There's Something About St. Tropez (41 page)

 

 

Because Belinda had been “confined to barracks,” there was no more jaunts into St. Tropez or Nice. She had successfully sabotaged her own safety and the infamous husband had been spotted clattering over the hotel in his red Bell helicopter, obviously alerted to her whereabouts. Mac had told Sara something would have to be done about Belinda, and soon. The paparazzo turned out to be a false alarm, but Lev reported that though the husband had scoured the entire coast he had not yet located the Hôtel des Rêves and still didn't know exactly where his wife was. What was certain was he would go on looking.

Sara had reverted to the old Sara, subdued after the previous day's events, back in her baggy beige shorts and white camp shirt, her shiny brown hair finally pulled back from her face in a ponytail. With her twiggy limbs, she looked like an overgrown schoolgirl, though in fact she was twenty-seven years old.

Flip-flops in hand, she walked barefoot along the edge of the water, stopping every now and then, gazing out to sea, searching the horizon like a woman looking for answers. From the opposite direction, Nate Masterson approached, also in beige shorts and a white tee and carrying his sandals. He called hello to her.

“Oooh, hi,” she said, half-jumping out of her skin. She'd been so lost in her own thoughts she hadn't heard him coming.

“So, what are you up to today?” Nate asked.

“Well, you know . . .” Sara shrugged, avoiding his gaze. “Actually, nothing much. I guess I'll just hang out here with Belinda and the others.”

Nate glanced speculatively at her. “You want to go for a ride? It's quite a long way, but I'll buy you lunch when we get there.”

“Get where?”

“That's a secret. You'll have to wait to find out.”

Sara turned back to contemplating the Mediterranean. “Oooh, I don't know . . .”

“Sara, please.” Nate found himself suddenly pleading. He needed to tell somebody and Sara seemed the only one available. “I've something to show you, something really special and I'd like your opinion.”

Surprised she turned to face him. “Really? You mean you want me to
help
you?”

“Just your opinion. I'll tell you more when we get there.”

Sara turned pink with pleasure. Nobody ever asked her opinion, except at work of course, where she knew everything there was to know and was the arbiter on any decision making. “I think I'd like that, Nate,” she said. Then with a doubtful look at her attire, “Should I go and change?”

“You look perfect.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on, Sara Strange, let's go.”

 

Sara rode most of the way with her arms snaked desperately around Nate's waist. Her knees were shaking when they finally roared up to a village perched on top of a sheer rock face.

“Where are we?” she squeaked, climbing thankfully off the back of the Ducati.

Nate led her to a café and without asking ordered two espressos. Standing side by side at the counter they downed the strong coffee, then he said, “Now what would you like?”

“Water,” she said, still gasping for breath. Nate ordered it for her.

“Is this what you brought me to see?” Sara inspected the rugged little village with its narrow streets leading off the square. “And anyway, where are you taking me for lunch?” Her stomach was rumbling, she hadn't even had time for breakfast that morning.

“First let me show you my secret.”

Taking her hand Nate led her out of the café and up one of those narrow streets. Thin alleyways ended in a sheer drop to the valley floor, and the houses were crammed close to each other, all in a row. Nate stopped at the one at the very end, at the top of the hilly street. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and stood back for Sara to enter.

She threw him a puzzled glance. “In here?”

“Yes.”

“But who lives here?”

“Nobody. Yet.”

“Wait a minute, you didn't . . . I mean you're not telling me
you bought
this place?”

“I saw it yesterday and bought it immediately. And now I want you to tell me if I've done the right thing.”

“You mean you bought it?
Just like that?
But it's out here, in the wilds. And you live in Manhattan. What about your job? I mean that's who you are, isn't it?”

“You know what, Sara Strange”—Nate pushed her up the step and into the house—“you and I have a lot more in common than I thought. Neither of us seems sure exactly who we are.”

They stood in the small square hall, gazing round. Exposed stone walls; bleached beams; pale wood floors and a shout of color from a tiny red-tiled powder room. A modern white limestone staircase spiraled four floors to a skylit ceiling and together they circled up it.

There was one room on each floor. First a beamed living room that opened out into a graveled courtyard with a small iron table and chairs, looking like something from a French movie. There was a view over the whole of the valley, a mosaic of vineyards and once-upon-a-time farms, now made over into expensive villas dotted with dark blue swimming pools. The floor was pale wood and the low Italian sectional sofas were honey-colored with huge orange cushions.

The third floor consisted of a kitchen and dining room, fitted out immaculately in Bulthaup steel and with a large glass table and orange Eames chairs. The fourth had been divided into a smaller bedroom and a tiled shower, and the fifth and top floor was the master bedroom and bath.

Here a row of windows opened onto a small balcony with a pair of Philippe Starck foam armchairs in red, a small steel table, and window boxes hung with greenery. The low platform bed was black leather and the bathroom a modernist symphony in white subway tile. There were no rugs, no ornaments of any kind, nothing to soften the simple beauty of the new space in the original old setting.

Sara stood in the middle of the bedroom, turning round and round to take it all in: the different furnishings, the primary colors, the beams, the exposed stone walls, the wide windows; the magical view that extended beyond where she could see.

“I half-expect to find the Yellow Brick Road out there,” she said, awed.

“Then you like it?” Nate was surprised how anxious he was for her reply.

“Like it? Nate, it's
wonderful
.”

He heaved a sigh of relief and for the first time that day allowed himself to smile.

“Except . . . well, I mean, like, I just can't believe you actually
bought
it.”

To tell the truth, nor could Nate. He shrugged a dismissive shoulder. “I fell in love,” he said.

