by Diana Palmer
“How did I get here?” she asked, and talking hurt her throat.
“I brought you,” Tony said through his teeth. He stood over her with his hands in his pockets. “God, honey, he isn’t worth it. Not worth your life!”
She looked up at him with wet brown eyes. “But I only had a couple of drinks and just a couple of tranquillizers, to make me sleep,” she whispered as it all came back, the pain and the anguish of losing Nick too much to bear.
“Honey, you never mix tranquillizers with whiskey,” he said heavily. “Didn’t you know? My gosh, what if I hadn’t gone to see about you? What would I do for a show next week?” he added, trying to smile. He knew he couldn’t tell her that Nick had phoned him in a panic, pleading with him to make sure Jolana didn’t do something crazy. Damn Nick! But if he hadn’t called, Jolana would be dead now. As it was, she was just about gone when Tony got there and broke down the door, with assistance from two of the neighbors. It was a relief to know that she hadn’t really meant to kill herself. But the doctor had said that if she hadn’t been found, it would have been too late to save her.
She fought to control herself and wiped her eyes with the sheet. “I guess you’d just have to get someone else,” she said with a forced smile.
“Listen to me, hotshot,” he said, moving closer determinedly. “If you try anything stupid like this again, you’ll need a doctor for a different reason! You’re no quitter. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and look ahead, instead of backward. You’re going to have a great career, and eventually you’ll find a man smart enough to love you. Nick deserves Margery, if he’s too damned stupid to see how selfish she is. She’s just using him, the way she used Andrew until he couldn’t take it anymore. But that’s Nick’s problem, not yours. He’s digging his own grave. Don’t dig yours along with him.” He caught her hand in his and held it tight. “You hold on to me. I’ll get you through this.”
Her fingers locked with his, and she saw the strength in him for the first time, and the caring that was beneath all his wild banter. “You’re a nice man.”
“Sure I am,” he agreed. “And I’m the best friend you’ve got right now. So how about living up to my faith in you?”
She studied his long fingers. “I loved him.”
“You’ll get over him.”
“Not while I’m here,” she said. “Not while I’m around you. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. You... You won’t be able to help mentioning him.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, I guess not.”
She lay back on the pillow and her eyes closed. “I have a girlfriend in France, one I went to college with. She asked me to come and visit, and I’d already written to tell her I would.” She laughed bitterly. “Isn’t that ironic? It will be spring soon. Paris is so lovely in the spring.”
“What about the show?”
“You’ll have to do it without the artist,” she said sadly. “I can’t bear to stay here that long.”
He pursed his lips. “I suppose I could say that you came down with beriberi or something. What about your apartment?”
“I’ll sublet it. That will be no problem at all. I’ll leave Maureen’s address with you, and you can send my check there,” she added.
“The address, I gather, is confidential?” he asked shrewdly.
“He won’t ask,” she said, dropping her eyes to the sheet. “He has Margery.”
“He won’t have her for long,” he said in a rough voice. “When she’s free of Andrew, she’ll be after fresh game. When Nick’s had his heart wrung out, he’ll probably be in the same shape you’re in. No inclination to pick up the pieces, Jolana?”
“I’d burn them, if I could,” she said, and meant it.
“If it’s any consolation, he probably cared a lot to get himself involved with you at all,” he said, searching her wan face. “That never happened before. He’s been obsessed with Margery for years, too obsessed to see her as she really is. She’s not a bad woman. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t hate her. It’s just that she’s weak and clinging and she likes to be pitied. When Nick won’t pity her, she’ll find another Andrew who will. Nick would terrify her in any intimate relationship. It would be like trying to mate a tiger with a lamb.”
“Life teaches hard lessons sometimes,” she said. Her fingers let go of his and she sighed, “I’m so tired, and my throat hurts terribly.”
“I’ll see the nurse for you,” he said. He patted her hand. “Get through one day at a time. It will get easier every day, until one day the hurting will stop and you’ll breathe in fresh air. Try it, okay? For me?”
