The Last Time I Saw Paris (21 page)

“Lara!” Bill caught up to her, took her arm, pulled her to him. “My God, Lara, what are we doing?” he groaned. “Why are we fighting like this? I was just worried about reaching civilization before it got dark and we got lost again.”

For a second Lara considered arguing the “getting lost again” scenario, then sensibly decided against it. “And I just wanted to take pictures of the swans,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “I'm so sorry, Bill.” Her arms were around him now; she was safe against his manly, anoraked chest.

It wasn't until she was lying in bed, warm and secure next to her husband later that night, in the very hotel he had intended for them to stay in, that she remembered. Bill had not said he was sorry too.

 

“You've been sleeping.” Dan's voice had a smile in it. “Wake up and look at what I found for you.”

Lara glanced around. They were in the courtyard of a small stone auberge. Through the open door she could see a fire burning in the massive grate, and from somewhere came the rattle of pots and pans and the aroma of something good cooking.

“I figured what was the use of pressing on any further in this bad weather, when there's a great little place right here.”

“How did you find it?” she asked admiringly.

“Oh, I just kinda fell over it.” He grinned as he hauled their bags out of the hatchback. “It ain't the Holiday Inn, lady, but you can bet it's French.”

“And
good,”
she added, following him into the welcoming portals of the tiny inn, remembering that after the fight with Bill, which had somehow conveniently been blocked from her memory bank until now, he had still insisted on finding the hotel they were booked into.

Again, she wondered how she had recalled the sweet bucolic vision of the two of them on the bank of the lake, feeding swans under blue skies, laughing and loving on their wonderful French honeymoon.

She was beginning to think it was a good thing Bill hadn't come with her. If things hadn't already been over between them, these memories would surely have done the trick.

I
t was late the next afternoon and they were sitting on the shaded stone terrace of the fourteenth-century Hôtel Le Château, in Lalinde near Bergerac, which by some miracle Lara had found without a hitch. The Dordogne River swirled lazily past, bearing flotillas of mallards and moorhens downstream, as well as the occasional kayaker and fisherman. A young waiter was opening a bottle of Ruinart champagne, the sky was an amazing azure blue with only one tiny puff of cloud, and the sun shone, as it had all day long.

Lara heaved a contented sigh. “Perfect,” she murmured, accepting the glass of champagne. She raised it in a toast: “To us. And to the sun, finally.”

Dan's eyes met hers. “To us. And thanks for the great navigating.”

She lifted a nonchalant shoulder. “It was nothing, m'sieur. I do that every day. In my sleep.”

“That's usually what it feels like,” he agreed. “Now there's just one problem.”

It was the same mistake as at the Ritz—they had been booked in for the previous night. Lara guessed this was going to happen all through their trip and that she would have to enlist the proprietor's help in telephoning the other hotels where they had reservations to ask them to make the adjustment.

“If the other people don't show up by six, we can
have their room,” she said optimistically. She wasn't about to let it worry her, she was having too good a time. The sun was warm, the champagne cold, and the river a pageant of color lapping almost at their feet.

They had been on the road for seven hours and Dan was amazed that Lara looked as fresh as a daisy in crumpled pale-blue linen overalls. Her hair was piled on top of her head for coolness and she wore no makeup save for a dash of lip gloss. Her pale skin was turning pink under the sun's kiss and her dark curling lashes gave her a sultry look that turned him on.

He looked longingly at her. “I wish we had that bedroom now.”

She caught the electric zigs and zags and smiled. “Finish your champagne. There's time enough for that.”

“Yeah, if we have a room.”

“There's always the backseat of the car.”

“In a Renault 106?”

She laughed with him. “Don't worry, it'll be okay,” she said confidently. Somehow she just knew it was one of those days when everything would go right.

It was impossible to guess from its narrow welcoming hallway and the curved oak staircase that the little hotel had been a prison in the thirteenth century. Rebuilt in the nineteenth, the tiny turreted château had only eight rooms and was more like a bourgeois house located on a side street, right on the Dordogne River, in the small town of Lalinde.

