapped the travel-worn sandwich. “You hungry?”

“Oh boy, am I!”

Sunny cut the baguette into four chunks and put it, still on its square of greasy paper, on the table between them. What with the coffee, the brandy, the food, it was getting to be almost cozy.

“So what do you do?” Nate asked. “Out there in the wilds of L.A.?”

“Oh, ooh, public relations. You know, getting clients recognition in the media, pushing them and their products, that kind of thing.”

“That kind of
L.A.
thing.”

“So what do
you
do anyway?” Sunny wished she didn't sound so defensive.

Nate sat back, sandwich in hand, thinking about it. “I do nothing. I quit everything that I am.” He took a bite, thinking about what he'd just said, then corrected himself. “That is I quit everything that I
thought
I was; the Wall Street trader working every minute God sends and then some, stashing the purloined loot away like a squirrel stashes its nuts for that long winter hibernation. But I never got to ‘hibernate,' I just kept on, summer and winter alike. I had no other life, just being the best at what I did, making money. Until one morning—one of those usual three o'clock mornings—getting dressed in my Wall Street pin-striped uniform, catching the latest events on the Asian market, my brain already running ahead to Europe and then . . .” He shrugged and took a gulp of coffee, pulling a face as the brandy hit his throat. “Well, you get the picture. It's kind of a classic: man sees his whole life run before his eyes like a bad movie, realizes he
has
no life, that money is not the be-all and end-all. That it's time for some real living.”

“And now what?”

“Now?” Nate took another bite. “Now I have to find out what ‘real living' means. I'm too used to work and solitude to thrust myself onto the world market. I need time to recuperate, figure out who I am, what I am, where I'm going. That's why I took this villa. It was better than a hotel, lots of space, I could be alone with my thoughts, do what I wanted, whenever I wanted.”

“And then I came along.”

“Then you came along.”

There was a long silence. Then Sunny said, “Tell me some more about you.”

Nate gave a self-deprecating little shrug. “Oh you know . . . I thought I might try my hand at that novel we all like to imagine we have in us.”

“Perhaps you really have,” Sunny said, but then she realized Nate wasn't listening. He was staring at the window, eyes narrowed. Tesoro turned to look then gave a sudden throaty growl.

Nate said, “I think there's somebody out there.”

Scared, Sunny scrambled to her feet, but Nate was already heading for the door. It took him a few seconds to get the big old-fashioned iron key to turn, then he ran out into the storm.

 

_______

 

Bertrand Olivier saw him coming and careened from the bushes, skidding across the muddy lawn at the side of the drive, dodging behind trees, finally hiding, panting, in a recess in the old yew hedge near the gates.

The footsteps had stopped. Bertrand knew the man was still standing there, searching the darkness for him, but he had the advantage of knowing the terrain. He knew this house and its grounds like the back of his own hand.

The man's footsteps retreated and Bertrand raced out into the lane before anyone could so much as catch a glimpse of his camouflage cape and the bulky old-fashioned bird-watcher's binoculars, bouncing on his chest.

He stopped near the gates though, looking longingly back, tempted to return, even though he knew there was a danger of being caught.

 

Nate had disappeared into the night. Nervous, Sunny paced the kitchen. She inspected the ancient range, all black and steel with massive ovens that she thought had probably, in Violette's day, been used to cook swans and larks or something equally awful and exotic.

It was obvious that no housekeeper had been near the place in years. All she found in the cupboards were a few dusty mugs and a couple of plates. There were no supplies, not even a box of cornflakes or dishwashing liquid. Yet the beamed kitchen had a country-style charm, with its low, wide windows and long refectory table, and the tattered blue-check curtain on a wire, hiding the space beneath the sink. Sunny tried to imagine it as it had once been, with a fire in the massive limestone grate, cheerful on a stormy night like this, and then in summer with the windows flung open to the sunshine and sea breezes. Perhaps Violette had held informal parties in this kitchen, fueled with wine and song with a crowd of friends gathered around the old upright piano that still stood in the corner near the fireplace, its lid now firmly closed, and covered, like everything else, in decades of dust.

She looked out the door and saw Nate walking toward her. He threw up his arms and shook his head.