“One day at a time,” she murmured. “It sounds easy enough. Okay. One day at a time.”
“Good girl.” He glanced at her one last time and left the room.
She left the hospital the next day, worn out, exhausted, and so ashamed of her own impulsive stupidity that she could have cried. Wouldn’t that give Nick a thrill, she thought fiercely, to know that she’d loved him enough to take her own life just because he wouldn’t be in it anymore, even if it was accidentally? Stupid! Well, that was twice she’d been taken in by sweet talk and charm.
Next time, she’d go into a relationship with her mind, not her heart. She’d never give her heart again.
The apartment was still full of Nick. Despite her weakness, she went around getting rid of every reminder, every single thing that had a memory attached to it. Even clothes. She’d buy more in Paris.
She arranged to sublet her apartment and packed up her canvases and supplies to take with her. She could paint in Paris. And she remembered vaguely that Phillipe liked racing cars. Perhaps they’d all be going to the Côte d’Azur. That would be nice. She’d enjoy the sun and sand and excitement of Monaco and Nice and Cannes. She and Maureen had always enjoyed adventurous pastimes, along with Phillipe. Perhaps they could recapture their youth. It would be lovely to feel carefree again.
Tony stopped by as she was closing the last suitcase. He looked around with quiet eyes as she put down the case and turned. She was dressed in a black suit with white accessories, looking very chic with her new short haircut and clothes.
“How you’ve changed,” he sighed. “And so quickly.”
“I just grew up all of a sudden,” she informed him. A slight smile turned up her lips. “I was a case of arrested growth.”
He studied her wan face closely. “Nick sent a message for you.”
“Take it back to him,” she replied, still calm, although the sound of his name made her want to cry. “I don’t want to hear it.” She kissed his cheek warmly, smiling. “You’re my best pal, Tony,” she said. “I’ll really miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” he said. He sighed. “Well, I’ll forward the check to you soon. I’m saying that you had to go to Europe on a family matter. An emergency. The paintings will speak for themselves.” He hesitated. “Uh, the one you did of Nick...was magnificent.”
She blanched. “Where did you see it?”
“He gave it to me,” he said quietly. His eyes searched her narrowed ones. “I’m going to tell you now, so you won’t be holding out false hope. He and Margery are getting married as soon as her divorce is final. He said he was sorry for everything, and he never wanted you to be hurt.”
She laughed slowly. “He never wanted me to be hurt. Now that’s a classic.” She stared into his eyes. “Take the painting and burn it. If you’re my friend, do that for me. And tell him someday that I asked you to. Tell him I hope he gets hurt the way he hurt me. Only double.”
“Don’t be bitter,” he pleaded quietly. “You’re the one who’ll be hurt by it, not him.”
“Sure.” She looked around the apartment one last time. “Well, I’m off to the moon, Tony, my friend. Paris, mecca of art. Wish me good luck.”
“You know that already.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “Get well. Then come home. Maybe you a
nd I could...”
“No. No false hope, remember?” She smiled to soften the blow. “I don’t ever want to see him again. If I got involved with you, I’d have to.”
“I could have him bumped off?” he offered drily.
“His ghost would probably haunt us both. Take care, my friend. Thank you for my life. I wouldn’t have it, but for you.”
He almost told her about it being Nick’s idea to check on her, but he held his tongue. What did it matter anyway, now? “My pleasure. Just remember,” he added. “One day at a time.”
She nodded. “One day at a time. Ciao.”
“Ciao.”
Paris was cold and rainy, and all the trees were bare and stark against the city skyline where the Seine meandered past bridges that sang their history in cold stone and survival. Maureen and Phillipe de Vinchy-Cardin lived near the Seine in a fashionable and expensive Paris apartment.
Maureen, slight and dark and full of energy, met her at the airport with open arms and the smile that Jolana remembered so well.