It had changed since Lara had been there with Bill, with a new chef-proprietor and a little swimming pool artistically surrounded by rocks and plants. The two small yellow dining rooms were models of French
bourgeois taste and the food was based on local delicacies like foie gras and duck confit, rich and full of good flavors.

Content, Lara sat back, thinking how angry Bill would have been about the mix-up with the reservations, how he would have been pacing by now. Or worse, he'd have been back in the car on his way to find some other place to stay. “It will all work out” seemed to be Dan's philosophy, and he was right. After all, in a pinch there was always the railway hotel.

“A centime for your thoughts, madame,” Dan offered.

“I was remembering the railway hotel near the Gare du Nord and the sound of the trains going by.”

“And the famous fountains of Paris.”

They were laughing when the desk clerk came bustling toward them to tell them that the other guests had telephoned to cancel and the room was theirs.

“Great timing,” Dan said.

“I told you, you could trust me.”

“Anywhere except in an automobile,” he agreed. Their gaze locked, shutting out the rest of the world. He reached out, took her hand, dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Consider that a deposit.…”

They were still laughing as they made their way up the oak staircase and through dim spacious hallways to the third floor.

Thankfully, their room was not the same one Lara had shared with Bill. She unlatched the tall windows that opened inward, French-style, pushed back the green shutters, and gazed down at the Dordogne River lapping at the stone walls. She thought of the longago men who had once been imprisoned here, and how they must have stared hopelessly out to the opposite
bank and freedom. But there were no bad vibes left over from the past in the simple, sun-filled rooms with their cheerful Oriental throw rugs and the old-fashioned furniture that looked as though it had come from somebody's grandmother's place. As did the big fluffy bed. Which was where they landed when Dan swooped her away from the view and into his arms.

Lara had come to terms with her rounded figure. She knew Dan loved her body; after all, he told her so, often. She told herself she no longer wanted to look twenty years younger for him. . . well, maybe five would do. Right now, age didn't matter; time was suspended as he rolled her over until she lay on top. She stretched her body luxuriously along his length, enjoying her power as she felt him harden against her, smiling that secret little smile of a woman who knows a man wants her. And this time she was going to take him, make him her own.

She straddled him, pausing for a moment as their eyes collided. She ran a hand down his strong neck, across his chest, feeling the muscles tense beneath her teasing fingers, knowing how urgently he wanted her. “Beautiful,” she murmured, depositing tiny, light-asair kisses where her fingers had touched. “I've never seen anyone as beautiful.”

His hands found her nipples and she flung back her head, groaning with pleasure, pressing down on his hardness; she had to touch him, to touch herself, feel with every fiber of her body what was happening to her, to them.

He was strong when she took him in her hand and sank down on him. He trembled beneath her, gripped her hips as she moved over him—
God, oh, God,
she heard him mutter—and she felt empowered, the arbiter of his fate for this one delicious moment.

They tangled like animals on their big soft bed, then Dan was on top, exploring, savoring.…

“I didn't know I could be like this,” Lara whispered as he held still over her. She could feel those seismic tremors quivering through his body.

“Open your eyes, Lara, look at me,” he urged. And the last veil of her inhibitions was drawn aside as she drowned in his eyes, hurtled over the edge by the sensual drive of his body into hers.

Afterward, they lay entwined. His skin was damp with sweat, salty under her tongue as she tasted him. She pushed the dark gold hair back from his eyes, still locked in his embrace, still in that other world of the senses. “Darling Dan,” she whispered, “I love you.”

 

Watching him walk naked into the bathroom in the little tower, Lara asked herself if she
really
loved him. Or if she was
in
love with him. Was there a difference?

Of course there's a difference.
The voice of her alter ego was back again just when she least needed it. She turned her head into the pillow and covered her ears, as if to shut it out.
How could he
love
you? He barely knows you. This is the classic shipboard romance, Lara
—
like on
Love Boat,
right? Proximity, a carefree vacation …

Not exactly
carefree,
she thought. I'm here to find myself. To reconcile myself to being without Bill, without a husband. To start over again.