“So did I once, but that wasn't the answer.”

“A house is less complicated than a lover,” he said.

Sara laughed, twirling again, delighted. “Nate Masterson, I don't know you very well, in fact hardly at all, but I would guess this is the best move you ever made. It's just perfect.” She turned to face him. “But what will you do here? I mean, like, all by yourself? In winter, and all?”

Nate was still smiling as he took her hand and led her back down the coolest spiral stairs he had ever seen and out onto the old cobbled street. He locked the door, pocketed the key and walked with her back to the Ducati.

“Let's talk about it over lunch,” he said. “With my new friends.”

It didn't take Sara more than a minute to fall in love all over again, this time with the miniature mill house set amid the trees, on the rushing stream with the waddling ducks and the simple restaurant. And with Malcolm and Roger, and their amazing hors d'oeuvres. By now she wasn't in the least surprised that Nate had bought the house.

“I was a waitress once,” she said casually to Nate, as the dark-haired waitress brought more bread.

“You were? Where?”

“Hooters.”

Nate's jaw dropped: he'd expected the local coffee shop.

Sara grinned. “Just kidding. It was a steak house. I was working my way through college. A business major. Imagine that.”

In fact Nate could imagine that. There was a level head under all those insecurities.

“You've found your paradise,” she said, tasting the tiny green lentils and dunking a hunk of baguette hungrily in the celeriac.

“I have,” Nat said, watching her. For the first time she had lost her inhibitions and her self-consciousness and was simply enjoying herself. Perhaps it was this place, this more rugged bit of Provence that brought out the best in her, as it had him, even though he barely knew it yet. But he would. He would be here in the summer sun, like now, and back again in winter when the icy wind whistled and he knew the air would taste like wine, so clean
and so pure you'd feel you could almost sail on the moon. Or at least on a star.

“You're the only person I've told,” he said.

She glanced up, surprised. “Not even Belinda?”

He laughed. “Especially not Belinda.”

Sara laughed with him. She knew that by now Belinda would have told everybody in the world Nate's secret. Or at least everybody she knew.

“Then let's not tell her,” she whispered.

“Let's not.” Nate grinned at her. He was enjoying himself.

“I plan on keeping my job, of course,” he said, though in fact he had not yet given much thought to anything other than the impulsive purchase of the house. “It'll be different now, I won't be so almighty wrapped up in what I do.”

“Now you can escape,” Sara said, with a surge of longing in her voice that speared Nate's heart.

“Hey, what's up?” he said, gently for once.

“I have to leave soon. Next week in fact. Back to Kansas. It's not Kansas that's the trouble,” she added quickly. “I love the place I was born. It's beautiful, the people are nice. Anyhow, everybody has to come from somewhere. So where do you come from?”

Nate shrugged, as though he didn't want to discuss it. “Born in Brooklyn, brought up in New Jersey,” he said quickly. “Scholarship to Colgate, then business school. Parents died while I was there. Car crash.” He shrugged again as Sara made a sympathetic face. “No family to speak of. Work became my reason for being. And I enjoyed it.”

“Until now,” Sara said.

“Until now.”

Sara said, “I have a decent job and I'm very good at it. I'm in charge of admissions at the medical center, I keep everybody in line. You have no idea how bossy I can be.” She laughed ruefully. “It's only in my personal life I'm such a dope.”

“You're no dope.” Nate poured her a glass of wine though he himself was not drinking. “You're a clever young woman, and a very attractive one. Trouble is you never allow either of those qualities to shine through. You cross your arms defensively over your chest; you hunch your shoulders and you let your beautiful hair hide your big brown eyes and your pretty face.”

Shocked, Sara turned pink again.

“And I've never known a woman who blushed before,” Nate said.

She pulled a face. “Left over from my childhood.”

“So, what will you do, back in Kansas? Go back to the same old job, the same old routine?”

Sara nodded. “But not the same old lover.”

Nate laughed. “Time to go,” he said as Malcolm and Roger came over to say goodbye.

“See you soon,” Malcolm yelled over the roar of the Ducati as they sped away.

 

58.

 

 

Bertrand was alone. Little Laureen's father had taken her off somewhere for the day and by evening they still had not returned. He missed her.

Unable to bear the idea of another early dinner alone without the prospect of seeing her, at his corner table under the scrutiny of the other diners and their curious children, he went to the kitchen and asked if he could please have a sandwich instead.

The sous-chef fixed it personally: chicken with tomatoes and a pesto sauce on a mini-baguette. A bottle of Orangina and Bertrand was on his way to his lair.

The lizards were out, basking in the last rays of the sun as he settled down. He had forgotten to bring his cape and binoculars and decided he would go back and get them later. He'd been neglecting his journal and it was time for some more Scientific Experiments, though not, he decided quickly, to Chez La Violette.

Chewing on the crusty sandwich, he thought about what Laureen had said last night. He knew there were no paintings at the villa, not even a print hanging on the wall. Still, maybe the robbers had hidden the stuff somewhere, until the excitement of the robbery had died down and they could be transported safely away to wherever stolen artworks were taken.

The sandwich tasted wonderful. He wished now he had more. The last of the light was fading from the sky, leaving that deep neon blue color that he knew later, when he was locked away in some cold northern boarding school, he would recall and be instantly transported from that bad world into this good one.

Bertrand loved the South of France, and he loved St. Tropez. There was just something about it that drew him. Maybe it was because he'd been coming here most of his life, though he was still only eleven. Because of his nocturnal Scientific Explorations, he felt he knew the inhabitants, their homes, their way of life. He only wished he knew whether there was really a ghost at Chez La Violette.