“My old friend,” Maureen laughed, “how long it has been, and how glad I am to see you. Mon Dieu, you are as beautiful as ever. More beautiful!”
“So are you,” Jolana said fervently, smiling down into the almond-shaped dark eyes. “Thank you for letting me come. I needed so desperately to get away for a while.”
“I know about the necessity for getting away, I must confess,” Maureen laughed. “With me, there is always a love affair that has not gone right. But someday, chérie, I will meet the right man and all will be well. Are you hungry?”
“Starved!” Jolana confessed.
“I have left Phillipe at the bakery. We must pick him up on the way home.” She climbed into a Renault, as red as lipstick, and waited for Jolana to put her art supplies and suitcase in the back.
“What a cute little car!” Jolana laughed. “It suits you.”
“Not as well as my Lamborghini,” came the lament, “but at least it was affordable. Times are hard here, even for the well-to-do. Phillipe was elated that you were coming. We have had good times together, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui,” Jolana murmured, leaning back against the seat as Maureen pulled out into traffic. “Très bon. How is Phillipe?”
“As always. Still the happy bachelor.” Maureen glanced at her. “And as crazy in the head as ever!”
Jolana laughed. “Remember the night he put soap suds in the fountain? And tied a huge satin bow to the back of the dean’s car?”
“He was incorrigible. He still is.” Maureen turned a corner where people were strolling by huddled in overcoats. “Paris is so cold and miserable at this time of year. Soon we go to Monaco, for the motorcar rally. The Côte d’Azur is much prettier, and warmer. You will come with us, of course.”
“I don’t want to impose...”
“Chérie, if I did not want you to impose, I would not have invited you. It will be so nice to renew our friendship. I have wanted for many years to have you visit, but you have been so busy... Tell me about this one-woman show in New York!”
Jolana did, leaving out all mention of Nick. “I hope it goes well. I just couldn’t stay in New York any longer.”
“A man, chérie?” came the wise query.
She sighed. Maureen always had been astute. “A man.”
“Here, you will heal. Phillipe and I will help. Oh, là! Look at the crazy fool!”
Phillipe was standing in the middle of the lane, waving two loaves of French bread like a seaman giving semaphore signals to a landing plane. Maureen slammed on the brakes, laughing.
Jolana opened her door and stepped out, grinning at the tall, tanned Frenchman with his lean body and blond hair and twinkling brown eyes. “Stop that!” she called. “We’re not an airplane!”
“C’est vrai?” he laughed. “But, then, chérie, you have not seen me drive. Here.”
He tossed the bread onto the backseat, grabbed Jolana and kissed her heartily in front of all of Paris. His mouth was cool and careless and his eyes twinkled.
“Jolana,” he laughed. “Welcome to Paris.”
He went around to replace his sister at the wheel, stuffing her into the backseat while traffic backed up behind them. He made a face at it. “Allez-vous en!” he called, and added something that Jolana hesitated to translate even in her mind.
“Phillipe, for shame!” Maureen chided. “Where are your manners?”
“In the back, with the bread,” he replied, pulling smoothly into traffic. “Jolana, have you come to paint?”
“Yes.”
“I do not think there is such a market for dead trees and cold water.” He grinned. “We go to Monaco soon. It will be a better subject for your talent. By the way, did my lazy sister thank you for the painting you sent last Christmas, of the villa in Nice?”
“Yes, she did,” Jolana returned with a dry glance. “And stop picking on my friend, you animal.”
“Moi?” he burst out. “You defame me.”
“No. I flatter you.” She laughed. “I just love animals.”
He laughed uproariously. “Do you? Then this will be a visit to remember, I think.”
“Definitely that,” Jolana agreed, and tried not to think why. Nick was still too vivid in her mind, the hurt too fresh, the wounds too raw. She wondered if he even thought of her now. He’d given Tony the painting. Her eyes closed. It had hurt her deeply that he’d thought so little of it that he didn’t even want to keep it. Or perhaps sweet Margery couldn’t bear the sight of it, she thought venomously. Damn Margery!