Alone,
the nagging voice reminded her.

Alone, she sighed. If I have to.

You mean you're still holding out some hope that Dan won't be going right back to Britt as soon as you
get back home? Come on, Lara, grow up, why don't you. I mean, how old are you now? Don't you ever learn?

Dammit, how can I learn? This is only my second time around.… I'm a virtual novice.

Darn right you are, lady. But not this guy. Not Dan. He's probably had more girlfriends than you've had hot dinners.…

“Lara,” Dan called from the turret bathroom, and she ran to him.

He was leaning out of the tiny arched window, and she stopped to take in the long lines of his hard young body, the taut buttocks, the lean flanks and muscular legs. The maple-syrup tan gained from working shirtless outdoors ended where his shorts fitted then started again halfway down his thighs, under a fine layer of golden hair. Lara put a hand on her still-pounding heart, struck with the physical force of how her body reacted to him. He was, she thought with a little catch in her throat, like a great golden bear.

He swung around, saw her, held out his hand to her. “You've got to see this.”

The sun was setting across the river, burning the brown waters a rippling red, tipping the trees on the far bank with crimson, hiding in a rosy gold lining behind the purplish clouds of approaching dusk. And, down the center of the river, like a painting by Corot, floated a pair of swans: regal, proud, the keepers of the great river, their white feathers now a blush pink, fading to mauve as the sun dipped finally behind the horizon.

“I'll never forget this moment as long as I live,” Dan said quietly. “Our lovemaking, the swans, the sunset, and you here with me now. It's …” He
searched for the right word.
“Perfect,”
he said humbly. “Yes, that's it.
Perfect.”

For once the nagging little voice that was either Lara's conscience or her alter ego had nothing to say.

D
an lay back against the pillows on their bed, his hands behind his head, watching Lara get ready for the evening. It had taken him five minutes to shower and throw on a clean shirt and pants, but he knew that even a woman as unserious about her appearance as Lara needed at least thirty, and a woman like Britt took forever. Polishing up the image for her public, he guessed.

His skin was cool from the shower; Lara's familiar perfume tickled his nose and he anticipated, pleasantly, a simple meal and a bottle of wine out on the terrace overlooking the river. What more could life offer a man?

Diamonds glittered at Lara's throat, matching the band of diamonds that encircled the third finger of her left hand—and that, Dan had noticed, though he had said nothing, Lara had not yet taken off.

Did that mean Bill Lewis was still on the scene? He frowned, suddenly uneasy. He didn't even want to think about that. That other life seemed so remote, that reality too far away even to contemplate. Still, he had to ask himself the question: Did he love Lara? Love her in the way you were supposed to when you knew this was it? Knew this was your one and only? Your lifetime partner, your friend, companion, lover?

Oh, yes, he loved her. But how did he love her? And why?

The answer to the first question was easy: Lara was unique. She was beautiful, intelligent, wounded. She was gentle and vulnerable in an old-fashioned way. Had he simply taken her in his arms that first night at the beach to comfort her? The hell he had not—he had wanted her the first time he saw her in that skimpy bathing suit.

He had never met anyone like her, so untouched by the day-to-day material rules that dominated the lives of most young women he had dated. The truth was, he told himself, that Lara simply didn't care about such things. Or did she? After all, she was a woman with two homes and a successful husband who had given her a lifestyle many women would envy. Bill had given Lara far more, materially, than he would ever be able to offer.

And, yes, that worried him. Could there be a future for Lara and him in his scaled-down, simple life? Could she give all that up for the local builder/handyman? And what about her children? They were old enough to resent losing their mom to the blue-collar guy who came back to his modest home covered in dust and sweat every night, instead of to a Pacific Heights mansion in a custom-tailored suit and a designer tie. It was a deeply troubling thought.