Around her, Phillipe and Maureen were arguing merrily about which dish to have the cook prepare for supper. Jolana coaxed her mind back to the present. She had to live for tomorrow, not yesterday. And as she listened to the gay banter of her hosts, she began to believe that it was possible to look ahead. She was going to make it somehow. Nick was a closed chapter in her life. And from now on, she was going to treat him as one.
As the days lazed by in Paris, and she was pulled into the frantic lifestyle Maureen and Phillipe enjoyed, it was like their old days at college over again. They went to discos and stayed out half the night partying. They visited friends, some of them wealthy jet-setters who didn’t mind the unconventional antics of the de Vinchy-Cardins or look down on them as café society. Jolana noticed that none of the old French aristocracy would receive them, but she imagined it was because of their youth and unusual lifestyles. They weren’t conventional at all. She began to think she wasn’t, either, because she seemed to fit in with them so well. She refused to consider the possibility that she was adopting their wild lifestyle in an attempt to forget her broken heart. She simply drank champagne and danced and partied and never looked back.
Meanwhile, she and Phillipe seemed to find more and more in common as they spent time together. Riding around Paris with him became an adventure. He was just as likely to stop impulsively at some expensive shop and buy something he clearly didn’t need as he was to forget that they hadn’t had lunch and suggest a stroll through an art gallery. He drove his little black Ferrari as wildly as any taxi driver, but he never came close to an accident. He was fast, but not reckless.
“I drive in the Grand Prix, chérie,” he reminded her, flashing his white smile her way, with blond hair falling carelessly over his deeply tanned forehead. His eyes twinkled, and he seemed to glow when he smiled. He had a Continental sophistication and a devastating charm. Jolana was almost glad that he didn’t try to use it on her. She was vulnerable enough from her recent heartache and might do something stupid on the rebound from Nick.
“Do you?” she asked, picking up the thread of the conversation with difficulty. “Just in France?”
“Mais, non!” he protested, rounding another curve with graceful skill. “The Mille Miglia in Italy, the Monte Carlo road rally... I race all over the world.”
&nbs
p; “I’ll bet you win all over the world, too,” she said drily.
“I always try to come in first, chérie, just to save the other drivers from tiring themselves too much,” he told her. “I would not want them becoming exhausted on my account.”
“Oh, no.”
“Besides,” he said, “I would lose too many bets.” He grinned. “I win more from that than I do from the races.”
“You like to gamble, then?” she queried.
He shrugged. “I have a facility for it.” He glanced over at her. “I will take you to Monte Carlo, to the casino, when we go there and teach you to play roulette.”
“That will be perfect,” she said with a grin of her own. “I’m really good at going around in circles.”
Phillipe laughed and turned the car onto the street where they lived. “Home again, and all too soon. If it were only spring, we would lie under the trees and drink good wine and eat cheese and bread.”
“And get fat,” she suggested.
“Me?” He stared at her. “God forbid! My image would lie in the dirt!”
“You mean, women would stop chasing you,” she teased. “Maureen told me how they cluster around you.”
“It is a pity,” he said, sighing theatrically. “But, what is a poor man to do? I cannot be so ungentlemanly as to force them away from me.”
“Someday you’ll be kissed to death, no doubt,” she agreed. Involuntarily, her eyes dropped to his mouth. It was much more sensual than Nick’s, but every bit as masculine. For two weeks, she’d hardly noticed just how much of a man her hostess’s brother was. Now, he seemed to be becoming as aware of her as she was of him. He caught her puzzled gaze and held it for a long moment, until her spine began to tingle. Watch out, she told herself. Watch out, you’re very vulnerable right now.
“So threatened, those great, dark eyes,” he whispered as he stopped the car in the garage and sat watching her. “Afraid of me, ma petite?” he challenged.
“No,” she returned.
He smiled slowly. “Now, why is it that I do not believe you?”